Now that the curse is over I’m expected Aston Villa to go from one extreme to the other. We may have never won a game in March under Martin O’Neill before Sunday’s FA Cup victory over Reading, but if you’ve looked at the fixture list you may be feeling the same as me.
I don’t blame MON’s little whine about fixture congestion, what sort of manager would he be if he didn’t, but he knows that this only happens to the successful sides this time of year and it’s not new. Nothing will be done, but it’s nice to point out to everyone that we have a lot of games on our plate.
I like to look at it as an opportunity though. With so many cup games recently, we’ve had to postpone several Premiership matches (at the time of writing, the trip to Hull and the visit of Everton are still awaiting a date), but now there’s 5 straight EPL between now and the end of the month. That’s 15 points, we can catch up a game or two that we have in hand and some of the teams above us will have the distraction of Europe to contend with.
I don’t normally bother wasting time with predictions, especially multiple predictions, but just for fun I checked out the fixture list for the top 8 for the rest of the month and came up with what I think the table could look like on April 1st. No joke.
Continued…
Posted in General Stuff.
By Dan
– March 10, 2010
If you use the internet much then chances are high that you use Google at least every now and again. You may have noticed that the search giant often wants to help you with your searches by making suggestions to complete your phrase. This gives you a glimpse into the zeigeit as it’s based on what everyone else is searching for.
I stumbled on a suggestion for one of our players last night which caused me to check out the rest of the squad and fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, no one else at the club seems to warrant a suggestion. I checked out a few other high profile players and found a gem or two which I thought I’d share for your amusement.
[Note for Emile Heskey - Emile, leave this with me, mate, I'll be contacting Google on your behalf. This is an outrageous slur!!]
Ashley Cole Is…
Continued…
Posted in General Stuff.
Tagged with Emile Heskey.
By Dan
– March 9, 2010
In short, no.
Then again, maybe it is… eventually.
Maybe no one really remembers the runner-up, but they’re rightly rewarded with cold hard currency which is needed to help finance next year’s campaigns. I’ve never made a secret of my opposition to the rich benefactor approach or my pride at the Villa way of doing things right now. I’m pretty certain that I’m not in the minority there.
I want to see Aston Villa challenging for titles at home and abroad as much as any fan, but I recognise that’s not going to happen overnight and each small step of progress helps. It’s not just about experience, although that’s a strong component, it’s also about the Benjamins. Here’s a quick exploration of what’s on offer and why finishing 5th or 6th in the league matters.
League Cup
It seems that only the losers refer to the Carling Cup as a “Mickey Mouse” cup. Utd looked pretty happy to win it and you can be sure there would be plenty of Villa fans still celebrating had we managed to lift the trophy ourselves.
Continued…
Posted in General Stuff.
Tagged with Carling Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League.
By Dan
– March 9, 2010
February was a busy month, but with all the Carling Cup and FA Cup fixtures, there were only 3 Premiership games to capture the data from. It’s probably quite fitting since he’s consistently among the highest scoring players in every game that Brad Friedel finally win an AVC Player of the Month award himself.
Very well deserved and largely thanks to being the highest scoring player in the Tottenham and Man Utd games. It’s unquestionable that Brad has saved us points this season.
Player of the Month – February
- 1st – Brad Friedel – 7.41
- 2nd – Richard Dunne – 7.07
- 3rd – James Milner – 6.67
Previous Winners
|
1st |
2nd |
3rd |
| January |
Richard Dunne (7.10) |
Ashley Young (6.90) |
Stiliyan Petrov (6.86) |
| December |
Richard Dunne (7.67) |
James Milner (7.44) |
Brad Friedel (7.25) |
| November |
James Milner (7.15) |
Carlos Cuellar (7.04) |
Brad Friedel (6.89) |
| October |
Richard Dunne (7.21) |
James Collins (7.14) |
Gabby Agbonlahor (6.69) |
| September |
Gabby Agbonlahor (7.34) |
Brad Friedel (7.28) |
James Milner (7.23) |
| August |
James Milner (7.03) |
Brad Friedel (6.91) |
Stiliyan Petrov (6.57) |
Posted in Stats.
Tagged with Brad Friedel, Player of the Month.
