It’s the final of the Asia Trophy and we’re taking on Chelsea for a chance to grab some pre-season silverware in Hong Kong. Like all pre-season games, it would be a mistake to read to much into performances, and the result doesn’t really matter, but doing well in this one wouldn’t hurt confidence.

Team news and full commentary coming up in the live blog below (hopefully it will go a little smoother than the last one!):

It’s not just the team who can test things during pre-season, it’s also a good opportunity to try a few new tricks here on the blog. Today’s live blog is just that; a test. The live blogs I’ve done in the past were hosted by an external company – the same one the official site uses – but I wanted to bring it in-house as it were.

I’m not sure of how many readers will visit, or the load it will put on the server, so if things get a little sketchy I may have to pull the plug, but hopefully it will go smoothly.

OK, it didn’t go so smoothly then, the server creaked and groaned before falling over, so I’ve switched to the old solution which is hosted externally:

[liveblog]

Villa Starting XI: Parish; Herd, Devine, Williams, Baker; Carruthers, Gardner, Bannan, Steiber; Forrester, Delfouneso. Subs: Berry, Barrett, Deeney, Johnson, Graham.

Chelsea Starting XI: Sebek, Chalobah, Pappoe, Kalas, Clifford, Woods, Tore, Djalo, Borini, Sala, Lalkovic. Subs: Phillip, Walker, Deen-Conteh, Sampayo, Kane.

The video is a Veetle stream and it should be tuned to the right station already. If you don’t have it, you will probably need to download the Veetle plugin to see the video. Veetle produce what is probably the best quality video streams around, so I’d definitely recommend it.

The blog will go live with team news etc. an hour or so before the 9.15pm kick off. Click here to access the very first Aston Villa Central Matchday Live. (It may be the last as well, we’ll see how it goes!)

Blog should be live with team news around an hour before the 9.30pm kick off.

Read the preview here. Hang around after the final whistle for the penalty shoot out.

Once again, the live blog will be mostly fed from the Aston Villa Central Live Twitter account, so there will be a little lag – I think it looks for updates every minute of so. You can add your comments to the Live Blog if you wish, but it’s not designed to act like a chat room, so comments do require approval before they appear.

Clear as mud? Good. [Simple version: Pre-match news below, live blog on page 2]

Starting XI: Friedel, Cuellar, Dunne, Collins, Warnock, A Young, Milner, Petrov, Downing, Carew, Agbonlahor. Subs: L Young, Sidwell, Delfouneso, Delph, Heskey, Guzan, Beye.

In case you missed it yesterday, I recently spotted an old video on TV of Johnny Dixon making an acceptance speech of sorts following victory in the 1957 FA Cup final. Unfortunately I can’t grab that video, but I did record the audio which you can listen to below. A completely different era for sure.

Premiership Fixtures

Just two games in the Premiership today; both involving teams fighting relegation, so no real consequence to our own league campaign, but interesting appetizers to our match at Wembley. Both kick off at 3pm.

• Hull v Burnley
• West Ham v Sunderland

Also, the Grand National will be running at 4.15pm if that’s your bag. And football fans all around the world will surely be watching the El Classico which kicks off at 9pm.

The James Milner interview on BBC’s Football Focus is worth checking out. James is always good value, a thoughtful and honest player. [AVFC OS]

I know a couple of the usual suspects speculated that James Collins had deleted his Twitter account after issuing a public apology for the 7-1 defeat under some kind of instruction from the club. Of course, that’s absolute nonsense. James explains that he simply decided “it was time to concentrate on playing football”.

James Collins
It was tough to take for myself. I’ve been pretty happy with my form over the last couple of months and to drop that [performance] in the middle was quite strange so I thought I would put [the apology] out there. It was maybe a comment that I shouldn’t have made looking back on it. But it did give the fans a chance to see how I was feeling. It’s all right taking all the hype and the congratulations but I think when you play bad you’ve got to be the first to admit it. And I’m big enough and ugly enough.

Martin O’Neill says that the confidence is back. [The Guardian]

The last time we were at Wembley, for the Carling Cup final, I seem to remember making a reference to entertainers being dragged into finals of yore. For some reason Stan Boardman springs to mind, but it could be anyone of his ilk for all I care. Anyway, apparently the team were “entertained” by a magician before the last Wembley game, but James Collins reveals that’s not the case this time. [The Telegraph]

This is not strictly related to the game and I probably will refer to it again in future posts, but Randy Lerner and COO Paul Faulkner have recently given an interview with The Independent’s Tom Watt and, as ever, have had one or two interesting things to say.

Randy Lerner
You know, I think back to the final in February. Manchester United are a huge club, a one-off, for all sorts of historical reasons. But I wasn’t sitting at Wembley, looking at United and thinking: ‘I wish we were them.’ I’d rather celebrate the things we’ve got that they don’t.

I looked along at our end of Wembley and it was rammed: scarves, banners, non-stop singing, absolutely behind the team. And this wasn’t a little club out on a jolly. It was 10 years since we’d been there and it felt like our supporters were dusting themselves down and saying: ‘Yes. That’s us. We’re the Villa.’

