Zion Suzuki had been the best player on the pitch for an hour. Then Alex Iwobi swung a corner towards the near post, the Japan goalkeeper went up for it, and the ball slipped through his gloves and dribbled over his own line. Fulham had their equaliser, Aston Villa had a point instead of three, and the eighth and last game of a crowded Premier League Saturday finished 1-1 at Villa Park.
Jackson keeps scoring, Villa keep failing to kill games
Nicolas Jackson had put the hosts in front on 39 minutes, and he did it the way he has been doing everything lately. Johan Manzambi slid the ball through, Jackson got away from David Affengruber and Timothy Castagne without either of them laying a glove on him, and he finished past Bernd Leno. That was his sixth goal in all competitions in October. No other player in the English top flight managed more in the month.
It should not have been his goal that mattered. Twenty-three minutes earlier Leon Goretzka headed the ball against Sander Berge's raised arm, referee Sam Barrott waved it away, and video assistant Matthew Donohue sent him to the monitor. Barrott changed his mind. It was the first penalty Villa had been awarded in the Premier League since April 2025, against Manchester City, and they did not get one at all last season. Jackson, scoring for fun, did not take it. John McGinn did, and he smacked it off the crossbar.
Suzuki's hour of saves, then the one that counted
Before the mistake there was a one-handed stop to deny Oscar Bobb when the game was still goalless, another to keep out Gonzalo Garcia after the break, and a save from Iwobi that only produced the corner the goal came from. Suzuki even made a good one late on to deny Antonee Robinson. Unai Emery was not interested in hanging him out to dry afterwards. "This is part of football," the Villa manager said. "He has played fantastically and is doing a lot of saves so he can make one mistake." The £30m Villa paid Parma for him in August buys a fair amount of patience.
Villa still had chances to win it. Pau Torres got his head to two balls from close range in the final stages and put neither of them on target.
Arbeloa's Fulham are no longer the team they were in September
Alvaro Arbeloa took over at Craven Cottage in the summer when Marco Silva left, and six league games later he had two points and a growing problem. Three games on from that, Fulham have seven more. They beat Hull City 1-0, then Coventry City 1-0, and now they have come from behind at a ground where Villa were unbeaten in five. The second half belonged to them, with Garcia twice getting into dangerous positions inside ten minutes of the restart, and Calvin Bassey was named man of the match for the defending that kept the point safe while Villa pushed at the end.
Both of these clubs were in the bottom three after four matches with one draw and three defeats apiece. Villa have won three and drawn two of the five league games since. Sunday, as it happens, marks four years to the day since Emery started work at Villa Park, when the team sat three points above the relegation zone. They have finished seventh, fourth, sixth and fourth since, reached a Conference League semi-final and a Champions League quarter-final, and won the Europa League last season, the club's first European trophy since 1982. This game was moved to Saturday evening because of what comes next: Barcelona away in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Match facts: Aston Villa 1-1 Fulham, Villa Park, Saturday 31 October 2026. Jackson 39', Suzuki own goal (second half). McGinn missed a 16th-minute penalty, awarded after a VAR review for handball by Sander Berge. Villa are ninth with three wins, three draws and three defeats from nine; Fulham are 15th, three points behind.
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