Martin O’Neill saw an Aston Villa side comprised mostly of reserve players, but with a healthy sprinkling of first teamers, kick off the 2010/11 pre-season programme with a loss to Conference side Basingstoke Town at The Camrose this afternoon.
Both of the home side’s goals came in the first half, Chris Herd with an unfortunate own goal in the 34th minute and David Pratt adding a second in the 38th minute. Youngster Graham Burke got one back for Villa 2
Judging by the early responses to the Season Expectation Survey, I may be preaching to the choir here, but I’m going to state my case for hoping Aston Villa have a good craic at the Europa League this season regardless. (I apologise unreservedly for the atrocious pun. Read on if it’s not obvious.)
Not everyone holds the second tier European competition in such high regard though, I may have seen it referred to as the “Europa LDV Vans Cup”
Aston Villa’s new home and away shirts for 2010/11 are being launched at an event in Centenary Square today, ably modelled by Stiliyan Petrov, Brad Friedel, Carlos Cuellar and Stewart Downing.
The home shirt has leaked ahead of the event, it’s a traditional claret shirt with blue sleeves, but features a check trim down the sides. The away shirt is black and features the same claret and blue check down the sides.
In other news today, Emile Heskey has announced his
2010/11 will be Martin O’Neill’s 5th season in charge of Aston Villa and before a major player has been bought or sold and before a single ball has been kicked, I want to find out what you expect the club to deliver next term.
I’m not looking for your predictions, I’ll leave such things in the capable hands flippers tentacles of sea creatures, I want to know what your expectations are. Is it all about the league for you? Do
Nothing like a good old beep test on your first day back at work after a long break, eh? The OS has some fantastic pictures of the first team back in training, kitted out in new purple gear with the FxPro logo emblazoned on the front. I’ve just borrowed a few here, but there’s lots more on the OS, so go check it out. I think I’m a fan of purple for the training kit, there’s a
Last year, as Villa headed out to Spain to compete in the Peace Cup, Martin O’Neill left the trio of Agbonlahor, Milner & Gardner behind as they had been given a little extra time before reporting back after taking part in the European Under-21 Championship.
After spotting that Nathan Delfouneso had also been omitted from the travelling party, and doing a little digging, I found he and Nathan Baker were in Ukraine representing England Under 19’s in their European Championships.
Clearly this is extremely fluid between now and the end of the summer transfer window with players moving in both directions, but following the confirmation of Yaya Toure’s move, here’s the current list of first team midfielders at Man City for next season:-
Michael Johnson
Stephen Ireland
Shaun Wright-Phillips
Adam Johnson
Gareth Barry
Patrick Veira
Nigel De Jong
Yaya Toure
David Silva
I suppose from our perspective, and, I suspect, a lot of teams, that’s a pretty intimidating array of talent. I can’t help wondering whether that’s something James
I added the transfer rumour page for a little light relief over the summer, but then gave it even less attention than it was due because of the World Cup. Let’s face it, whatever I’ve missed over the last few weeks has hardly come to fruition yet.
I was just having a quick nose around to see if there was anything interesting doing the rounds and I stumbled on this little nugget from the ever reliable Daily Mail:-
I know, not
Actually, the introspection part is just wishful thinking on my part. Far more likely: hand wringing, gnashing of teeth, finger pointing, talk of reform, grass roots etc., but in 4 years time and again, to a lesser degree, in 4 years, we’ll almost certainly repeat the same cycle.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. All fueled by the feckless tabloid media playing to the lowest common denominator and its readership lapping it up.
We English have a disease. It’s a disease of