Window Shuts – This Is Your Aston Villa Team For Next 4 Months

That’s the Summer 2010 transfer window done then.

Out: Marlon Harewood and Andy Marshall were both released at the end of their contracts. Stephen O’Halloran went to Coventry on a free, while Nick Shorey joined West Brom for £1.5m and James Milner joined Man City for £26m.

In: Stephen Ireland joined from Man City for £8m.

KMac has confirmed that he would like an interview. Make whatever you will of the inclusion of a two minute video recap of his four game C.V. embedded into the official announcement.

This, then, is the “player palette” I’ll be using during the next few months:-
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Statshack – Aston Villa 1 Everton 0

Tactical analysis seems almost pointless, if ever there was a display based on mental qualities such as determination, commitment and spirit, this was it. The stats will speak for themselves, so I’ll just throw in a couple of factoids, tug my forelock and bid you good day.

Firstly, Stewart Downing. Not the best use of the ball when he saw it, but he struggled to get involved in the game. For once his central position in the average position map is more a reflection of where the action was instead of him playing roughly equal time on each wing. Villa focused 55% of their attacks down the right, Everton 41% down their left. With Downing spending most of the time on the left, he didn’t see much of the ball.

Secondly, Villa had very little possession in general, just 32%. That led to completing just 139 passes, which was 27% of the total passes completed in the match. That’s the least number of passes Villa have made in a Premiership match since the same number were completed during the 3-2 loss to Utd at Old Trafford. And the 27% CPS was the lowest since the 26% during the 1-0 win over Utd last season.
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Faulkner: Management Candidates Must Have Premiership Experience

Excerpt from an official statement just published on the club website:-

We are conscious that we have steered clear of openly communicating our thoughts on the search for a permanent manager until this time, as we felt that to do so would undermine both Kevin’s and the players’ efforts to focus on preparing for these games.

To date, we have immersed ourselves in the process of appointing a new manager and clearly identifying the key criteria this person must meet.

Two of the traits we believe are of crucial importance are that candidates have experience of managing in the Premier League and a strategy for building on the existing strengths in our current squad.

We have thoroughly researched potential candidates and have reached out to a variety of contacts we have within the game for advice and guidance, as well as keeping key staff at Villa Park informed and focused.

If you hadn’t ruled Bob Bradley out in your own mind for his lack of UEFA badges, you can rule him out for his lack of Premiership management experience, which is now an explicit prerequisite.

Aston Villa 1 Everton 0 – Three Vital Points

Aston Villa carved out a vital three points today in an absolutely enthralling battle against Everton at Villa Park with Luke Young providing the only goal of the game in sublime, if unlikely style.

The day didn’t get off to the best of starts when Stephen Ireland pulled a hamstring in the warm up, but his replacement, Nigel Reo-Coker, probably provided that little extra steel that would prove vital in the middle. Nathan Delfouneso took Nigel’s place on the bench.

Everton started brightly, moving the ball around well, but Villa opened the scoring against the run of play in the 9th minute when Luke Young latched on to Ashley Young’s superbly weighted through ball and delivered an inch perfect left footed shot, curling around Tim Howard into the top corner.
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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.