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Aston Villa Blog Mon, 08/08/2011 9:20 AM

Midfield Partnerships Forming but Players too Similar

Having watched all of Villa’s pre-season there have been some notable deficiencies in the squad as well as some encouraging moments. I think you will see McLeish take very few risks early on in his Villa career, with the more experienced players favoured in order to prove their worth come the start of the season. The likes of Albrighton, Bannan and Delph in midfield are all likely to be on the bench for Fulham I feel, but I would be pleased to be proven wrong!

Of the aforementioned young trio it is Bannan who has undoubtedly impressed the most in this summer’s friendlies for me. Albrighton hasn’t replicated his form from last year’s pre-season while Delph is stunted in a deep role when he weighs about 6 stone. Captain Stiliyan Petrov and Jean Makoun are likely to start versus Fulham, and although the former has certainly lost his legs somewhat, both are undeniably intelligent players in possession, though creativity is a real issue. Makoun has the ability to spot a pass before receiving the ball and rarely needs an extra touch, while Petrov dallies at times. Despite this the duo seem to have built up a decent understanding between themselves but the problem for Villa is that they rarely look for the attacking option. League investors have been weighing in on who should be the likely starters.

With Stephen Ireland hoping to rejuvenate his up-to-now nothingness of a Villa career, the controversial Irishman has been hampered by knocks and a lack of fitness. For that reason I think he will also have to make do with a place on the bench alongside Bannan, with the two providing very brief glimpses of a potential attacking partnership. Like Petrov and Makoun both are very intelligent players, though the younger pair have more energy and flair about them. One thing that all of Villa’s centre midfielders have in common is a distinct lack of physical presence, particularly in an upward sense. I would hazard a guess that our middle men average out at around 5’9″ which is hardly intimidating and a tall, strong anchor man should have been brought in in my opinion, especially considering the loss of Nigel Reo-Coker this summer.

In terms of my preferred line-up for Saturday’s opener, I would be inclined to pick the following; Given; Young, Dunne, Clark, Warnock; Albrighton, Ireland, Makoun, Bannan, N’Zogbia; Bent.

However, judging from pre-season set-ups thus far I would predict that McLeish will line-up with; Given; Young, Collins, Dunne, Warnock; N’Zogbia, Makoun, Petrov, Heskey; Agbonlahor, Bent.

Who would make your starting XI?

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Stephen Ireland's future uncertain after failing to impress Newcastle

Louise Taylor | Wed 27 Apr 2011 13.54 | www.theguardian.com/

• On-loan midfielder ruled out for season with ankle injury
• Newcastle disappointed by interview in French magazine

Stephen Ireland is staring at an uncertain future after his frustrating loan stint with Newcastle United ended on a disappointing note when the midfielder was ruled out of the season's final four games with an ankle injury.

Well aware he has no future at Aston Villa – certainly while Gérard Houllier exerts any influence over first-team affairs – Ireland had hoped to secure a summer transfer to St James' Park after joining on loan in January.

Knee and thigh injuries sidelined him until this month, during which he has made two substitute appearances, and ankle damage sustained in the second of those games, at Blackpool, means he will not play any further part in proceedings.

Newcastle will "reassess" Ireland's situation over the close season and his hope of securing a move there seems in doubt, particularly as Alan Pardew, the manager, has repeatedly challenged the former Manchester City playmaker to prove he was worth investing in.

Ireland displayed some promising touches during his cameo in last week's 0-0 draw at home to Manchester United but had already planted doubts in the minds of Newcastle executives with an undiplomatic interview given to a French football magazine. In it the 24-year-old was rather rude about both Birmingham and his native Cork while suggesting that Los Angeles was his natural habitat.

By way of exacerbating Ireland's troubles, he has spent much of the past couple of weeks visiting the hospital in Cheshire where his partner is recovering from the serious, multiple injuries she sustained in a recent car crash.

Meanwhile a hamstring injury has dictated that Danny Welbeck may well have played his last game for Sunderland. The 20-year-old Manchester United striker has spent this season on loan at the Stadium of Light but has returned to Old Trafford for treatment on an injury that will almost certainly sideline him for the remainder of the season.

