It wasn’t a bad day for Aston Villa yesterday in the chase for fourth place. Arsenal seemingly couldn’t summon up the desire necessary to beat an unadventurous City side at home, but Utd restated their title credentials by finishing off Tottenham, not an unimpressive feat given form over the last couple of games.
Today was even better, although it wasn’t pretty. Not that any Villa fan will care right now; it’s local bragging rights and, more importantly, 5th place
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20th April 2008, Villa Park. A brace each from Ash and Carew topped with a 5th from Gabby. What a day. Some great, great moments. From the goals, to Carew and the ball boy, to Ollie pumping his fists with unbridled joy in the 85th minute. I think that look on his face will be etched in my mind forever!!
Just over two years later and they’re back…
…hopefully for more of the same!!
UTV!!
I’d love to give these
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Portsmouth were told yesterday that they would not be allowed to represent England in the Europa League next season, which is an entirely correct decision in my opinion. I know, I would say that, wouldn’t I? Let’s be frank; reaching the FA Cup final is a fantastic achievement and the fans deserve their day at Wembley, but the way the club has been run should not be rewarded with a jolly to Europe.
If I were in any way
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First things first; CT scans have revealed that Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink has suffered no long-term damage following his nasty clash of heads with Richard Dunne. That’s good news indeed, it’s always a concern when someone apparently spends so long unconscious. He’ll be able to train next week and should be able to play again before the end of the season.
To the game itself. Well, we won this in the first 25 minutes and then coasted to
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With Liverpool recovering from their road trip to Madrid for Thursday’s Europa League semi final tie against Atletico, Villa re-took that 6th place in the league with a slightly stuttered performance in Hull to keep the pressure on the teams around us as the end of the season looms.
Three points which are vitally important to this season of course, but it also mean that we became only the fifth team to amass 1,000 points since the Premiership was born back
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It’s probably entirely fair that the majority of the sane football world regard Barcelona as the best team on the planet at the moment and Lionel Messi as the world’s best player. Inter Milan were the under dogs for last night’s Champions League semi final and whilst Barcelona aren’t massively superior on a man-for-man basis, it was also fair to describe them as the favourites.
But a funny thing happened; Barcelona lost 3-1.
That’s not what is intriguing me and causing
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That’s how many Premiership games that Martin O’Neill has prowled the Aston Villa technical area “like a panther”. The significance? Oh, it’s the same number as John Gregory, which means that MON will effectively become our longest serving manager during the Premiership era when he takes charge of his 149th EPL game at Hull on Wednesday.
It seems a good time to update what is a loose series of posts analysing the current manager’s league performance in comparison with
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In case you weren’t aware, Fabian Delph was stretchered out of Bodymoor on Saturday with a “serious knee injury” and immediately went for scans to assess the damage. The news is not good, here’s the official statement from the club:-
AVFC
Fabian Delph suffered a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament [ACL] in his left knee in training on Saturday at Bodymoor Heath. This has been confirmed by clinical examinations and scans.
Fabian will undergo ACL reconstruction at the appropriate time
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The most significant statistic in this game was the sheer number of passes. You have to go back to Wigan at Villa Park in April 2007 to find the last game with more complete passes – 361. In fact, there’s only one other game with more passes since MON came to Villa; Charlton at home in September 2006. Incidentally, the Wigan game finished 1-1, the Charlton game was a 2-0 win.
Perceptions
I think I’ve said before that one
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