Marc Albrighton and Stiliyan Petrov produced the vital goals to deliver Villa’s first away win of the season, but Ivan Klasnic was able to prevent Brad Guzan earning a clean sheet on his first Premiership start.
It was a much improved performance during the first half, and fans crying out for a 4-4-2 system will be quick to point out that was the case today with Marc Albrighton on the right and Charles N’Zogbia on the left. However, it has to
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With Shay Given out for a month, Brad Guzan gets his first Premier League start, and it’s also emerged this week that the American is in contract discussions with his current deal set to expire at the end of the season. Jermaine Jenas is out for the season, and with the club apparently on the hook for his wages the less said about that the better.
It looks like it’s a straightforward 4-4-2 from McLeish this week, and with Herd providing
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The debate surrounding the pros and cons of zonal marking versus man marking at set pieces will doubtless rage on, but most of the big teams will continue to use a combination regardless. Indeed, the argument about what constitutes zonal rather than man marking will be no more likely to reach consensus any time soon.
All of that is outside the scope of this post, I’m simply going to go through each of Bolton’s eight corners and translate what I saw
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The mid-week gamble has backfired, the repercussions are obvious. Three goals conceded at set pieces, or second phase set piece, missed chances at the other end, including a sitter or two for Darren Bent and an Ashley Young penalty saved.
Bent should have opened the scoring inside the first five minutes after being sent through brilliantly by Young, but he wasn’t able to dig the ball out from under his own feet and Jaaskelainen snuffed out the chance before he could
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After Manchester, Gerard Houllier names a full strength team today. Luke Young rejoins the team, filling in at left centre back, Fabian Delph retains his place and will partner Reo-Coker in the middle.
Bolton
Aston Villa
22
Jussi Jaaskelainen
1
Brad Friedel
2
Gretar Rafn Steinsson
36
Kyle Walker
31
David Wheater
32
Nathan Baker
5
Gary Cahill
21
Ciaran Clark
4
Paul Robinson
2
Luke Young
14
Kevin Davies
6
Stewart Downing
8
Stuart Holden
20
Nigel Reo-Coker
6
Fabrice Muamba
16
Fabian Delph
10
Martin Petrov
12
Marc Albrighton
15
Daniel Sturridge
7
Ashley Young
9
Johan Elmander
39
Darren Bent
Subs
Subs
1
Adam Bogdan
33
Andy Marshall
17
Ivan Klasnic
8
Robert Pires
7
Matthew Taylor
19
Stiliyan Petrov
27
Lee Chung-Yong
31
Chris Herd
16
Mark Davies
13
Michael Bradley
19
Rodrigo
18
Emile Heskey
25
Marcos Alonso
11
Gabriel Agbonlahor
This doesn’t require a great deal of narrative, it was never going to be a classic. The statistics reflect a very even affair and, though it may be easy to claim after the event, I really don’t think that Villa did much more than was required.
Young’s 11th minute goal is worthy of mention beyond the merits of being the game’s only goal. It was a very fitting finale to a series of 6 or 7 shorts passes in
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Aston Villa bounced back from last weekend’s trouncing at Stamford Bridge with a functional, if not awe-inspiring, 1-0 victory over Bolton at the Reebok today. Ashley Young’s fine goal in the 11th minute turned out to be the winner and quite fitting too.
In truth, Villa looked to be keeping plenty in reserve and against a Bolton side who had little to offer besides endlessly peppering the box with lofted crosses and throw-ins, it was never necessary to do much
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There’s one period in our recent history that I refer to frequently, so I thought I’d recount it in more detail and then I can put it to bed. Or just link to it!
So if you’re sitting comfortably, I shall begin…
Our tale begins in late March 2008, it had been an extremely poor month for Aston Villa and we still had to go to Old Trafford to play an on form Man Utd side spearheaded by Rooney and Tevez,
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It’s not easy to simply forget about that horrendous result at the weekend and move on, especially as a fresh wave of headlines roll in this Monday, but that’s pretty much what we have to do. Conceding 7 goals for the first time in 46 years during a season in which we were able to boast the meanest defence in the league is clearly a complete aberration, there’s no credible argument to the contrary. That doesn’t make it
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