With five league games gone, I’m afraid it’s time for the return of This Season vs Last Season – lucky number 13. The series was born during the 2009/10 season as dissenting voices towards Martin O’Neill’s stewardship grew louder and louder. Lots of comparisons were made to how many points we had at the same stage of the previous season, but comparing the fixtures on a like-for-like, or apples-to-apples, basis revealed that we were often doing better than the previous
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Dare I suggest that we can concentrate on the league now? No? Didn’t think so. Nevertheless, we are out of the Carling Cup thanks to a 2-0 loss at home to Bolton in what, by all accounts, was an utterly dismal performance.
Chris Eagles picked up on a Marc Albrighton mistake to score a screamer from 20 yards. Gael Kakuta picked hit a shot on the turn from the edge of the box and beat Shay Given in the bottom corner.
Alex
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Bolton come to Villa Park for the 3rd round of the Carling Cup, Alex McLeish has fielded a very strong side and Owen Coyle is able to hand Stuart Holden his first appearance since his knee injury at the tail end of last season.
Aston Villa
Bolton
1
Shay Given
1
Adam Bogdan
2
Alan Hutton
2
Gretar Rafn Steinsson
5
Richard Dunne
5
Gary Cahill
6
James Collins
31
David Wheater
3
Stephen Warnock
11
Ricardo Gardner
19
Stiliyan Petrov
7
Chris Eagles
25
Barry Bannan
6
Fabrice Muamba
7
Stephen Ireland
8
Stuart Holden
12
Marc Albrighton
21
Darren Pratley
14
Nathan Delfouneso
28
Gael Kakuta
11
Gabriel Agbonlahor
24
David Ngog
Subs
Subs
22
Brad Guzan
22
Jussi Jaaskelainen
23
Habib Beye
4
Paul Robinson
34
Shane Lowry
20
Robbie Blake
16
Fabian Delph
16
Mark Davies
38
Gary Gardner
10
Martin Petrov
10
Charles N’Zogbia
14
Kevin Davies
Graham
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Another game, another draw. That’s four draws and a win now in the Premier League. Gabby Agbonlahor gave cause for optimism when he opened the scoring somewhat against the run of play during the first half, but Leon Best cancelled that out during a second half the visitors largely controlled.
Gabby has now equalled his league goal scoring record from last season, scoring three goals from just five games. Barry Bannan started in place of Emile Heskey and played on the
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The Geordies are back at Villa Park for what is a battle between two unbeaten sides, albeit after just four games. Alan Pardew’s side managed to hold Arsenal to a goalless draw in their opening game, took a credible three points at Sunderland and the same again against Fulham at St. James’.
Newcastle have lost this fixture for the last three seasons and have only managed to leave Villa Park with all three points twice in the last ten years.
They were
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There’s no getting away from it, that was a poor performance against an Everton side unable (or unwilling) to field a single recognised striker. We might owe a somewhat sheepish nod in the referee’s direction, but Petrov and Gabby somehow managed to cancel out Leon Osman’s opener and Leighton Baines’ second half penalty to grab a hugely valuable point we barely deserved.
Any hope I harboured of Everton being bogged down by their off-field issues were killed off immediately as the
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It’s the first Premiership game after an international break and the transfer deadline day changes. Since we last played, Luke Young and Jean II Makoun headed for pastures new, but were replaced by Alan Hutton and Jermaine Jenas.
Here’s how the two managers are going to look for the points today:
Hutton replaces Chris Herd in the only change to the starting line-up against Wolves, but Jenas doesn’t make the 18. David Moyes has both of his new boys (Royston Drenthe and
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Another international break has come and gone, time to focus on the bread and butter stuff. If you watched England labour to three points against Wales at Wembley this week, as a Villa fan, the line-up may have looked a lot like the image below. It probably stung quite a bit for most of us.
This is a relatively rare experience for us, but it’s been coming and it’s easy to lose sight of an important fact amongst the bitterness. In
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The Premier League have published the full list of 25-man squads for the first half of the 2011/12 season and there were no surprises from Aston Villa, naming 23 players.
Teams are required to name up to a maximum of 25 players aged over 21 and are not allowed to include more than 17 players who do not qualify as “home grown”. As we only have six players who cannot be classed as home grown, this was not an issue for
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