Aston Villa kicked off the pre-season proper with an entertaining 3-2 victory over Peterborough at London Rd tonight, Ashley Young, John Carew and Eric Lichaj getting the goals and all 8 substitutes got some time on the pitch.
Ashley Young opened the scoring inside the opening 10 minutes, but Aaron Davies brought the home side back on terms almost immediately. John Carew restored the briefly held lead just before half time.
Elliot Parish came on in place of Brad Friedel for
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Martin O’Neill saw an Aston Villa side comprised mostly of reserve players, but with a healthy sprinkling of first teamers, kick off the 2010/11 pre-season programme with a loss to Conference side Basingstoke Town at The Camrose this afternoon.
Both of the home side’s goals came in the first half, Chris Herd with an unfortunate own goal in the 34th minute and David Pratt adding a second in the 38th minute. Youngster Graham Burke got one back for Villa 2
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Nothing like a good old beep test on your first day back at work after a long break, eh? The OS has some fantastic pictures of the first team back in training, kitted out in new purple gear with the FxPro logo emblazoned on the front. I’ve just borrowed a few here, but there’s lots more on the OS, so go check it out. I think I’m a fan of purple for the training kit, there’s a
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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.
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Clearly this is extremely fluid between now and the end of the summer transfer window with players moving in both directions, but following the confirmation of Yaya Toure’s move, here’s the current list of first team midfielders at Man City for next season:-
Michael Johnson
Stephen Ireland
Shaun Wright-Phillips
Adam Johnson
Gareth Barry
Patrick Veira
Nigel De Jong
Yaya Toure
David Silva
I suppose from our perspective, and, I suspect, a lot of teams, that’s a pretty intimidating array of talent. I can’t help wondering whether that’s something James
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Carlos Cuellar’s website has gone live and it looks like he’s going to be doing a spot of blogging. There’s some content there which I’m presuming has been ported over from a column he had at marca.com and I think he’s also syndicating some World Cup analysis to elcorreo.com, but don’t quote me on that. No idea if he’s writing this himself or employing a ghost writer, but it’s pretty cool all the same. The photo albums
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Aston Villa flavoured news has been a little thin on the ground recently, but here’s a few things that have been going on in the last few days that caught my interest:-
World Cup Squad
This is happening right now and whispers started last night that it’s our Stephen Warnock who will be Ashley Cole’s understudy, not Everton’s Leighton Baines. Neither will play unless Cole is injured and, from what I’ve seen of Baines in an England shirt, I know which
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If you’re a Villa fan with a holiday in the Algarve booked around the end of July / beginning of August you just lucked out! The club have announced a couple of pre-season friendlies in Portgual as part of the Guadiana Cup; an annual mini-tournament hosted by Benfica.
The format varies, some years four teams have competed, others just three, it’s not unknown for it to feature only two. This summer it looks like it will be three, with Feyenoord
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