A predictably tight affair was statistically edged by Villa. Perhaps Everton will be the more satisfied with the draw, they’ll certainly have less complaints about being reduced to 10 men. Ironically, Everton could actually appeal Bilyaletdinov’s early bath as he received a straight red card while Carlos Cuellar was harshly shown a second yellow card late on, but dismissals resulting from two bookings cannot be appealed. Yeah, that’s fair, isn’t it?
* The sharp eyed among may well notice
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Unsurprisingly, it was a tight affair between our new centre back pairing, but Richard Dunne just edged it. Although not eligible, a special mention should probably be reserved for penalty king Brad Guzan.
Player of the Month – October
1st – Richard Dunne – 7.21
2nd – James Collins – 7.14
3rd – Gabby Agbonlahor – 6.69
Previous Winners
1st
2nd
3rd
September
Gabby Agbonlahor (7.34)
Brad Friedel (7.28)
James Milner (7.23)
August
James Milner (7.03)
Brad Friedel (6.91)
Stiliyan Petrov (6.57)
As promised, it’s time to look at this season’s performance in the Premiership in comparison with last season. A reminder of the two methods:-
Chronological – i.e. compare the first 10 games this season with the first 10 last season, regardless of opponent.
Apple for Apples – compare identical fixtures from last season, regardless of when they occurred. Since 3 teams are relegated and 3 promoted each year this isn’t possible across all 19 opponents so I’ve made the following
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I was just updating some data and I noticed a little nugget; Martin O’Neill has now amassed 189 points in the Premiership from his 123 league games in charge of Aston Villa, which is the same number of points Brian Little achieved in his 130 game career.
Next target, John Gregory’s 229 points from 148 games:-
John Gregory – 229 points, 148 games
Martin O’Neill – 189 points, 123 games
Brian Little – 189 points, 130 games
David O’Leary – 145 points, 114 games
Ron Atkinson
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Milner and Petrov (just) eased back into the Actim Index Top 100 this week, making 8 Aston Villa players overall. James Collins’ performances and winning goal propelled him up the charts from 58th to 16th place – our highest placed player.
16th James Collins – 147 points
19th Gabriel Agbonlahor – 144 points
34th Ashley Young – 124 points
39th Brad Friedel – 122 points
41st Richard Dunne – 120 points
63rd Carlos Cuellar – 105 points
71st James Milner – 100 points
99th Stiliyan Petrov – 86
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In a lot of ways this game reminded me of the 3-1 win at Anfield and looking at the stats it’s easy to see why. Statistically speaking, Villa took a bit of a battering, but I’m not sure how many neutral observers could reconcile the game they witnessed with the stats below. I’m struggling myself, but I’m biased and I admit it, I thought MON’s men gave an enormous performance.
Unsurprisingly, as you’ll note in the average position map,
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I started keeping tabs on Aston Villa players in the Actim Index Top 100 last year, although I didn’t keep records of every week. In fact, my records aren’t very good at all, but one week I do happen to have from last year is the current week – i.e. after 7 games.
It’s interesting that the record of the first 7 games for this season and last is near identical, yet Villa’s representation in the Actim Top 100 looks
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Better late than never.
One thing that struck me early on during this game was the focus on the attack down the left channel. I’m not talking about simply looking for Ash on every pass, but both Gabby and Carew working the left side of the pitch. In fact, if anything, Ash played a lot deeper than usual. I put a screen shot of the average position map up at half time which really shows this effect.
There was
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At least 24 hours after a game I collect scores for the players’ performances voted on by fans. At the moment that comes from two sources; Sky Sports & The Telegraph, but as I use the average of these scores I can easily add new sources as and when I come across them.
The important thing is that these are scores directly from the fans, not the journalists. It also means that this is restricted to Premiership games for
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