A tale of two halves, or Jeckyll and Hyde as I sometimes like to think of performances so different either side of the break. That might be overstating things, but at half time Villa had 49% of possession, by full time that had shrunk to just 42%.
That might not seem like an enormous swing, and it’s an oversimplification, but if you assumed the ball was in the possession of one team or the other for all of the 90
Stewart Downing’s well taken opening goal was cancelled out by Matthew Jarvis’ 2nd half in-swinger that evaded everyone, including Brad Friedel, but cometh the hour, cometh, er, Emile Heskey to nod in a late winner in emphatic style, grabbing all three points and fifth place in the Premier League.
It was a game that started off brightly, a fairly even affair, Wolves clearly keen to press for an early advantage while the home support were still in good voice. Villa
Emile Heskey came on around the hour mark with Villa a goal down to Blackburn and within a minute he had equalised, possibly with his first touch, and 18 minutes later Ashley Young was tapped in Heskey’s cross for the third goal to seal a comeback victory. Ashley had also headed in a second goal in between, crossed in by Nathan Delfouneso.
Quite the start for Gérard Houllier.
I didn’t see any of it, so I can’t give you any first
I’ve talked about this many, many times: possession football is all well and good, but if you don’t move the ball into position to score goals often enough, you don’t win many games. Our home record was 13th best in the league last season as we consistently struggled to roll inferior opposition over and that was to be the key challenge to address this season.
If Gérard Houllier learned anything from his position in the stands, it’s that grinding out
Gérard Houllier and Gary McAllister watched their new charges labour to a disappointing draw from the stands today and will know that they have an awful lot of talent at their disposal, but also have their work cut out for them.
It started extremely brightly with Villa absolutely dominating the opening 30 minutes or so, much like the first game of the season against West Ham. Marc Albrighton was having a field day down the right flank and it seemed
I don’t get to see the reserves live as often as I would like, but as they were playing Man Utd Reserves tonight, I was able to catch the first 80 minutes of the game bossed by Gordon Cowans before the stream died on me. A very good performance it was too, lead from the front by Barry Bannan, who was near faultless throughout.
Bannan opened the scoring just after five minutes with a curled free kick from just outside
It lived up to the preview, we got what we expected at the Britannia Stadium. When Stoke had the ball, they were direct and made effective use of possession. When they didn’t, they dropped deep into two well organised banks of four, the midfield almost on top of the back line. Very tough to break down.
During the opening spell, 15 to 20 minutes say, Gabby & Ash were struggling to get into the game, both occupying fairly
A late equaliser from Kenwyne Jones and an injury time winner from Robert Huth cast Stewart Downing’s fine first half header and all the good work Villa had put in during this game to distant memory. It was a lesson in how to lose all sense of conviction in the latter stages of a game, having failed to capitalize on some excellent work earlier on, to lose a match that should have been in the bag.
More importantly, once again,
Tactical analysis seems almost pointless, if ever there was a display based on mental qualities such as determination, commitment and spirit, this was it. The stats will speak for themselves, so I’ll just throw in a couple of factoids, tug my forelock and bid you good day.
Firstly, Stewart Downing. Not the best use of the ball when he saw it, but he struggled to get involved in the game. For once his central position in the average