Milner Shines As England Scrape Into The Next Round

Let’s be honest here, two goals over three games in a group The Sun christened “EASY” (England, Algeria, Slovenia, Yanks) won’t be causing any of the other nations to shake in their boots, but we’re though and that’s all that counts.

James Milner was given the nod to start on the right against Slovenia for the final group game with England requiring a win to ensure progression. Fortunately his confidence didn’t seem dented following his horror show against USA in

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Tottenham Set The Trend When It Comes To The Reserves

In case you didn’t notice, Tottenham sent 22 players out on 32 different loan spells last season. Why? Because Spurs elected not to take part in the Premier Reserve League during the 2009/10 season, which clearly left an awful lot of their players kicking their heels.

It’s an intriguing policy and one I personally feel isn’t too clever in the long run. Equipping your up and coming talent with competitive experience, albeit at a lower level, may well be

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Lichaj Offered New 3 Year Contract, Expected To Challenge For First Team Place

Eric Lichaj impressed most observers during his brief cameo in the senior team during last summer’s Peace Cup tournament in Spain. Although he may have seemed a little green around the gills positionally, he was definitely an exciting prospect going forward, while his pace and aggression allowed him to make up for the odd mistake most of the time. Definitely one for the future.

After a couple of successful loan spells at Lincoln and Leyton Orient under his belt

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2010/11 Premier League And Europa League Fixtures

You’ve probably already seen the Premiership fixtures for 2010/11 and are hopefully aware that due to a particularly anachronistic and egregious piece of copyright law, I can’t just publish the fixture list here. I’ve no intention of coughing up the £266 plus VAT for the Villa list and absolutely no intention of forking out the £3,931 plus VAT for the full list, so I’ll just pick out some highlights and intertwine the European fixtures which are not protected by

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A Tale Of Two International Villans

Unless England and the United States both exit the group and negotiate their way past all opponents, all the way to the final, this was the one game of the World Cup to bring all 4 Villans in South Africa into the same stadium at the same time. Based on what we saw tonight, I would say the chances of a rematch occurring are slim to none.

Warnock and Guzan watched from their respective benches and while no one

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Aston Villa Confirm FxPro As New Shirt Sponsor

The club have just confirmed the cat that got out of the bag was indeed genuine and trading company FxPro will be Aston Villa’s commercial shirt sponsor beginning in 2010/11. The three year deal means their logo will replace Acorns, but the club retains key ties to the children’s charity.

FxPro are also principle sponsors of Virgin F1 and World Rally Championship and are clearly looking to expand their brand awareness.

It’s a shame to see Acorns go, but we knew

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The Big Picture – League Points History

I’ve been meaning to get to this for some time and as transfer hungry fans start rolling out the old memes, such as Martin O’Neill “has taken us as far as he can” and is “useless in the transfer market”, it seems as good a time as any. I want to put the last few seasons, and especially 2009/10, in a larger context so that the progress and trend can easily be seen by everybody. So it’s time

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Adidas World Cup Star Wars Ad

I featured the Nike ad here mainly because of the obvious Villa connection, but also because it was brilliant.   I’m doing the same with this Adidas ad simply because it’s bonkers and I love it! If the Star Wars theme seems a bit random, it’s probably because they actually have a Star Wars range. I know, still, the commercial is great, especially Snoop’s take on what Luke Skywalker should have said…

Oh, and if you missed it,

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James Milner Crossbar Challenge

Another of these videos has mysteriously leaked from the training ground. This time it’s James Milner kicking balls into wheelie bins by deflecting them off the crossbar. This also proves that Milner will remain an Aston Villa player since it’s a well known fact that they don’t have wheelie bins in Manchester, so why would he want to go there?

Did you spot the glimpse of Ash at the beginning? I assume that the next video will be

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