Ollie Watkins got the only goal in a contest that could have gone either way.
Morgan Rogers scored a minute later but it was ruled out for offside, keeping the visitors in the lead that stayed until the end.
Brentford kept fighting, notably with Keane Lewis-Potter hitting the post, but no chances were converted, leading to a massive win for Aston Villa, with some quality defending from both sides on display.
Story of the match
Due to their ongoing Champions League and FA Cup campaigns, the Villan’s had played twice since the midweek round of Premier League fixtures a week and a half prior, both being wins, against Cardiff and Club Brugge respectively.
Hosting Aston Villa comes ten days after the Bee’s last game, a 1-1 draw at home to Everton, while Villa lost to Crystal Palace 4-1 the day before.
The break will have come as a much needed rest and a reset for Thomas Frank’s squad, who went into the game winless in six home games, the longest they have ever had to wait for a home win in the top-flight.
Frank’s starting XI was unchanged from the Everton game, apart from Yegor Yarmolyuk being replaced by captain Christian Norgaard, who missed it due to a knock he had picked up.
Unai Emery made two changes from the midweek Champions League triumph in Belgium, with Marcus Rashford and Emiliano Martinez swapped for Jacob Ramsey and Robin Olsen. Marco Asensio, who came on as a sub and scored in Europe, was left out of the squad as a precaution.
It was a cagey opening 45 minutes in West London, with neither team having any clear cut opportunities throughout.
The best chance of the half came eight minutes in when Damsgaard received the ball on the edge of the Aston Villa box and twisted and turned the defender, before slipping a pass through the lines into the path of Lewis-Potter. The winger wasn’t then able to play the ball around Olsen for Yoanne Wissa, who was waiting in the middle with an empty net in front of him.
Following a quiet first period for both teams, the second half sparked to life almost immediately. Three minutes in, picking the ball on up on the left-wing on a Villa counter-attack, Watkins advanced towards the Brentford goal and with Matty Cash at the back post and Rogers in the middle, the striker decided to go it alone and struck his shot low and hard to take it past Mark Flekken.
Not 60 seconds later, Watkins found himself with the ball in a similar position, but this time without any help from his teammates. With some better Brentford defending he was forced away from goal, but this only gave time for Rogers to run in and finish Watkins perfectly weighted ball first time.
To the dismay of the travelling support however, the goal was taken to VAR and Watkins was judged to be offside by what seemed like mere centimetres.
With the score back to just 1-0, the Brentford players and fans sighed a huge sigh of relief at not conceding so quickly after the first.
This seemed to give the players a fire that had not previously been there, with Kevin Schade having a chance to equalise just seconds later.
Lewis-Potter hit the post on 70 minutes after the ball fell to him following a clearance from a corner, while Bryan Mbuemo had a couple of half-chances to equalise but nothing concrete.
With five minutes to go Watkins found himself completely one-on-one with the goalkeeper, with the Villa defence caught high up the pitch trying to get a goal, but he seemed to have almost too much time and tried to chip Flekken but the Dutchman stood tall and kept his side in the game.
The Bee’s kept pushing for a goal but none of their attacks, while came close, found themselves in the back of the Claret and Blue net.
On loan from Chelsea, the French defender put up a quality performance that saw him completely shut out Schade.
In a game that required more attacking than defending, he was able to slow the game down when needed, giving his side that much more of a chance of winning.
A natural centre-back, it says a lot that he was picked to play at right-back, given Emery had two fully-fit right-backs at his disposal, in Cash and Andres Garcia.