Nil-nil it was. Boring it wasn’t

By: Martini Extra Dry | August 31st, 2008

It’s been over a year since Villa have drawn 0-0 and if you’d told anyone 2 years ago that the Masters Of The Draw would become not just exciting but would average more than 3 goals scored per game, they would’ve told you that it was more likely that England would fail to qualify for the Euros than the Villa would become entertaining!

Many will look at this result of this game and say that it was boring, but they’d be wrong. The game was entertaining and it’s hard to believe that no-one scored. It was Villa who really should’ve taken the win here and that’s not just me being biased, Liverpool didn’t hit the target once all game.

Villa undoubtedly were living in fear of Liverpool’s reputation, which was shown by how often they passed the ball backwards. Many a time there was a forward pass on but the ball went backwards and a number of times Villa passed back to Friedel from inside Liverpool’s half.

Martin O’Neill once again named Nigel Reo-Coker as his right midfielder, despite having seen his inability to hold the position, and again he spent half the game drifting into his preferred central area. Despite NRC doing his damnedest and occasionally breaking down the wing (then looking knackered for five minutes), in the most part he played narrowly and made our attacks pretty predictable to Liverpool and therefore easier to defend against. All our attacks went via Ashley Young and it didn’t take Jamie Carragher long to suss this and organise his defence accordingly.

The O’Neill vs Benitez ruck never materialised as both managers took the high road but they did spend most the game ignoring each other’s presence. It was the lack of Stevie G though that made all the difference for Liverpool, who, despite having decent strength in depth, are lost without him. Then to make matters worse, their other match winner, Fernando Torres, hobbled off in the first half with a hamstring strain.

The man who everyone was watching was Gareth Barry and he proved himself worth every single last penny of the £18 million Villa wanted, throughout the game. It was often a scrappy game with rash passes, but Barry was a different story. Everytime he got the ball he was cool, calm and collected and almost every pass he made was complete. The man is simply exquisite and it will be a very sad day when he finally leaves the Villa. The only other Villan who was as composed on the ball as Barry was Carew, but the big man has never had such clinical split-second decision making as Bazza.

Milner came on in the second half but didn’t get much chance to make an impact, other than one strike, so Villa fans will have to sit tight till our old hero shines again. A big plus for Villa was how Friedel and the defence finally seemed tighter and more reliable today, and we still have Cuellar to come in too.

In the end a draw was a fair result, leaving Villa with one win, one draw and one loss and no team in the Prem on 100%.