New 2011/12 home kit officially unveiled at Star City

The new Nike supplied kit for the 2011/12 is officially being unveiled at Star City tonight, a neat connection to new main sponsor Genting. Of course, the away kit had already been launched and leaked images surfaced on the interwebz last month. The home kit had leaked even earlier, way back at the beginning of May. Seems like a lifetime ago now.

So, more of a confirmation than an unveiling then.

New signing Shay Given is joining Darren Bent, Gabby Agbonlahor, Marc

Continue Reading

One out, one in, one on the fence, one in the wings

So, Liverpool upped their offer to £20m, Stewart Downing handed in a formal transfer request and there’s not much more that needs saying. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Stewie. Textbook no-brainer.

That’s £8m more than we paid Middlesbrough two years ago, but represents a £14m profit in terms of “disposal of player’s registration”. Aside from the fact that we went from three wingers to two recently, and now to just the one, it still represents some

Continue Reading

25-man squad rule: there’s less room left at the Aston Villa inn than you might think

I’ve covered the Premier League 25-man rules several times since it first cropped up so I won’t dwell on the details in this post. If you recall, last summer we named 22 players within our maximum of 25 players 21 years old or over on January 1st 2010 without any problems with the quota of “home grown” players. Including the academy players, we had no less than 36 additional players under the age of 21 also listed.

That stacked up favourably

Continue Reading

Boys back in training, clean slates all round and squad numbers up for grabs

It’s been a while since anything surfaced here at Aston Villa Central, I know. The last post confirmed Ashley Young’s somewhat low key move to Man Utd and since then very little of substance has actually happened. Well, the Stewart Downing “situation” has threatened to develop into a “saga”, but aside from a couple of actual bids from Liverpool being reported, nothing has changed yet; Downing is still an Aston Villa player. For now.

McLeish has stated categorically that he’s “not

Continue Reading

Video: Ashley Young joins Man Utd on a five year deal

It’s official then, Ashley Young has made the switch to Old Trafford in a deal thought to be worth £17m after putting pen to paper on a five year contract.

It’s a transfer every Villa fan will have a view on, some will be more upset than others. Personally, I think Aston Villa and Ashley Young had simply gone as far as they could together and a change was best for both parties. With his heart elsewhere and a year left

Continue Reading

And the new sponsor is… GENTING

Whooooooo?

Genting is a Malaysian company whose core business is built around casinos and tourism, although they also own property and energy businesses amongst other things. They reportedly own the largest number of casinos in the UK, including the Circus Casinos in Hurst Street and Star City.

Their primary areas of business are Asia, United Kingdom and the United States. Their turnover last year was $41 billion which is similar to well known companies such as Cisco, Kraft Foods and MetLife.

Aston Villa

Continue Reading

Bradley deal off, Rangers bid for Cuellar and new away shirt and sponsor to be revealed

After a generally well received first press conference, it looks like life at Villa Park is getting off to a predictably busy start for Alex McLeish. During his time in front of the cameras on Monday, he mentioned being inundated with calls from agents offering their players, but it’s the futures of Carlos Cuellar and Michael Bradley that are capturing the headlines first.

Carlos Cuellar

McLeish was quizzed about Cuellar’s future specifically because it’s become fairly open knowledge that Rangers are interested

Continue Reading

Alex McLeish officially unveiled as manager

I don’t know if a player or manager has ever literally been ‘unveiled’, but I’d love to see it happen once and, given the odd nature of this whole appointment, this would have been an ideal occasion. Can you imagine if a claret & blue chequered sheet was whipped away matador style to reveal the new manager sheepishly sat there waiting for questions?

No? Just me then. Oh well.

However the introduction went down, the press conference officially introducing Alex McLeish as

Continue Reading

Podcast: Mat Kendrick on theScore’s Footy Show

As we were awaiting confirmation last night of Alex McLeish’s appointment at Villa Park, the Birmingham Mail’s Mat Kendrick spoke with theScore’s Brendan Dunlop and Kristian Jack of The Footy Show podcast to share his reaction to events over the past week or so.

It’s an interesting insight so I’ve borrowed a little under five minutes from the final 16 minutes or so of the podcast which featured the interview with the man from the Mail. The clip picks up with

Continue Reading