00:00 Hibernian 0, Aston Villa 5 here at Easter Road in Edinburgh.
00:04 The Europa Conference League campaign has gone off to a perfect start for Aston Villa.
00:08 It's only the first leg but, to be honest with you, unless there's one of the greatest comebacks in history at Villa Park next week,
00:13 it's pretty much all over for Unai Emery's team.
00:16 In a good sense because they're going to be going into the group stage if they can hold on to their 5-0 aggregate advantage.
00:22 It was a hat-trick of goals tonight for Oli Watkins, two headers and a volley finish from a Luca Digne volleyed cross.
00:28 Digne actually got a hat-trick of assists himself, a hat-trick of headers as well, a night of hat-tricks as Leon Bailey also got a header in the first half.
00:37 And then Douglas Luiz rounded things off with a 5-0 victory with a second-half penalty.
00:41 That was won by Virgil Trieri with some fine work coming off the bench.
00:45 It looked comfortable, it looked really comfortable. I think there was a real gulf in quality, it was easy to see.
00:51 In my player ratings actually, which you can check out on birminghamworld.co.uk and Match Report as well,
00:56 I've not been too generous and that's because of the quality and the expectations you would have of the performances based off of that.
01:03 I think Hibbs definitely in the first 15-20 minutes put a good account on themselves,
01:07 but maybe exerted a little bit too much energy in that period.
01:10 They just allowed Villa to control things as you'd expect given the quality they've got.
01:15 Unai Emery, who is the man who loves European competitions, will definitely, or most nearly definitely anyway, be heading into another group stage.
01:23 It's been well over a dozen years in a row that Emery's had that.
01:26 Villa meanwhile, it's their first European campaign in 13 years.
01:30 So Emery coming here definitely making things a lot more exciting for fans.
01:34 It wasn't the biggest allocation actually in the away end here at Easter Road,
01:38 but the fans that were here in Edinburgh this evening made plenty of noise.
01:41 An awkward kick-off on a Wednesday, they didn't seem to care.
01:44 Very expensive trains, very expensive hotels with the festival going on at the moment, the Fringe Festival.
01:49 But amazing support as per usual from Villa and the next leg should be quite an arseful naturally for youngsters to get to game time.
01:56 But check out my match reports and play ratings and post-match quotes on birminghamworld.co.uk.
