Darren Bent’s first return to Wearside since his switch to Aston Villa has dominated the headlines, but Steve Bruce will be more concerned with trying to find what would only be his third home win of 2011.
Alex McLeish is coming off the back of two losses; one far from unexpected, the other extremely disappointing. He’s a man that can’t really afford a third straight loss.
After his wrongful dismissal was rightfully rescinded, Chris Herd keeps his place in the starting line-up.
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I was just catching up on the news from the last few days and I came across Tottenham’s Benoît Assou-Ekotto issuing a plea for his club to do whatever it takes to hang on to their top stars and bringing in new ones… or risk becoming another Aston Villa.
Ouch!
The way things stand at the moment, it’s not hard to at least partially agree with him and his message will definitely resonate with a fair number of Villa fans disgruntled by
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Not everyone enjoys watching Barcelona play football these days, some find them incredibly boring, but I happen to be among the group who gets a lot of pleasure from watching them play.
I’m reluctant to hold them up as an example of what other teams should be doing – least of all Aston Villa – as they have players from another planet in terms of ability. Often, if you try to replicate Barcelona without the same quality players, you’ll fail miserably
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You might not have been alive the last time West Brom left Villa Park with three points: it was May 11th 1979. In fairness, we’ve only played in the same league 12 seasons since then, which reduces the chances of losing somewhat, but then we also didn’t have to endure Phil Dowd refereeing.
Actually, Dowd may have officiated one of those games for all I know, but I do know that he made us play with 10 men today in some
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West Brom come to Villa Park in a fixture we haven’t lost since 1979. Our record from the last 10 times we played the Baggies in the league is six wins and four draws.
Roy Hodgson’s side picked up their second win of the season last weekend, a 2-0 home victory against the hapless Wolves. We’re trying to put a comprehensive loss at the hands of Man City behind us, Alex McLeish threatening to drop any players who put in lacklustre
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I have to admit, there are a number of things that Manchester City are doing very well, better than most of the clubs in the league at the moment. Their website is excellent and the video content they produce also sets the standard for the rest to follow. I’d imagine their budget for this sort of thing is somewhat bigger than most clubs.
They’ve been using YouTube for a while now, recently signing a formal deal with the website, and are
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Not the scoreline we hoped for, but certainly one we feared. Not a great deal to discuss really, we were soundly beaten by a side who are clearly superior in every single position. We’ve now lost our unbeaten status. Not unexpectedly.
Mario Balotelli opened the scoring by leaping on the opportunity to pull a bicycle kick out of his toolbox, scoring from six yards. That was the only goal of the first half, but although we had created the same number
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We’re back in action for what is the first really big test for Alex McLeish since he came to Villa, possibly one of the toughest of the season, but also as good a time as any to play Man City at their own place.
Over the last 10 times this league fixture has been played, we’ve won just two and lost eight times. No wonder the Castrol Football Prediction doesn’t think much of our chances.
Here’s how McLeish is looking to grab
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Unless you’ve been in a cave, you’ll be well aware of the suggestion from Liverpool’s managing director, Ian Ayre, that his club is getting short changed from the overseas TV money pouring into the Premier League these days. Or, more to the point, the smaller clubs in the league are getting what’s really due to Liverpool.
The good people of Kuala Lumpur, Ayre informs us, are not subscribing to the Premier League TV packages available in their neck of the woods
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