Straggler

I would be really disappointed to see Delph get picked to go to Brazil. It could be the breaking of him as a Villa player as I see there being more of a chance of it working out badly than well. As many have said this England side are one very average group and there is very little positivity around them. All I can see is the risk of physical injury after a long season, or mental scarring of having to share a living space with Wayne Rooney (or possibly like Carson after a bad performance). I would rather Delph got the chance to have a bit of a rest this summer (after his first real full season for Villa) then come back and continue to improve as he has done this season. Very selfish of me I know as I'm sure if you asked Delph he would love to get a call up, but ce la vie. I've been a fan of the lad since he joined the club, but he would be better served in my eyes not being a part of the current England set up. Maybe in 2 years for the Euros when Gerrard and Lampard are out of the picture and a new generation can really make their claim.

9 players in my team play twice this week. Could be a biggun.

20k a week would be a freaking enormous sum of money to pay for Holt. The best part of half a million sucked out of the club for a few lumbering sub appearances is just not worth it if true. Not a huge sum in the modern game, but there is no point pissing the clubs money away. If we have another 500k going spare that we need little or no return on, I'll happily take the cash off to Vegas and see what I can come back with. Pretty sure that for that sort of money I'll score a good few more times than Holt does.

Apparently we are off to be Bath Rugby fans next season. It is my dads childhood rugby team and we fancy a change after coming to Villa park for the last 30 years.

What does it help that we try to play to his strenghts, but can't? When was he last set free with an on ground quick pass behind the defense? When did hoofing it up to Benteke to hold and feed Gabby last work? I agree that on paper counter attacking suits Gabby, and sometimes we succeed in it. Just way too seldom. I don't want Gabby to go, on the contrary. I want a better midfield. Throwing Bent out there was a bit controversial, I admit. Dunno the answer to most of this, but I was there when Gabby got put clean through by Andy W against West Ham and Gabby shinned his first touch 30 yards away for a goal kick. A very good and fast break that was and shows the best and worst of Gabby in one move. He is the only lad in the team with the speed an heart to get into the position he received the ball in. Sadly controlling a ball pinged in at pace whilst running at full tilt is a difficult task even at the top level and there was an air of inevitability when bounced off him like he is made of angles and springs. Still love him to bits and if he is fit he is one of the first names on the team sheet for me.

Not too bothered if the name changes. I still call assistant referees, linesmen. I still call referees rocket polishers and I will always call Villa Park Villa Park. I just hope we don't do anything stupid like Man City did and end up calling it the Birmingham City stadium or anything.

We really should have got a loan in to cover for Vlaar. It is the biggest single point of failure in our team.

great minds.....

howw is that a corner?

KEA is mind numbing.

Lowton for Holt? What is that about then?

Stephen Ireland was voted as the fans player of the season. To this day it still baffles me how that happened (Petrov was streets ahead of him IMO that season). For me this defines over rated.

Badly written blog is badly written. Says more about the author than it does about the subject matter.

Reminds me of when Harewood joined. I wasn't happy then and I'm not happy with Holt. He is the answer to a question I have not been asking. That said, January is half done so there is time for more to follow and they say that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Sadly this feels like starting a thousand mile journey with a kick in the nuts and some **** running off with your shoes.

I got the PM just after midday. Didn't even ask for it and there it was.

Why not any 2 from 3 out of Vlaar JL and Okore? they will all get plenty of games based on form, fitness opposition etc. I would love the selection headache to be which 2 quality Centre backs to play rather than which midfielder will be the least worst in defence.

Equally don't see us selling Delph for less than we paid for him.

Instinctively went for the lowest option, but did the math and I believe we are in the 100 to 120 million range (just). Young British players go at a premium regardless of how good they are (the example of Bannan was a good one) and we have lots of young and British. I have moved my vota accordingly.

