Shamrock Rovers left back Enda Stevens, who will be joining Aston Villa in January 2012, has been named in the Irish Premier Division Team of the Year and nominated for the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland (PFAI) Young Player of the Year award.
21 year old Stevens has remained with Rovers whilst they compete in the Europa League. They currently sit bottom of Group A with ties against Rubin Kazan on November 30th and Tottenham on December 15th left to play.
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Richard Dunne has confirmed what we already knew; he was heading for the exit door under Gerard Houllier. He’s yet another player to lift the lid on a testing atmosphere under the Frenchman last season.
Speaking to ESPNsoccernet ahead of Ireland’s vital Euro 2012 play-off match against Estonia the veteran defender said:
Last season was very difficult for me as I was not enjoying coming to work every day at Villa and there were some issues with the Ireland team as well.
It
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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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It’s a little over 10 hours to go before the rumour mongers and speculation, erm, spasmos take themselves a much needed break. At least for a fortnight or so, then they’ll be back with a vengeance, leading all the way up to the perennially underwhelming January window.
Until then, I thought I’d summarise this summer’s movements to date, borrowing from the transfers page, and throw in anything that happens during the course of this afternoon and evening. And by that I
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You’ll all be aware by now that Luke Young and Jonathan Hogg left Villa, joining QPR and Watford respectively, over the weekend; both signing three year contracts. Although I missed it at the time, Young’s move did warrant an announcement, Hogg apparently slipped away in the night.
I noticed during pre-season that Hogg had been removed from the squad pages on the official site, perhaps that’s got something to do with it. Then again, they’ve currently got Gary Gardner listed as
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As someone who loathes the flood of transfer speculation we’re forced to swim through for the best part of 10 months of every year, I was actually pleased that cold water was poured on our prospects of trading in the market some time ago. However, with the transfer window coming to a close next week, there are a few signs of movement. There may be some ins and outs at Villa Park yet.
Luke Young
Luke Young is now confirmed to be
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It’s being billed as the “Champions League of youth football”, which is probably a massive overstatement, but the NextGen Series is an interesting competition nevertheless. We’re one of 16 teams across Europe taking part in this new Under-19 championship which kicked off with a handful of games this evening, including our own Young Lions going down 2-0 to Ajax at their youth training camp, De Toekomst – Dutch for “The Future”.
As the competition is so new, information is a little
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Nathan Baker’s Under-20 World Cup adventure will last for at least one more match after England qualified for the knockout stages in Colombia, but Andreas Weimann will be heading back to Europe as Austria finished bottom of their group.
England might consider themselves a little fortunate after squeezing into the knockout phase as one of the best third place finishers thanks to three goalless draws. It’s true, it’s hardly a scintillating record; played three, drew three, scored none, conceded none, but
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It’s official then, Charles N’Zogbia is a Villan. I’d assumed that it wouldn’t be completed, or at least officially announced, until after the weekend since just about everyone is in Hong Kong at the moment, but I guess it really was just a formality in the end.
It looks like N’Zogbia is going to have the number 10 shirt, the same number he had at Wigan, left behind by John Carew. He’s joined on a five year contract in a deal
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