Let’s not be naive here. There are rules against tapping up and, with one or two exceptions, they’re generally observed (within reason), but that doesn’t mean that words aren’t said, glances exchanged and knowing nods made before a club puts in an official bid for a player. In fact, it’s highly unusual for a club to feed the paper into the fax machine and dial the number without feeling reasonably confident that it will be well received at
I’ll just leave this here…
Rejected.
Oh, while I think about it…. Gareth Barry… £12m? I guess this confirms what we already knew… he’s just a poor man’s James Milner!
The first thing I read this morning was Matt Slater’s blog chronicling his experience attending Randy Lerner’s press conference at Villa Park last week. The details of what Randy had to say during the event have filtered out through the usual sources in the days that followed, but I was particularly interested to read Matt’s account for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it was from one of the Tweets that Matt made during the actual press conference that I picked
The curtain fell on a fascinating La Liga season this past weekend with Barcelona crowned champions in triumphant style, but Madrid running them a close second. In fact, Real Madrid have earned more points this season than any team in La Liga history… except one… Barcelona 2009/10.
I know some people are fond of suggesting that the three 6th place finishes mean Aston Villa have not progressed, despite the year-on-year improvement in performance over the last 4 years, and love
I recently mentioned in flippant fashion that League attendance was down a little at Villa Park this past season, but since we had more cup games – leading to 2 trips to Wembley – and less European matches, I thought it worth looking at overall attendance this year.
Despite falling at the first hurdle in the Europa League, Villa Park still played host to 25 games this season, compared with 27 in 2008/09. When you consider that somewhere in the
As part of the 2009/10 Season Review, I thought it wouldn’t be bad idea to actually list all 52 games that Villa played during the season in order. I’ve highlighted the scores of the games that we lost – there’s only 11 – and provided links to Statshacks where available. There’s some summary statistics at the bottom. Plenty more coming, I’m just a bit slow getting to it.
It’s taken a little longer to pull this post together
Just in case you weren’t aware, I’ve been gathering the player ratings submitted to The Telegraph and Sky Sports by fans at least 24 hours after each game to compile the Player of the Month series.
To create the Play of the Year award I’ve taken the average ratings for players who have played some part in at least half of the league matches during 2009/10.
If you’re interested, Martin O’Neill has utilised 23 players in the league during the course of
Think you could score a goal at the Holte End? Have you ever dreamed of walking out of the same tunnel as Dennis Mortimer and Martin Laursen?
To celebrate the end of another great season as Aston Villa Football Club’s Official Travel Partner, Thomas Cook Sport is teaming up with Aston Villa Central to offer one AVFC supporter and friends a once in a lifetime, money can’t buy chance to play on the hallowed turf of Villa Park.
The winner will get
Refusing to give up hope for fourth place as long as it remained possible, but knowing we weren’t favourites, the question of who I’d prefer take that place if we could not has been at the back of my mind for a little while now. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for City’s “throw money at the problem” approach to breaching the barrier of 5th place, so it may seem like a no brainer to favour Tottenham.
Not quite.