Man City recently visited The Emirates with the clear primary intention of avoiding defeat, their cause largely assisted by an Arsenal side devoid of much interest in winning themselves. Mancini’s thinking could not have been more clearly stated; take a point against Arsenal, then win the points they need for fourth from Villa and Tottenham. Cheeky bugger if you ask me, but he’s technically correct since both games happen to be “six pointers”. He’s got to pull
It happens in almost every televised game. A tasty tackle is made, bodies go flying and the commentators confidently call the incident a foul. Then we see a replay, in slow motion, possibly from a different angle and we hear “oh, he got a touch on the ball first”. It’s repeated to the point that the average football fan, and presumably those repeating this meme, actually believe that a glancing blow between the leather of boot and ball are enough
I don’t expect an answer, so I’ll use this post to draw a line under the disappointment of the FA Cup semi final at the weekend, but Howard Webb, The FA, The Referees Association, anyone with any kind of vested interest, should consider this an open letter of sorts and feel free to respond with an explanation.
We all know what happened in the 16th minutes of this game. Just about anyone who is honest and has the use of
Does what it says on the tin, these are quite literally the random thoughts I have running through my head right now. Apologies if this turns into an incoherent ramble, it’s tricky to assemble much order at the moment. I’m not looking to make excuses here, the better quality side won through in the end.
Officiating
I’m generally not one to moan about referees. The reason for this is simple; I want humans refereeing, not robots, and humans make
When Aston Villa won the 1957 FA Cup we became the first team to win it 7 times, a feat now matched or surpassed by Liverpool (7), Tottenham (8), Arsenal (10) and Man Utd (11). Small wonder really, we’ve made it to the final just once since; the 1-0 loss to Chelsea in 2000. You’ve got to be in it to win it after all.
The game has changed a wee bit since 1957 though. Martin O’Neill was just
It’s just 50 hours until kick off. On Saturday afternoon we’ll be at Wembley for the second time this season. This time it’s the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. It’s no small game.
And yet, I haven’t managed to create the build up I was expecting this week. I’ve changed the background image (which you may need to refresh your cache to see – either hold down Ctrl + F5 or Shift + click on your browser’s
I’ll go from the sublime to the ridiculous and keep this super short and to the point. The Times published the graphic below which is available in PDF format here. However, the Aston Villa numbers might not look familiar and there’s a good reason for that.
The numbers that The Times use are correct, but they’re from the Aston Villa FC 2008/09 accounts, not the Reform Acquisitions accounts. The difference between the two, besides the headline numbers you
Please.
Please.
Support your team.
Thank You.
There’s one period in our recent history that I refer to frequently, so I thought I’d recount it in more detail and then I can put it to bed. Or just link to it!
So if you’re sitting comfortably, I shall begin…
Our tale begins in late March 2008, it had been an extremely poor month for Aston Villa and we still had to go to Old Trafford to play an on form Man Utd side spearheaded by Rooney and Tevez,