Steve Bruce, Sunderland's manager, would ideally like to buy Welbeck, or at least extend the loan by another season, but he is not overly optimistic about either scenario materialising.

"It looks like we'll be without Danny and Asamoah Gyan for the rest of the season," Bruce said. "It's a massive blow." Gyan, Sunderland's £13m Ghana striker, is also recovering from a hamstring injury.

 

 

Aston Villa Daily News

Club Call Mon, 08/08/2011 9:10 AM

Boss' Bent and Collins confidence

Villa are monitoring the fitness of Darren Bent and James Collins after the duo withdrew from international duty this week. 
More James Collins news...

 

 

Aston Villa Daily News

Setanta Mon, 08/08/2011 8:39 AM

McLeish observing Villa duo

Aston Villa are monitoring the fitness of Darren Bent and James Collins after the duo withdrew from international duty this week. 
More Aston Villa news...

 

 

AVFCBlog Mon, 08/08/2011 2:38 AM

Teenage kicks, a good first impression and shouldering the responsibility

Well, the week finally arrives and today is just like any other Monday - we had a match at the weekend and this weekend coming we are at Fulham. The difference is, this weekend we are playing for points and it all starts to get quite serious again. 

Outrage over Alex McLeish's move to Aston Villa is lazy tribalism

Man swaps job? So what? It's not as if Big 'Eck was synonymous with Birmingham City

Paul Hayward | Sat 18 Jun 2011

 Alex McLeish won the Carling Cup with Birmingham City but his dedication to the club ended with his resignation email. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Big 'Eck deserves a big cheque for what he is about to go through. With his move from Birmingham City to Aston Villa, Alex McLeish has succeeded in uniting a whole city against him. For new enemies now, Villa's manager will have to fan out to offend Walsall, West Brom and Wolves.

As defections go McLeish's crosstown dash has been received by Birmingham and Villa fans the way Philby, Burgess and Maclean signing up for the Kremlin went down in Whitehall. To tribalists it takes high rank on the list of line-crossing career lurches, up there with Sol Campbell from Spurs to Arsenal, Alan Smith from Leeds to Manchester United and Harry Redknapp bouncing between Southampton and Portsmouth. Implicit in the outrage is a belief that there are just some jobs a football man should never take.

Why? McLeish's suitability for the Villa post, you will notice, was barely discussed. Claret-faced and most certainly blue inside, the most trenchant Villa antis were too busy calling him "blue-nose scum" to come up with a better objection than his previous place of employment. Simply, McLeish could not be manager of Villa because he had just been manager of Birmingham. That was about as cerebral as it got.

The mistake is to confuse professional and personal allegiance. McLeish was dedicated to Birmingham from the day he took charge in November 2007 and his dedication ceased when he tapped out his resignation email. In a few cases, there is such an emotional symbiosis between player or manager and club that a defection looks unthinkable.

Throwing that idea out there, I gathered that minds would explode if Neil Lennon jumped from Celtic to Rangers, Alan Shearer took the Sunderland job, Kenny Dalglish left Liverpool for Everton, Craig Bellamy resumed his Premier League career by joining Swansea City, Arsène Wenger fancied his luck at Spurs or Pep Guardiola decided to take to Real Madrid the wisdom he has accumulated at Barcelona.

Surgical intervention would be needed in all these cases. The one on the move would have to be cut out of his milieu by people with scalpels. They are synonymous with their club, or at least anti-synonymous with the outfit they would be transferring to. McLeish's life was never bound up with that of Birmingham City. His leap required him only to decide he wanted to stay in the Premier League and not sink to the Championship with employers who had warned him, clumsily, that he was expected to bring Blues back up at the first time of asking.

Lots of Championship clubs, including Cardiff City, are telling their managers it's 12 months or bust. To what end? Do they think their managers would rather hang around in the Championship for five years? This pointless directive from the Birmingham board entitled the manager to feel he was on unsafe ground and the history of the club under Carson Yeung says they had only themselves to blame for McLeish's restlessness.

In that sense his move to Villa was a windfall for Yeung and his directors. It allowed them to chunter on about tapping-up and betrayal. They could pose as the victims of an opportunist act that paid no heed to the psychological Berlin Wall that divides two of the Midlands' biggest clubs.

