Mike Hurley's artikel. Del 2
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DEL 2:
I went along to watch the reserves hammer Small Heath 4 - 1, an excellent performance by the Villa and it was good to see how much they wanted to beat the Scum, in particular Luke Moore was really fired up and Steven Davis played particularly well and isnt too far away from a regular 1st team squad place. The reserves have once again started the season off well and there is every chance that they could retain the title this season, there are some very good young players there although O'Leary doesn't seem to be convinced and has said that there are no players who are yet ready for the first team. Its always good to beat Small Heath and the 3,000 crowd went home happy (apart from a couple of knuckledraggers in blue).
Its a bit difficult to understand why Villa didnt sell out against Chelsea or Newcastle. 37000 is pretty good against Southampton but its disappointing to see 6000 empty seats at the other two games. It will be interesting to see what the crowd is against Palace, although the club have reduced the price for children to about £7 for a few games (including Palace) which may help boost the crowd for those games. Maybe this is about our level of support at the moment and whilst it will go up if Villa are doing well, if we start having a few bad results i can see us getting under 30000 for quite a lot of the games against the smaller sides
Whilst Villa have started the season better than last year and have improved the squad, it will not be easy to improve on last years position, a few clubs, such as Spurs and Boro have bought well and are playing better than last year and these are clubs which we are going to have to finish above if we want to get into Europe, and the team are going to have to play at the top of their ability to get into the top 5. deadly may talk about improving the position, but seems to think Villa can do it without spending the money that other clubs spend. There are already a few rumours circulating that O'Leary wants assurances that Villa are willing to spend some money in order that we can compete. Another summer of spending hardly any money (and having just about the smallest squad in the premiership) could well see us looking for another Manager.
Predictions for the season
Champions - Villa
FA Cup - Villa
League Cup - Villa
Relegation - Small Heath, Man Utd, Newcastle
Best regards
Michael Hurley, er man på Holte End.
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