We are in the middle of a bunch of away games, as well as a hectic schedule, it was nice to see MON make a different change from the usual Heskey on for Carew, or Carew on for Heskey, may his hand was forced due to the injury of Milner, but it’s still nice to see a different squad from the usual, and it paid off with a goal straight after the second half kick off.

Now, the heavy schedule would suggest we need to mix it up a bit, MON likes playing the same squad week in, week out, but we do have a bit of depth now, and a change could be for the good. We have gone a bit stale, especially in front of goal, maybe the youngster Delph could mix things up a bit, or maybe NRC could come back in, Sidwell seemed to be lacking a bit. Warnock did extremely well, he pushed forward on the overlap and that’s what we need, Ashley came back into form as well, and Abonglahor used his pace well as always.

Our game in hand is to be played Wednesday, against West Ham, a difficult game in its own right, but then we’ve got Bolton three days later, I surely wouldn’t want to be MON right now, and I’m unsure as to Milner’s injury.

A win against West Ham would boost the lads confidence for Bolton, but we need maximum points to keep up the pressure on 4th place, which our main contenders at the moment seem to be Man City, with Spurs close behind. I wont mention Liverpool.

Rx

Follow me on Twitter : Ry’s Twitter!

I didn’t watch the match, but I did follow the updates on the Villa website and on Sky sports news, seemed to be a game of few chances, and those few chances seemed to be Sunderland’s. This worry’s me quite a bit, our last match against Wolves was kind of the same, some very poor passes and crosses leading to us losing possession and just not performing in the final third.

I reserve final judgment until Everton, I’m hoping the boys can redeem themselves in attack. As far as tonight goes my hat goes off to little Brad, and most importantly, WE ARE THROUGH!

Rx

Follow me on Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/StagediveRy

Our Hero :

Our Hero!

Well there it is, not quite my original prediction of 2-0 but certainly a fantastic scoreline, and thoroughly deserved. I ventured up to Villa Park with my best mate Nick, and I’m still smiling now watching Match of the Day. Was a cracking game, I’m really pleased with our new look defence, we are really working as a team, we defend as a team, attack as a team, its fantastic to see. Dunne and Collins play like they’ve been playing together for years!

We worked hard, very hard, especially Abonglahor, Petrov and Milner (as always!) they all covered a lot of ground and helped out the defence a number of times. My only gripe with the team today is with Ashley Young, tremendous last season but lacking in this one. Countless times he either lost the ball, failed to cross, failed to shoot when on the edge of the box in acres of space and even failing to back up the attack a couple of times, once I remember Warnock pushing forward with Young walking in his own half. But saying that, he did put in a few great balls, and of course assisted both goals from the corner flag, just a little bit more effort needed Young, take a leaf from Milner’s book. Carew should always get a mention, but I should be writing about Villa’s third goal here, because he should of buried a brilliant move from Young to Milner to Carew, but it went straight over Cech’s goal.

Not taking anything away from Chelsea, they played some fantastic football, and really put the pressure on us in the second half, this certainly wasn’t an easy win, but that just makes the victory that little bit sweeter.

This result proves we are genuine Top 4 contenders, but looking at the table, there are a few more contending for that spot, its gonna be a close one. But bring it on, we’re ready for ya!

Today Villa played in the Peace Cup today and apparently they defeated Atlante 3-1 with goals from Marc Albrighton, John Carew, and Ashley Young. I didn’t have a chance to watch the match but from the reports I have read they came from 1 down and scored 3 unanswered to secure their spot in the semi-finals on Friday night. Porto now await them after an impressive win against OL. A friendly is a friendly so I don’t take too much stock in this result but unfortunately Stiliyan Petrov came off injured. He was diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder and he should miss a few weeks, hopefully to be back by the beginning of the season. I would love to bring a little bit of insight on how the team looks right now, but since I didnt have a chance to see the game, I’ll leave the conclusions to you!

Now on to how our team looks on paper:

GOALKEEPERS

There is not much to say which hasn’t been said already. In my opinion, this is the strongest part of our team. Bradley Friedel will be the starter come Matchday 1, but Brad Guzan has put in some impressive performances as of late and we should expect to see some split time as the season progresses. For me, a good keeper is a luxury, not a necessity. Unfortunately our strength at keeper will keep us in a few games, maybe win a game or two, but it will not make or break the season for the Villains. Again, the goalkeeper position is great for us to have depth at, but its the men in front of the net who are going to either help us crack the top four or keep us mired in the Europa League.

DEFENSE

As of today, Villa Park has only seen transfers out of the back four and the squad is in desperate need of some reinforcements, especially on the wings. Currently our only established wing backs are Luke Young on the right and Nickey Shorey (who was not impressive last year) on the left. And really the only two we have in the middle are Curtis Davies and Carlos Cuellar, with Carlos not being a regular last year in the middle. It is obvious that we are weak along the back line, and with MON insisting that the lack of depth hurt Villa down the stretch last season, I would love to see some of the Barry money spent in the back. With the retirement of Martin Laursen and the recent sale of Zat Knight, we are currently down two centre-backs and we have no proven back-ups at any position. Obviously the return of Wilfred Bouma will give the squad a solid player who can play at multiple positions, but he has not played in a long time and it will take him match practice to get back to the player he used to be. Villa have recently been associated with some defenders in the transfer rumors lately, but nothing has come to fruition. Last year, Craig Gardner and Nigel Reo-Coker both filled in admirably at the back, but they are not natural defenders. After the loss of two more centre-backs, MON NEEDS to go out into the transfer market. I would like to see someone like Gianni Zuiverloon of West Brom, or Habib Beye or Sebastien Bassong of Newcastle step into the fold at Villa Park. There are some promising youngsters within the club and they are seeing plenty of time in the pre-season, but we still lack depth and this must be addressed ASAP.