If Villa fans need to worry it should be because McLeish is a cautious, not a speculative appointment. He has a record of making do. Retrenchment at Villa Park seemed to stop with the arrival of Darren Bent but will return if Ashley Young and Stewart Downing are sold. These bigger questions are merely obscured by the hysterical response to McLeish's supposed perfidy in staying local.

In a more politically attuned age people expressed objections by seizing the great platforms of public debate. Now they sign a Facebook page. Click here to stop Alex McLeish coming to Villa Park. Any protest that requires so little effort should be ignored on principle. Washing-up done? Ten minutes to burn before the news? Sign a Facebook page challenging a man's right to change jobs.

McLeish, a flinty sort, is right not to submit to such feeble pressure. Meanwhile, Randy Lerner, Villa's owner, has performed a spectacular volte-face in cancelling an interview with Steve McClaren on public-reaction grounds and then hiring Birmingham's former manager in the face of an indignation whirlwind.

All this will fade because there is no deep emotional basis to the antipathy, beyond the club crest, and proximity. The real problem comes when a man whose work has been defined in opposition to Club or Culture X scrambles over the fence to join that organisation. So Sir Alex Ferguson could never manage Liverpool, Dalglish could not jump ship to Everton, Shearer could not take Steve Bruce's job at Sunderland and Lennon could most certainly not settle his differences with Rangers fans to relocate from Celtic Park to Ibrox.

Well, they could, because they should be free to do so. Emotional restraint of trade is to be avoided. In no sense would it be morally indefensible. It would just feel wrong. But these days the lynch mob rides out on any old excuse.

System failing over whip-hand penalty

Royal Ascot's most photogenic moment was also its most controversial, as Frankie Dettori hit Rewilding 24 times with his whip in the last two furlongs of the Prince of Wales's Stakes to beat So You Think. This classic finish was at once held up as an example of brilliant jockeyship and cited as further proof that racing is in a mess on the issue of coercion.

Two of the season's biggest races have ended in ignominy for the rider. Dettori was banned for nine days for excessive use on Rewilding and in April the Grand National winning pilot, Jason Maguire, was suspended for five days for hammering away at Ballabriggs. As Lester Piggott pointed out in these pages recently, a gruelling steeplechase should not be judged in the same way as a mile-and-a-quarter Flat race. Yet Dettori will serve a longer ban than Maguire, presumably on a sliding scale of numbers of blows to the animal.

Pressure is building to create a new deterrent: disqualification for the horse, as opposed to a compulsory holiday for the jockey. The current system is failing, with the reward still clearly outweighing the punishment. Then again, whips remain a useful tool, as Piggott also said.

Aston Villa Blog Mon, 08/08/2011 1:20 AM

Easy Early Start Could Prove to be Making of McLeish Half-Season Preview

Now that the hysteria, negative in the most part, of hiring an ex-Blues manager has subsided, Villa are set to embark on the new Premier League season 2011/12 with a lack of games and indeed a lack of players under their belt. The new boss hasn’t been handed the entirity of the transfer funds made from the sales of key players such as Ashley Young and Stewart Downing, and despite replenishing the squad with excellent signings in Charles N’Zogbia and Shay Given, the Scot’s squad is thin on the ground./p>

It is for this reason that McLeish will be thankful for a somewhat favourable start to the campaign after the fixture list revealed that the club would not play one of last term’s top 6 until 8 games into the new season, when the club travel to Manchester City. Villa open their account with an away trip to Fulham, also under new leadership in Martin Jol, though a home tie with Midlands rivals Wolves is a standout fixture just 3 games in, and is the first of the Villans matches to be shown live on Sky on Saturday 27th.

With 5 of the club’s first 7 matches being against opponents who finished in the bottom half of the table, or promoted sides in QPR (live on Sky a month later on September 25th), McLeish is certainly under pressure to get results immediately, and may need to do so when looking at the club’s schedule for December.

After a so-called easy start there is inevitably going to be a tricky period in any fixture list, and Villa’s campaign during the Christmas period couldn’t be trickier! Starting with a home tie with champions Manchester United Villa then travel to Bolton, where victories are notoriously hard to come by, before hosting Liverpool and Arsenal back-to-back. The month end with two of the toughest away games in the league, first against Stoke before facing Chelsea on New Year’s Eve! Happy New Year? Perhaps not!

