Not walking in a winter wonderland in Wigan – match postponed

I likened Wigan to low hanging fruit in the preview, but we’re not going to pluck any today after “freak weather” has caused the game to be postponed. That’s a problem, we really could have done with sinking our teeth into that sweet, ripe flesh ahead of the Boxing Day fixture against Tottenham.

I hope no one asks Gerard Houllier for his opinion on the ability of the English to cope with inclement weather as his Gallic scoffs will surely

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Gerard Houllier Live and Uncut

Maybe I’m just being over sensitive, but it really seems that Gérard Houllier is having his words twisted more than I’m used to seeing. It may well be because he’s reputedly more forthcoming with journalists than many managers, certainly than his predecessor, but it would be a shame if he ended up being punished via the media for his candour.

MON was the master of talking and talking, but saying very little. Houllier gets to the point and his

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Should we have sacked Ron Atkinson after 11 league games?

Gerard Houllier has stood on the touchline and overseen 11 Premier League games now and the table doesn’t lie, the stats are grim. His two wins represent an 18% win ratio and you can put that up against the records of his predecessors if you wish in the manager performance table I complied just before this season kicked off.

That particular table is sorted by percentage of available points won and Houllier would sit at the bottom of the pile

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Brummie Tiki-taka failing to yield results so far

I hate to sound like a broken record, but a consistent theme I’ve stressed in the Statshack series is the need to look at match statistics as a whole and to be suspicious of anyone attempting to leverage a point with the use of a single metric. Passing for example.

Last season, I read many times that the number of complete passes was an indication that our brand of football was dour and failing to improve, except when the statistics

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Aston Villa payments to agents for 2009 and 2010 revealed

Since last year, Premier League clubs have been required to publish the payments they’ve made to agents during the preceding 12 months at the end of November and the OS revealed that players’ representatives have received £2.28m from Aston Villa between October ’09 and September ’10, up from the £1.71m last year.

Given the lack of transfer activity at Villa Park in the last year, that might cause a head or two to be scratched.  I suspect it reflects how some

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This Season vs Last Season #10

Unfortunately, it’s time to review this season’s performance against last season and it’s pretty grim. Last year I apparently ran the numbers after 14 games so that I could arrive neatly at 19, the half way mark, but I think I’ll stick with every five games for the rest of this season.

I won’t waste your time with narrative, the numbers speak for themselves. What I will add is that in games 16 – 20 last season we went

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Statshack – Aston Villa 2 Arsenal 4

Apologies for the delay on this one, I haven’t had much chance to look at the data and ESPN have introduced significant changes to their match graphics which have made things difficult for me. They say a picture paints a thousand words, this will be graphically heavy I feel.

Firstly, the old cliché about a game of two halves couldn’t be more apt, could it? Villa were woeful during the first half. The opening gambit with Clark moving the

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Villa Players In EA Sports Index – 23rd November 2010

I somehow managed to miss posting an EA Sports Index update during October, but it wasn’t deliberate, merely an oversight on my part.

Given that the index is primarily a measure of contribution to a winning team, you probably won’t be surprised to find that we’re not exactly packing the top 100 with Villa players. There are just six Villans in the current top 100, none in the top 20; Stewart Downing the highest ranked in 24th place.

Similarly, Bolton’s high

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Statshack – Blackburn 2 Aston Villa 0 – Lopsided approach fails

One of the great things about football (sometimes) is the variety of opinions, some more valid than others. Fans are particularly vociferous in expressing those opinions after a loss. I’ve read them all. Take your pick of the players not playing yesterday; that’s why we lost. We missed Albrighton. We missed Collins. We missed a big man in the middle. Downing should play on the left. Ireland is rubbish.

If only it were that

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