An extreme hat tip to pre-Premier League football. The “good ol’ days”!! Both of these games were overseen by our longest serving manager, George Ramsey.
Blackburn Rovers 0 Aston Villa 3 – 1904
One of the final few games from the 1903/04 season which Aston Villa finished 5th.
Preston North End 2 Aston Villa 0 – 1905
This game, from the 1905/06 season in which Villa finished 8th, was played on what would eventually become Armistice (Remembrance) Day. Yes, it’s almost
As I wasn’t really expecting much today this wasn’t planned, but a few names are being thrown around in connection with Aston Villa today, so I figured we could use Twitter to keep us up to speed.
Below the fold you’ll find a widget for anyone who is interesting at the moment. Michael Owen and Nicky Shorey being the prime examples right now. If I spot anything else interesting on Twitter, I’ll drag it in here to share.
Don’t forget that
I’m starting to see a pattern here. Richard Dunne wins his third AVC Player of the Month award, this time based on the three Premiership games in January 2010. Anyone still wondering whether we have an adequate replacement for Martin Laursen on our hands? What do you mean Martin who?!?
Player of the Month – January
1st – Richard Dunne – 7.10
2nd – Ashley Young – 6.90
3rd – Stiliyan Petrov – 6.86
Previous Winners
1st
2nd
3rd
December
Richard Dunne (7.67)
James Milner (7.44)
Brad Friedel (7.25)
November
James
23 down, 15 to go. It must be time to compare progress this season with last season again. You should know the rules by now, but if you’re new to this; I not only compare where we are now compared to the same number of games last season (chronological), I also compare the same fixtures with the 3 promoted teams replacing the 3 relegated teams (apples for apples).
It’s inescapable that we are 7 points worse of this year than
If you hadn’t seen this game and just saw the statistics below, you might think that Fulham had a good chance in this game and were unlucky not to get something. They weren’t and they weren’t.
The possession finished 55/45 in Fulham’s favour, but midway through the first half it was 43/57. I know this because I was poking fun of the official Fulham Twitter account when they were claiming it was “pretty even stuff”. No, it wasn’t.
However, we
Aston Villa cruised to a very welcome three points at Craven Cottage today with a Gabby Agbonlahor brace just before half time, capping an impressive first half performance. Arsene Wenger would no doubt have appreciated the healthy mixture of short and long play.
The second half was perhaps more an effort in containment, but the danger of the counter attack was of course ever present from the Claret and Blues. Fulham huffed and puffed and did manage to score
Hopefully you’ve spotted that I include the number of good and bad passes in the Statshacks and maybe you find it interesting. Maybe you don’t. There’s a certain logic which suggests that the higher the number of passes, the more expansive the style of play. That’s crude and overly simplistic, but there is enough correlation that I thought I’d look at how we’ve been doing over the last few seasons.
One thing that’s immediately obvious when looking at
This doesn’t include the Arsenal game, but as we haven’t had an update in 2010 so far I thought it was about time to check out the latest Actim Index. Gabby’s dropped down a place to 5th, but it’s an impressive foursome ahead of him – Cesc Fabregas, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka and Wayne Rooney. Not too shabby then.
5th Gabriel Agbonlahor – 350 points
15th Ashley young – 310 points
18th Richard Dunne – 304 points
24th James Milner – 293
Maybe not a classic, but pretty entertaining, especially in the second half, and a very even affair this one. Arsenal hit the woodwork twice, but otherwise it was Aston Villa doing most of the pressing. Let’s just take a quick look at the shots either side managed to fire off:-
The blue are on target. The red are off-target and the dotted red lines indicate the two shots which hit the post and crossbar. The grey lines are