I didn’t get to see any of the Under 19’s today, but as I was leaving the house earlier I did note that England were losing 1-0 to the extremely impressive French and Holland were being held 0-0 by Austria. Even if England could get back on terms it wouldn’t be enough, they needed Austria to win.
Well, that’s exactly what happened.
With three minutes left in Mondeville, Ricky van Rhijn brought Georg Teigl down in the box and
Nathan Delfouneso and Nathan Baker both played 90 minutes for England in a disappointing European Under-19 Championship loss to Holland in France tonight and now face the ominous prospect of needing a result against a very impressive French side to progress.
FC Twente’s Steven Berghuis scored the only goal of the game for the Dutch in the 6th minute with a strong header from some distance to cap a fine cross. They were clearly the stronger side and enjoyed much
All three of Aston Villa’s representatives at the UEFA Under-19 European Championship in France were on display in England’s opening day 3-2 win over Austria. Both the Nathans; Delfouneso and Baker, started for England while Andreas Weimann started up front for Austria.
All three will be reasonably happy with their performances. Nathan Baker was solid, tidy and well disciplined at the back for England. Perhaps caught out positionally a little early on, as Austria fired the opening salvos
Last year, as Villa headed out to Spain to compete in the Peace Cup, Martin O’Neill left the trio of Agbonlahor, Milner & Gardner behind as they had been given a little extra time before reporting back after taking part in the European Under-21 Championship.
After spotting that Nathan Delfouneso had also been omitted from the travelling party, and doing a little digging, I found he and Nathan Baker were in Ukraine representing England Under 19’s in their European Championships.
You thought our season was over, didn’t you? Not quite. We’ve been sending some of the young lions over to Hong Kong each summer for at least the last 8 years to participate in the Hong Kong Soccer Sevens tournament and it’s something we’ve had a fair amount of success in.
Earlier today a team that included Nathan Delfouneso, Marc Albrighton and Ciaran Clark won the trophy for a 5th time, beating Glasgow Rangers 3-2 in the final.
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
Here’s the news that’s caught my eye in the last couple of days.
Martin O’Neill Rumour
I didn’t plan on touching this as it’s just some silliness from a forum. However, it was repeated by a couple of blogs for reasons best known to the bloggers in question and now the bastion of journalism that is The Daily Mirror are reporting that Martin O’Neill has quit. Martin O’Neill is now a trending topic on Twitter in the UK.
I’ll stick my neck
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
I can haz Aston Villa Avatars?
I’m working on a new set of Aston Villa player avatars in spare moments here and there. I thought I’d share the first batch. Don’t ask me why I picked these players, they were just the most convenient at the time I think.
Most forums and blogs have some kind of restriction on avatar dimensions, so I’ve created these in 100×100, 75×75 and 50×50 pixels which will hopefully have you covered. They’re in PNG