Ash And Gabby Talk Positive, As Does Koeman And Blackburn In The Cup

Among much speculation regarding Champions League bound Tottenham trying to get their hands on no-longer-cup-tied Ashley Young, he’s talked up the team’s desire to bounce back against Everton and also his own determination to re-establish himself in the England set up.

Ashley Young
I’m a positive person. You can’t carry defeats around on your shoulders, because you would be going into the next game having too many negative thoughts. You have to look forward.

Of course, the Newcastle result crushed us. We just crumbled. It hasn’t been a good week, with what happened in the Europa League as well. But it’s the way you bounce back which shows the character in the squad.

I’m very determined. You always want to win things and do everything to the best of your ability. I’ve a lot of hopes and dreams. I’m a winner. Any time I lose, I hate it. I want to play at the highest level, win the big tournaments, win the big trophies – and I still believe we can achieve great things at Villa.

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Your Season Expectations – Survey Results

I suppose this might seem like odd timing, but I was planning on compiling and publishing this right before the West Ham game and then Martin O’Neill went and put the kybosh on things. I thought I’d leave the survey open for a little while longer to see whether any of the data trickling in after MON’s departure would take any kind of dip, but I really didn’t see that.

That’s a good thing since I was looking for expectations, not predictions. I wanted to know the sort of progress in each competition it would take to leave you with a satisfied feeling in 10 months time and though I labelled it “MON’s 5th season”, it will still be season 5 of the rebuilding following Randy Lerner buying the club.

After dithering for a while, I decided to pull this together once we had successfully qualified for the Europa League since I had a good idea that was high on fans’ priorities. After Thursday’s terrible result, I once again considered not publishing this for fear of it appearing motivated through sour grapes. That can’t be helped though, the longer I leave it, the less relevant it becomes.
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My Left Foot – How The House Of Cards Collapsed

I don’t want to enter into a debate about managerial qualities just yet, but if you were screaming out for rotation in the past, you’ve certainly had your fill recently. Last season, Martin O’Neill started just 24 different players in all competitions and received no shortage of criticism, not unfairly in some cases. Just four games into the 2010/11 season and Kevin MacDonald has already used 23 different players in his starting team sheets.

To be fair, MacDonald has certainly had more injuries imposing themselves on his team selection than we’re used to, but senior players have also been “rested”. Take Stephen Warnock and Stewart Downing for instance. I know it’s a long season, but these are 28 and 26 year old professional athletes we’re talking about, do they really need to be rested after three games?
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Aston Villa 2 Rapid Vienna 3 (Agg. 3-4) Out Of Europe Again

I don’t know what to say. It looked so good for much of the game, I wrote much of the match report during the game, most of it at half time when it looked bright, then it all fell to pieces in the second half and we’re out. That’s all I have right now, I’ll have to see what I can salvage a little later.

Really, really disappointed. It’s no secret that I really wanted to see us do something in Europe this year and we’re out before we got going once again.

No excuses, that was pathetic. Inept and clueless, absolute rubbish in the second half.

That really is it, I’ve got nothing positive to say right now.

Gutted.

Preview – Aston Villa vs Rapid Vienna

Half way through this tie, it’s advantage to Villa and I’m hoping this is going to be a great game. Rapid have to come looking for goals, a goalless draw is no good to them, a 1-1 draw would force extra time, they have to score twice to gain the advantage, but Villa are surely going to have a point to prove after the debacle at St James’.

The good news is it sounds like Gabby’s fit and hungry to get his season going and could be making his first appearance along with James Collins and Carlos Cuellar. Dunne & Luke Young have “niggles”, while Warnock and Downing are likely to rested. Tough news for Andreas Weimann whose encouraging start to season was brought to an abrupt end after rupturing his ankle ligaments in Vienna and will now be out for two months.
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A Little On Bob Bradley And Why He Should Not Be The Next Aston Villa Manager

If you don’t read Richard Whittall’s ‘A More Splendid Life’ regularly you’re doing yourself a disservice. Richard is a Canadian Villa fan – albeit one I suspect is becoming increasingly jaded with what life in the Premier League has become – based in Toronto and today he’s weighed in on an element of the Bradley-for-Villa story that I also find egregious in ‘This Bradley to Villa thing is embarrassing‘.

It’s a good read and Richard might not be using “embarrassing” in the context you assume.

That is if you’re one of the many commenters I’ve seen on various blogs and forums getting what Americans describe as “your panties in a bundle” over the mere suggestion of Bob Bradley being the next Aston Villa manager based on nothing more, so far as I can determine, than his nationality.
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Albrighton And Delfouneso In England Under-21 Squad

Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouneso have been named in Stuart Pearce’s England Under-21 squad to play Portugal on September 3rd and Lithuania on September 7th.

You can see the full squad here. Interestingly, Newcastle’s Andy Carroll has also been called up.

In other news, Sky Sports have interviewed Bob Bradley who pretty much confirmed what we already knew on Sunday. However, by bringing us what is essentially the same news two days later, it’s now “breaking news”. Thanks Sky for this amazing scoop.

I guess everything really is different in HD then.

Statshack – Newcastle 6 Aston Villa 0

Apologies for the delay. This one hurts, it took some serious motivation to pull it together. I still haven’t seen the whole game, not sure I want to right now, so I can’t really comment on what went wrong. You’ve no doubt all got your own ideas.

I would like to pause briefly to look at the team passing maps side by side though. It’s frequently the case that this level of data won’t reveal much, it’s just a mass of blue and red lines, but this game is a little different and illustrates an important point beautifully.

I know one or two people will focus on a single metric, predominantly the number of passes, to determine the quality or otherwise of the football on display, but that view is completely undone by games like this. Villa actually completed more passes than Newcastle, a 53% share, and a better completion rate, 86% to Newcastle’s 79%, but Newcastle thrashed us 6-0.
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