5 glorious goals by 5 different team members, glad to see Young getting back into form the last couple of games, Milner getting on the score sheet for all his hard work, as well as goals from John Carew, Gabby Agbonlahor, and Cuellar of all people! It was a fantastic game, Villa really did play well together, pushing forward all the time and making some brilliant passing moves, something which has been lacking somewhat in the last few games. Agbonlahor gets into some great positions, but his finishing really does let him down sometimes, he really needs to work on that. Glad to see the youngsters getting some playtime, Delfouneso and Delph coming on for the last 10 minutes.

Villa Park is becoming a fortress, its just those away games we need to start collecting more points from. Burnley forced a draw at Man City which will help our top 4 challenge, although Tottenham won which means we are sitting in fifth, just outside the holy grail that is the top 4.

UP THE VILLA!

Rx

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Comments always welcome.

Villa Park will need to be our fortress this year, isnt it beautiful…

Match Preview After the Jump!

The pre-season ended well for MON and his men. They went on and won the Peace Cup after a penalty shoot-out against Juventus (with some superb goalkeeping by my boy Guz) and defeated Fiorentina at home 1-0. They also went out and signed Habib Beye and Fabian Delph. Habib is a versatile defender and Villa got him on the cheap. In my last post I also called for him to be signed, so that makes me happy Fabian Delph looks to be quite a prospect and he should blend in well with our talented youngsters. He should get a great chance, especially with the questionable availability of Stiliyan Petrov. In addition, I think the youngsters will definitely get looks tomorrow, with some of them seeing significant time after particularly impressive pre-seasons.

Wigan has had a disappointing offseason so far, with both their manager and some key players departing for greener pastures. Their defense is still relatively intact and they will bunker down and play as physical as ever. Chris Kirkland is a solid keeper and I predict he will have to be at his best as Villa will lay siege to his net. With all of this being said, I can’t look beyond us for this game. Wigan are one of the favorites to go down this season and I think starting against them at Villa Park will be a great way to begin the year. Here is my predicted lineup:

-Friedel (although Guzan has been great and I could see him here too)-

-Lichaj, Davies, Cuellar, N. Shorey-

-Reo-Coker-

-Milner- -*Petrov- -A. Young-

-Gabby- -Heskey-

* If Petrov can’t go, I would like to see Sidwell here but it could be Gardner too.
Also, I think Reo-Coker or Gardner could slide back into the RB spot if MON is not completely ready to throw Lichaj into the fire.

Well there we go folks! I will be watching the game and if I can figure out how to do the live blog thingy, maybe I will get that going for some of the big matches.
!!TOM HANKS SAYS GO VILLA!!

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

I hope that you have kept checking this blog here at The Offside because now I am the new author, blogger, or whatever you want to call me. Unlike my predecessor, I will strive to update this page almost daily, and ALWAYS when there is new breaking Villa news. In the next few days I will have a full team update of some of the transfer dealings and pre-season friendlies, along with full team previews of every position. This blog will be more then just copying and pasting what can be read on Soccernet or Eurosport, it will be a place where my opinions will be made obvious and where we Villa fans can share how we feel about the team. So I want to hear from you! I am fairly active at the USA Offside and the Poland Offside and the comments from readers really make the blog exciting and fun to read. I want to create that atmosphere here at the Villa Offside.

If anyone cares, and I can’t blame you if you don’t, I wrote up a little bio of myself after the jump…

Name: Andy
Age: 22
Location: Chicago, IL USA
Occupation: Graduate school. Doctoral student in Microbiology.
Footballing Experience: Club level player
Favorite Club: Villa of course! But I follow all football closely and am especially fond of the US and Polish national squads.
Favorite Player: Frieds is the man.

I’m sure I’ll disclose more about myself as the season progresses, but if you have any burning questions let me know!

Liverpool – 22nd – Away
Fulham – 29th – Home
Birmingham – 12th September – Away
Portsmouth – 19th September – Home

Mixed reactions from myself, quite a tough opening to the season, but definitely should be action packed. Last season we managed to get 3 points from these same games, (apart from Birmingham) so we really need to do better this season. Lets see who MON brings in.

R x

It seems fourth place is a bit like winning the lottery now, you know it’s possible, but you also know it probably wont happen. But lets not dwell on the bad form we’ve been in, this has still been a tremendous season, and the thing we NEED to do is finish strong. Finishing the league badly is not good for anything, it sets us in a bad light for the whole of the summer, we are dangerously close to losing fifth place to Everton which would leave us at the same place we were last season. The last games coming up are vital, they are winnable, and we need to try to win them all, we have the attacking force to score goals, but after watching our defence against West Ham, we could also easily lose quite a few.

