There are no shortage of complex Aston Villa related situations worth exploring right now, you barely have to look. From the unknown future of the incumbent manager to the past of his litigation happy predecessor coming back like a bad penny. We touched on the Friedel situation this week, which may be taking a turn toward north London, and also his younger compatriot.
We’ve got Nigel Reo-Coker‘s agent bigging him up in every willing media outlet attracting attention from all over
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Brad Guzan wouldn’t have been a name known to many outside of the United States when Martin O’Neill first tried to acquire the keeper’s services from Chivas USA in January 2008. That attempt failed because of work permit rules, but the fact that MON went back for him (successfully) the following summer suggested Guzan was someone worth getting to know.
Since then, we’ve only seen him in first team action during European and domestic cup competitions, save for 26 minutes at
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Brad Friedel turned 40 years old today, so, aside from wishing the big man many happy returns, it seemed like a good excuse to take a glance at our goalkeeping situation now and going forward.
Friedel’s contract expires this summer. We know that Gerard Houllier was actively looking at potential replacements last year, but the gaffer never ruled out the possibility of extending Friedel’s stay. In fact, he said that they’d talk about it in February and come to a decision
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I’ve talked for some time now about needing to hit a theoretical safety threshold of 43 points by the 36th game, essentially writing off our last two games against Arsenal and Liverpool. As it happens, West Brom occupy the final position offering mathematical safety today; 13th place with 43 points.
We’ve fallen a point shy and head a group of seven teams capable of suffering relegation. Mathematically speaking. Leading the group, as we do, we’re the least likely to go down
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Oops! We’ve got an early peek at the new Aston Villa home shirt for the 2011/12 season thanks to a slight SNAFU on the JJB Sports website and… it’s… checked!
There had been strong whispers that the check motif would be a feature again this year, but it’s actually a two-toned effect in the body rather than the claret and blue check trim found on both the home and away 2010/11 shirts.
Other than that, it’s a claret shirt with blue sleeves
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You won’t need me to tell you, you’ll no doubt recognise this team right away, but if not, it’s the starting eleven from the FA Cup 5th round at Eastlands that caused so much anger:
Brad Friedel
Chris Herd
Richard Dunne
Ciaran Clark
Fabian Delph
Michael Bradley
Stiliyan Petrov
Barry Bannan
Nathan Delfouneso
Gabby Agbonlahor
Emile Heskey
Look at it again. They’ve been called “kids”, “reserves”, “B-Team” and much more. Aside from Chris Herd – who had been named in 12 of the 35 match squads before that game by the way
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As you’ll be aware, Barry Bannan has joined Leeds on loan for the rest of the season with the option of an extension should they make the play-offs. Who knows, maybe he’ll end up repeating the trip he made to Wembley with Blackpool last year. There’s probably a quiz question in that if he does.
As ever, not everyone is thrilled by this move and it provides another convenient stick to whack the manager over the head with. Personally, I think
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You may have already seen that Deloitte has just published the annual Football Money League report and, as I speculated might happen in a post on last year’s report, Villa have just snuck back into the top 20 for the first time in several years.
The report is always an interesting read, but lately I’ve found that it gives us an early glimpse of Aston Villa’s revenue ahead of the official accounts being filed.
Last year, Deloitte said that Villa’s 2008/09 revenue
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Umbro have follow up their Diamond Icons video featuring our own Darren Bent with a Q&A where he goes beyond talking about tattoos to reveal how he’s settling in at Aston Villa.
How have you settled into the [Aston Villa] changing room?
It’s been great to be honest, I’ve known a lot of them already so that’s helped. I’m quite surprised that they haven’t tried any pranks out on me so far! There’s plenty of jokers in there, and they’ve made me
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