{"id":4777,"date":"2014-09-14T02:35:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T02:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=4777"},"modified":"2014-09-14T02:35:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T02:35:49","slug":"gabby-agbonlahors-goal-sends-villa-to-second-place-as-helpless-balotelli-makes-anfield-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/gabby-agbonlahors-goal-sends-villa-to-second-place-as-helpless-balotelli-makes-anfield-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabby Agbonlahor&#8217;s Goal Sends Villa to Second Place, as Helpless Balotelli Makes Anfield Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aston Villa dished out the rough stuff to Mario Balotelli and Liverpool, but can claim the tactic was justified as Paul Lambert\u2019s men climbed to second in the Premier League following captain Gabby Agbonlahor\u2019s shock winner.<\/p>\n<p>Balotelli, making his Anfield debut after a \u00a316million move from AC Milan, appeared to be targeted by Villa to try and make him lose his temper, particularly when Philippe Senderos kicked him off the ball.<\/p>\n<p>Substitute Raheem Sterling was also the victim of a bad, late tackle from Alan Hutton.<\/p>\n<p>But any collateral damage in public relations terms will hardly dampen Villa\u2019s spirits after Agbonlahor celebrated his new four-year contract with a goal poacher\u2019s effort after nine minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Manager Lambert will point out that only one Villa player, Hutton, was booked and on Saturday only Chelsea sit above them in the Premier League table.<\/p>\n<p>Even though \u00a325m England midfielder Adam Lallana and Manchester United reject Tom Cleverley were making club debuts, one-man publicity machine Balotelli was predictably the centre of attention.<\/p>\n<p>Super Mario\u2019s name was cheered louder than anyone else\u2019s and a Liverpool lap-dancing club hired a plane to fly overhead and advertise their wares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aston Villa dished out the rough stuff to Mario Balotelli and Liverpool, but can claim the tactic was justified as Paul Lambert\u2019s men climbed to second in the Premier League following captain Gabby Agbonlahor\u2019s shock winner. Balotelli, making his Anfield debut after a \u00a316million move from AC Milan, appeared to be targeted by Villa to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4777"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4780,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4777\/revisions\/4780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}