Darren Bent nodded in a mirror image of his Upton Park goal shortly before half time to cancel out Kenwyne Jones’ 20th minute header, unsurprisingly from a Rory Delap long throw, in a game that’s unlikely to be released on DVD any time soon.
Bent’s goal just about provided the only glimmer of class from a Villa side that were pedestrian for most of the match. Credit must be given to the visitors for pressing and harrying well before they scored,
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I said I’d be happy with a point before kick off and I would have been too. And with five minutes or so left on the clock I began writing just that, but then Gabby popped up in injury time and forced a rewrite I couldn’t be happier about!
The game got off to the worst possible of starts after Robbie Keane took advantage of Ashley Young’s failure to leave his post quickly enough at a corner and blasted in from
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A very rare occurrence for us in the last few years; results around us did us a big favour coming into this match and the opportunity was capitalised on. Three vital points opening up a little bit of breathing room at the bottom of the table. Take a moment to breath in that oxygen. Sweet isn’t it?
The single goal that yielded three points came courtesy of James Collins’ shiny dome 25 minutes in, flicking on a superb free kick from
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It’s not enough to be good, you have to have a share of luck now and again too. Luck is something that deserted us some time ago; its evil cousin, bad luck, getting its feet under the table in short order. Today, good fortune appeared to briefly return when Jermaine Beckford’s thunderous shot ricocheted off the underside of the crossbar and was adjudged not to have crossed the line.
While Everton protested, Brad Friedel spotted the opportunity to move the ball
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I won’t be alone in feeling completely numb right now. I can’t even think where to begin explaining that one. There’s zero point talking tactics and team selection, the starting XI wasn’t vastly different from expectations, they just didn’t play with any real intent about them.
I hoped someone might pass a note around the changing room at half time, perhaps a snapshot of the table, wake them up a little, something to bring our situation into focus. They’d come out
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The teams are almost exactly as expected from yesterday’s preview, just Marc Albrighton instead of Gabby – nothing shocking about that – but Chris Herd starts, presumably at left back, rather than Fabian Delph.
Aston Villa
Wolves
1
Brad Friedel
13
Wayne Hennessey
36
Kyle Walker
32
Kevin Foley
24
Carlos Cuellar
5
Richard Stearman
32
Nathan Baker
16
Christophe Berra
31
Chris Herd
3
George Elokobi
6
Stewart Downing
19
Adam Hammill
20
Nigel Reo-Coker
8
Karl Henry
17
Jean II Makoun
20
Nenad Milijas
12
Marc Albrighton
17
Matthew Jarvis
7
Ashley Young
24
Jamie O’Hara
39
Darren Bent
29
Kevin Doyle
Subs
Subs
33
Andy Marshall
1
Marcus Hahnemann
8
Robert Pires
6
Jody Craddock
11
Gabriel Agbonlahor
7
Michael Kightly
13
Michael Bradley
9
Sylvan Ebanks-Blake
16
Fabian Delph
10
Steven Fletcher
18
Emile Heskey
11
Stephen Ward
19
Stiliyan Petrov
14
David Jones
The debate surrounding the pros and cons of zonal marking versus man marking at set pieces will doubtless rage on, but most of the big teams will continue to use a combination regardless. Indeed, the argument about what constitutes zonal rather than man marking will be no more likely to reach consensus any time soon.
All of that is outside the scope of this post, I’m simply going to go through each of Bolton’s eight corners and translate what I saw
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The mid-week gamble has backfired, the repercussions are obvious. Three goals conceded at set pieces, or second phase set piece, missed chances at the other end, including a sitter or two for Darren Bent and an Ashley Young penalty saved.
Bent should have opened the scoring inside the first five minutes after being sent through brilliantly by Young, but he wasn’t able to dig the ball out from under his own feet and Jaaskelainen snuffed out the chance before he could
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Eight changes, first starts for Chris Herd and Michael Bradley. It didn’t work, not at all. A routine beating at the hands of a frankly bemused City. A lacklustre and, at times, completely inept performance during the first half deserved the 2-0 half time scoreline. The third goal wasn’t entirely merited, there was a little fight about Villa after the break, but overall it’s probably a fair reflection on City’s superiority.
There was much head scratching before the game when the
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