So says Andy Brown, back with a long overdue smacktalk. I’ve only had Newcy Brown once myself and my assessment was very similar to Andy’s.
Andy’s the resident Villa fan among my friends at Yanks Call It Soccer (the website previously known as Among The Thugs), which is a great blog featuring a bunch of American football fans (that’s American’s who are fans of football, real football, not that silly hand-egg game) who each support a different team. A
In Part I I used a little slight of hand when comparing detailed playing stats for Milner and Ireland by putting two different seasons against each other. I was open about that and it was done with the expressed purpose of illustrating that at their best, they are extremely comparable players. But will we be getting Stephen Ireland at his best?
That remains to be seen, there’s obviously no guarantees, but for what it’s worth, here are their key
As we don’t get too many opportunities to see Brad Guzan play, I thought it worth dropping in the highlights from the USA vs Brazil friendly from last Tuesday. Guzan played the second half – which starts around the 3:30 mark if you’re not particularly interested in seeing Brazil’s goals – and he made a number of excellent saves.
Not the best USA performance, but Brazil were close to their best, playing some exceptionally good football at times.
YouTube Video
While it’s up, here’s the goals and some highlights from today’s fantastic game.
Goals from Downing (15′), Petrov (40′) and Milner (66′).
YouTube Video
Video of each of the goals in last night’s 4-1 loss to Benfica in the Guadiana Cup. (One video for each goal)
10′ David Luiz’s pile driver takes a wicked deflection to beat Brad Friedel.
36′ Franco Jara hits another big shot from distance, Friedel parries, but Saviola is smartly following up.
43′ Óscar Cardozo sticks an unstoppable free kick into the top corner.
49′ Franco Jara drags the ball back at the byline, beating Curtis Davies and cuts it back to Saviola to
All the goals from last night’s Guadiana Cup match between Aston Villa and Feyenoord in the Algarve, plus the tie-breaking penalty shoot out which finished 4-4.
I’ll be back tonight with another live blog for the Benfica game, hopefully a little better prepared than last night when I missed Marc Albrighton’s screamer because I was under the impression the kick off was at 9.30pm… don’t know where I got that from… *cough* *cough* AVFC official site!!
Oh, speaking of the
The goals and post match interviews from 2-1 loss against Bohemians in Dublin on Saturday.
Once again, kudos to my new friends at extratime.ie who put this video together in good time.
A bit thick on PR here and there as Jack Woodward unconvincingly attempts to lead the players into agreeing that the new FxPro deal will somehow bring success no other sponsor could, but still interesting to see extended interviews. Especially Carlos Cuellar talking about the World Cup and Brad Friedel’s obvious disdain for the bumblebee costume goalkeeper kit.
(More vids after the jump)
Carlos Cuellar
Stiliyan Petrov
Brad Friedel
Stewart Downing
Just in case you missed the goals on Sky Sports, here’s the video while it lasts:-
Ashley’s goal was a bit special, wasn’t it?