We played ok for 20 mins. There was a plan and it was press high up the pitch and stop them from playing. It worked well, they were rushing long passes up the pitch into 50 50 contests and it created a goal for us when we won the ball very high up the pitch. I can pretty much pinpoint the moment where our game plan went to hell. On 20 minutes one of their center backs got the ball on the edge of his own box and started jogging up the middle of the pitch. Gabby and Andreas were stood not 15 yards apart and the defender just strolled through the middle of them to the half way line without a sniff of a challenge. It wasn't just the confidence that went away, you could see that the midfield stopped trusting the forwards to do their job of closing down. Instead of pressing in the Swansea half we started defending 10 yards into our own half. This let Swansea right back into the game, allowing them to do what they do best and pass pass pass, with limited pressure on the ball. Almost everyone was guilty of letting a runner go at some point, which by default means that either another defender has to be pulled out of position to cover, or we leave a man free in a dangerous position. I do not think this is so much a fault of the effort put in, it is a part of a wider malaise. We gave the ball away consistently throughout the whole game. The stats don't lie, on average after 2 passes it is odds on that Swansea would have the ball back. This means we are spending the majority of the game chasing the ball. Even after 20 mins I can see why after Gabby and Andreas had been doing 30 yard shuttle runs and full pelt pretty much without pause closing down the defense, they would simultaneously let the other do the closing down. Equally the unbelievably bad passing is not just about poor technique (although there was some pretty shocking simple passing that went wrong), but it is also about a lack of options. Without the ball we buzzed about, with the ball we stood like statues. I remember one point in the second half, Bacuna had the ball in our on half, very central and under only a little bit of pressure. He held the ball and looked up to see 2 banks of 4 stood there looking at him, not a man jack of them running past him. They didn't even move, they just stood and waited for the inevitable as he got closed down and lost the ball without a single opportunity to pass the ball to a team mate. This is the bit that confuses me the most. Deep in his own half with team mates all around him, Bacuna did not have a single simple pass available to him. I don't think that there is a single person on this board that does not know that you have to move off the ball. they must know it too, so why is it not happening? For me it is a confidence issue. They don't seem to trust each other to control or pass the pall successfully so would rather stay in place rather than take a risk and be out of position should the pass go astray. With each time the ball is cheaply given away the players seem to go deeper and deeper into their shells becoming more risk averse with each moment. There is a law of diminishing returns here that result in stats like 24% possession. There was another moment that stood out in the second half. There was yet another hurried and scuffed clearance out of the Villa defence. It looped to Westwood more by luck than judgement, who took it down with a lovely touch then on the half turn played an accurate pass between center back and full back to release the right wing (I think it was AW) with acres of space to run into. The move came to nothing as the cross was poor, but it served as a reminder that each and every one of the Villa players on that pitch is capable of better than they served up that day. Nothing Westwood did in that moment was exceptional. It was a good first touch, but he was under little pressure and at this level you should be able to kill a ball like that. Equally the pass, whilst well weighted and directed was played in to a big gap and had a wide margin of error. Simple control, simple movement and a simple pass. It should be the bread and butter of any team, but it stood out in this performance because of the scarcity of the provision of the basics of the game. I have been deeply disappointed by the last few performances, it is a standard that deserves to be relegated. Equally I was overjoyed with how we played against Arsenal and Chelsea at the start of the year. We can do better, we have done better and we will do better again.

I've not seen a performance as anonymous as KEA since Kinsella was at the club. Sylla must be awful in training to not be worth a place in a team that starts KEA most weeks.

I think we probably need a whole player. Buying bits of players is probably not even allowed.

So we should let tonev take the goal kicks then

Well, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. I was wondering after the fixture list from hell at the start of the season, some memorable wins (Man City at home being a spectacular example), the mind numbing inconsistencies in the quality of the football with sublime and ridiculous demonstrated in almost equal measure how AVFCLion2013 is feeling about his inaugural season as a Villa fan so far?

Regarding the Cahill thing. My Dad met Graham Taylor on an plane I think coming back from a European game that GT had been the pundit on.. He asked about the whole Cahill thing and GT was adamant that the club had done the right thing. Apparently GC was getting a bit too big for his boots and becoming quite disruptive. They all knew that he was going to be a good player, but he just didn't see his future at Villa Park. At the time £5M was the best they could get and it was the consensus at the club that it would be better to let him go than to have him get more difficult down the line. I am paraphrasing a lot as I was told this a long time ago and obviously my dad was recalling a conversation that he had had. I don't think the club messed up on this, I just think that they had to make the best out of a bad situation.

We need a defender with Okore out for as long as he is. Big, strong and technically sound is a good start if the descriptions online are too be believed. Anyway ITSOP is when I will get a little more excited