Villa 1-2 MSK Zilina – What went wrong?
Did MON get it wrong last night? Not necessarily
Last night’s loss was an embarrassing scoreline that will not help us to rebuild our confidence after failing to score against Fulham despite such dominance. The game was won and lost (won by them and lost by us) in a 3 minute spell, just after the quarter of an hour mark. MSK started stronger than anyone had expected but it was still a huge shock when Vladimir Leitner’s cross was left by Zat Knight and it ended up in the net.
Villa were shocked and stunned, and while we were still pondering how on earth we were losing, Zilina caught us on the backfoot with a well worked passing movement and doubled that lead. Villa had to snap out of it and fast. We continued to push forward but Ashley Young’s crossing and Marlon Harewood’s positioning weren’t marrying up too well. Just before the half hour mark up stepped the new Villa youth wonderkid, Nathan Delfouneso, with a wonderful strike that was supposed to be the beginning of our comeback.
It didn’t happen.
Villa 1-2 MŠK Žilina ***Live blog*** FT
Game: Aston Villa vs MŠK Žilina
Competition: UEFA Cup – Group Stage
Date: Thu 4 Dec 08
KO: 19:45 GMT
Venue: Villa Park, Aston
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FT- An embarrassing loss at home in what should’ve been the easiest game in the group. We seal our passage through because Hamburg won at Prague but it’s not really celebrations time as we have a lot to think about after the last two games. We are really struggling to score goals now, we miss Carew and a 17 year old seems to be our only other threat. O’Neill has a LOT to think about and the players who got their chance to prove themselves today have let theirselves down. The strength we have in depth suddenly looks very shallow.
Aston Villa vs MŠK Žilina – Match preview
The opponents
So who in the hell are MŠK Žilina? Well, they are from Slovakia, where they play in the top flight and have finished 1st or 2nd 6 times in the last 7 seasons. They are almost as old as us, being formed in 1908, but through their 100 years they have undergone many name changes (9 in total!). In 2003 they were knocked out of the Champions League in the qualifying rounds by Chelsea, who had recently been purchased by some Russian bloke called Roman Abramovich.
They were considered by many to be the whipping boys of Group F when the draw was first made, but the Slovaks have held strong, gaining a point against Prague in a goalless draw and losing by just one goal to Hamburg and Ajax.
Team to face MSK Zilina on Thursday
We aren’t quite through to the next stage of the UEFA Cup yet but we are damn close and the fixture on Thursday is considered to be the easiest of the group, so we can expect to see O’Neill experiment with the line-up to give some of the key players some rest and allow some fringe players a chance to prove themselves. O’Neill has stated some of these intended changes on the official site.
Brad Guzan – will his chance come?
At Villa we have three first team goal keepers, a luxury not all teams have, most having two and an understudy. They come in the form of two Americans called Brad (Friedel and Guzan) and former Arsenal man, Stuart Taylor. Ex-Blackburn stopper, Brad Friedel is the first choice keeper and has been since his arrival, in the same transfer window as Guzan arrived, so the MLS keeper of the year has spent most of his time at Villa sat on the bench. But thats not a discredit to him, in fact making the bench shows a great amount of faith in him as he is being preferred to Stuart Taylor, who is an experienced and capable goalie. Read more
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