Aston Villa carved out a vital three points today in an absolutely enthralling battle against Everton at Villa Park with Luke Young providing the only goal of the game in sublime, if unlikely style.
The day didn’t get off to the best of starts when Stephen Ireland pulled a hamstring in the warm up, but his replacement, Nigel Reo-Coker, probably provided that little extra steel that would prove vital in the middle. Nathan Delfouneso took Nigel’s place on the bench.
Everton
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I don’t want to enter into a debate about managerial qualities just yet, but if you were screaming out for rotation in the past, you’ve certainly had your fill recently. Last season, Martin O’Neill started just 24 different players in all competitions and received no shortage of criticism, not unfairly in some cases. Just four games into the 2010/11 season and Kevin MacDonald has already used 23 different players in his starting team sheets.
To be fair, MacDonald has
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I don’t know what to say. It looked so good for much of the game, I wrote much of the match report during the game, most of it at half time when it looked bright, then it all fell to pieces in the second half and we’re out. That’s all I have right now, I’ll have to see what I can salvage a little later.
Really, really disappointed. It’s no secret that I really wanted to see us
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Apologies for the delay. This one hurts, it took some serious motivation to pull it together. I still haven’t seen the whole game, not sure I want to right now, so I can’t really comment on what went wrong. You’ve no doubt all got your own ideas.
I would like to pause briefly to look at the team passing maps side by side though. It’s frequently the case that this level of data won’t reveal much, it’s
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It’s a long story, but it was a late night last night.
I’m talking about me, not Villa, I don’t know what the excuse is for that.
This was the first game I’ve missed in I can’t remember how long. There was an hour gone and we were 3-0 down by the time I got to it. I already knew the score when I tuned in.
I saw the 4th and we looked terrible during the half hour I
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Job done I think. Just. An away goal could be vital and we learned an awful lot in what turned into a less than an entertaining game after a promising opening 20 minutes or so. Barry Bannan opened the scoring, but Ardhe Nuhiu is being credited with the equaliser with what must be the faintest of touches, fooling Brad Guzan during the first half.
It started extremely brightly, Rapid struggling to cope with the pace and vigour of
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I’ve been working on developing Statshack 2.0, but I have to confess that I left myself with more to do than I realised and despite a late night last night, it’s still not ready. Also, I’m not sure why, but the average position map data doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m using my own interpretation of the general positions the players took up for now.
System wise, it was more of a 4-4-1-1 than a 4-2-3-1, although they may
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Kevin Macdonald’s first game in charge of Aston Villa launched a new era with a thrilling 3-0 victory over an almost bewildered West Ham side with goals from Stewart Downing, Stiliyan Petrov and, of course, James Milner. New Hammers manager, Avram Grant, will head back down the M40 grateful it was only three, it really could have been six.
Villa were firing on all cylinders from the opening whistle, attacking down both flanks, winning 3 corners in the opening 2
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Aston Villa polished off the final game of the season with an entertaining 0-0 draw against Valencia, showing some encouraging signs right before the new season, surely impressing the watching England manager, Fabio Capello. The only concern might be the lingering lack of a genuine threat in front of goal, Stewart Downing’s injury time free kick rattling the cross bar being the one true chance on target.
The early taking point, of course, was the unsurprising absence of a certain
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