This started off so brightly with Martin O’Neill handing Fabian Delph a rare start in place of the injured Emile Heskey and the home side lined up in my favourite 4-2-3-1 formation with Delph and Petrov providing the solid platform for the front four to work from.
Villa enjoyed the better of the opening exchanges and Carlos Cueller deservedly put us into the lead just before the 20th minute with a looping header that left van der Sar flapping in the
Aston Villa will be heading back up the M40 feeling very sore and not a little grateful to come away from White Hart Lane with a point following a fairly anaemic 0-0 draw with Tottenham. If Spurs are looking for answers about why they failed to capitalise on periods of control, they need only look in the mirror. In truth, a seriously decent side would have gone a couple ahead inside the first 20 minutes.
Despite a very shaky start, the
If you hadn’t seen this game and just saw the statistics below, you might think that Fulham had a good chance in this game and were unlucky not to get something. They weren’t and they weren’t.
The possession finished 55/45 in Fulham’s favour, but midway through the first half it was 43/57. I know this because I was poking fun of the official Fulham Twitter account when they were claiming it was “pretty even stuff”. No, it wasn’t.
However, we
Aston Villa cruised to a very welcome three points at Craven Cottage today with a Gabby Agbonlahor brace just before half time, capping an impressive first half performance. Arsene Wenger would no doubt have appreciated the healthy mixture of short and long play.
The second half was perhaps more an effort in containment, but the danger of the counter attack was of course ever present from the Claret and Blues. Fulham huffed and puffed and did manage to score
Maybe not a classic, but pretty entertaining, especially in the second half, and a very even affair this one. Arsenal hit the woodwork twice, but otherwise it was Aston Villa doing most of the pressing. Let’s just take a quick look at the shots either side managed to fire off:-
The blue are on target. The red are off-target and the dotted red lines indicate the two shots which hit the post and crossbar. The grey lines are
After a very tough 90 minutes at Villa Park tonight, both sides left he pitch as they had entered it at 0-0. Arsenal rattled the frame of Brad Friedel’s goal twice, but otherwise it was Aston Villa who bossed most of the game. In the end though, for all their industry, the home side were still unable to find their first goal in the Premiership since before Christmas.
I’ll do a full review with the Statshack later as it’s
Aston Villa will be in tomorrow’s FA Cup 5th round draw after cruising past Brighton and Hove Albion at Villa Park today. Don’t let the scoreline fool you. As suspected, MON rang the changes to give some tired legs a much needed rest and employed a fairly unusual system:-
Delfouneso
Downing
A Young
Sidwell
Albrighton
Delph
Warnock
Collins
Beye
L Young
Guzan
The introduction of Albrighton and Delfouneso paid dividends almost immediately with Albrighton feeding the forward to open the scoring inside the first 5 minutes. Unfortunately the wing
Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
We’re going to WEM-BER-LEY!!!
Que Sera, Sera
Aston Villa 6 Blackburn Rovers 4 (Agg. 7 – 4)
They did it!! Aston Villa have booked their first cup final appearance since the FA Cup back in 2000!!!
Villa being Villa, they didn’t do it the easy way. What drama at Villa Park tonight… who would have predicted TEN goals?? Certainly not this blogger. At least the fans at VP got their money’s worth tonight.
Villa got
I’m sure it’s something that is, and will be, looked at back at Bodymoor, but surely the fact that goals from set pieces are apparently drying up has to be an area of concern right now. We had 16 corners in this game and won 9 free kicks inside the West Ham half which I’m pretty certain all were used to either shoot directly at goal or at least deliver the ball into the box.
Throughout the game we had