Four seasons in one day Wolves Away Report

[blandy]

Another bleary eyed trek to the local station while the more sensible remainder of the world snoozed comfortably on in the land of nod. It can only mean yet another early o'clock kick off time in association with Sky blasted telly.

After the train journey down I managed to inveigle my way into a very decent "No Away Supporters" boozer for some breakfast sustenance, to give me that Golden Glow. From the pub it was just a short walk to the ground and my seat in the Lower Steve Bull Stand. Pre match there was a touching tribute to the sadly lost Paul Birch and then it was on with the game.

Almost immediately Gabby was clean through, but weakly rolled the ball straight at Hennesey. Wolves, after that early fortune, then set about making sure that they were first to every ball and that Villa didn't settle.

With the same starting team as last week Villa were getting over-powered through the middle and Carew was getting overwrought at the way he was being penalised for every 50-50 tussle with his marker. Despite Wolves greater purpose they weren't really that much of a threat. Neither keeper was much troubled by the results of all the scuffling going on in front of them. There were throws into the box, balls into the box, fouls and tackles, but nothing actually happened.

I felt secure in the solidity of our defence, disappointed by the lack of creativity or quality in much of our play and frustrated by the form of several players. Ash is somewhat off the boil, Siddy was not tying up in any meaningful way with either Stan or the rest of the team. The effort was there from all of them, but no cohesion. And then it rained on us.

At half time the sun came out and happily it remained out for the rest of the game, I feel it was equally indignant at the whole early start to proceedings and simply deigned that it would turn up at its own time, thank you very much, not that of the cursed broadcaster.

The second half saw MO'N change things. We went 4-5-1 with Milner moving to the centre, Gabby to wide right and big John being the target. It worked. Villa got a reasonable hold of the game, Wolves lost any sense of threat and it was really only some incompetent officiating that was holding us up. Milner, Warnock and at last Ashley, were putting good balls into the box from wide, though to be fair Wolves defended well.

With about 15 or 20 minutes left MO'N swapped Emille on for Carew and that worked too. He profited from good midfield play, got away down the right and crossed low into the centre where Gabby held off and turned his marker before scuffling the ball into the net. Unfortunately the Wolves managed to regroup and pretty quickly were given a penalty for a tackle by Sidwell. I was surprised it was given, but admit my view from right on the halfway line, low down was far from ideal. It was scored well and the Wolves fans started to make some proper noise. Duly inspired, their team regained the momentum and spent the remaining 10 minutes of the game pressing for a win. Villa held out fairly comfortably, but it wasn't pretty.

I don't like these early kick off games, I doubt anyone does, other than some bean counter at Sky. I can't imagine players like them because you rarely see a cracking performance from anyone. So honours fairly shared, Wolves now have a couple of solid results against Everton and ourselves and Villa continue a solid start to the season. That was it, really. Solid, unspectacular and so I went back to the pub.

Some marks

Brad - 7 good.

Carlos - 7 a pretty good performance

Stephen Warnock - 7 also good, got booked for eventually losing his cool with the idiot linesman

Dunne & Collins- 7 each. Dunne looked shaky early on, but recovered. Collins just looks a very good buy.

Milner - 7 invaluable, the inheritor of the secret of perpetual motion .

Stan - 6

Sidwell - 4. Things didn't go right for him, after last week's excellent work.

Ash - 5. Like the post office, his delivery is off at the moment

Carew - 5

Gabby - 8 MotM for Villa because he was the one constant threat

Sub Emille was not on for long but did well for the goal.

[TRO]

Sorry, but that post was about as non descript as the game itself.

I hope you had a better time in the pub.

I would have hoped for a from the heart description of the game whether we agreed with it or not.

For my part I watched it at home and thought it was winnable, but not with that performance.

too many players clearly not up to the standard of things.

[limpid]

TRO, you obviously feel you could do better. Please click the "submit news" link on the left of every page and show us how much better you can do.

[fantram]

Thanks for the report, Blandy. A pretty fair summary of the game, although I would have given most players a rating of 6 rather than 7, other than Sidders, Ash and Carew who were only worth a 5. Heskey actually made a difference when he came on - never thought I'd say that :shock: I can understand your annoyance with the early kick offs, but every cloud has a silver lining - it is great for those of us on the other side of the world who normally have to be up all night to watch the game :cry: This one started at 10.45pm for a small group of Villans who watched the game in Sydney :winkold:

[roscoe]

Agree with Blandy's report from what I saw on tv. Not much happened until the last 15 minutes really. Very disappointing after the high's of the week before. Disappointed with Gab's first minute miss and Ash's late efforts on goal. If just one of those chances gets buried in the net, it obviously becomes a whole different story. Didn't make the keeper work enough, or at all, on those golden opportunities unfortunately. Have to be better at taking the few chances we are creating atm

[blandy]

Sorry, but that post was about as non descript as the game itself.

I hope you had a better time in the pub.

I would have hoped for a from the heart description of the game whether we agreed with it or not....

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's fair comment. The trouble is this - There wasn't a great deal of incident in the game, there wasn't a great deal of quality play, it wasn't a particularly good game. I struggled to find something to write about. I typed it on the train on the way home on an iPod and nothing really stuck in my memory to write about. I suppose really that it was a from the heart description of the game, but there wasn't much in my heart to describe about it. I'm more than happy for someone else to do these reports from the away games, as I guess they can all get a bit samey coming from the same person all the time. After you've written 50 of them or however many it is (probably more) you just start to run out of ideas, so if the game's not up to much, what can I write that I haven't said before?

[sting]

Sorry, but that post was about as non descript as the game itself.

I hope you had a better time in the pub.

I would have hoped for a from the heart description of the game whether we agreed with it or not....

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's fair comment. The trouble is this - There wasn't a great deal of incident in the game, there wasn't a great deal of quality play, it wasn't a particularly good game. I struggled to find something to write about. I typed it on the train on the way home on an iPod and nothing really stuck in my memory to write about. I suppose really that it was a from the heart description of the game, but there wasn't much in my heart to describe about it. I'm more than happy for someone else to do these reports from the away games, as I guess they can all get a bit samey coming from the same person all the time. After you've written 50 of them or however many it is (probably more) you just start to run out of ideas, so if the game's not up to much, what can I write that I haven't said before?

Please continue to write the away reports 'blandy' as they are always excellent. Totally agree with your summary of the game as there was indeed nothing much to write about. The game, like our performance, was a non event, with both teams struggling to show any quality on the ball. A dreadful, dreadful performance from us with the 'Undertaker' the only player of note who earned his wages!

I suppose you could say it was a typical O'Neill team performance, full of effort, with the exception of a disinterested Carew, but totally lacking in any real flair, or creativity and we are indeed, still a long way from being a trophy winning team. Lets hope the eventual introduction of Downing will provide some quality in our midfield?

[John]

Thanks for the report and I particularly enjoyed your summing up of Ashley's contribution:

Like the post office, his delivery is off at the moment

This like the Blackburn game only more so was an away game that we could have taken all 3 points from. I had hoped we would hold on and to be honest they did not look like scoring from open play and it took a rash challenge from Sidwell to get them back into a game we would surely have otherwise closed out. We need to win these games and players needed to match the performances they produced against the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea on a wet early afternoon kick off in Wolverhampton.