Does what it says on the tin, these are quite literally the random thoughts I have running through my head right now. Apologies if this turns into an incoherent ramble, it’s tricky to assemble much order at the moment. I’m not looking to make excuses here, the better quality side won through in the end.
Officiating
I’m generally not one to moan about referees. The reason for this is simple; I want humans refereeing, not robots, and humans make
The scoreline flatters Chelsea, every honest Blues fan will admit it.
The positives: we were fantastic during the first 45 minutes. Defensively immaculate from front to back. Chelsea weren’t exactly at their best and unforced errors littered their play, but take nothing away from the Villa boys who all knew exactly what they had to do and carried it out to the letter.
Of course, you know a major game officiated by Howard Webb would not be without controversy.
I’m doing something a little different with this today. Any of the news links that crops up between now and kick off will appear here on the first page, with the latest at the top. The live blog will be embedded on the second page (there’s also a link at the bottom of the page) so you don’t have to load that up if that’s not what you’re here for.
Once again, the live blog will be mostly fed
When Aston Villa won the 1957 FA Cup we became the first team to win it 7 times, a feat now matched or surpassed by Liverpool (7), Tottenham (8), Arsenal (10) and Man Utd (11). Small wonder really, we’ve made it to the final just once since; the 1-0 loss to Chelsea in 2000. You’ve got to be in it to win it after all.
The game has changed a wee bit since 1957 though. Martin O’Neill was just
It’s just 50 hours until kick off. On Saturday afternoon we’ll be at Wembley for the second time this season. This time it’s the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. It’s no small game.
And yet, I haven’t managed to create the build up I was expecting this week. I’ve changed the background image (which you may need to refresh your cache to see – either hold down Ctrl + F5 or Shift + click on your browser’s
It was close, but I was expecting Ashley Young to come out on top for the Player of the Month award for March after a string of consistent performances signalled a return to form. In the end, Milner’s man of the match performance in the only win of the month, the 2-1 victory over Wigan, made the difference.
It’s notable that this is the first month of the season that a defensive player has not appeared in the top 3
This doesn’t require a great deal of narrative, it was never going to be a classic. The statistics reflect a very even affair and, though it may be easy to claim after the event, I really don’t think that Villa did much more than was required.
Young’s 11th minute goal is worthy of mention beyond the merits of being the game’s only goal. It was a very fitting finale to a series of 6 or 7 shorts passes in
Aston Villa bounced back from last weekend’s trouncing at Stamford Bridge with a functional, if not awe-inspiring, 1-0 victory over Bolton at the Reebok today. Ashley Young’s fine goal in the 11th minute turned out to be the winner and quite fitting too.
In truth, Villa looked to be keeping plenty in reserve and against a Bolton side who had little to offer besides endlessly peppering the box with lofted crosses and throw-ins, it was never necessary to do much
I’ll go from the sublime to the ridiculous and keep this super short and to the point. The Times published the graphic below which is available in PDF format here. However, the Aston Villa numbers might not look familiar and there’s a good reason for that.
The numbers that The Times use are correct, but they’re from the Aston Villa FC 2008/09 accounts, not the Reform Acquisitions accounts. The difference between the two, besides the headline numbers you