The fans who stayed away from this dirge fest in droves were the lucky ones; only surprise inclusion Chris Herd and Gabby Agbonlahor provided anything worth getting excited about. The ~12k empty seats generated more talking points during the game than the “action” on it.
There’s nothing to say about the first half, it was truly awful. I’m assuming that Alex McLeish read the riot act at half time, the home side were much improved after the break and, for 20
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This is a big, big game for Alex Mcleish today. The last of a run of home games and a derby against an opponent that caused his predecessor so many problems. It’s also something of a “top of the table” encounter and the winner, should there be one, will get boasting rights over the rest of the league for at least a while today.
With Luke Young unavailable, McLeish has opted to start Chris Herd ahead of Eric Lichaj and Habib
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I won’t be alone in feeling completely numb right now. I can’t even think where to begin explaining that one. There’s zero point talking tactics and team selection, the starting XI wasn’t vastly different from expectations, they just didn’t play with any real intent about them.
I hoped someone might pass a note around the changing room at half time, perhaps a snapshot of the table, wake them up a little, something to bring our situation into focus. They’d come out
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The teams are almost exactly as expected from yesterday’s preview, just Marc Albrighton instead of Gabby – nothing shocking about that – but Chris Herd starts, presumably at left back, rather than Fabian Delph.
Aston Villa
Wolves
1
Brad Friedel
13
Wayne Hennessey
36
Kyle Walker
32
Kevin Foley
24
Carlos Cuellar
5
Richard Stearman
32
Nathan Baker
16
Christophe Berra
31
Chris Herd
3
George Elokobi
6
Stewart Downing
19
Adam Hammill
20
Nigel Reo-Coker
8
Karl Henry
17
Jean II Makoun
20
Nenad Milijas
12
Marc Albrighton
17
Matthew Jarvis
7
Ashley Young
24
Jamie O’Hara
39
Darren Bent
29
Kevin Doyle
Subs
Subs
33
Andy Marshall
1
Marcus Hahnemann
8
Robert Pires
6
Jody Craddock
11
Gabriel Agbonlahor
7
Michael Kightly
13
Michael Bradley
9
Sylvan Ebanks-Blake
16
Fabian Delph
10
Steven Fletcher
18
Emile Heskey
11
Stephen Ward
19
Stiliyan Petrov
14
David Jones
I don’t really know what happened at Champneys spa resort, I’ll leave the speculation to others. Sufficed to say that the incident was dealt with swiftly, both James Collins and Richard Dunne have been punished and it turns out neither player is fit for this game in any case.
We’ve got more important things to worry about right now, like winning some football games. Starting with Wolves at what could well be a sold out Villa Park tomorrow.
At first glance, Wolves
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Call this karma for John Carew’s offside opener if you like, but the defending on Wolves equaliser yesterday was just comical. I’m all for zonal marking, but let’s have some common sense – there’s absolutely no point having two quality centre backs like Collins and Cuellar marking thin air.
I apologise for the poor quality pics here, I’m working with screen caps of the first replays available online, better quality video may be available by the time you read this.
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I think we’ve touched on this in the past, but one of the weaknesses of our current system when we play two strikers is that it can leave Petrov a little over run. Perhaps I was hasty in wondering whether his mind was elsewhere and maybe he just had a tough game. Either way, he wasn’t able to stamp his usual authority on the game.
Let’s start with a graphic showing the two systems against each other, and this
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The good news? Aston Villa remain unbeaten in the Premiership this year. The bad news? Boy, did they have to work hard to maintain that record today. If they’re honest, Wolves fans might be willing to admit that they put in one of their best performances of the season and wonder why they can’t play like that more often, but I still think that we were our own worst enemy today.
First of all, the game was fantastically entertaining, or at
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