It could hardly have been better scripted; Darren Bent silenced his critics with a clinical poacher’s goal 18 minutes into his Aston Villa debut before a 2nd half of sometimes desperate defending kept Man City at bay. It was Villa’s first league win of 2011 and sets up the opportunity to record back to back wins for the first time this season with the visit to Wigan on Tuesday.
Gerard Houllier signalled his intentions with what looked like a very attacking
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Five days ago, I wasn’t much looking forward to Saturday, but how quickly things can change; all it took was £24m! Seriously though, it’s amazing what a boost the acquisition of Darren Bent has provided. To everyone, fans and players alike it would seem; Gabby, Ash & James Collins all waxing lyrical about Bent joining the team.
It’s also given Gerard Houllier a massive boost in the eyes of many fans who were doubting him, but ultimately it will still come
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Better late than never.
One thing that struck me early on during this game was the focus on the attack down the left channel. I’m not talking about simply looking for Ash on every pass, but both Gabby and Carew working the left side of the pitch. In fact, if anything, Ash played a lot deeper than usual. I put a screen shot of the average position map up at half time which really shows this effect.
There was
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I live blogged one game during the Peace Cup and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do it again. I decided to dip my toe in the water once more, we’ll see how it goes…
Updated: A thrilling game ended in the sides sharing the points. Richard Dunne scored the opener from a corner in the first half, ironically out-muscling Gareth Barry to the ball.
Bellamy got the visitors back on level terms after Adebayor finally slipped his shadow
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Unless there’s any pertinent issues relating to upcoming games, as there certainly are in this one, I’m going to knock these previews on the head for a while. There’s some good resources out there and my view is that unless I add something new, it’s not something I can get my teeth into.
However, this game may well have been one on the fixture list a lot of Villa fans looked for at the beginning of the season. As
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