As armchair managers, our job is no more complicated than dreaming up wish lists of players, deciding who gets to start in the team sheets and what formation they will play and assigning arbitrary valuations of players for transfer market purposes. Yes, arbitrary values, and buying players is no more complicated that writing that value on a bit of paper and feeding it into the fax machine.
A player is worth what the buying club are willing to pay and
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Martin O’Neill wasn’t the only one talking to the press today. It probably shouldn’t be too surprising that Richard Dunne also had a few microphones shoved in his face and of course was asked for his thoughts regarding some of the Irish players that Villa have been linked with recently.
He naturally spoke in glowing terms:-
Richard Dunne
Stephen Ireland is brilliant so, if he became available then absolutely I’d recommend him. But the manager does his own thing. Regardless of
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Twitter has just erupted in a James Milner based explosion sparked by a claim that Martin O’Neill has told Sky Sports News that Milner wants to join City and he is ready to sell at the right price.
It took a while for an actual post to appear on the Sky Sports website, but here it is. There are no actual quotes, but Sky are quite unambiguous; they claim that MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready
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Nathan Delfouneso and Nathan Baker both played 90 minutes for England in a disappointing European Under-19 Championship loss to Holland in France tonight and now face the ominous prospect of needing a result against a very impressive French side to progress.
FC Twente’s Steven Berghuis scored the only goal of the game for the Dutch in the 6th minute with a strong header from some distance to cap a fine cross. They were clearly the stronger side and enjoyed much
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It may well seem like a shameless plug once again, but I really do use The Villa Wire myself and I just spotted this little gem in the Flickr feed:-
What you’re looking at is Kenilworth Road on the 9th April 1983 and I think that’s Colin Gibson in the foreground. The scoreboard reveals the game is all square at 1-1 when this snap was taken, but thanks to a late winner from David Moss – shown in the video
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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?
Aston Villa kicked off the pre-season proper with an entertaining 3-2 victory over Peterborough at London Rd tonight, Ashley Young, John Carew and Eric Lichaj getting the goals and all 8 substitutes got some time on the pitch.
Ashley Young opened the scoring inside the opening 10 minutes, but Aaron Davies brought the home side back on terms almost immediately. John Carew restored the briefly held lead just before half time.
Elliot Parish came on in place of Brad Friedel for
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Unsurprisingly, with the pre-season schedule underway, I’ve started to spot one or two Villa fans crouching in corners gibbering about lack of signings, hyperventilating with a paper bag over their mouths. Does that describe you? Read on.
I did this before last year, so I’ve updated it with the data from 2009. All you have to do is look at today’s date in the left hand column and then scan across to the right to see how many players
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All three of Aston Villa’s representatives at the UEFA Under-19 European Championship in France were on display in England’s opening day 3-2 win over Austria. Both the Nathans; Delfouneso and Baker, started for England while Andreas Weimann started up front for Austria.
All three will be reasonably happy with their performances. Nathan Baker was solid, tidy and well disciplined at the back for England. Perhaps caught out positionally a little early on, as Austria fired the opening salvos
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