So the end of 2011 could be an unfruitful one for McLeish, highlighting the importance of getting the high number of fans still opposed to his appointment on board early on. Villa enter the campaign having played just 5 pre-season friendlies, the most recent of which saw Charles N’Zogbia make a goalscoring debut in a 1-1 draw away to Europa League finalists Braga. A bright display from the Frenchman was encouraging, along with Jean Makoun’s ability to see a pass before he receives the ball and I am tipping the January signing, and am sure McLeish is hoping in the same vein, to be like a new recruit this time around, with the likes of Stephen Warnock and Ireland also looking to rejuvenate their Villa careers.

In terms of friendly highlights, Barry Bannan has perhaps been the most promising of the younger crop, as Albrighton was the year before him, whilst Shay Given has proven what a coup he could be for the club as well. Darren Bent’s 3 goals indicate that his finishing will be crucial next year, and even though some maintain that he is not involved in the games enough, his prowess in front of goal will undoubtedly be key to a decent finish for McLeish’s debut season at the helm.

So plenty to look forward to, plenty of action to get your teeth in to, and plenty for the new man in charge to prove to the fans as we approach the new campaign. Anyone excited? I know I am!

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Aston Villa Blog Mon, 08/08/2011 1:20 AM

Captain not so Marvellous: Does Petrov Need Replacing?

The latest instalment of Aston Villa Blog’s partnership with fellow fan site Aston Villa Life has been sent in by editor and guest blogger Matt Turvey and is based around the comments made by Villa icon Dennis Mortimer regarding Stan Petrov, and whether the club should be looking to appoint a new captain ahead of the upcoming Premier League campaign.

In the light of Dennis Mortimer’s recent comments regarding Stiliyan Petrov, and Mortimer’s view that Petrov is no longer up to the job of captain, it got me thinking.

You see, when you take a step back from the situation and think “Yes, we do need a new guy for the job”, the solution isn’t as evident as you might hope for.

Maybe it is down to the dearth of leaders in the squad at present.  Maybe it is down to the breakdown of the long term plan to cycle players from incoming transfers to outgoing sales.  Either way, we seem to have an abundance of overpaid, over rated players sitting on the fringes of the squad and, it would seem, that our “Hollywood or Bust” attempt at getting to fourth fell falt on it’s face.

Anyway, I digress.  The problem we are facing in the immediate future is who will be captain of Aston Villa in the coming season.  Obviously we have relied on Petrov for the past few seasons, but nobody can say that he is suitable in the role anymore.

It isn’t to do with a sudden drop of form, or a fickle change of attitude to the player, it is down to realistic assessment of fitness.  Petrov can’t be expected to play 90 minutes a game nowadays and, ideally, you would like your captain to be on the pitch for most of, it not all of, the games of the season.

So the question begs “If not Petrov, then who?”

Ponder that for a second.  Had a mental scan through our current squad?  Come up with lots of names?  No?  Me either.

You see, when you look past the steady if unspectacular “Stan” Petrov, then you realise that there is hardly an abundance of choice out there.  Who could be picked after all?  Dunne?  Collins?  Darren Bent?

The aformentioned three are, for the most part, at least professional.  However, I’d say that none of the three are actually ideal choices.  In fact, I would struggle to even call any of them “good” choices, let alone “ideal”.

So who then?  My only thought that springs to mind is that of Shay Given.  How one wants to view the fact that our only candidate for the captaincy is a player who was only purchased this close season is up to you.  Be objective though and think to yourself who else?

Beyond the Shay Given angle, Villa are limited to the possibility of purchasing a brand new player and letting them assume the role.  In my opinion at least, Scott Parker would be an ideal acquisition for this position.  However, there are still questions around whether the board wish to spend any further money on transfers or, as may possibly be the case, withhold it to fund the redevelopment of the North Stand.

So the question I leave open to fans is this – who do you think is captain material in the squad and, if you think we are in need of a purchase to provide said person, who would you like to see bought in to assume the position?

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