If either Aston Villa or Brighton have ambitions to reach Europe, they will need 2025 to start better than 2024 ended. The match began and concluded as ninth against 10th after Tariq Lamptey was the unlikely hero with a late equaliser to punish the hosts for missing a glut of chances.

Villa have won four of their past 15 matches this year, while Brighton are winless in seven to make them the poster boys for midtable mediocrity at the halfway point of the season. Goals from Ollie ­Watkins and Morgan Rogers had put Villa into the lead after Simon Adingra’s opener and the hosts sensed victory until Lamptey scored his third goal in 95 league games for Brighton to level with less than 10 minutes to go.

It should not have come to this for Villa, who dominated possession but looked vulnerable on the break. Chances came and went with great regularity, with 20 attempts but only four on ­target. Rogers was a ­constant menace with his direct running and skilful ­dribbling, making Lamptey’s night a ­difficult one, but the hosts struggled in the early stages to threaten Bart ­Verbruggen’s goal.

Turning the Villa defence was a key strategy for Brighton. It was a long punt over the top from Lewis Dunk that resulted in the opener as Ezri Konsa and Pau Torres, who later sustained a suspected broken ­metatarsal, failed to deal with the matter when the ball dropped in the box, allowing Adingra to step in and curl beyond Emiliano Martínez into the corner.

Emery used his programme notes to bemoan VAR and was once again left irritated by the officials when they ruled that Jan Paul van Hecke had got the ball after an ill‑advised lunge on Rogers in the box. The Villa manager threw out his arms when the video officials declared there was no need to overturn the original decision. He need not have worried because, in the next action, João Pedro kicked ­Rogers when trying to clear a corner and, this time, Craig Pawson, the ­referee, eventually changed his mind at the screen after ruling Verbruggen was not impeded seconds before the foul, much to Fabian Hürzeler’s ­chagrin. Watkins, on his 29th birthday, did the rest.

“You can give the pen but you can’t not give the foul on Bart,” ­Hürzeler, who was booked for his complaints, said. “In a normal game when a player is blocked when the ball is not near from him it’s always a foul so I don’t understand why it’s not a foul, they have to find an answer.”

It was only right that ­Rogers’s ­terrorising of Brighton was rewarded when the visitors failed to clear their lines in the 47th ­minute. Watkins chipped a pass over the defence that Rogers chested down and ­immediately fired the ball into the corner for his sixth goal of an electrifying season. The winger was the best player on the pitch by a distance, having already earned a ­penalty, and was causing panic to those dressed in yellow.

Unai Emery said: “I think we deserved to win, we played more or less in the same form in the last match we played at home [against Manchester City] but sometimes that is enough. I think we need to be proud of everything we’ve done this year. We are finishing the first part of the season, and the year, and we have to be proud of everything we did.”

Hürzeler did what he could to get Brighton into the game by ­making a triple change before the hour. Kaoru Mitoma and Yankuba Minteh brought some much-needed verve to their output and it was the ­Japanese winger who helped to create the ­equaliser when he found João Pedro in the box, who laid the ball into the path of Lamptey to take a touch and fire into the corner from 18 yards.

Lamptey had earned greater freedom from Rogers being moved ­centrally after a tactical tweak, ­allowing him to push further ­forward without fear of being exposed if things went awry, but it was Villa who were punished.

“I think we were a better team, we created better chances, we controlled the game, especially in the first 20-25 minutes,” Hürzeler said. “We made the equaliser, we had another two or three big, big moments, big chances, where we easily could score the third goal. When you come back it’s always good, but in the end I think we deserved much more.”