Steve Sidwell has signed for Fulham after being on the edge of signing for both West Ham and Wolves in the last couple of days. He will be remembered as the first real transfer movement for Aston Villa in 2011, an own goal on his debut, that lovely goal at Goodison… and… er, the ability to turn practically invisible at will. I’d say he’ll be missed, but not too many people have seen him enough to miss him.
Sidwell was
Aston Villa have completed the loan signing of Kyle Walker, Tottenham’s young right back signed from Sheffield Utd about 18 months ago, before being promptly loaned back and then playing at QPR on loan this season. He’ll be on loan with Villa until the end of the season, I don’t know yet if there is any option to make the move permanent.
I can’t comment on Walker as a player, I honestly haven’t seen him play so far as I
And the hits just keep on coming.
Honestly, outside the first 20 minutes or so, I don’t think we were too bad (although I was expecting a little more vibrancy), a bit nervy here and there, but far from being second best. Houllier named an unchanged side, they created chances, they had control of the game for the most part, but made life difficult for themselves with frustrating mistakes.
Emile Heskey was superb in the outfield, bringing exactly what we’ve missed so
A great deal of confidence was undoubtedly restored at Stamford Bridge and our slide toward oblivion apparently halted. At least for a while. Tonight, with Sunderland coming to Villa Park, we’ll see whether there’s enough fire burning in this team to launch an ascent back up the table.
The CEO’s backed the manager, the assistant manager has backed the team, now it’s up to the players to show that they really do care.
Results last night weren’t the most favourable
We’re now 20 games into 2010/11 so it’s time to compare this season with 2009/10 once again. As we’re only four points better off than the last post, the gap to last year, however you slice or dice it, has grown. After the first 20 games last year, we had 35 points and by comparing the same fixtures, apples for apples, we had 32 points compared to 21 points this year.
We’ve conceded twice as many goals than we
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to put the doom and gloom of the latter part of 2010 to bed and look forward to a bright 2011. We were certainly treated to the sort of spirit and determination that abandoned our side of late as the boys fought against an inexplicably inept refereeing performance to grab a last ditch point thanks to Ciaran Clark.
Villa had fallen behind early, just as they appeared to be shedding early nerves and impose themselves
USA Today are reporting via the AP that Brad Guzan has joined Hull City on a one month loan deal. It’s a great move for Brad, a brilliant opportunity to get some first team action under his belt and he may well be playing as early as tomorrow against Leicester after Vito Mannone returned to Arsenal.
It does, of course, raise intriguing questions about the goalkeeping situation at Villa Park as the transfer window is about to open, Brad Friedel’s
Part two was an exploration of Gerard Houllier’s first 14 Premier League games in comparison with Dr Jo’s first 14 games in charge of Aston Villa back in 1990. Mainly because their record over the 14 games was so similar, despite Houllier’s program being considerably more challenging, but also because our position after 19 games is exactly the same today as it was 20 years ago.
Ian made the point in the comments that the table around us is not
As starts go, Gerard Houllier has made a particularly bad one with Aston Villa; winning just 13 points from his first 14 league games, fuelling the fire with a number of clumsy PR gaffes, a growing army of fans calling for his head.
In part one, we looked at Villa’s history of dealing with the threat of relegation and here in part two we’ll make a direct comparison between Houllier and Jozef Venglos who oversaw a terrible season at Villa Park,