Football agents don’t have the greatest of reputations, although it may well be a case of a few rotten apples, etc, etc. I particularly don’t like agents running to the papers with stories before or during contract negotiations in order to leverage their client’s position.
Today it’s Curtis Davies’ agent complaining about the club sticking to an agreement, a clause if you like, in the player’s current contract. From the way Martin O’Neill has been speaking recently, I suspect
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At least 24 hours after a game I collect scores for the players’ performances voted on by fans. At the moment that comes from two sources; Sky Sports & The Telegraph, but as I use the average of these scores I can easily add new sources as and when I come across them.
The important thing is that these are scores directly from the fans, not the journalists. It also means that this is restricted to Premiership games for
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I’m deliberately late with this post as I didn’t want to make it too easy to spot this game in the formation challenge. In case you were wondering, it was (D).
You may notice that the formation shown in the average position map for this game probably more closely resembles a 4-4-1-1 with John Carew apparently in the deep striker role. As a recent commenter correctly pointed out, there will be factors that influence the average position, sometimes distorting the
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Not quite what I was expecting this week. Following the loss at Blackburn, the Villa players in the Top 100 positions slipped a little from last week, but the number of players in the Top 100 increased!!
Last week it was Stan Petrov finally crashing the Top 100 and this week it’s James Milner joining the party. Milner didn’t finish the 2006/07 season in the Top 100, but that would have been some feat for a 21 year old
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Blackburn Rovers vs Peterborough United
Tottenham Hotspur vs Everton
Chelsea vs Bolton Wanderers
Arsenal vs Liverpool
Manchester City vs Scunthorpe United
Barnsley vs Manchester United
Sunderland vs Aston Villa
Portsmouth vs Stoke City
Games will be played week commencing October 26th 2009 – Sunderland vs Villa will be Tuesday 27th.
Sunderland away is definitely winnable, but it’s Cup football and anything can happen. Arsenal vs Liverpool and Spurs vs Everton are obviously the games of the round and also mean that two tough opponents will definitely be knocked
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It was just nanoseconds after the referee blew the final whistle on the disappointing defeat in Blackburn today before the formation criticisms began to be posted online. Of course it’s all so simple, you play 4-5-1 and you win, you play 4-4-2 and you lose!! How could Martin O’Neill not see this?!?
Now, I agree that we appear to have achieved better results when starting a game in what appears to be a 3 man central midfield with the
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Aston Villa threw away a massive opportunity to take an invaluable three points at Ewood Park today and instead came away with nothing after a penalty in the closing minutes gifted 10-man Blackburn a 2-1 victory.
Gabby again got Villa off to the best of starts in the opening minutes. The in-form striker cleverly moved from an offside position just before James Milner flicked on a long ball with his head. Gabby’s shot initially looked like it was just
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Yeah, lame headline I know. I wouldn’t normally do a post for this sort of thing, but there was a detail in the OS WEBFLASH caught my attention.
The point of the story is that Marc has just been rewarded with a new three year contract and considering his new squad number for this season it’s fair to conclude that he’s rightly held in high regard. He and Nathan Delfouneso have both impressed Martin O’Neill and can be considered
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It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve just spotted that Stan Petrov has finally made it into the Actim Index Top 100 this week (updated September 22nd 2009) in 74th place. I’ve mentioned the curiosity of Stan’s absence from the Top 100 before, so it’s nice to see him sneak in.
On the other hand, Stan’s inclusion starts me pondering Milner’s absence, but I’ll save that for another post I think.
Aston Villa have 7 players in the Actim Index
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