Marc Albrighton’s first Premiership goal will probably be quickly forgotten after being cancelled out by two goals, one in either half, from Rafael va der Vaart at White Hart Lane today. More of a concern, though, will be how flat Villa looked without Emile Heskey leading the line.
It started off very well, aside from some early home team assertion from Spurs, Villa were soon making their attacking intentions clear and Heskey, in particular, once again looked like a new
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Marc Albrighton crashing into the first team with such style this season could be the real catalyst for raising this question, after all, Stephen Ireland was considered a like-for-like swap for James Milner and there’s no reason in the world why I’d be asking where Milner would fit in if he was still with us now.
Albrighton made a name for himself last summer with some fine performances with the first team during the Peace Cup in Spain, an opportunity afforded
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You won’t have needed to be too eagle eyed to have noticed the EA Sports logo on screen when you’ve been watching the Premier League this season, especially when any statistics have been presented.
EA Sports have taken over from Actim as the official stats provider and that includes what was the Actim Top 100 Index, which has been a regular monthly(ish) feature here at Aston Villa Central.
Although the Actim system was proprietary and they didn’t divulge exactly what
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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
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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
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Gérard Houllier has signed the contract he said he would. It’s a three year deal. Really pretty simple, not sure why it’s such huge news, but it seems to be lighting up the wires at the moment, so to speak.
Previously, Emile Heskey was dominating the headlines, for the right reasons for once, following the impact he made against Blackburn midweek. A welcome change, but not a sustainable one I suspect. Hopefully I’m way off the mark because
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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
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Blackburn return to Villa Park in the Carling Cup tonight, but if it’s to be a repeat of the 6-4 thriller back in January, it will likely be for different reasons. Sam Allardyce has stated explicitly that the Premier League is their priority at all costs and after a bruising encounter with Fulham last weekend, on top of a Lancashire derby against Blackpool next weekend, Sam’s unlikely to field his strongest possible XI.
But neither will Houllier, who’s hit the
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I ran this as a regular feature last year and I don’t see any reason for it not to continue. I find it interesting at least. Same premise as before, which was explained in #01 if it’s not immediately obvious, the only change being the mapping of the three promoted and three relegated teams:-
Newcastle = Burnley
WBA = Hull
Portsmouth = Blackpool
That reflects their finishing positions in the respective leagues.
You’ll probably be aware that last season, after five games, we
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