What’s new rumour-cat? Villa transfer targets from our UEFA Cup journey and more
Hands up those who think that being in the UEFA Cup this (is it still ‘this’ or is it ‘last’ now?) season was a waste of time? Come on, even you at the back, put your hand up if thats the way you feel. Don’t be shy, lets see your opinion.
OK, so I’m imagining that a percentage of you out there now have your hands up. Well at least metaphorically, you’d look a bit of a dillweed if you just sat there on your computer with your hand up! But I may have some news that will change your mind on the whole affair. Y’see it seems we did have a purpose in the competition after all. We were scouting. Come on, you cynics, we didn’t ‘throw’ the Moscow game, we used it to watch Vagner Love. And for many of us he was begrudgingly the best thing about the game. Who can tell me honestly that they didn’t once consider going down to the barbers and asking for some blue hair extensions.
He wasn’t the only one either, so I think we should have a look at him and Trochowski of Hamburg, as well as any other linakges that have been made with our boys in claret and blue.
- First then, Vagner Love (or Vágner Silva de Souza as he’s known to his mom) is a striker for CSKA Moscow, who you no doubt remember by his long blue hair if you don’t recall his football skills. He made a good impression on me in the UEFA Cup and his stats show that it wasn’t a one-off. His club career has seen him score more than 1 goal every 2 games, getting 60 in 111 for Moscow. He hasn’t done so well for Brazil, but he is still fairly young at 24. If you watch the video below you will some of his goals and see that he seems to be very much what we need; he can play off the last man, he can poach, he can get onto to crosses, get onto through balls, basically all the things we really need. I want him. Randy, get your cheque book out. Or send Luke Skywalker round to use Jedi mind tricks to convince Zico to swap him for Emile Heskey!
- Next up is Piotr Trochowski, who we’ll call Pete. Pete can play on the wing or at the front of a diamond, which could work well with Petrov deeper behind him. He is clearly being touted on the assumption that Barry is going. The word on the street is that he wishes to leave Hamburg for their lack of ambition and wants to play for a club that will win titles. This kind of puts us in the shade a little, especially as Arsenal are rumoured to also be interested. But so too are Spurs and we are as good a punt as them for success. Anyway, I’m in a video mood so here’s some of Pete’s action:
- Also on the rumourmill are some more that I’ll just brush over; Lucas Neill is an Australian defender who I’m sure you all know. He was at Blackburn for an age and joined West Ham 2 years ago. The rumour has sprung up because he has turned down his new contract, but I don’t think there’s anything in this.
- Argentinian Renato Civelli is keen for a move to the Premier League or La Liga, so our name has obviously come up as he is a centre back. The great thing about Civelli is that he would be as free as a bird when his contract expires this summer.
- Joleon Lescott is reported to now be on Arsene Wenger’s radar, which could make it harder for us to lure him. He doesn’t really strike you as someone Wenger would go for though, does he? Y’know, with him being English!
- Finally for today it’s back to the UEFA Cup links with the news that Thomas Vermaelen has expressed his happiness at being linked with us. I covered the defender last week or the week before but it seems now that he would very much like a move to the Premier League and is pleased with the rumours that are floating around.
Villa end it with a win but Everton ensure we finish 6th
After the Blackburn game at the start of Feb our season took an unexpected downturn seeing us win just 2 of our last 13 games, and those were against the teams that ended 17th and 18th. It was a disastrous end to what was set to be a sensational season. But luckily we did enough up until Feb to keep us top six, despite this crumble.
Yesterday we needed Everton to drop points if we were too sneak back into 5th for the final table, but the Toffeemen defied history’s trend and came away from Craven Cottage with a victory. Leon Osman potted 2 for them and Fulham failed to reply, making our 1-0 home win over relegated Newcastle irrelevent in the chase for 5th.
The significance of finishing 5th was that we would have improved on our league finish for a 3rd season running under O’Neill. As it turns out we have stabilised and stayed 6th. It is a wake up call to the powers that be at Villa that we need to invest to improve. The Premier League has become a VERY expensive league to compete in these days.
Maybe not even necessarily more expensive signings, just shrewder ones really. If we had enough quality players on the fringes of the team, we could’ve prevented this season’s crumble. We could’ve halted our league slide and avoided the UEFA Cup mess.
But outside our first team we are very below par, as was proved by our early Carling Cup exit and our poor EUFA Cup performances (ie Zilina & Hamburg). The Moscow mess may well have been the cause of the slide as it made the club unsteady and ambitions unclear. If it wasn’t the cause it certainly did nothing to stop the boat rocking.
This summer will be a very telling time for Aston Villa. Keep your fingers crossed.
DEBATE: Tiredness? Small squad? Inexperience? Incapability? What IS Aston Villa’s problem?
Aston Villa’s recovery from their winless streak lasted for just one match! Not the best.
