Live blogging the Aston Villa vs Feyenoord Guadiana Cup match from The Algarve, Portugal later tonight.
Blog should be live with team news around an hour before the 9.30pm kick off.
Read the preview here. Hang around after the final whistle for the penalty shoot out.
Aston Villa vs Feyenoord – Guadiana Cup
I watched the opening game of the 2010 Guadiana Cup last night between hosts Benfica and Feyenoord which finished in a very entertaining 4-1 victory for the Portuguese side. They also followed that up with a 5-4 victory in a penalty shoot out.
Feyenoord opened the scoring just 3 minutes into the match with a breakaway goal that broke the offside trap laid by the extremely high Benfica backline and left a relatively simple finish one-on-one with Roberto in goal.
From
After revisiting how the new Premier League “Home Grown Rule” impacts Aston Villa and confirming that we’re comfortably able to comply with the rules, I couldn’t shake my curiosity about Man City. After all, they must be among the worst offenders in terms of the number of foreign players and I keep hearing about how many they’ll have to offload, right?
Well, unless my understanding of the rules is way off, I didn’t find them to be in bad shape
Martin O’Neill revealed today that Nathan Delfouneso will be travelling out to Portugal tomorrow to link up with the rest of squad and he’s hoping the striker can play some part in Sunday night’s match against Benfica at least. Even if he doesn’t play this weekend, just being with the squad and not stuck at home is good for him ahead of the new season.
The same thinking applies to James Collins who is nursing his calf, but a little
The 22 man squad arrived in Portugal ahead of the weekend’s Guandiana Cup friendlies against Feyenoord and Benfica on their own private jet yesterday. That includes Luke Young, James Milner and James Collins, who was cleared after a scan on his calf Wednesday morning.
Luke Young’s agent has confirmed that he is discussing personal terms with Liverpool. Meanwhile, Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson insisted on showing his Macedonian hosts the courtesy of discussing tonight’s Europa League match against Rabotnicki, refusing
Liverpool have reportedly made a £2.5m bid for Luke Young and Martin O’Neill has confirmed the club have received a bid from an unnamed club with Young currently “mulling it over”:-
Martin O’Neill
There has been an offer from a football club, which Luke is mulling over and if it doesn’t materialize then he would also join us [in Portugal] because he needs to play some football soon. We will see how that develops.
My personal opinion is one of slight disappointment,
3,000 Villa fans made it to the Bescot tonight to see a mixed Villa side turn in a comfortable 2-1 victory over Wallsall thanks to a brace from young Andreas Weimann just back from international duty.
As rumoured prior to kick off, Steve Sidwell was included tonight, partnered in the middle by Nigel Reo-Coker wearing the armband, with the side returning to a more familiar 4-4-2, giving the new away kit its first airing.
James Collins lasted all of three minutes before
Spain coasted into the final of the European Under 19 Championship in France with a commanding performance against an England side who are clearly not in the same league technically.
Nathan Baker limped off midway through the first half with what looked like a pulled hamstring, Nathan Delfouneso may have wished he could have joined him after seeing very little of the ball during the first 45 minutes.
Spain held the majority of possession during the first a half and converted that
Last September, I wrote an overly lengthy post which stumbled its way through the then recently ratified rules introducing quotas on numbers of “home grown” players and squad size limits on Premiership teams from 2010/11. The conclusion I eventually came to was that it would not adversely affect Aston Villa in any way. It just took a while to get there.
As we head ever closer toward the start of the 2010/11 season, with much speculation about the likes