Aston Villa News 24/7Man Utd come to Villa Park on Saturday for the early kick off game. For all the talk of being a point off of 5th place, we’re a full eight points behind Utd and they’re a point worse off than they were after 12 games last season. At that same point, we were just four points behind with 21 to their 25 points.
The league record against Utd at Villa Park makes sobering reading, the 1-1 and 0-0 draws in the last two seasons being the highlights, the previous six seasons delivering consecutive losses, scoring just one goal and shipping a total of 13.
However, we do currently sit a place above Utd in one table; the injury league. In fact, if one of the 17 players the two clubs cannot call on right now could be persuaded to play in goal, you could name an absolutely cracking team from this lot:-
| Aston Villa | Man Utd |
| H Beye | P Evra |
| C Cuellar | Rafael |
| S Sidwell | O Hargreaves |
| N Reo-Coker | Anderson |
| J Carew | M Owen |
| E Heskey | W Rooney |
| S Petrov | R Giggs |
| A Weimann | A Valencia |
| F Delph |
Who would you put in goal?
Add Paul Scholes’ suspension, the virus that Utd insist is affecting their squad and Gary Neville also reportedly unavailable and this could be as good an opportunity to record the first league win over Utd at Villa Park for 15 years as we could hope for. Except we’re in the midst of our own injury crisis!
The good news for us is that we finally have two strikers fighting for a place again since Gabby’s half hour against Blackpool went without a hitch and Nathan Delfouneso is keen to continue playing after chalking up his first senior goal of the season.
Even better; Gabby Agbonlahor has just signed a new contract keeping him at the club until 2015.
Villa are one of six teams only separated by goal difference in the middle of the table, but there’s massive potential for some gaps to open up this weekend; Bolton (6th) travel to Wolves, Tottenham (7th) will host Blackburn, Sunderland (8th) are at Chelsea on Sunday, Liverpool (9th) will be at Stoke for the late game and West Brom (11th) will be at Wigan.
Man Utd are unbeaten so far this season, Villa are unbeaten at home. On recent form, Utd have the 4th best away record based on the last five games and Villa the 7th best home record. However, overall, Villa ranked 19th during the month of October alone. It was poor.
I’m sure we’d all settle for a draw before kick off, and at the moment that would appear to be the most likely outcome, but it goes without saying how much a win would mean to us right now and this will be as weak a Utd side as we could hope to come visiting.
Perhaps, rather than falling victim to complacency as we might with a full strength squad to select from, the youngsters out there on Saturday will raise their game and go for Utd’s jugular.
Anything could happen in this one and, aside from the early kick off, I’m really looking forward to it.
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5 Comments to “Aston Villa vs Manchester Utd Preview featuring the “Walking Wounded Fantasy Team””
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Concerned about the lack of physical strength in our strike force. Vidic and Ferdinand are big muscular guys. If we had Carew and / or Heskey they could really battle, indeed batter, them. The Fonz is slightly built and i don’t want his confidence smashed by the big Serb. Also Gabby is just coming back from injury, so he may not fancy a battle at this stage.
If we attack down the wings, Vidic and Ferdinand will deal with crossed balls. Its only at set piueces that our big central defenders can come up to threaten the ManU goal.
What is the best way of solving this problem?
play to the feet, and pray agbonlahor and delfoneso are in form
That or work them with our speed down the middle, our pace up front is our strong point vs Man U
A. Young, Downing and Albrighton taking on their man and putting in curling shots from the top of the box. Let the strikers draw a man away, opening up a few gaps for shots.
some very good points there. with utd’s weakness at fullback going into this one our wingers should have a field day, but our weakness in the air against their strength in the middle negates that.
i’d agree, our best hope for goals is cutting in from “the wrong side” and shaping it for the back stick.
my biggest concerns remains from the blackpool game where harewood had the freedom of our penalty area. berba won’t need five attempts to score if given the same space.
They will sit back. We will get hit on the break. They will win by several. Probably 3-1.