Aston Villa News 24/7Martin O’Neill took the opportunity to send a much changed Aston Villa side out to face Blackburn in the FA Cup 3rd Round at Villa Park today and it paid off with a 3-1 victory. Clearly with an eye on Tuesday’s Carling Cup Semi-Final 1st leg at Ewood Park, MON gave some periphery players a run out with James Milner and Gabby Agbonlahor not even asked to sit on the bench.
| Heskey | Delfouneso | ||
| Downing | Reo-Coker | Delph | A Young |
| Warnock | Collins | Cuellar | Beye |
| Guzan | |||
Subs: Friedel, L Young, Dunne, Sidwell, Albrighton, Petrov, Carew.
Nathan Delfouneso made the most of his rare start by opening the scoring in the 12th minute with a headed goal provided by Ashley Young. Blackburn possibly thought they would be back on terms on the half hour mark when Nigel Reo-Coker conceded a penalty, but, if so, they hadn’t taken into account that penalty king Brad Guzan was in goal. Maybe David Dunn did have that on his mind, but his effort from the spot was stopped by the American understudy.
6 minutes later Carlos Cuellar doubled Villa’s lead, again with the head and again Ashley Young the provider.
The home side would have entered the break with even more confidence thanks to El-Hadji Diouf being sent off minutes before half time.
Steve Sidwell replaced Fabian Delph for the second half and Blackburn proved that they weren’t entirely out of the match when Nikola Kalinic headed in Morten Gamst Pedersen’s corner in an aerial challenge with Guzan.
Villa pressed their numerical advantage for the remainder of the half, but it would be injury time before home nerves were settled by substitute John Carew’s penalty to make it 3-1 and an appointment in the 4th Round.
That’s 1 down and 2 to go against Blackburn this month. So far, so good. Tuesday is serious business though.
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9 Comments to “Aston Villa 3 Blackburn 1 – FA Cup 3rd Round”
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Why was Delph taken off? Tactical or injury?
injury, “a knock”. don’t know how serious, but probably nothing to be concerned about.
Will you be showing the statshack thing on this match? I’m new to your blog, keep it up.. it’s a good ‘un
b23avfc
thanks very much. actually, i’m glad you stopped by, i see i have you to thank for sending some traffic over from VT. i would have said thanks there, but for some reason i can’t post from my account and i never got round to asking anyone over there why that might be.
unfortunately the more technical stats such as passes and tackles are generally only available for Premiership games. other interesting things such as the average position map are also only available for prem games. i’d love to pull them together for other games, but i just can’t get my hands on the data.
i pull the more generic stats from ESPN and they look pretty decent for this game http://soccernet.espn.go.com/match?id=285181&cc=5901 we did have that extra man for the 2nd half though!!
Just got back from the game, second half we were abysmal. The score flattered to decieve, Reo definately deserved MOM, and the Fonz was also on fire, but Carew only needed 20 seconds to show Heskey how it was done.
It was so bad that Reo got a massive cheer when he had a shot on goal. Can anyone shed any light on why Ashley Young has decided he doesn’t need to perform any more and when a tackle comes in he decides the dive is easier?
The win was important but the performance left a lot to be desired!
i’ve been wondering whether delfouneso is the striker i think we’re missing. someone capable and willing to grab the ball, run at defenders and cause serious problems, not to mention bagging the odd goal. i know we’ve all talked about his potential, but it’s the specific style of play that i’m referring to.
from what i’ve seen of him on the first team stage, and based on this evidence, he may just be. trouble is, he’s not likely to be given too much of a sniff unless there’s an injury crisis. long way to go though, that could well happen.
as for ash, i know what you mean, but 2 shots on goal, both on target and 2 assists isn’t a terrible day at the office, is it?
oh, how did you rate delph in this game?
I think Delph is a star in the making, all he needs is the run of games. I think the problem with Ash is, he has so much more to his game.
His potential is being overshadowed by his performances of late.
I am not moaning about our game yesterday, I just expect more from our so called star players.
i agree with sam regarding ash…………. back to school to learn the simple things!