Nigel Reo-Coker and John Carew released by Aston Villa

We have a number of players with contracts expiring this summer and uncertain futures, but the one with the biggest question mark over his head was Nigel Reo-Coker. That question mark remains no longer, the club have just announced that he has been released along with nine other players.

I know Reo-Coker wasn’t in everyone’s list of favourite players, but he’s always given 100% and frequently was the only one providing anything close to the grit we needed in the centre

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Revisionism or ignorance? Time for a minor rant

I’m getting a little irked with a lot of the reporting around Villa in recent times. Let me be clear; I couldn’t be happier that Nigel Reo-Coker is going to be wearing the armband and will also be negotiating a new contract at the club, regular readers will know I’m a fan. However, you’d think from the way it’s being portrayed that NRC had been exiled to Siberia and was literally coming in from the cold.

Obviously Reo-Coker isn’t

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Aston Villa 0 Chelsea 0 – An entertaining and well fought for point

Several early and late chances for Villa bookended some good opportunities for Chelsea, but I suspect both managers will be satisfied with the point after this extremely entertaining encounter at Villa Park, despite the lack of goals. The best chance of the game came with almost the last kick of the game, Nigel Reo-Coker in the unfamiliar territory of a one-on-one with Petr Cech, lifting his effort just wide.

It started off in an encouraging fashion for the home side,

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Double training? What does it mean?!?

I know most of the readers who stop by the blog regularly are cool cats and will get the headline reference straight away, but just in case you’re one of those awful squares, it’s a nod to the now infamous ‘Double Rainbow’ video made even more popular by the Auto-Tune the News folk.

It remains something of a meme in my household and I’ll never miss an opportunity to respond to two barks from my dog at the back door, for

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Players Out Of Position

Regular readers will not need reminding that I’m an ardent supporter of the Lerner/O’Neill management of our club. Aston Villa are barely recognizable from the club they were a little over 3 years ago. In fact, they’re almost polar opposite.

However, no one is beyond criticism and I must confess one trait of Martin O’Neill’s that frequently leaves me scratching my head is his apparent willingness to ask players to perform roles outside of their natural positions. Sure,

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Reo-Coker Not In Carling Cup Squad

That’s the word on the street anyway. I’ll be confirming the team sheet on Twitter, as always, but I’m hoping this little snippet of info isn’t accurate.

Stuart James at The Guardian had me confused on Monday with his view of what was likely to happen. His opening paragraph contained this information:-

Martin O’Neill has sought to draw a line under the incident that saw him clash with Nigel Reo-Coker during a training-ground practice match after the midfielder apologised for swearing

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Grief At The Heath

A story surfaced today that initially seemed completely ludicrous. In fact, so ludicrous that you probably couldn’t make it up, so there was probably a grain of truth in there somewhere. The Sun, ever the bastions of journalistic integrity, reported that Martin O’Neill and Nigel Reo-Coker had a training ground bust up that resulted with the pair wrestling on the ground. Yeah, picture that scene!

It was really heated and at one point they fell to the ground

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