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By: Martini Extra Dry | August 26th, 2008

Don’t worry Villa fans, the Stoke embarrassment wasn’t a sign of things to come this season, it was just a temporary glitch, a bump in the road, a minor hiccup. Stoke were fuelled by a newly-promoted, first-Premiership-display-to-the-home-fans excitement. Villa were having a very off day.

Villa’s display was very poor, by our new, higher standards (maybe in the O’Leary downhill days). This was caused by / exaggarated by (delete as applicable, depending on your current opinion of our want-away ex-captain) the poor performance by Gareth Barry. The Liverpool target not only gave away the ball (very unlike him) for what lead to their second goal but also failed to stamp his usual influence on the game.

Not many Villa fans believed a word of Fabio Capello’s spout about Barry’s form being affected by the summer-long transfer saga between Villa and Liverpool (isn’t it funny how quickly Capello has contracted England Manager Syndrome; a disease causing you to make up excuse after excuse but never actually change around the team that has again and again underperformed). So before the game it was expected that Barry would find the game easy and rule the midfield, against opposite numbers so inexperienced at Premiership level. This ease never materialised as Barry and Petrov failed to take charge of the game. Perhaps in a cruel twist of fate, the transfer saga itself didn’t affect Barry’s form but Capello’s public proclamation that it had, did!

The defence was the real worry though on Saturday, which already wasn’t the first time this season and we’re only two games in. The new boys at full back haven’t yet got to grips with the team and even Martin Laursen (last year’s Mr Reliable) was having a mare. Curtis Davies is going to find it a very tough season to maintain a first team place, with the arrival of Carlos Cuéllar, so you would expect him to be firing on all cylinders, but it appears he is also suffering a similar fate of reverse psychology to Barry; he performed excellently last season, when his place was pretty much guaranteed but now competition has arrived, he is daunted.

Don’t fear though Villans because Martin O’Neill won’t put up with it for long. Whilst at Celtic, O’Neill made signings that didn’t click immediately and he had games that didn’t match up to expectations, but it didn’t become habit. O’Neill has most likely made a number of the team cry since Saturday and on Thursday I am expecting a much better show, against the completely unpronouncable Fimleikafélag Hafnarfjarðar (they go by the nickname of FH, thank god for that!). It won’t be the finished article yet, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it will definitely be an improvement on the Stoke game.

On the plus side, Carew’s goal, and the link up play that led to it (involving Ashley Young, but that’s taken as read) was fantastic and a flash of the brilliance that is going to happen regularly this season. Our attacking capabilities are just awesome and we will be putting fear into even the top four.

Expect better to come on Thursday though and make sure you’re watching (it’s on Channel 5 – not the best coverage but available to all) and who knows… we might not even give away a penalty!