Team news and live text commentary starting roughly one hour before kick off.
This live blog will be fed almost exclusively from the new Aston Villa Central Live Twitter account so there will be a little lag following here. If you prefer, you can stay up to speed by following @AVC_live.
Other Fixtures Today
Birmingham (9) v Arsenal (3)
Hull (19) v Fulham (10)
Tottenham (4) v Portsmouth (20)
West Ham (17) v Stoke (12)
Wolves (15) v Everton (8)
Bolton (14) v Man Utd (1) [5.30pm]
Headlines
Forest wanted
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Everton fans must truly wonder what a season could deliver for them if they could hook it up at the start of the season the way they do towards the end. As far as the race for fourth place goes this season, they’re arguably hitting form at just the right time and, looking at their run-in, aside from coming to Villa Park on April 14th, every other team left to play is below them in the table. I
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There can’t be too many people close to Martin O’Neill’s innermost thoughts. In fact, there may be a few who wonder whether he is close to his innermost thoughts sometimes, but I couldn’t possibly comment. I’m certainly not among the inner sanctum so it’s idle speculation on my part here, but is it possible that MON’s transfer dealings to date reveal a tactician who is actually ahead of the curve? Wait, hear me out here!
MON’s activity in
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My personal feeling about this game is that MON gambled. He rolled the dice on Richard Dunne and James Milner’s fitness and neither looked like they should have started this game. Richard Dunne was caught off guard on a number of occasions and it was clear he was off the pace. James Milner struggled to make any impact in this game and it was little surprise that he left the pitch in the 77th minute. I
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Well, another game, another draw at Villa Park. 1-1 this time and with City getting beaten at home 2-0 by Everton it’s a chance to go 5th that I think we’ll look back on at the end of the season and rue.
I can’t find too many faults in the performance, Craig Gordon had to make a couple of game saving saves in the first 10 minutes. I mean, real top quality saves that reinforce why Sunderland paid so much money
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It’s that time of the month again, time to see how our players are measuring up according to the Actim Top 100 Index. This time we once again have 8 players in the top 100:-
6th Gabriel Agbonlahor – 489 points
14th Richard Dunne – 425 points
15th Carlos Cuellar – 411 points
16th James Milner – 408 points
17th Ashley Young – 397 points
28th Brad Friedel – 368 points
63rd Stiliyan Petrov – 301 points
79th James Collins – 288 points
James Collins slipped 10 places,
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Well done to the Birmingham Mail for another piece of awesome journalism, the Pulitzer is surely just a matter of time. They’ve taken the following quote from Martin O’Neill:-
Expectation levels I expect to go up because it is Aston Villa, then you are hoping you can make something happen for the supporters. However, like everybody else, you have to earn this and it is not a case of just because a club has been successful in the past
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Call this karma for John Carew’s offside opener if you like, but the defending on Wolves equaliser yesterday was just comical. I’m all for zonal marking, but let’s have some common sense – there’s absolutely no point having two quality centre backs like Collins and Cuellar marking thin air.
I apologise for the poor quality pics here, I’m working with screen caps of the first replays available online, better quality video may be available by the time you read this.
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I think we’ve touched on this in the past, but one of the weaknesses of our current system when we play two strikers is that it can leave Petrov a little over run. Perhaps I was hasty in wondering whether his mind was elsewhere and maybe he just had a tough game. Either way, he wasn’t able to stamp his usual authority on the game.
Let’s start with a graphic showing the two systems against each other, and this
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