Could A Sporting Director Be The Solution To Our Situation?

Sporting director, technical director, director of football, general manager. Take your pick, all the same thing. I elected to avoid the director of football tag in the headline as it’s frequently been used in England and without success enough that just the mention of the term leads to assumptions of unavoidable failure.

It’s a system that’s been used in Europe for many years though and in places is regarded as the norm. Quite why it hasn’t taken hold in

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Premier League Squad Analysis – All Clubs

All 20 Premiership clubs were required to submit their squads for use in the Premier League today and they were all pretty much as expected, although Luke Moore was left out of the West Brom squad, so we won’t be seeing him playing Premiership football this side of January.

Clubs were required to list up to 25 players over the age of 21 on January 1st and within that list, no more than 17 could be players not classed as “Home

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Villa Among First To Name 25 Man Premier League Squad

No one should be surprised that Aston Villa have been able to name their squad under the new “home grown” rules well ahead of today’s deadline as it was as straight forward as it can be. I took a look at the squad back in July and listed 23 players who would have to be named under the new rules. Since then, James Milner and Nicky Shorey left, Stephen Ireland joined, so here’s the 22 player who were

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Window Shuts – This Is Your Aston Villa Team For Next 4 Months

That’s the Summer 2010 transfer window done then.

Out: Marlon Harewood and Andy Marshall were both released at the end of their contracts. Stephen O’Halloran went to Coventry on a free, while Nick Shorey joined West Brom for £1.5m and James Milner joined Man City for £26m.

In: Stephen Ireland joined from Man City for £8m.

KMac has confirmed that he would like an interview. Make whatever you will of the inclusion of a two minute video recap of his four

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Statshack – Aston Villa 1 Everton 0

Tactical analysis seems almost pointless, if ever there was a display based on mental qualities such as determination, commitment and spirit, this was it. The stats will speak for themselves, so I’ll just throw in a couple of factoids, tug my forelock and bid you good day.

Firstly, Stewart Downing. Not the best use of the ball when he saw it, but he struggled to get involved in the game. For once his central position in the average

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Faulkner: Management Candidates Must Have Premiership Experience

Excerpt from an official statement just published on the club website:-

We are conscious that we have steered clear of openly communicating our thoughts on the search for a permanent manager until this time, as we felt that to do so would undermine both Kevin’s and the players’ efforts to focus on preparing for these games.

To date, we have immersed ourselves in the process of appointing a new manager and clearly identifying the key criteria this person must meet.

Two of the

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Ash And Gabby Talk Positive, As Does Koeman And Blackburn In The Cup

Among much speculation regarding Champions League bound Tottenham trying to get their hands on no-longer-cup-tied Ashley Young, he’s talked up the team’s desire to bounce back against Everton and also his own determination to re-establish himself in the England set up.

Ashley Young
I’m a positive person. You can’t carry defeats around on your shoulders, because you would be going into the next game having too many negative thoughts. You have to look forward.

Of course, the Newcastle result crushed us. We just

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Your Season Expectations – Survey Results

I suppose this might seem like odd timing, but I was planning on compiling and publishing this right before the West Ham game and then Martin O’Neill went and put the kybosh on things. I thought I’d leave the survey open for a little while longer to see whether any of the data trickling in after MON’s departure would take any kind of dip, but I really didn’t see that.

That’s a good thing since I was looking for expectations, not

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A Little On Bob Bradley And Why He Should Not Be The Next Aston Villa Manager

If you don’t read Richard Whittall’s ‘A More Splendid Life’ regularly you’re doing yourself a disservice. Richard is a Canadian Villa fan – albeit one I suspect is becoming increasingly jaded with what life in the Premier League has become – based in Toronto and today he’s weighed in on an element of the Bradley-for-Villa story that I also find egregious in ‘This Bradley to Villa thing is embarrassing‘.

It’s a good read and Richard might not be using

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