All four goals were worthy but this award belonged to John McGinn
We love a Goal of the Season competition here at JOE, and this year there were a couple of clubs in the Championship that had a set of ridiculous nominees.
As we covered last week,
Sheffield Wednesday had a wonderful showreel of long-range stunners to choose from, and it was no different for Aston Villa, who announced the winner of their Goal of the Season on Wednesday at their player's awards evening.
In fairness, Villa's four nominations were fairly difficult to choose between. There were two efforts from their captain and talisman, Jack Grealish. One was a first-time rocket of a volley, dispatched after a corner kick was floated to the edge of the area against Derby County and the other was a magnificent, give-and-go slalom run from inside his own half, capped off by a cool finish against Rotherham United.
https://twitter.com/AVFCOfficial/status/1123648925754429442
'The Scottish Cafu' Alan Hutton also made a surprise appearance in the final shortlist thanks to his memorable one-man stampede up the entire pitch in the Second City derby against Birmingham City, which ended in the right-back seemingly forgetting exactly who he was and curling into the far corner on his left-foot like a bald, Glaswegian Lionel Messi.
In our opinion though, the winner should have been John McGinn for this mesmeric volley he plucked from the sky all the way back in September. I mean, just fucking look at it. Eyes on the ball, head over it, follow through. It's perfect; technically and aesthetically, even down to the ball bouncing off the underside of the bar and McGinn peeling away to celebrate as he watches it smash back up into the roof of the net.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqIwc2BSwK8
It was, however, Grealish's goal against Rotherham that was crowned winner, which, yeah, we get. He ripped the whole team apart on his own. You can't argue too much.
Unless, of course, you're the goalscorer in question, who replied to the tweet announcing that'd he won the award with "Really?" and a GIF of Alan Hutton doing Alan Hutton things.
https://twitter.com/AVFCOfficial/status/1123699621468037122
https://twitter.com/JackGrealish1/status/1123712831822663680
Like we said at the start. We love a Goal of the Season competition.