What do you think? Let me know!

Next Up: Midfield

The first goal was an absolute shocker all round, it came against the run of play, and I still have no idea what Milner could of possibly been thinking when he passed the ball straight into Friedels hands, and I still have no idea how we let United score from the resulting free kick.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being bitter about the whole thing, I thought we showed some of the spark that we used to have at the beginning of the season, we played an absolute blinder, and if we were facing any other team than United, we would of taken 3 points easily.

Looking at the big picture now, the rest of the games on our schedule are do-able, if we play like we played on Sunday, and with Abonglahor back on the score sheet, we should be able to take a few points. Everton is the next match, which is arguably the hardest match left, and will be a real test, but with Arsenal’s heavy schedule, and Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea left to play, fourth place for Villa is certainly NOT out of view.

R x

The good news is that Friedel’s red has now been rescinded, so he is able to play against Manchester United, and if the Liverpool match is anything to go by, we are going to need all the help we can get.

Oh and I must say congratulations to Brad Guzan for his debut Premiership match, he did well between the posts during the time he was on the pitch, it’s just a shame his debut was under these circumstances.

Ryan x

So…the controversy.

I’m not going to sit on the fence here, and I’ll probably lose some readers – sod them. Martin O’Neill was right to leave Brad Friedel, Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Emile Heskey at home.

The question being asked by most of the moaning Villa fans today has been “why all the fuss last season if we didn’t want to win it?”. Hell, I’ve even read one twat asking what Freddie Bouma must think, having picked up his horrible injury in a game which helped Villa make the UEFA.

I hope to god that the more idiotic Villa fans don’t read this blog. If you do, you’d probably be better off phoning the local radio show with the other misfits. But take this piece of information with you: circumstances change.

We did want to win the UEFA Cup. But you know what? Nobody predicted Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool being so bad this season. Nobody predicted that this would be the year for someone to break the top four. And nobody predicted that it’d be Villa with the best chance of doing it.

We’re not really in a position to grab this very rare opportunity with both hands at the same time as fighting for two cups. We made some decisions before Everton and CSKA, and fell short in the games. C’est la vie.

If you think that either of those competitions is more important than Champions League qualification then you are, sadly, very wrong. The Champions League is a bad thing, but it’s a reality of modern football. To be successful, we need to be in it. And we’ll never get a chance like this again.

If you’ve used the word disgrace in the last 48 hours, you should hang your head in shame. If you’ve suggested that Martin O’Neill should be sacked, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

I got a lot out of this year’s UEFA Cup. I saw Villa beat Ajax, and I had an amazing couple of days in Prague – including a win for the lads. I regret nothing. But right now, and just for this season, it’s rightfully been put on the backburner.

Disgrace? Look in the mirror.

Alan Hansen’s view was that Chelsea’s peformance was “excellent”, but I left the ground thanking the footballing gods that I don’t have to watch that possession-intensive, time-wasting boring shite every week. Hopefully for Chelsea fans it was just a means to an end in a tough first game for a clever new manager.

Don’t get me wrong, Villa did not dominate, nor did we deserve three points. There were some glaring weaknesses in our side. Worryingly, Curtis Davies was the most obvious.

However, there are complaints to be made about Chelsea’s conduct and, more importantly, about the so-called referee who let them get away with it. Let’s be honest, we’d all time-waste for an hour at 1-0 if we were allowed to.

How Petr Cech did not get booked for constant time-wasting after Nicolas Anelka had put Chelsea ahead would baffle me. I would be confused as to how Frank Lampard was allowed to take an age over each corner, and Jose Bosingwa and Paulo Ferreira were allowed to delay every throw in, usually grabbing an extra ten yards while doing so. I would be surprised that twice yesterday Chelsea got away with horrible and cynical body-checks.

I would be shocked at all that. If the game hadn’t been refereed by Mark Halsey, the pug-nosed fuckwit who has made a career out of screwing the Villa over and hugging and shaking hands with Didier Drogba and the like during matches.

Anyway, we dropped to fourth and could have been very close to Arsenal, but Sunderland went to the Emirates and got a draw. I reckon we’re still in the driving seat for fourth, and we got away unscathed with our loss yesterday.

CSKA came to impose themselves and play football, and they were very impressive. Milos Krasic ran the midfield in the first half and remained pivotal to Moscow’s second half attacks. Vagner Love, the Brazilian striker, looked pretty damn good too.

Villa were excellent, and we should be proud that we were utterly dominant in the second half. We were decent in the first, too, but fell behind to a fluid CSKA side with their only shot on target in the game (their only shot of any description in the first 45).

Vagner Love’s penetrative run ended with a quick one-two and a tidy finish past Brad Guzan. 0-1, and possibly slightly undeserved.

The second half was absolutely all Villa, and we chucked the kitchen sink at it. Luke Young was magnificent, as was Zat Knight who did some awesome mopping up when our defence became exposed by our constant attacking. We could easily have had six goals, with better finishing – particularly from headers.

In the end, it was down to John Carew to drive us level. Villa Park went absolutely insane.

The boys did us proud last night and played brilliantly, but I can’t help feeling that – against a very, very good side – we were desperately unlucky not to win.

The equation for our Russia trip is simple: we need to score. After that, anything can happen.