Alex McLeish kicked off his first Villa Park match with a near perfect start thanks to goals from Gabby Agbonlahor, Emile Heskey and Darren Bent. Only Morten Gamst Pedersen’s very well taken header spoiled the perfect result. Most importantly though; three points and a convincing performance were required today… and we got both.
McLeish made no changes from the starting line-up at Craven Cottage last weekend, although the system was slightly more attacking in nature; much more of a 4-2-3-1 instead
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Guess who’s coming to Villa Park… again!! I’m sure their fans are as sick of the sight of us as we are of them. Fortunately, if we can avoid being drawn against them in both of the cups, we won’t have to see them again until the reverse of this fixture in March next year.
So, here’s how the two Glaswegian managers are sending their sides out today in what will be Alex McLeish’s first home game since taking over at
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Yes, it’s just pre-season. Yes, it’s still early days, there’s much to be done. Nevertheless, the positive signs continue. The green shoots of recovery are quite possibly poking their heads through the soil.
Darren Bent (who else?) got the only goal of the game in typically oppressive conditions in Hong Kong, but there were encouraging performances all around the pitch. Most impressive, perhaps, was the obvious communication between the players who were well organised and clearly playing for each other.
McLeish made
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It’s not just the team who can test things during pre-season, it’s also a good opportunity to try a few new tricks here on the blog. Today’s live blog is just that; a test. The live blogs I’ve done in the past were hosted by an external company – the same one the official site uses – but I wanted to bring it in-house as it were.
I’m not sure of how many readers will visit, or the load it will
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Since the analysis of Gabby’s goal at Blackpool was well received, I thought I’d repeat the task for the goals against Blackburn yesterday. This time the solid orange lines represent player movements without the ball, the dashed orange lines indicate movement with the ball (dribbling) and the blue lines show the path of the ball between players (passes).
Goal One: Build up to the penalty
With the opening goal coming from the spot, there’s obviously nothing to look at with the goal
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There were no signs of rust today as Villa returned from the two week absence and put in a confident, dominant performance to beat Blackburn 4-1 with two goals from Ashley Young – one from the spot – Stewart Downing and a Grant Hanley own goal, turning Marc Albrighton‘s low shot/cross into his own net.
All five goals came in the second half, Nikola Kalinic grabbing a late consolation with nine minutes left – possibly receiving a fortuitous deflection sending the
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The unofficial Aston Villa winter break finally comes to an end today against an all too familiar opponent. If there is a single team out there that don’t require a preview post right now, it’s Blackburn, so I won’t waste your time or mine, but let’s just take a quick refresher of who’s in and out and a few of the news stories that haven’t made the blog here recently.
Blackburn will be without Canadian David Hoillet. Carlos Cuellar is out
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Houllier’s much rotated side ensured their place in the draw for the 5th round of the FA Cup thanks to goals from Ciaran Clark, Robert Pires and Nathan Delfouneso, but were forced to see out just under 30 minutes with 10 men after Nathan Baker was shown a straight red card for a dangerous tackle on David Hoilett.
If you weren’t at Villa Park, you didn’t see this game live, and that includes me, so I’ll just briefly describe what I
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I’m sick of the sight of Blackburn Rovers. We’ve played them eight times in the last two years; four times in the cups, four times in the Premier League. Villa have a 100% record in the cups, but Blackburn have won the last three league meetings.
It’s the 4th round of the FA Cup, form largely goes out the window, but for what it’s worth, Villa are obviously riding high on back to back league wins for the first time this
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