Warnock, Milner and Heskey Named In England’s Provisional World Cup Squad

Fabio Capello has just named his 30 man provisional squad ahead of the World Cup next month and it’s good news for Stephen Warnock, James Milner and Emile Heskey. Not such good news for Ashley Young, Stewart Downing and Gabby Agbonlahor then.

As you’ll see in an upcoming post on the Actim Index Top 100, Gabby is the highest ranked English striker, above Wayne Rooney, but apparently isn’t good enough for England. Emile Heskey does make the cut, but

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AVC Player of the Year

Just in case you weren’t aware, I’ve been gathering the player ratings submitted to The Telegraph and Sky Sports by fans at least 24 hours after each game to compile the Player of the Month series.

To create the Play of the Year award I’ve taken the average ratings for players who have played some part in at least half of the league matches during 2009/10.

If you’re interested, Martin O’Neill has utilised 23 players in the league during the course of

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AVC Player of the Month – April

This is obviously something that should have been done before we played our first game in May, let alone before the season was over, but there you go, it’s done now.

James Milner wins the Player of the Month award for the fourth time this season. Congratulations, James etc. (Can you tell this post is more of a formality?)

I won’t be doing a separate award for the month of May, but I’ll include the scores for the final 2 games

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Aston Villa End Of Season Awards Dinner

While you were watching Tottenham crush City fans’ hopes of Champions League, Aston Villa enjoyed the annual end of season bash for handing out the gongs tonight, here are the winners:-

Former Players Player of the Year Award – Colin Gibson
Goal of the Season – James Milner v Sunderland

Nominations were: –

Ashley Young v West Ham
James Milner v Hull City
James Milner v Sunderland
Gabby Agbonlahor v Fulham
Stan Petrov v Crystal Palace

James Milner v Portsmouth
Gabby Agbonlahor v Man Utd
James Milner v Blackburn
Carlos Cuellar

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James Milner – Young Player of the Year

James Milner Wins PFA Young Player of the Year 2010

Congratulations to James Milner who has just been named as the PFA Young Player of the Year for 2010.

As you’ll recall from when the nomination was announced, James joins Andy Gray, Gary Shaw and Ashley Young as players who have won this award while at Aston Villa.

Congratulations are also in order for Richard Dunne who joined James in the PFA’s Premier League Team of the Year.

Well done to both

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James Milner Nominated For PFA Young Player of the Year

James Milner’s season continues to go from strength to strength. First he was listed in Ollie Irish’s Top 10 Premier League Players Of The Season and now he’s been nominated for the 2009/10 PFA Young Player of the Year award.

Andy Gray holds the 1977 PFA Player of the Year and Aston Villa Central Player of the Year Awards

Villa have a reasonably rich history with this award. Andy Gray won in 1977 and also picked up the

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AVC Player of the Month – March

It was close, but I was expecting Ashley Young to come out on top for the Player of the Month award for March after a string of consistent performances signalled a return to form. In the end, Milner’s man of the match performance in the only win of the month, the 2-1 victory over Wigan, made the difference.

It’s notable that this is the first month of the season that a defensive player has not appeared in the top 3

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Aston Villa Players On Aston Villa

This post was originally scheduled for Friday, but I had to swap some things around so I apologise if it’s a little out of date. I noticed that quite a few headlines featuring Villa players “hailing” this and that seemed to be flowing through the wires yesterday, so I figured that the press had been given access to some of the players and it might be a good idea to compile a quick list.

Ashley Young is looking forward

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Villans Do The Business For England

Nathan Delfouneso won his first England Under-21 cap this evening and managed to get a consolation goal back for England in the 2-1 loss to Greece in Doncaster. Nathan looked extremely lively as soon as he came on the pitch and made the most of his first touch with some impressive footwork down the left, leaving 2 Greek defenders chasing shadows, before sending a decent delivery into the box.

No one was on the end of it that time, but

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