You can’t take anything away from Fulham; they played well and deserved to beat us, but it served to severely deflate a huge number of Villa fans who thought we had re-found our winning form of earlier in the season and were going to go unbeaten for the last 4 games. We’d already left it late enough to start winning again, but we still had 5th in our grasp and if we won our games we would secure it. Whatever your opinion in the grand scale, 5th IS an improvement over 6th, so it would’ve been another season of climbing up the league ladder (whether that climb is quick enough is your own opinion and for another debate, not this one).
But Villa blew it after just one win and now have 2 games left which we will have to win because Everton won’t be letting us get away with it again. We have the tough task of facing 2 teams fighting for their Premier League status though (Newcastle and Boro), so they will be real dogfights.
What has caused our slide?
At earlier points in the season we occupied 4th place and even made it look pretty secure. We had a big gap over Arsenal and were flying high, winning almost every time we walked out onto the park. We looked uncatchable and destined to be in next season’s Champions League qualification games. Then it all went tits up!
We gave up our lead and let Arsenal back in (not just back in but let them fly away ahead of us) and now we find ourselves relying on Everton to draw to keep hold of 5th. What went wrong?
Was it our small squad? Are you tired of hearing that we have a small squad, especially when MON didn’t utilise January to fill it out?
Was it our January signings that knocked confidence out of the players and made them feel like the club wasn’t aiming as high as they were? All we brought in was Emile Heskey (who has never been Mr Popularity), who is not going to score 20 goals and lead us to the top of the league and Arsenio Halfuid, who is for the youth system for now.
Is it Martin O’Neill? He has many more fans than critics (maybe not right now), but there are plenty out there who believe that MON is no divine saviour and it has been his ineptitude, particularly in the transfer market that has led to our recent downturn in fortunes. (Personally, I’m not in this group; yeah he’s having a mare at the minute but look where he’s got us from and to)
Was it the ‘throwing away’ of the UEFA Cup that caused the problems? Did the way we seemed to concede knock the stuffing out of us and lead us into this awful run-in?
What’s your opinion? Who or what do you blame for Villa’s dramatic change to the season? Click comment and add your views to the debate.
O’Neill has no idea… any of us dare to venture a guess?
Morning, morning, morning Villa fans! How are we all today? I’m sound, thanks for asking 
My 9 month old daughter has already done 2 cacks today though, which kinda takes the shine outta things, and she’s straining like there’s more on the way! I write these at 6am y’see, and then sechedule them to upload around midday. Oh well, we’re not here to discuss my little girl’s bowel movements or my morning routine, so let’s get onto business:
“I’ve no idea,” he replied to Setanta’s Darrell Currie when asked where he thought Villa would be in a year’s time. “Honestly.”
The above quote is lifted from a Setanta Sports interview with Martin O’Neill, in which he also talked up the progress that Spurs and Man City will make next season, claiming that our push for the Top 4 will be more difficult with those 2 also doing the same. It surprises me massively that he makes no mention of Everton, as I believe they are more likely than either of those 2 to be in the thick of the fight. Just look how well they are doing this season, under huge injury woes. But this isn’t EvertonBlog.com, so let’s leave their potential threats aside for now.
Where will we be in a year’s time?
It’s a question that many of us Villa fans have avoided answering, particularly in this period of pessimism, where everything we touch seems to be turning into another loss (or draw on a good day!).
In the last 5-6 years many teams have had a good season, putting pressure on the top four (Everton, Spurs and now us) or even just a season where they do better than usual (Bolton, Fulham, Middlesbrough, us) but the following season they often have a mare (us, Everton, Spurs). So will next season see us push on with the progress we’ve shown this season or will we see a decline in our fortunes?
In the same interview, O’Neill hinted that the funding for transfers this summer will not be vast, and having seen his limited activities in January, you can’t help but think that we will only be signing unproven, unready youngsters and/or players past their best.
So what do you reckon? Will Villa kick on and carry on growing next year? Or will we suffer a dismal / mediocre season next term?
FOUR. FIVE. ONE. It HAS to be!
Gabby Agbonlahor is out with a virus (which probably means a snotty nose) and Emile Heskey is out (thanks Fabio) which means that MON may well revert back to the fan favourite formation of 4-5-1. Carew (also the fan’s choice at present) should find himself alone up front today, with Milner and Young not far behind him on either side and Petrov, Reo-Coker and Barry in the midfield.
It’s not a forgone conclusion, we know how stubborn O’Neill can be, but the other likely option he could choose would be to give Delfouneso a start, which would also go down well with the fans. I’d be surprised to see him start the lad in such a crucial and difficult game though.
Also out for Villa is Carlos Cuellar, so we are well short at the back (as we have been for large parts of the season). The back four will most likely be Young, Knight, Davies and Shorey. Hopefully he won’t go with any of his hare-brained plans of playing midfielders at full back and/or full backs on the wrong sides. We will need to be tight at the back today and a mifielder with straying tendencies could well work against us.
