OK, it’s finally a done deal, full details to follow, but it’s official, Stephen Ireland is an Aston Villa player, James Milner is a Man City player.
Going the other way, Stephen Ireland has also completed his transfer from City to Villa. Ireland spent eight years at City, having come through the ranks as a teenager. He made 142 starts in that time, scoring 23 goals. His best season in a City shirt came in 2008/09, when he was named as
In Part I I used a little slight of hand when comparing detailed playing stats for Milner and Ireland by putting two different seasons against each other. I was open about that and it was done with the expressed purpose of illustrating that at their best, they are extremely comparable players. But will we be getting Stephen Ireland at his best?
That remains to be seen, there’s obviously no guarantees, but for what it’s worth, here are their key
I’ve been doing a little research. I worked these same stats a while ago in the Luke Young vs Carlos Cuellar at right back comparison, so you should be familiar. However, this time I didn’t isolate games played in the same position – they’re both versatile midfielders – and I’m not comparing data from the same season.
It seems to me that we’re all optimistic about getting the Stephen Ireland from two years ago. For whatever reason, and
It would appear James Milner’s 24 hour ultimatum has forced some action and it’s currently being reported that he is heading to Manchester for a medical. Presumably he’ll pass Stephen Ireland on the way. Not sure they’ll wave to each other.
As it stands, it sounds like our side of the bargain will be Stephen Ireland plus £16m. What will happen to that money is another question, but I wouldn’t assume it will all go to fund new
Kevin Macdonald’s first game in charge of Aston Villa launched a new era with a thrilling 3-0 victory over an almost bewildered West Ham side with goals from Stewart Downing, Stiliyan Petrov and, of course, James Milner. New Hammers manager, Avram Grant, will head back down the M40 grateful it was only three, it really could have been six.
Villa were firing on all cylinders from the opening whistle, attacking down both flanks, winning 3 corners in the opening 2
We were required to submit our Europa League squad for the play off round by midnight Monday and while I’ve waited for that information to filter through, part of me has wondered whether discussions about that squad could have been a catalyst for Martin O’Neill walking out.
I don’t know whether that was the case, I don’t know whether it was rushed through after MON walked, but at the moment it appears that Nathan Delfouneso and Marc Albrighton have not been
I bet you would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at Bodymoor today, right? Well, the plot thickens. After the James Milner, his agent, Martin O’Neill and Paul Faulkner sat down for talks described as “amicable”, the following statement was issued by the club:-
AVFC Official Site
James Milner trained with the rest of the Villa squad today at Bodymoor Heath. He and the manager, along with chief executive Paul Faulkner and the player’s representative, Matthew
As armchair managers, our job is no more complicated than dreaming up wish lists of players, deciding who gets to start in the team sheets and what formation they will play and assigning arbitrary valuations of players for transfer market purposes. Yes, arbitrary values, and buying players is no more complicated that writing that value on a bit of paper and feeding it into the fax machine.
A player is worth what the buying club are willing to pay and
Twitter has just erupted in a James Milner based explosion sparked by a claim that Martin O’Neill has told Sky Sports News that Milner wants to join City and he is ready to sell at the right price.
It took a while for an actual post to appear on the Sky Sports website, but here it is. There are no actual quotes, but Sky are quite unambiguous; they claim that MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready