With Gareth Barry, that point would’ve been 3

November 30, 2009 by Martin Banks · 7 Comments
Filed under: Aston Villa, Match Reports 

Hey all, hope you’ve been well. You’re looking great! It’s been a long time since I’ve written on here; between having a young child, a pregnant wife, a foam business to run and no internet for a while, it’s been difficult to find the time to watch Villa, nevermind write about them.

But I’m back online now, so I figured I’d at least do one post, as there doesn’t seem to be much going on around here since i trapped into obscurity, which is a real shame as the site was really starting to grow and do well. If there’s anyone out there who is a fan of the site and(/or) wishes to become a writer, then get in touch. It has adverts now too so there’s earning possibilities I’m sure.

Back to the point

Anyway, back to the point at hand. I’ve dived straight in with a debate-ensuring title, knowing full well that some will not agree with it. I have received criticism in the past for titles and only trying to get newsnow traffic and blah-blah-f?@king blah. But, like it or not (and I really dislike it), you can only get readers from newsnow with controversial titles. If I’d called it ‘Aston Villa 1 – 1 Tottenham’ would you have clicked? Plus this site hasn’t exactly got any loyal following anymore, due to lack of content to loyally follow.

I honestly do believe it though. If not exactly, at least in sentiment. We lack a player in the middle who is inventive and creative going forward. Yeah, Barry had his haters by the bucketload after the Liverpool saga (and then that bucketload multiplied by a Brazilian when he chose to move to Man City) but whether you want to admit it or not, he was an ESSENTIAL part of our team and our success. Had his heart still been with the club, do you really think he would’ve allowed that slide in the second half of last season? he was probably glad of that slide in the back of his mind because he’d agreed to stay if we made the Champions League. (The dillweed then went and joined a non-CL team in the end though, surely knowing he would be accused of money-grabbing.)

But I’m not just talking about Barry. We need SOMEONE of quality. We NEED a playmaker in the middle of the park who dominates the game and gives us someone to look for when going forward, not just whacking it for Young, Milner or Agbon to chase down.

Reo-Coker is not focused (thanks to not getting on with the boss) and Sidwell has never recovered the form and confidence that made him such a star at Reading. I’m sure all the Anti-O’Neill brigade will (and may well have every right to) blame him, but then if either of those had stepped up then everyone would be calling him a hero for seeing they could take on the role.

Didn’t happen though, so we find ourselves playing the ugly ‘whack it and hope’ game that I’m not a fan of.

Passing

Towards the end of the game against Tottenham, ESPN put up a completed passes statistic; Villa had 170 and Spurs had nearly 2½ times that figure! They played the type of football (ironically) that I love to watch. They passed it around. They dinked it about creatively. They beat players and looked for an option and then played that option, often ALONG THE FLOOR (a concept lost on us!). They built their attacks, instead of countering with pace and very little else (short of booting it and running like hell). In all honesty, I can’t believe we held on to a point. And, we came within a whisker of nicking it with another Heskey header, which would’ve been very welcome to me, but totally undeserved.

So what now?

I am all for trying Milner in the middle, I dunno about you lot. If not with Downing on the opposite wing to Young, then why not Albrighton? I’ll tell you why not; it’s too big a risk for our manager to take. But it’s pretty obvious to anyone that we are not ruling the games in the middle. Petrov is doing his role well, but he needs someone with him who he can feed with short, sharp passes and then that man will take us forward to attack. We shouldn’t be having our attacking players receiving the ball from the defenders as the general rule.

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