Villa vs Everton – This could be one of the best games of the season
Whenever Man U play Chelsea it is billed as the greatest game for spectators to watch and pubs are packed. This is partly because of the amount of glory hunters who both these teams attract, so they have huge numbers of fans who will watch them in the pub but don’t go to the actual games and partly because everyone is expecting to see some real entertainment.
But often its not the case because both teams are weary of playing with too much flair incase they leave theirselves exposed. Whereas the 2 meetings of Villa and Everton this season have produced excellently entertaining and watchable games of football.
We nicked the first one in the dying seconds, after Everton almost nicked a draw in the dying minutes. Then they got revenge in the FA Cup, beating us 3-1 and knocking us out of the major domestic tournament. Both games were great to watch, so I’m expecting this one to be even better as there is now so much at stake.
Both teams are still chasing the glimmer of hope of finishing 4th and getting a bash at the Champions League (though more for the money and players it can attract for now, not entertaining the dream of winning it) and a loss in this game must surely end all hope. In fact a draw could be the final nail in the coffin for both, judging by Arsenal’s display yesterday.
The Gunners were 1-down at Wigan and it all started to look rosy for us for a while, but they hit back and won 4-1 so it looks like the injury woes are not hindering them in the way we had hoped.
The winner today is still in the fight, but whoever it may be will still be banking on Arsenal’s good form of late to slip.
The plunge began against Everton… and it will end against Everton
It was mid-February and we were in sensational form. We were beating teams left, right and centre. We hadn’t lost in the league for 3 months. We had broke the club’s all-time record for away wins on the bounce. We were 4th in the Premier League and looking good in the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup. Birds were singing, children were laughing, sweet music was floating on the breeze… ok, you get the picture;
It was an awesome time to be a Villa fan.
But then the rain came. We lost to Everton in the FA Cup, which the day after seemed like no big deal; we were out the FA Cup so we could concentrate fully on the league and the UEFA Cup. But what we didn’t realise was that it was a pre-cursor to things going majorly tits up!
Every Villa hater under the sun had been giving us digs all season about us not being able to go the distance, and those buggars turned out to be right! They said we’d slip up sooner or later, and we did. Their smug grins and mean spirited satisfaction in our downfall only made it harder to bear.
But tomorrow we face Everton again, this time at our place, and it MUST serve to have the reverse effect. And for the first time in a month or so, I’m going into this game with belief that we can do it.
A victory against Everton will solidify the confidence we showed against the title holders and take us into a good run to see the season out. If Arsenal don’t slip up and we finish 5th, then so be it. At least we have learnt a LOT from this season and in particular from these 2 months of misery, and we have acheived more than most thought possible last August.
How did we become such LOSERS and is 4-5-1 the only way to bring it to an END?
Not too long ago, though it’s beginning to feel like a lifetime, Aston Villa were winning games left right and centre. We were 4th in the Premier League, well ahead of Arsenal, and coasting towards the Champions League qualification spot. Villa press was more about whether they had a chance of catching 3rd placed Chelsea, than whether Arsenal could overtake us.
We broke the clubs all-time record for away wins on the bounce and we were all on cloud 9 and loving every minute of the best season to be a Villa fan for far too long.
Villa went on an unbeaten league run from 15th Nov, when we beat the aforementioned Arsenal at their own ground, until 21st Feb when we hosted a rejuvinated Chelsea and gave them a damn good run for their money.
But since the victory at Ewood Park, Villa have seen a dramatic downturn in fortunes; losing to Everton to fall out of the FA Cup, losing to CSKA Moscow to fall out of the UEFA Cup and losing to Man City, Chelsea and Tottenham in the league, dropping us below Arsenal and out of the Champions League spot we’ve strived for.
We had become losers. Losing was something we had begun to forget the feeling of. And we liked it that way thank you very much. But now the losing feeling has well and truly set itself back in and is showing no signs of going just yet. We don’t like it!
Then it all culminated in a humiliating thrashing at the hands of Liverpool on Sunday. A 5-0 beating is not the kind of result you expect a team to get who are supposed to be challenging to break into the top four.
Will Villa bounce back from it? With the next 2 games being a trip to the league leaders and then a tough clash against Everton, it doesn’t look all that rosy. We can take solace in the fact that they both lost this weekend so wins are possible, but a huge attitude change is required by Villa.
Many (me included) will be screaming out for a 4-5-1 formation in both those games, as midfield domination and counter attacks have proved to be the winning formula for Villa. Yes, teams have ‘figured us out’ but even if they have sussed us, that doesn’t make them able to contain us. Do people really think that all the teams we beat were stupid enough not to know our formula? Of course they knew our strengths, just the same as every team that faces Man Utd et al knows their strengths, they just aren’t able to do much about it.
