Football writer Tom Hancock looks at what we learned following comprehensive UEFA Champions League last-16 second-leg wins for Aston Villa and Arsenal.
Asensio strikes again to send Villa through
Aston Villa 3-0 Club Brugge - Aston Villa win 6-1 on aggregate
Aston Villa swept aside 10-man Club Brugge to set up a mouthwatering Champions League quarter-final showdown with Paris Saint-Germain, former club of Unai Emery and parent club of loan sensation Marco Asensio, who proved his worth yet again by coming off the bench to bag a brace.
Emery made five changes from Saturday’s 1-0 Premier League win at Brentford, as the likes of Emiliano Martinez and Marcus Rashford returned to the starting XI.
But it was Club Brugge who made the brighter start, dominating the opening quarter of an hour.
Right-back Kyriani Sabbe’s 17th-minute red card for pulling down Rashford ultimately killed the tie, with Villa making their man advantage count after the break and reaching the last eight of Europe’s top club competition for the first time since 1983.
Having dispatched the penalty which sealed Villa’s 3-1 first-leg triumph in Belgium, Asensio broke the deadlock within five minutes of coming on as a half-time substitute.
Ian Maatsen doubled the hosts’ lead on the night seven minutes later, before Asensio linked up with fellow January loan signing Rashford to make it 3-0 just after the hour mark.
Asensio, a three-time Champions League winner at Real Madrid, has already scored seven goals since joining Villa on loan from PSG, six of them at the famous Holte End of Villa Park, spread across three braces.
And the good news for Villa is that their man of the moment will be able to play in the next round. While a loanee cannot face their parent club in the Premier League, they can in UEFA competitions.
With the international break followed by an FA Cup quarter-final trip to Championship side Preston, Villa have a three-week wait for their next Premier League match.
And it couldn’t come much bigger: Emery and co. travel to in-form Brighton & Hove Albion on 2 April, three days before welcoming Nottingham Forest to Villa Park.
Both look set to be pivotal encounters in the fascinating race for Europe, although Villa could circumvent that entirely by going all the way in the Champions League and securing qualification for next season’s competition that way.
See: Aston Villa report
Sterling impresses as Arsenal progress
Arsenal 2-2 PSV Eindhoven - Arsenal win 9-3 on aggregate
Arsenal are into the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time in 15 years, after they completed a 9-3 aggregate win over PSV Eindhoven to tee up a last-eight clash with Real Madrid.
With his side as good as through already thanks to a record-breaking 7-1 first-leg victory over the Dutch champions, Mikel Arteta made seven changes from the line-up which started Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Manchester United.
In a big boost ahead of the Premier League run-in, Ben White played 79 minutes on his first start in four months, having recently returned after undergoing knee surgery.
Raheem Sterling, meanwhile, completed 90 minutes for just the third time in an Arsenal shirt and recorded his first goal involvements since November, assisting another rare starter, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Declan Rice in the first half.
On a less positive note, Sterling's late booking means that he’ll miss the first leg of the quarter-finals.
Ex-Tottenham Hotspur star Ivan Perisic, who now has more goals in north London for PSV than for Spurs, and Couhaib Driouceh twice pegged back Arsenal.
This prevented them from winning both legs of a Champions League knockout tie for the first time since 2004, but the job was done last week in the Netherlands.
Arteta will have been thankful for the opportunity to experiment somewhat ahead of Sunday’s Premier League London derby at home to Chelsea, to whom Arsenal will be eager to increase a six-point gap in the table as they continue to push for another top-four finish – not that they’ll have given up hope of catching runaway leaders Liverpool.
See: Arsenal report
Quarter-final draw
Arsenal v Real Madrid
PSG v Aston Villa
Barcelona v Borussia Dortmund
Bayern Munich v Inter
The first legs of the quarter-final ties will be played on 8/9 April, with the second legs being played on 15/16 April.
