When James Milner re-joined Villa from Newcastle our side was so conditioned to channel the ball down the left in search of Ashley Young that Milner struggled to get involved and spent far too much time as a spectator. That soon began to change, bit by bit, and it wasn’t long before we were finally achieving the balance we’d missed for so long.
I was reminded of this while watching the 0-0 opening day draw at Craven Cottage. This time is
If you had asked me a little over a year ago to name the eight teams most likely to fill the top eight places in the Premier League come May I would have said; Liverpool, Everton, Man Utd, Man City, Aston Villa, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea. Not in that order, obviously.
Then our manager skipped off into the sunset and the season that followed will last in the memory for many years. For all the wrong reasons. Still, thanks to a
We all know that Alex McLeish has a tough task ahead of him. We all know that he’s arrived with about as little goodwill as a new manager could possibly arrive with. We all know that he must win over large swathes of the Villa fanbase, and that there are significant numbers who will never accept him. We all know that a good start is vitally important. Vultures circle.
We’re probably all aware – or we should be – that the
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
I like pre-season. A lot. It frequently gives us a chance to see promising youngsters mixed in with the established senior players and can provide clues to what lies ahead. Notice the emphasis on the words ‘can’ and ‘clues’.
The truism I keep returning to is that more can be learnt from a failure than a success. Doing too well during pre-season can mask real problems that are subsequently exposed by the harsh competition in the Premier League.
Take summer 2009 as
For all the questions regarding the strength in depth of the current Aston Villa squad, there hasn’t been a great deal of discussion, so far as I’ve seen, about the captaincy. In truth, the role of the captain is often overblown, and it has to be said that the other highly paid professional athletes on the pitch shouldn’t need any motivation or encouragement from a colleague, but a great leader can still be worth his weight in gold.
Or points. I
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
It’s a pretty rare event that we’ll receive official confirmation of an agreement being reached to purchase a player before the actual transfer itself is announced, but that’s apparently the situation with Charles N’Zogbia. It’s all over bar the shouting.
I’m sure such steps wouldn’t have been taken if it wasn’t a formality, it’s just a shame that the player won’t have the chance to hook up with his new team mates in Hong Kong due to a lack of work
Aston Villa are taking 24 players to Hong Kong to compete in the Barclays Asia Trophy and the travelling party are en route right now. As the strength and depth of the squad is a hot topic at the moment, I thought it might be interesting to compare this pre-season tournament squad with the squads from the last couple of seasons.
Asia Trophy 2011
Goalkeepers
Shay Given, Brad Guzan, Andy Marshall.
Defenders
Luke Young, Habib Beye, Eric Lichaj, James Collins, Richard Dunne, Ciaran Clark, Stephen