It wasn’t until Villa changed the formula and stopped playing to our strengths, that we stopped winning.
I’m calling for MON to bring back the old style. Bring back the 5-4-1. Bring back the confidence. And bring back the wins. There’s still plenty time.
Who is with me?
Up the Villa.
Laursen return on-again again, Mellberg may play against us in the summer and transfer rumours
Filed under: Aston Villa, Injury News, Transfer News
It’s becoming a real on-again off-again affair, but now Laursen’s return date is being re-suggested as the Man Utd trip. I’m not sure whether Setanta Sports are simply out of date or if Laursen now re-plans to be back by that game. It had originally been pencilled in for him to return then, but after a training setback it looked to be delayed till the Everton game of the following Sunday.
Hopefully Laursen isn’t rushing back because of the panic that is growing at the club. I’d really hate to see him rush back and then end up going straight back out injured again as a result. If we are to mount any kind of challenge on 4th place, I see Laursen as a figurehead of it. He gives us a lot more stability and confidence when he’s on the pitch.
Peace Cup
Never heard of it? You can be forgiven for that because it has only taken place 3 times before, every two years since 2003. Tottenham have won it in the past, along with PSV and Lyon.
The competition will be druing this summer’s close season break and the confirmed teams so far are: Real Madrid, Sevilla, Juventus, Ajax, Porto, Lyon and us. So there are decent chances of Mellberg playing against his former club, which will mean a lot to him as he still holds us in very high regard, as do we him.
The tournament will be a decent chance for us to get used to playing high quality European teams, preparing us for our goal of reaching the Champions League.
Transfer rumours
Villa are rumoured to be interested in Bosnia and Herzegovina international striker; Edin Dzeko. The striker is also believed to be on the radar of Arsenal and Valencia, after a successful couple of seasons for Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga and a near 1-in-2 goals ratio for his country.
Also on the rumour mill is Portugal defender Miguel, who could fill our problem position of right back. The player is currently out of form, so unless O’Neill feels he can get him back to his best, I don’t see this one as that likely. We have Luke Young, who has fit into the team as well as can be expected for someone playing out of position, so hoepfully we will look more eagerly for a left back than right.
Finally on my transfer rumour radar is Tom Huddlestone. The Tottenham youngster is proving himself to be full of potential and ability and may well have a promising career ahead of him. He has been mentioned as a £6m target, but whether he is ready yet to fill Barry’s boots is unclear.
Cuellar shut up!, Osbourne out, Wenger rallying cry and are Villa off the rails?
OK then, for today’s blog post, I promise I won’t mention Arsenal!
There’s been no shortage of press coverage for our beloved club this last week or two, and a lot of it has been pretty negative. A season that was powering forward at full steam, seems to have come off the rails in recent weeks. So is it time to panic? Nah, I don’t think so. Yeah we haven’t had much in the way of convincing results, but if you look at it closely it’s not panic time yet.
- Everton in the FA Cup was always going to be difficult; they had a point to prove after the previous meeting and let’s be honest, when Everton are on their game (and by Everton I mainly mean Arteta and Cahill), they are very hard to beat. And they wanted it more than us, because try as we might to convince ourselves, our mind was on the league moreso than the FA Cup.
- CSKA at home wasn’t bad and away the kids gave it a damn good go. We lost, but you can’t help but feel that MON engineered it that way.
- Chelsea were on their new-manager buzz, but we still made it very hard for them and if Young’s free kick had been an inch or two lower that may have given us a draw.
- And Stoke was going well for 88 minutes. Enough said on that though.
So yeah, whilst it’s all been a bit of a cacker, it isn’t time to give up yet. We’re still 4th and still 6 points clear of our nearest rival… errr… can’t think of their name at the minute.
Nobody panic, keep the love and keep the faith, we’ll get back to winning ways soon (Wednesday hopefully).
What else has been going on then?
Isaiah Osbourne is going out on loan to Nottingham Forest for 2 months. I think this is a good thing, as the lad is never going to improve or build his confidence by sitting on our bench (at best), and we have plenty of options in the middle of the park. Whether he will ever be good enough for the ‘new improved Villa’ is debatable, but I’m willing to give the guy some patience as he, like me, is a huge life-long Villa fan.
Sky Sports have reported that Carlos Cuellar thinks Ronaldo should stay with Man Utd, as a move to Real Madrid wouldn’t suit his style. My advice: Shut up Carlos, let the nob leave!
And finally, our last minute decaying against Stoke may have given that team in 5th a kick up the arse to drive the remainder of their season. So we need to get back on our game and quick, a 6 point gap can disappear quickly if you relax.
Sweet, I got through with no mention of Arsenal, well I mentioned them once but I think I got away with it
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