Which brings us to this afternoons game, away to Bolton, typically this season we’ve been tremendous away, and with the likes of Abonglahor possibly coming back, we could do some real damage at the Reebok Stadium. But with the killer blow news that Laursen may be forced into retirement, and Bouma needing more surgery, I’m afraid our defence’s moral will be dented. I really hope to god the defence can hold it together today, every time the ball was in our half against West Ham, my heart was in my mouth, we were really shaky at the back, and that’s not good for my nerves.

It will be interesting to see who MON plays today, with talk of playing Abonglahor, Carew, and Heskey up front at the same time, personally I don’t see that being beneficial at all, but I’m also not a huge fan of lazy Heskey, so that might have something to do with it.

My prediction? 3-2 to the Villa.

R x

Our attacking display was phenomenal, everyone just works so hard, It’s just a shame our defence isn’t up to scratch at the moment, we really are missing Laursen quite a lot. Our second goal was nothing short of brilliant, and for it to come from the boot of James Milner makes it even better. A free kick of that caliber I would expect from the likes of Ashley Young, or David Beckham, well done James, absolute cracker!

Not to put Everton out, they too had an amazing game, it really was end to end stuff, a contender for game of the season, both teams wanted the three points bad, so I guess the only outcome had to be a draw, anything else would of been just wrong.

So what does this mean now for the Villa? Just carry on trying to win games, Everton are only a point behind, and we really don’t want to lose 5th place, and as for the Arsenal, well, if we manage to win every remaining game this season we could come 4th, hoping that Arsenal fail to Liverpool, Manchester United, and Chelsea, but that really is a big ask.

R x

Hopefully, in some bizarre way this change will trigger a change in Villa’s form of late, because lets face it, its been terrible. Also a change in the starting eleven, ahem, Carew maybe? Bouma maybe? We have had a terrific season so far, it would be a shame to take nothing from it. A few tough games coming up, but nothing’s impossible, right?

Ryan

When I first joined this site, I did so because I wanted to have a crack at single-club blogging. That remains the case, but I simply don’t have the time. So last week I pinged Daryl an email to let him know I was moving on (hence no Spurs preview – sorry about that!).

As it happens, it now looks like I’m jumping ship as the wheels come off at Villa, but in reality the timing of this post is simply a manifestation of my reasons for leaving this blog behind. I work a full day job, have two (and a half) other blogs to run, play football twice a week and go to every Villa home game.

I have not had a spare evening to blog for over a month, and on top of it all my girlfriend lives miles away and even a visit to her is a massive undertaking. Yet I’m taking something else on (a podcast) which means that I need to prioritise. Unfortunately The Offside is the only project for which I’m not personally responsible.

Daryl kindly encouraged me to plug all my other shit on the way out, and I’m not stupid enough to pass up that opportunity. So, I’ll be writing more stuff for VillaTalk, blogging about football at twofootedtackle, writing about social media and PR at Silent in Flames and Clicking & Screaming and, soon, launching the twofootedtackle podcast.

You can also follow me and VillaTalk on Twitter. And I’m no newcomer to it either!

I want to thank Daryl for giving me this gig in the first place and being understanding about my decision to pack it in. The Offside is a fantastic thing, brilliantly managed. Don’t you lot forget it.

Right then, the important stuff: my replacement. If you want to take this blog on (and I thoroughly recommend it) then this is the page for you.

It’s been a pleasure writing for you. I look forward to reading the next chapter.

Chris

The excuse for allowing Arsenal’s signing of Andrei Arshavin to drag on a full day past an already extended deadline will be that the snow affected the club’s ability to get the paperwork in on time. That, of course, is bullshit of the highest order.

Quite apart from the very authoritative reports doing the rounds at the time that the sticking point was a payment demanded by Zenit St Petersburg from Arshavin, 24 hours is too long a period for snow to be the excuse. In my book, that means that the deal was not complete. Still, all that London snow was obviously preventing Lazy Andrei from coughing up the cash, right?

Anyway, we can forget any possibility of a satisfactory explanation – the footballing authorities in this country are so scared of the ‘Big Four’ and downright incompetent that their error will be swept under the carpet.

One man who won’t let it lie, according to the Torygraph, is Villa boss Martin O’Neill.

Reports suggest that Martin isn’t happy because Arsenal are hoping to catch up with us in the fight for the Champions League. And who could blame him.

Still, as long as the status quo remains intact that’s all that matters, isn’t it?