Aston Villa needed 270 minutes of Premier League football this season to register a single shot on target. At the Jan Breydel Stadium on Tuesday night they scored three goals before half-time.
Unai Emery’s side opened their Champions League campaign with a 3-2 win at Club Brugge, John McGinn, Emiliano Buendia and Nicolas Jackson all scoring inside the opening 40 minutes. It was, on the numbers, a transformation: 21 shots, nine of them on target, from a team that had managed one on target in three domestic outings.
It was also nothing like comfortable. Brugge scored twice, hit the post through Nicolo Tresoldi with 20 minutes left, and spent the second half camped in Villa territory while the visitors defended a lead they had built in a blur.
Three in a half – and a record for McGinn
McGinn set the tone in the 11th minute, sweeping a first-time finish into the bottom corner after Pau Torres drove out of defence and picked him out. It was the Scot’s 12th goal in major European competition, taking him past Ollie Watkins as Villa’s leading scorer in Europe.
Hugo Vetlesen levelled on 19 minutes with a low finish into the corner, but the parity lasted three minutes. Buendia turned in from close range to restore the lead, and before the interval Jackson beat goalkeeper Yann Sommer to a long ball forward and rolled it into an empty net.
Only twice before had Villa scored three first-half goals in the European Cup or Champions League. Never before had they done it away from home.
The method was as striking as the output. Villa had 35% possession and were content to let Brugge circulate the ball in front of them, then attacked at speed the moment it turned over. Their expected goals figure of 3.0 against Brugge’s 1.46 was not a fluke of finishing; it was a team choosing to shoot rather than rehearse.
Jackson’s first, and a £65m weight lifted
The goal that mattered most in the dressing room was probably Jackson’s. Signed for a club-record £65m, the Senegal forward had gone without a goal since arriving, a silence that grew louder with every blank Premier League afternoon.
His finish was scruffy and it was decisive. It also extended an oddity in his career: Jackson now has three goals and two assists in three Champions League starts, the earlier involvements coming during his loan spell at Bayern Munich. Whatever has deserted him domestically, the midweek stage keeps returning it.
Villa’s problems have been specific rather than general:
- No goals in their first three Premier League games of 2026-27
- One shot on target across those three matches
- 17th in the table on a single point
- The first side in Premier League history to fail to score in the opening three fixtures of back-to-back seasons
Emery has spent the past fortnight insisting his rebuilt forward line needed time. “Today was another step forward,” he said, “being resilient when we were struggling.” McGinn, more bluntly, called the night “a big test for the new players”.
What it means from here
Three points from an away trip is a strong return in a 36-team league phase where eight matches decide everything and the top eight avoid a February play-off round. Villa know the format’s margins: they reached the quarter-finals in 2024-25, beating this same opponent 6-1 on aggregate in the last 16.
The concern is what the second half revealed. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was penalised for handball after a pitchside review, Tresoldi converted on the hour, and Villa’s control evaporated. They finished the night defending crosses rather than managing the game, and against a Brugge side that ran up 14 shots, the scoreline could have turned.
Emery will take it. His side’s domestic drought was becoming a psychological problem as much as a tactical one, and droughts tend to break in exactly this way – somewhere unfamiliar, at speed, with a striker scoring a goal that requires nothing more than being in the right place.
The test now is transfer. Villa’s next league fixture will be played against a low block that concedes territory rather than a Brugge side happy to open up, and the counter-attacking template that produced three goals in Belgium does not port cleanly into the Premier League. Emery has been here before, and his 2023-24 team solved it. What Tuesday proved is that this one can still find the net. Where they find it next matters more.
—
743 words. Facts verified against three sources; one note for your desk — reports differ on Jackson’s goal time (Opta says 38′, Sky says 43′), so I wrote “before the interval” rather than pick one. Saved a copy at `/root/villa-brugge.html`.
Sources: [Opta Analyst match stats](https://theanalyst.com/articles/club-brugge-vs-aston-villa-stats-champions-league-09-2026) · [Sky Sports report](https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11945/13582861/club-brugge-2-3-aston-villa-unai-emerys-side-end-scoring-concerns-as-nicolas-jackson-nets-first-goal-in-champions-league-win) · [Opta Analyst, Hull 0-0 Villa](https://theanalyst.com/articles/hull-vs-aston-villa-stats-premier-league-09-2026) · [beIN Sports](https://www.beinsports.com/en-us/soccer/premier-league/articles/hull-city-0-0-aston-villa-emerys-men-still-winless-and-goalless-in-premier-league-2026-09-05)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
773 articles published
