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
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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
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I haven’t had chance to pull together a proper preview for Bolton’s visit to Villa Park, but this game is definitely more about various intertwining story arcs off the pitch than tactics and strategy on the pitch.
It is, of course, Kevin MacDonald’s final game in charge and it goes without saying that he and the players will want to both finish on a high note and attempt to atone for the slip-ups in the past few weeks. MacDonald’s grace
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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
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If you didn’t watch last week’s press conference, you can be excused if this is new news. However, those of us who watched it and paid attention heard Gerard Houllier explain quite succinctly that he had prior commitments that prevented him being at Stoke. He went on to say that he might be in charge for Bolton, but it may well be afterward, he did promise to attend that match regardless, watching from the stands if necessary.
He also
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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
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Look, no excuses here, we need to take our medicine, we brought this defeat on ourselves by not pressing for a win or sufficiently holding what we had, but I want to quickly highlight an issue that we all know needs fixing.
I’m not advocating that we should do this kind of review during the game, obviously that would be a ridiculous disruption. I’m not advocating that every decision be reviewed either. However, contentious issues that had an effect
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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,
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People are fond of claiming that Stoke is a tough place to go, but the truth is that they lost six games at the Britannia last season and their overall home record ranked 13th in the league. Villa were 12th if you’re interested.
We haven’t beaten Stoke at the Britannia yet, the last league win on their own turf being a 3-1 win at the old Victoria Ground in 1984.
So far this season, their home record is played one, lost
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