Vår man på Holte End, Mike Hurley i en ny artikel. Del 1
Vår man på Holte End, Michael Hurley är tillbaka med en artikel om sina tankar kring Aston Villa just nu. Och om säsongen så här långt enligt hans personliga ögon. Trevlig läsning.
Five or Six games into the season and how are things looking down at Villa Park ?
During the Summer, the signings of Laursen and Berson were well received and most were impressed with Laursens performances for Denmark. (Even if they were slightly suspicious of the convenient 2-2 with Sweden !) It's difficult to assess the truth about the Beattie bid. Villa have a habit of bidding for high profile players before the season starts and they normally don't sign them. They may be genuine attempts, but the cynics may say its Deadly Doug up to his old tricks to appear to the fans that he is willing to spend big money for players without actually having to spend it.
Pre-Season wasn't looking particularly promising following defeats by Walsall and Derby County. We play Walsall each year as part of the arrangement that lets Villa reserves play some of their games at Bescot (Walsalls ground) and this year we maintained our losing run against them. Against Derby, a full strength team put in a below par display and a 2-1 defeat was a fair result. The most interesting part of the evening was their winning goal was scored by Ian Taylor (who didn't celebrate) and this was greeted by all the Villa fans standing to applaud the goal, which confused a lot of the Derby fans.
I think that the best word to sum up the form so far is that Villa have been 'average' a fairly straightforward win against a poor Southampton (a game which I managed to miss) was followed by a slightly fortunate point at West Brom, this may have turned out better if the blind idiot with the whistle hadn't disallowed Mellbergs second 'goal'. As the second half progressed we were hanging on and a slightly worrying thing was how much Laursen struggled to cope with the physical nature of Horsfield. Hopefully he and Mellberg will form a strong partnership as soon as he returns from injury. The win over Newcastle included an excellent second half display and a comprehensive win against a team who normally do well at Villa Park. Villa were by far the better team and deserved to win, though the 'self appointed best fans in the Country' chose to whine about Sorensen remaining on the pitch after handling outside the box. I don't remember them making such a fuss about Vassells goal against them being disallowed for a non-existent foul last year. A decision that ultimately meant that they qualified for the Uefa Cup instead of us.
Similar whining greeted the point against Chelsea which we just about deserved, much was made of De la Cruz' challenge on Drogba which should have been a penalty, but there wasn't much mention of the two occasions when JPA was the victim of two obvious shirt pulls in the area which also were not given. Mourinho, is always pretty entertaining when he is interviewed. In addition to moaning about the Drogba foul and the Villa bench trying to influence the ref, he also praised the Villa fans for the atmosphere (which may come as a suprise to those who have commented on the lack of noise at Villa). It is difficult to dislike a man who ran around Old Trafford last season giving the finger to the Glory Hunting fans when at Porto.
We wont mention the thrashing by Charlton, other than saying that we should have been at least two up in the first 20 minutes but in the end, we were lucky that it was only three nil. The second half against Norwich was described in the press as 'truly dreadful' and still means that we are yet to win an away game. Lets hope that we are not returning to the state of being unable to win away games.
So while its fair to say Villa have done ok so far, there is much room for improvement, to have played three of the weaker teams away from home and being unable to beat any of them is a concern. If we are to improve on last years 6th place, then we certainly have to beat teams like Albion and Norwich, who both stand a very good chance of being relegated.
Regarding the players, Mellberg is as usual, the pick of them. He continues to be consistently the best player (even considering a howler at Charlton) and he seems to be developing the habit of scoring from Corners or free kicks which will be a massive bonus. Vassell and Cole are both playing pretty well, Vassells performances have improved and he is doing far more running although there is often little end result. To me, Cole appears to be inconsistent, he can be excellent one minute, then disappears for large parts of the game. It will be interesting to see him and a fully fit JPA play together.In addition to playing for Villa, he has scored a couple of goals for England Under 21's so far and is starting to get a lot of attention. Mccann has been fairly impressive and we appear to miss Hendrie when he does not play . As for Hitz and Salano - both can do better.
If we ignore the Charlton result, the defence as a whole have been playing well, especially the emergency centre half Delaney who has fitted in well alongside Mellberg. If we will ever see Drobny, i dont know, but there seems to be a reluctance to play him at the moment. As for Berson, who O'Leary pursued all summer and was wanted by Nantes, it appears that he isnt fit enough to play yet, although he was involved in pre-Season games in France. He has played a few times in the reserves and has looked steady if not spectacular. When he is considered fit enough, I think that Hitz' place is in danger as he doesn't seem to have progressed at all last season into this one.
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