Barry Bannan off to a flying start
Villa youngster Barry Bannan showed a lot of potential with his performances in our UEFA Cup campaign this season and now he has gone on loan to Derby County for a month. He made his debut yesterday as a half time subtitute and within half hour he had scored his first Derby goal.
Derby boss Nigel Clough now wants to extend the loan to the end of the season and I imagine Villa will be more than happy to agree, provided the lad is getting games. He only joined them on Friday so began the game on the bench, but after training with them next week I can see him being a regular in the first team for the remainder of his loan.
The Scot is happy to be getting first team games and will hopefully return to us a better player for the experience.
CSKA Moscow 2-0 Aston Villa – Out but not down
We lost. That’s the short story.
We went to Moscow with a team that was likely to lose and they did. That’s the medium story.
But look a little deeper and you find a game with a number of youngsters who did themselves proud. I’m talking mainly about the three 19 year olds; Albrighton, Bannan and Delfouneso. These are young lads, still largely untested (the Fonz a little less so) and they suddenly found themselves thrown in at the deep end… and they swam, with competence.
Performances
Albrighton and Bannan played wide midfield roles, areas which are well secured in the first team for the time being, but they both made good impressions last night and will no doubt be pushing their way into contention more and more if they keep getting experience such as this.
Delfouneso found it hard up top on his Todd Terry, but he worked hard and showed once again that he has natural talent and just needs a little more experience to follow in Gabby’s path.
Salifou and Sidwell in the middle of the park were average. Not crap, but certainly not great.
Gardner, as ever, gave his all and had a good chance which he brought down superbly, but hit straight to the keeper.
The defence was as full strength as we had available and they put on a solid display.
Harewood and Isiah Osbourne both came on as subs but neither made a real impact on the game and this proved to be where MON needed to have Barry, Young and Gabby on the bench. At 1-down, those boys could well have swung the game in our favour (not having these available is my gripe with O’Neill controversial plan).
The ‘B-team’ played much better than in some of the previous games and in some ways I admire O’Neill’s balls to put out such a side. The short story has to kick back in there though; ballsy, experimental and superb experience it may have been for some, but we lost and are out of Europe. The dream we chased last season is over. Forfeited to chase a new, bigger dream, so now the pressure is on.
Many Villa fans are miffed about the way in which we ‘conceded’ exit, but what we all need to do is unite and back the team / manager and be delighted that we have raised our standards. We have gone from Intertoto-chasers to Champions-League-chasers. Lets put aside an feelings of anger and get loud and supportive for the run in.
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