An old friend of mine, a Baggies fan, emailed me to say that as much as he hated to admit it, Stoke’s disallowed goal should have stood and asked what I thought. I didn’t disagree, but goals change games so we shouldn’t assume that the rest of the game would have played out exactly the same to end in a 1-1 draw. I’m confident that we would have found the necessary goals to win the game and the stats below show that the result was a fair reflection of the match.

As Heskey went off with a groin injury in the 24th minute I’ve included John Carew in the average position map instead. Interesting to note that Downing, our left footed winger, spent more time on the right and Ash, our right footed winger, spent more time on the left.

Speaking of Downing, he did seem to run out of steam a little in the second half, so once again was replaced by Steve Sidwell for the last 10 minutes. He’s obviously been practicing free kicks on the training ground with James Milner & Ash, their clever routine almost delivered what would have been a very interesting goal. I watched the game back today and spent some time trying to spot the communication between the trio, but beside Downing looking over his right shoulder to get a sight of goal I couldn’t see how they arrived at the decision to pull that one out of the playbook. Hopefully we’ll be treated to some more unorthodox free kick routines during the rest of the season.

So notwithstanding the disallowed goal that probably should have stood, this was the fourth clean sheet running and we now have the stingiest defense in the Premiership, conceding just 14 goals. I’ve mentioned the full back pair of Luke Young & Stephen Warnock being among the very best duos in the league right now. Richard Dunne has rightly won the plaudits and made a mug of Mark Hughes, as if anyone else needed to do that. I generally refer to James Collins as a “beast” and I think he’s already become an awesome acquisition, but the player of the moment at the back has to be Carlos Cuellar.

Cuellar may well win Man of the Match from the majority of fans for this game and you’ll hear no arguments from me. He’s clearly fully settled in at Villa Park now and you can see confidence flowing through everything he does. His reading of the game is outstanding, but he’ll never give up on the few occasions that he does get caught out. Collins can have no arguments about not being able to regain his place at the moment, but with a tough winter schedule to negotiate there will surely be an opportunity before too long.

But for all the new faces at the back, I think Cuellar could well be the greatest reason we need to worry about Brad Friedel falling asleep from boredom right now. Arsenal will be planning on testing Friedel soon, but they’ll have to get past King Carlos first.

1	Aston Villa	Dec 19th 2009	Stoke City	0
	53	Possession %	47
	18	Shots	18
	5	On Target	0
	3	Corners	4
	0	Offsides	0
61′ Carew		Scorers
		Booked	Wilkinson
		Sent Off
	248	Good Passes	176
	46	Bad Passes	78
	29	Interceptions	15
	42	Tackles Won	51
	43	Tackles Lost	39
	8	Blocks	4
	14	Free Kicks	10
Starting XI: 1. Friedel 2. Young 25. Warnock 24. Cuellar 5. Dunne 19. Petrov 8. Milner 7. Young 6. Downing 18. Heskey 11. Agbonlahor Subs: 22. Guzan 10. Carew 4. Sidwell 20. Reo-Coker 29. Collins 23. Beye 16. Delph
Average Position Map