Once upon a time being compared to Michael Owen would have been considered a good thing. These days, not so much. Nevertheless, Dmitri Sychev, due to his pace, has apparently earned the comparison in his native Russia where he has also been called “the most sensational young Russian forward since Vladimir Beschastnykh” and is now being linked to Aston Villa.
Who knows how much truth is in this story, and it’s not my usual cup of tea to address baseless speculation
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The academy side recorded a 4-1 victory over Milwall in the 5th Round FA Youth Cup, setting up a quarter final against Fulham. The draw for the semi-finals has already been made and if they manage to beat Fulham they’ll face either Newcastle or Crystal Palace.
Young Dutchman Arsenio Halfhuid notched up an impressive hat-trick in the win over Milwall, all three provided by strike partner Ryan Simmonds, who bagged the other Villa goal himself. I was interested to
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The first thing I notice when I create the average position maps is whether our players were deeper or more advanced in comparison to the previous match; in this case the game against Tottenham. This is most noticeable among the back four and I was encouraged to note that they were considerably more advanced on average during this game, especially Carlos Cuellar.
I sang Fabian Delph’s praises on Twitter during the game, I sang them again in the first review
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Aston Villa enjoy a fantastic bunch of fans who travel to away games, some of them getting up at ridiculous hours and going to great effort and expense to make the trip. Spare a thought though for the Villans on the west coast of America who have to get up for every weekend game at crazy o’clock to make a trip to a local sports bar that screens the Premiership, or to huddle around a computer or TV, propping
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Here’s a little table I thought worth sharing ahead of our game with Man Utd later tonight. This shows how the Premiership would look if we only included the record against teams in the top half of the table. Since there’s obviously a differing number of games played, it’s sorted on a points per game basis, although that doesn’t affect Villa’s 2nd place position.
Team
Pld
W
D
L
F
A
GD
Pts/Gm
Pts
Chelsea
12
8
2
2
23
8
15
2.16
26
Aston Villa
13
6
5
2
14
9
5
1.76
23
Man Utd
11
6
1
4
17
14
3
1.72
19
Arsenal
13
6
2
5
24
19
5
1.53
20
Liverpool
12
5
2
5
16
16
0
1.41
17
Tottenham
13
4
5
4
14
17
-3
1.30
17
Man City
9
2
4
3
14
17
-3
1.11
10
Burnley
14
3
4
7
11
29
-18
0.92
13
Fulham
12
3
2
7
11
16
-5
0.91
11
Birmingham
12
1
6
5
8
15
-7
0.75
9
Stoke
12
2
3
7
7
18
-11
0.75
9
Everton
11
1
5
5
13
23
-10
0.72
8
Bolton
14
2
4
8
17
33
-16
0.71
10
Wolves
13
2
3
8
7
23
-16
0.69
9
Sunderland
12
2
2
8
12
26
-14
0.66
8
Wigan
12
2
2
8
12
34
-22
0.66
8
Hull
14
2
3
9
11
34
-23
0.64
9
West Ham
12
1
4
7
12
23
-11
0.58
7
Blackburn
12
2
1
9
8
30
-22
0.58
7
Portsmouth
14
1
0
13
7
30
-23
0.21
3
I won’t show you what the table looks like versus the
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The long ball debate doesn’t want to go away. Apparently Brad Friedel has recently suggested that Tottenham are fairly fond of the odd long ball themselves and I found Harry Redknapp’s response quite amusing. He basically said that Spurs weren’t a long ball team, but at the same time it’s sensible to hit a few long passes when you’ve got someone like Peter Crouch in the side and, ultimately, lots of short passes sideways and backwards don’t achieve much. For
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This might seem like an odd question to introduce the statistics from Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Tottenham, but do you remember the 4-4 draw we had at White Hart Lane back in 2007? Of course you do!
Last week I was looking at how Aston Villa have performed based purely on passing over the last couple of seasons and was surprised to find that the 4-4 draw with Spurs contained our least number of passes during a game for the period
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I couldn’t resist the Follow Friday thing any longer, but wanted to do something a little different. Welcome, then, to the first post of what will more than likely be a sporadic series failing entirely to live up to its “of the week” moniker.
Also, don’t get upset if you didn’t make the team this week, I have a large squad and I’ve every intention of rotating. I’d very much like to earn the title “Tinkerman”. It’s difficult
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It’s called the Root Suit and it can be yours for just $64. Trust me, every Villa fan at Wembley will be wearing this, you should go ahead and order one now. Go on, what are you waiting for?
Thanks to Match Fit USA for the tip.