If it ay bost, doh fix it!

By: Martini Extra Dry | October 19th, 2008

It was a 0-0 draw for our Villa Lions yesterday against Portsmouth but there is still plenty of stuff to talk about from the game, even if there wasn’t any goals.

First and foremost has got to be the formation. For every league game so far this season we have started with the same 11 and they had served us well. We lost to Stoke, which was a one-off blip, and we lost to Chelsea, but they were phenomenal on the day and we couldn’t knock anyone for that one. Other than that we’d recorded wins against Man City, Spurs, Baggies and Sunderland and even got both a point and a clean sheet from a trip to Anfield. So why change the team?

Cuéllar and Milner together cost Villa £20m and both had yet to start a Premiership game until yesterday. Then, in one of Martin O’Neill’s rare managerial errors, he chose to put them both into the team to play Pompey. Dropped were our two new full-backs to make space, in a decision that has to be questioned, given that neither of the replacements are full-backs. So how the hell did this one work then?

Well, Gareth Barry was put into his old role of left back and Carlos Cuéllar was placed in right back, but with Barry playing a slightly roaming role. Bearing in mind (unless there’s something we don’t know) that Luke Young and Nicky Shorey are both fit to play, this was a risk that seems totally unnecessary and proved to be a mistake. This new formation never seemed to find real shape and when we did make chances we never really seemed likely to convert them. Curtis Davies had a decent chance but he was falling back as he struck and it flew over the bar. The same thing happened to Jermaine Defoe at the other end moments later, when Traore hit the post and Defoe acrobatically swung at the rebound, but he too was falling back and over it went. Another chance came to us near the end when Young sent a long ball up to John Carew, who’s header struck the crossbar.

One of our attacks also lead to Martin Laursen hitting the post… literally! Ashley Young floated the ball into the box and Laursen and James both went up, resulting in Laursen clattering his back against the post.

For the most part of the game though, Silvain Distin and Sol Campbell played out of their skins and kept all of Villa’s attacks at bay, even making us wait until the 75th minute before we forced David James to make his first save.

Carlos Cuéllar had a good game, pushing forward a lot and making a good case for himself for further starts, but the same could barely be said for James Milner. Our new record signing really struggled to fit in to the team and make an impression. Milner showed little of the form that made him such a fan favourite at Newcastle but to be fair to the lad, Ashley Young didn’t slot straight into our team and play fantastic football right away, but now he has really come through. Hopefully Milner will follow suit.

Portsmouth were reduced to ten men with ten minutes left, Sean Davis receiving a second yellow card. His first was for a nasty sliding tackle into the back of Nigel Reo-Coker and the second for needlessly tugging Petrov’s shirt as he was getting away from him. Petrov seemed to suggest to the referee that a card be brandished, which was the first act from Villa that I was a little disappointed with. The second act I was way beyond ‘a little’ disappointed with.

In the added time at the end of the match a Villa fan acted totally unforgivably by throwing a 50p coin at one of the linesman. The coin, which Harry Redknapp believes was headed for him, struck Phil Sharp on the head and left him with a nasty gash. This kind of behaviour is exactly against the image that Randy Lerner’s Villa have been forming with our great conduct both on the field and off, our sponsorship give-away to Acorns charity for example. People like this coin thrower have absolutely no place in the game and it really upsets me that it has happened at our ground. I hope he gets a lifetime ban and other idiots learn from this. What a cock!