Aston Villa 1-0 Stoke City: John Carew Becomes Football's Nice Guy

It was a colossal and rather convincing win for Aston Villa at Villa Park on Saturday, as they emerged 1-0 victors over Stoke City in the Premier League .

It's a result that consolidates Villa's hope of attaining that very lucrative fourth Champions League position, as they are now two points clear in fourth place.

Stoke striker Mamady Sidibe might've felt hard done by when his smashing header, which found the back of the net, was disallowed for a seemingly harmless push on defender Stephen Warnock.

But apart from that disallowed goal, Stoke were no match for Aston Villa, as the team from Birmingham ripped their opponents to shreds and should've scored more than just one solitary goal.

Gabriel Agbonlahor , Stiliyan Petrov, Steve Sidwell, and John Carew all had glorious chances to find the net, before the ex-Lyon striker Carew used his head (literally) and finally scored to give his side a more than deserved lead and eventually the win.

Ashley Young , who has been in fine form lately, delivered a superb cross into the box for the big Norwegian striker to powerfully smash home in the 61st minute, giving the Villans a 1-0 lead and Carew another goal, and all the more reason for him to be in the Villa side ahead of the useless Emile Heskey.

After scoring the decisive goal, Carew thought he'd take it upon himself to celebrate by kicking the corner flagpole into the crowd.

Whereas most other players wouldn't have cared what happened with the pole or who it hit, Carew proved himself to be one of the nicer men in football by checking to ensure no fan was injured by his irresponsible action.

He saw that the pole came close to hitting one little boy in the crowd who was sporting a Superman outfit with Carew's name on it, and this is where the Norway striker really boosted his profile with football fans.

None of the fans, including the boy, that were close to the pole even cared that Carew kicked it towards them (they were just happy their side had won), but the striker still felt he had to make amends for his action.

At the final whistle, he went back over to that section of the crowd and said sorry to the kid, before giving the little Villa fan the best Christmas present possible, the jersey he wore in the match.

So in the end, it was John Carew who proved to be the Superman and Mr. Nice Guy for Aston Villa, giving fans of all ages the best possible Christmas present; three points, and yet another step closer to that dream of Champions League football.