Aston Villa’s lack of a true goal threat was highlighted in a frustrating performance against a struggling West Ham side at Villa Park today. West Ham clearly arrived knowing they had next to no chance of winning this game and will head back to London very satisfied with their point. Villa fans will be heading home wondering how their team could dominate the game without ever really threatening to break the deadlock.
Once again the other teams around us
So far so good. Aston Villa have the advantage at what is effectively half time in their Carling Cup Semi-Final tie with Blackburn Rovers after winning 1-0 at Ewood Park tonight. Blackburn really didn’t look like they have much fight in them for much of the game and we have to be cautiously optimistic that we will be booking ourselves a trip to Wembley when the final whistle is blown at Villa Park next Wednesday night. Cautiously optimistic, but
Martin O’Neill took the opportunity to send a much changed Aston Villa side out to face Blackburn in the FA Cup 3rd Round at Villa Park today and it paid off with a 3-1 victory. Clearly with an eye on Tuesday’s Carling Cup Semi-Final 1st leg at Ewood Park, MON gave some periphery players a run out with James Milner and Gabby Agbonlahor not even asked to sit on the bench.
Heskey
Delfouneso
Downing
Reo-Coker
Delph
A Young
Warnock
Collins
Cuellar
Beye
Guzan
Subs: Friedel, L Young, Dunne, Sidwell, Albrighton, Petrov,
For some reason or another I neglected to create a Statshack for the 3-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield, so I’ll take the rare step here of including it below the stats from last night’s 1-0 loss at Villa Park. It might be interesting to compare the two.
0
Aston Villa
Dec 29th 2009
Liverpool
1
42
Possession %
58
9
Shots
15
4
On Target
4
8
Corners
10
0
Offsides
1
Scorers
93′ Torres
Dunne
Booked
Lucas
Sent Off
214
Good Passes
325
60
Bad Passes
81
35
Interceptions
18
36
Tackles Won
37
21
Tackles Lost
29
7
Blocks
1
12
Free Kicks
13
Starting XI:
1. Friedel
2. Young
25. Warnock
24. Cuellar
5. Dunne
19. Petrov
20. Reo-Coker
8. Milner
6. Downing
10. Carew
11. Agbonlahor
Subs:
22. Guzan
14. Delfouneso
4. Sidwell
12. Albrighton
29. Collins
23. Beye
16. Delph
Average
I’m probably not alone in feeling this loss a bit harder than the previous losses this season. I’m trying to put my finger on why and I can come up with little more than Liverpool probably deserved to take the three points the least out of the 5 teams who have beaten us so far this term. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the freshest wound since we probably should have got something from the Blackburn and West
Absolutely heartbreaking. An injury time mistake sent Fernando Torres through clear on goal and he didn’t miss. That was all that separated the sides in the end.
It doesn’t matter than it was an even first half with the best chance falling to Stewart Downing.
It doesn’t matter that Villa were the only side to offer anything in the second half.
It doesn’t matter that MON made a really positive substitution when he brought Reo-Coker
Statistically speaking, this game closely resembles the three victories over Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd. The one major detail that differs significantly is the scoreline of course.
Villa presented little threat to Almunia’s goal in the second half, but it was certainly more a case of Arsenal eventually making their chances pay after the break and there will be little argument about who can be credited with that fact.
It’s not often that a single player comes off the bench to
The headlines for this game will rightly belong to Cesc Fabregas after his 26 minute cameo performance was enough to put Aston Villa to the sword and deny us a grand slam of victories over big four teams. In fairness though, Villa weren’t exactly setting the world on fire when the Spaniard stepped on the pitch with just over half an hour to go and a victory didn’t appear likely. When the Spaniard left the pitch with 6
An old friend of mine, a Baggies fan, emailed me to say that as much as he hated to admit it, Stoke’s disallowed goal should have stood and asked what I thought. I didn’t disagree, but goals change games so we shouldn’t assume that the rest of the game would have played out exactly the same to end in a 1-1 draw. I’m confident that we would have found the necessary goals to win the game and the