By Dan
– March 8, 2010
It was over a month ago that I first wrote about the bad JuJu surrounding Aston Villa in March under Martin O’Neill’s leadership and since then I have not rested in my quest to find the source of this curse and vanquish the demons once and for all.
I couldn’t reveal my journey to you all before now, for fear of derision and at half time today in Reading I seriously questioned whether by mission had truly been successful, but by the time the referee blew his whistle to close 90 exhilarating minutes I knew that my work was complete and I was free to tell the tale.
I hunted for him in the four corners of the earth, my friends, but just days ago I finally found him in deepest Borneo. A lone, pathetic, twisted, evil man… Kevin Wilkinson. He is the one who had placed this despicable hex on our beloved club, the source of his bitter jealousy was easy to fathom when I stumbled upon him.
Continued…
Posted in General Stuff.
Tagged with Martin O'Neill.
By Dan
– March 7, 2010
Ex-Villan David Ginola just took part in the draw for the FA Cup Semi-Final and Aston Villa will play Chelsea… thanks David!!
In the other Semi-Final, Portsmouth will take on Spurs or Fulham.
Both matches will be played at Wembley Stadium over the weekend of 10 April and 11 April.
I suppose we haven’t done bad with cup draws so far this season, so it was probably inevitable that we would draw Chelsea. But there you go, they always say that you have to beat the best to win, so why not?
Update: It’s been confirmed that we will play Chelsea on Saturday April 10th, kick off at 5pm.
Posted in News.
Tagged with Aston Villa vs Chelsea, FA Cup.
By Dan
– March 7, 2010
What March curse?
We might as well just get ‘Aston Villa’ etched on one of the Wembley changing room doors permanently… after beating Reading 4-2 at the Madejski today, we’re off there again. We don’t know who we’ll be playing in the FA Cup Semi-Final over the weekend of 10 April and 11 April yet, but the draw will be later today and I’ll update here.
If you ever wanted to see the epitome of football’s oldest cliche; ‘a game of two halves’, this was it. Villa were truly terrible for much of the first half and Reading were good value for their 2-0 lead at the break. Not that Villa didn’t create chances, but most of their play was sloppy to say the least. Errant passes, silly unforced mistakes, lack of movement, disinterest from certain quarters.
By contrast, Reading harried and hussled, at times showing some nice, fluid play. Their first goal came from a corner with the Villa back line unusually all drawn to the ball which was flicked on to an unmarked Shane Long at the far post to make the simplest of headers unchallenged.
The second goal capped off a move that illustrated everything Villa was failing to achieve. Passing, movement, intent, quality. (I should just add “poower” and then you can read that in your best Alan Hansen voice) Shane Long again with the goal; a simple tap in after Villa had been frankly sliced to pieces.
Continued…
Posted in Reviews.
Tagged with FA Cup, Reading vs Aston Villa.
By Dan
– March 7, 2010
The walls of Aston Villa Central are still creaking under the weight of what turned out to be quite a busy day here yesterday. There were no less than three posts, none of them particularly brief and all of them focused on financial matters. So, plenty to make the eyes glaze over of most football fans, myself included.
I need to follow up on the third post (this one effectively replaces it), so here’s a quick recap of the day:-
- Firstly, I was exploring the Deloitte 2010 Football Money League Report which ranks and reports on Europe’s top 20 earning football clubs every year. I discovered that Aston Villa are apparently catching the big hitters up and this year were in 25th place.
- We’ve been waiting for Aston Villa’s annual report to be submitted for the last few weeks, but with the revenue figure I discovered in the Deloitte report I was able to follow up on a post from last summer disputing the claim that there’s any kind of comparison at all between Doug Ellis and Randy Lerner when it comes to money spent on bringing new players to the club.
- Finally, I stumbled on an article from The Telegraph which discusses the amount of money that Randy has invested in Villa and cites the most recent accounts. It turns out that they were filed last weekend so I had to put together a quick post on it, but as I was writing there were several things about the The Telegraph’s version of the accounts that didn’t make sense.
A reader contacted me late last night to offer to let me have copies of the accounts for both Reform Acquisitions (Randy’s Parent Group) and Aston Villa FC, which was fantastic as I’ve struggled to get hands on them myself. So, thank you very much for your help!
Continued…
Posted in General Stuff.
Tagged with Aston Villa Annual Reports, Randy Lerner.
By Dan
– March 6, 2010
Aston Villa Central
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