Carling Cup Fourth Round Draw Preview

Making the Carling Cup fourth round draw really shouldn’t be such a big deal, but when you consider that Villa haven’t progressed any further than the fourth round for 5 years you’d be forgiven for hoping to get a decent draw.

I certainly am. Here’s the 16 teams left in the draw, what odds on Man Utd at home?

Aston Villa
Arsenal
Chelsea
Bolton

Barnsley
Everton
Liverpool
Man Utd

Sunderland
Peterborough
Portsmouth
Blackburn

Stoke
Scunthorpe
Spurs
Man City

The draw will be held on Saturday 26th September.

Reo-Coker Not In Carling Cup Squad

That’s the word on the street anyway. I’ll be confirming the team sheet on Twitter, as always, but I’m hoping this little snippet of info isn’t accurate.

Stuart James at The Guardian had me confused on Monday with his view of what was likely to happen. His opening paragraph contained this information:-

Martin O’Neill has sought to draw a line under the incident that saw him clash with Nigel Reo-Coker during a training-ground practice match after the midfielder apologised for swearing

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How The Home Grown Quota Will Effect Aston Villa

All 20 Premier League clubs recently ratified a rule to restrict the size of their squads and install a quota on the number of “home grown” players. Personally, I’m a little surprised that they agreed to restrict the squads to 25 players since the majority of clubs have used more than 25 players a season for the last 2 years.

Granted, the clubs will get to submit the lists twice a year – at the end of the summer &

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Relive Villa’s First Premiership Season

Very much recommended viewing, some interesting stuff from behind-the-scenes of the first ever Premiership season back in 1992/93 – the one that got away for Villa. It’s amazing how much the game and haircuts has changed since then.

Regardless of where you stand on the levels of cash flowing through the game today, you’ll surely have to concede that a lot of what you see in these videos makes the average pub team look sophisticated today!

Part 1 of 5

Part 2

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No Europe Makes Me Sad

Today is Match Day 1 in the Europa League and it’s a massive shame that Aston Villa won’t be taking part. It’s ironic that a strong, balanced squad has finally been assembled just in time to miss out on a major competition that would have stretched the squads of the past.

I was reading Martin O’Neill’s reflections today and he is equally sad to be missing out and also recognises the opportunity to utilize the squad that’s slipped through his

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An Intimate Experience With Jack Woodward

Firstly, don’t let the somewhat homoerotic headline put you off, this isn’t one of those salacious videos you might associate with Paris Hilton, but featuring our very own Jack Woodward. However, if Jack yanks your chain and that is what you came here for, I apologise, but stick around you might like it all the same.

I should tell the back story to this first, bear with me. I was working away on something this evening when all of

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2009/2010 Team Picture

The team got together for the annual team picture today available in a handful of dimensions at the OS here.

It was only recently that I was comparing the current squad with the squad MON inherited and I was again struck with the same thought as I looked at this year’s squad picture. Now we truly have the squad that MON built. I thought it would interesting to view the transition over the last 4 team pictures…

2006/07

2007/08

2008/09

2009/10

If

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Getting Back To Business

Well, that was a nice little break, wasn’t it? I decided not to waste your time or mine trying to fill the Villa void with too much guff. The preview for that little derby game coming up on Sunday will be following in the next day or two, but I thought I should briefly touch on one or two things that I didn’t deem worthy of a blog post in the last few days.

As expected, Curtis Davies has

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Squad Depth

I’ve had this post at the back of my mind for a few days, but now I sit down to write it I find that there’s little to be written, the squad speaks for itself. Check it out:-

Carew
Agbonlahor

Heskey
Delfouneso

Harewood

A Young
Petrov
Reo-Coker
Milner

Downing
Delph
Gardner
Albrighton

Bannan
Sidwell
Salifou
Herd

Warnock
Dunne
Cuellar
L Young

Shorey
Davies
Collins
Beye

Bouma
Clark
Lichaj

Lowry

Friedel

Guzan

Marshall

If you find yourself with some time on your hands, I’d encourage you to check out some of our competitors’ squads from Wikipedia or somewhere and write them down in the same fashion. If you’re honest with yourself, I

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