Keith Andrews hit a shot from a little over 25 yards out on the hour mark that forced Brad Friedel’s only save of the match. It was a fine save, but still reasonably routine that you’d expect most goal keepers at this level to deal with with comfort. That was Blackburn’s only shot on target during the 90 minutes, but they somehow managed to head back up the M6 with three points.
In reality, Hoilett shouldn’t have
I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not that interested in the stats from this one, it might feel a little anti-climatic now I suppose. Nevertheless, I’ll chuck the usual statistics in and for the “feature stats” I’m going to break our passing down into 10 minute chunks graphically which demonstrates how the game evolved quite nicely I think.
Wingers
One quick point about Downing and Ash; they spent much more time on their natural wings during this game, they usually swap
Regardless of what happens in our remaining two games; Man City and Blackburn, Aston Villa’s performance over the course of the 2009/10 season will be at least the 2nd best in the 18 year life of the Premier League. It will make no difference how you choose to compare the records from each season, only 1992/93 can rank higher.
However, some people feel the need to wait until the season is over and our final position is confirmed before they
I intended to open this post talking briefly about the penalty, but once I dived into the subject I found it deserved its own post. This post got left on the back burner. I apologise, but I realise that you don’t really care about the statistics from this game; if ever there was a game where only one stat counted it was this one, right? Yup, we won, that’s all that matters.
So, let’s be brief then. I’ve
We’ve played 36 games. We have two left; Man City at Eastlands and Blackburn at Villa Park. We have 64 points. Regardless of what happens in those two games, this season will be the second best performance in 18 years of the Premier League. Only 1992/93, the very first EPL season, was better.
And some people believe that Martin O’Neill has taken us as far as he can? Really?
One thing to consider is that there were
First things first; CT scans have revealed that Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink has suffered no long-term damage following his nasty clash of heads with Richard Dunne. That’s good news indeed, it’s always a concern when someone apparently spends so long unconscious. He’ll be able to train next week and should be able to play again before the end of the season.
To the game itself. Well, we won this in the first 25 minutes and then coasted to
That’s how many Premiership games that Martin O’Neill has prowled the Aston Villa technical area “like a panther”. The significance? Oh, it’s the same number as John Gregory, which means that MON will effectively become our longest serving manager during the Premiership era when he takes charge of his 149th EPL game at Hull on Wednesday.
It seems a good time to update what is a loose series of posts analysing the current manager’s league performance in comparison with
The most significant statistic in this game was the sheer number of passes. You have to go back to Wigan at Villa Park in April 2007 to find the last game with more complete passes – 361. In fact, there’s only one other game with more passes since MON came to Villa; Charlton at home in September 2006. Incidentally, the Wigan game finished 1-1, the Charlton game was a 2-0 win.
Perceptions
I think I’ve said before that one
This is the final part of the series comparing this season against last season both chronologically and using and apples to apples comparison. In case you missed it, I chose at the beginning to map the following 3 promoted teams to 3 relegated teams:-
Birmingham City = West Brom
Burnley = Middlesbrough
Wolves = Newcastle
I’m going to use the same tables and graphs from Part 6, but I just wanted to add some “big picture” perspective before we go on. We’ve