I wouldn’t normally want to drag up old batterings from the past, but this game at Highbury contained a slightly unusual incident. With the game at 4-0, Nigel Spink was injured in a challenge with Kevin Campbell – interesting to note Brian Moore’s keenness to exonerate Campbell of any blame, not sure that would be the case with a similar tackle today – and without a substitute goalkeeper available, David Platt takes over between the sticks.
Campbell and Alan Smith
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I know most of the readers who stop by the blog regularly are cool cats and will get the headline reference straight away, but just in case you’re one of those awful squares, it’s a nod to the now infamous ‘Double Rainbow’ video made even more popular by the Auto-Tune the News folk.
It remains something of a meme in my household and I’ll never miss an opportunity to respond to two barks from my dog at the back door, for
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The FA have just released this fascinating “Tunnel Cam” video giving a glimpse behind the scenes in the build up, during and after England’s 2-1 victory over Romania Under-21s at Carrow Road last night. Nice to see Albrighton and Delfouneso looking relaxed and chatty as they exited the dressing room before kick off.
Both Villans started on the bench, but Albrighton came on in place of Utd’s Tom Cleverley for the last 15 minutes with the game tied at 1-1
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The Premier League have announced a raft of fixture changes over Christmas and New Year, several involving Villa:-
Liverpool, Anfield – moved from Sat 4th December to Mon 6th December, 8pm kick off.
Tottenham, Villa Park – December 26th, kick off now at 5.30pm.
Chelsea, Stamford Bridge – moved from Sat 1st January to Sun 2nd January, 1.30pm kick off.
Gérard Houllier probably won’t mind the two week break in the domestic fixture schedule as he continues to settle in, but he will be without several key players:-
Ashley Young and Stephen Warnock were called up to the England squad for Tuesday’s European Qualifier against Montenegro at Wembley.
Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouneso are with England Under 21s ahead of the play-off against Romania for next year’s European Under 21 Championship in Denmark. The first leg is at Carrow Rd on
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Instead of any tactical analysis in this Statshack, I thought I’d share something I was looking at ahead of this game: our record at White Hart Lane over the last few seasons.
The table below shows both teams’ complete and incomplete passing numbers which, of course, is the basis for “Completed Pass Share”. I’ve also included the possession figures and then further combined the two percentages to form what I’m calling “Game Share”. What I’m trying to achieve is
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Marc Albrighton’s first Premiership goal will probably be quickly forgotten after being cancelled out by two goals, one in either half, from Rafael va der Vaart at White Hart Lane today. More of a concern, though, will be how flat Villa looked without Emile Heskey leading the line.
It started off very well, aside from some early home team assertion from Spurs, Villa were soon making their attacking intentions clear and Heskey, in particular, once again looked like a new
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Marc Albrighton crashing into the first team with such style this season could be the real catalyst for raising this question, after all, Stephen Ireland was considered a like-for-like swap for James Milner and there’s no reason in the world why I’d be asking where Milner would fit in if he was still with us now.
Albrighton made a name for himself last summer with some fine performances with the first team during the Peace Cup in Spain, an opportunity afforded
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You won’t have needed to be too eagle eyed to have noticed the EA Sports logo on screen when you’ve been watching the Premier League this season, especially when any statistics have been presented.
EA Sports have taken over from Actim as the official stats provider and that includes what was the Actim Top 100 Index, which has been a regular monthly(ish) feature here at Aston Villa Central.
Although the Actim system was proprietary and they didn’t divulge exactly what
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