Sunderland
22
Simon Mignolet
15
Nedum Onuoha
2
Phillip Bardsley
4
Michael Turner
19
Titus Bramble
6
Lee Cattermole
10
Jordan Henderson
8
Steed Malbranque
17
Danny Welbeck
27
Ahmed Elmohamady
11
Darren Bent
Subs
1
Craig Gordon
33
Asamoah Gyan
16
Cristian Riveros
5
John Mensah
14
Paulo Da Silva
29
Anton Ferdinand
7
Boudewijn Zenden
Aston Villa
1
Brad Friedel
5
Richard Dunne
29
James Collins
23
Habib Beye
3
Stephen Warnock
7
Ashley Young
6
Stewart Downing
9
Stephen Ireland
19
Stiliyan Petrov
20
Nigel Reo-Coker
18
Emile Heskey
Subs
4
Steve Sidwell
10
John Carew
12
Marc Albrighton
21
Ciaran Clark
22
Brad Guzan
24
Carlos Cuellar
25
Barry Bannan
It’s been a reasonably quiet week on the Villa front so I elected to make a rare foray into the realms of off-the-field antics at another club, mainly to get to the little nugget about Sir Alex not fancying Villa Park because of Deadly, but I suppose the Rooney story was the story and worthy of a mention.
Football’s resembling a cheap Mexican soap opera more and more every day. Frankly, I was never a soap opera type and it
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It might seem like a strange combination to throw together in a headline, but bear with me. I should let you know from the outset that I’m not suggesting Wayne Rooney will be an Aston Villa player any time soon – much as I would love to – but it’s clear he isn’t going to be a Man Utd player for very much longer.
You’ve no doubt seen the revelations in recent days and may also be aware that Alex
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It looks like plenty of air miles will be racked up by Aston Villa players and staff next year as it’s just been confirmed that we’ll be competing in the Barclays Asia Trophy in Hong Kong around the end of July 2011, presumably on top of some of the youngsters taking part in the Hong Kong Sevens during mid-May as usual.
The mini-tournament takes place every two years and is the only “official” Premier League summer tournament and clearly an opportunity
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Let’s be completely honest here, Chelsea have a considerably better side than we do and we have little practical reason to expect to beat them, yet their record at Villa Park isn’t that good. Over the last five visits now they’ve won only once, lost twice and drawn twice.
We beat them 2-1 last season despite having just 32% possession and being out-passed 407 to 167, a 29% share of the completed passes. The season before, Chelsea won 1-0
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Several early and late chances for Villa bookended some good opportunities for Chelsea, but I suspect both managers will be satisfied with the point after this extremely entertaining encounter at Villa Park, despite the lack of goals. The best chance of the game came with almost the last kick of the game, Nigel Reo-Coker in the unfamiliar territory of a one-on-one with Petr Cech, lifting his effort just wide.
It started off in an encouraging fashion for the home side,
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Perhaps the fact that Chelsea will be without Alex, Benayoun, Drogba and Lampard helped, but Carlo Ancelotti has played his hand and told us who will be starting at Villa Park tomorrow:-
“The line-up will be Cech, Ferreira, Ivanovic, Terry and Cole, Ramires, Essien and Mikel, strikers Kakuta, Malouda and Anelka.”
Still a decent side of course and I’m not going to get carried away by the lack of Drogba, he watched from the bench at Stamford Bridge and Chelsea did OK
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I watched, or attempted to watch, three games of football yesterday and didn’t see any goals. Perhaps it was fortunate that I was unable to see the England Under 21s a little earlier in the day, but congratulations to them for securing their place in next year’s European Championships in Denmark with a goalless draw in Romania.
Given his age and talent, it’s remarkable that Ashley Young was making a debut of sorts as last night was his first start
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Ash was handed press conference duties in the England camp today and spoke about his desire to cement a place in the national side and his enjoyment playing in his new, more central role at Villa.
In other England news, the Under 21 squad have just touched down in Romania minus Marc Albrighton who has returned to Villa for treatment to an unspecified injury.
[If the video doesn’t appear above, it can be seen here]