Solid.

September 14, 2009 by Steve Orchard
Filed under: Aston Villa 

There’s a very solid look about Aston Villa going from the result and performance against Birmingham City. Brad Friedel had a couple of long range shots to take care of but I can’t remember him having to do anything else of note. James Collins and Richard Dunne look to be a tower of strength in the middle of our defence. Blues only played with one up top for the whole game and would have been the happier side with a point, anything to stop the domination eh? I never got the feeling that Blues had it in them to breach the back four with Cuellar and Warnock both as solid as their middle men. We looked comfortable from start to finish and I guess there will be bigger tests to come.

Interesting that MON went for Carlos at right back instead of Beye. A clear indication that he rates the Spanish defender very highly. Cuellar isn’t that great a player, he gave the ball away on a few occasions but he is a very solid and steady defender and throws his body in the way on a regular basis. There was one passage of play down our left when no less than three Villa men threw themselves at a shot from the edge of the area. With that sort of passionate defending, we’ll be keeping a good few clean sheets.

Also interesting was that we never really looked like scoring when we 4-5-1. It was only when Carew came on that we had our first shot on target, Sidwell’s header at the far post. It is easy to argue the point that we need to be defensively solid with that third central midfielder protecting the back four, unlike the Barry/Petrov partnership last season that you could have driven a coach and horses between. With Dunne and Collins together, MON may now want to give Gabby that extra bit of help with Carew also up top and hope that we can stay as solid defensively when we play 4-4-2. One for further debate.

Milner and Young are still taking plaudits for being England’s young guns. Neither were that impressive yesterday in my opinion as their distribution wasn’t as good as it could have been. That said, Young’s free kick led to the goal and we won the game. They can’t play brilliantly every week, and we did, as said, win the game, again!! Bring on Pompey.


Comments

One Comment on Solid.

  1. Kev Ball on Mon, 14th Sep 2009 9:42

    2. Blues fan here. Obviously I’m disappointed we lost, but I actually thought we played pretty well. The 451 has been talked about for both sides – and I don’t think we had any choice against the pace that Villa have in the middle.

    You made a fair point that despite our posession, we didn’t really look like scoring but in truth before the goal I don’t think Villa did either. The goal gave you a lift and when you switched to 442 coupled with our attempt to push on – gave you several more chances that would have given a false impression of the game if you had scored.

    Having said that, Villa have a better squad than us – there’s no denying it, but the fact that we matched and probably looked better on the ball for a lot of the 70 minutes prior to the goal, makes me hopeful that we will stay up.

    Fair play to Villa, they took they chance and therefore they took the points, but there was no hammering, (despite a number of predictions), and on the whole the game was quite even.

    See you in April. ;-)

    Kev

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