If you’re worried about the effect that the 7-1 beating has had on us, as I and many Villa fans are, Rob Smith has some excellent examples of teams that have bounced back from heavy losses to inflict revenge and vanquish their conquerors. [The Guardian]

The Wembley pitch has been relaid for the 10th time this season, following heavy criticism after the Carling Cup final and England vs Egypt friendly. [The Guardian]

This live blog will be fed almost exclusively from the new Aston Villa Central Live Twitter account so there will be a little lag following here.  If you prefer, you can stay up to speed by following @AVC_live.

Other Fixtures Today

• Birmingham (9) v Arsenal (3)
• Hull (19) v Fulham (10)
• Tottenham (4) v Portsmouth (20)
• West Ham (17) v Stoke (12)
• Wolves (15) v Everton (8)
• Bolton (14) v Man Utd (1) [5.30pm]

Headlines

Forest wanted Freddy Bouma on loan, but were knocked back. [Tribal Football]

Nicky Shorey has told Fulham that he’s willing to consider a permanent move when the time comes. [Sky Sports]

“A lot of players went for scans yesterday” – Martin O’Neill [AVFC OS]

MON admits that there’s “no margin for error” and that we’re going to have to freshen up the squad and win a few games away from home. [The Guardian]

James Milner, Richard Dunne, Emile Heskey and Gabby Agbonlahor are all doubts. [Birmingham Mail]

Stewart Downing was impressed with Nathan Delfouneso’s impact in the Sunderland game – “I thought Nathan changed the game the other night.” [Birmingham Mail]

Team News

Starting XI: Friedel, L Young, Dunne, Collins, Warnock, Young, Milner, Petrov, Sidwell, Agbonlahor, Carew.

Subs: Guzan, Beye, Cuellar, Davies, Salifou, Downing, Delfouneso.

Firstly, I noticed that the countdown timer in the sidebar was incorrectly counting down to tomorrow instead of today. Apologies if you also noticed that, it was my error and I’ve taken myself outside for a good flogging. If it makes you feel any better, until yesterday I was under the impression that the match was on Thursday for some reason.

FIFA 10

I was messing around with Google’s new look search earlier, or a sneak peak anyway, and I stumbled on this forum post for FIFA 10 online:-

You wont notice this until you get to play people with high rankings.

Almost 95% of top 100 use Aston Villa and the main reason they use them is very simple to exploit Fifa. They play with 7 man back and 3 upfront.

Agbanlahor (spelled wrong) Young and Carew upfront. With pass creation set to 100 and agression to 100 and pressure to 20. Basically they become a team you can’t stop when they attack but can’t penetrate when you’re on the attack. with 7 defenders on you and those amazingly 3 strikers upfront.

Agg is the fastest player on the game and Young is the fastest dribbler on the game alongside messi and Carew is strong as a tree , fast, and has the finishing of David Villa.

Even if you pick 1 star team they’ll go aston villa. Pick 5 star team they still go Aston villa.

Avoid them at all cost people that abuse Aston villa like this.

I must confess that I haven’t played FIFA for some time and I still own a PS2 which is just gathering dust, so I couldn’t possibly comment on whether this is true or not. It certainly made me laugh though. I wonder whether MON has ever considered employing a 7-3 formation? He’s probably already got the aggression set close to 100 and the pressure on 20, it’s the pass creation setting that he needs to look at!

Jermaine Pennant

Apparently NotW were reporting at the weekend that Aston Villa are interested in Jermaine Pennant for January. I’m calling shenanigans, there’s no credibility in claiming MON is interested in players we don’t need to add “further competition for places in the wide positions” when he’s very limited in his squad utilization.

Formation

Regular readers will know that I’m fairly neutral in any debate about formation and that I’d echo MON’s sentiment that it’s more about the players and roles than recognised formations. I’m perfectly willing to concede that in certain situations there’s a case to be made for Villa employing 5 midfielders when MON’s preferred 4, in fact I generally lean that way myself, but I won’t buy any argument that 4-5-1 wins games and 4-4-2 loses them.

We’ve played 4-4-2 enough this season to put that tired argument to bed, but Jonathan Wilson’s article on formations and symmetry naturally resonated with me.

I would totally agree that the English mindset has become stuck in its definitions of roles and, by extension, the formation the players line up in. The continental and South American perspective has a broader vocabulary to describe what the players are doing on the pitch and are able to have a more sophisticated understanding of the nuances effecting strategy and tactics.

I would certainly recommend setting some time aside to read it. As Villa fans, you will certainly be rewarded with a choice assessment of our own Emile Heskey in the closing sentences. Trust me.

McGregor Statue

This is definitely worthy of its own post, but it kept getting bumped down the list. The club and Supporters’ Trust unveiled the fruit of labours at the weekend when the William McGregor statue was finally installed. This was an excellent project and congratulations and thanks should be extended to everyone involved.

BBC News published a nice article and the OS has a fantastic gallery of pictures. I think it will become a very warmly regarded feature at Villa Park, just one more thing to make us fans proud of the club we support.

Team News

Starting XI, which I imagine will line up something like this…

Subs: Friedel, Delfouneso, Delph, Reo-Coker, Beye, Gardner, Clark.

The second half is just underway with the score currently 1-2. There was an early OG from Petrov at a corner, but Villa have come back in fine form with goals from Heskey and what sounds like a belter from James Milner.

Full time – Portsmouth 2 Aston Villa 4!! We’re in the semis!! Report here.