Losing Gareth Barry is Not A Problem. Is it?
When questioned by Sky Sports this weekend about whether losing Gareth Barry for the next game is a problem, Capello’s response was ‘No’ and that he’d have to find a new solution. I couldn’t help but spot the pertinence of these words to us.
Martin O’Neill and Villa find themselves in this same position; needing to find a solution for the new-found lack of Barry. Where England have Frank Lampard, Steve Gerrard, Michael Carrick and David Beckham in the central midfield position, Villa have Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker and others.
Nigel Reo-Coker
Villa signed NRC for £8.5m but last season he spent most his time on the bench and when he did play it was out of position. £8.5m seems a lot to pay for a utility player, so does this mean he will be filling Barry’s role next season? During the pre-Milner games, Reo-Coker played right midfield and showed an aptitude for attacking play, so could he be the yin to Petrov’s yang?
Steve Sidwell
Sidders was brought in for that familiar Villa fee; £undisclosed. The plan was for Sidders to replace Gareth Barry when he left for Liverpool. Neither happened. Barry stayed and Sidwell got injured.
On his recovery, Sidwell forced his way into the side as part of the notorious 4-5-1, that the fans loved but MON wasn’t so keen on and stubbornly refused to go back to it if he could help it. Sidwell had some good moments, scored some great goals, but then again got injured and disappeared from the team on his return.
Others
There is a feeling amongst some fans that James Milner could make the switch from right wing to central mdifield and do a good job there. It would mean a change to the focus of his game, looking to pick out clinical passes and penetrative through balls, as opposed to his runs down the wings and crossing (not his specialty anyway). Could he do it?
Craig Garnder has played in almost every position on the park for the first team, being used as more of a utility player than NRC! Gardner is a player who always gives 100% and certainly has ability, but does he have enough to be the new mainstay in the middle for Villa?
We also have Salifou and Osbourne but I can already imagine what you lot will think of them as solutions to this puzzle.
Newbie
The other option for us is to look elsewhere. There have been no shortage of names linked with us by the papers including Jenas, Huddlestone, Defour & Delph amongst many more.
What’s the answer for Villa then? Do we need to look around or take one of the internal propsects?
Aston Villa lose their backbone, how will they stand tall now?
Last summer it was THE transfer saga of the summer, the whole Gareth Barry to Liverpool story. It began early, prior to the window even opening, with Rafa Benitez stating an intent to sign the Villa midfielder. It royally pee’ed off Martin O’Neill and a public war of words began.
Liverpool made an offer, Villa rejected it. Liverpool made another offer, Villa rejected it again. Liverpool made yet another offer and, guess what, Villa rejected it yet again. It’s possible that more offers were made and rejected but by this time everyone was so bored and pigsick of it all that they just wanted it to be sorted out one way or another.
Villa (or should that be Martin O’Neill’s stubbornness) won the battle; Barry stayed at Villa. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Barry had spoken to the papers, saying that he wished to join Liverpool and he criticised Martin O’Neill while he was at it. This seemed like a risk-free thing to do, as he would be heading to Anfield any day now, so why not? But when that didn’t happen, Bazza found himself stripped of the captaincy, banned from the training ground and fined 2 weeks wages.
So what at first was an exciting face-off, then crescendoed into a frenzy of will-he-won’t-he, only to peter out and start to lose steam as it got tiresome and repetitive and then eventually it became downright boring. By the end, neither Villa fans nor Liverpool fans could give a damn whether he went or not, so long as the news spoke about something else. Y’know, kinda like how we currently feel about Susan Boyle and MP expense claims in the UK!
Finally, the window closed and Barry remained at Aston Villa. He realised he was stuck there, but it didn’t seem like he was exactly delighted by the situation, after falling out with the boss, losing the armband and then getting boo’d by the fans. He saw out the year, but it seemed very unlikely that he would stay at Villa to see out his contract.
Barry didn’t waste much time getting things into place, being announced today as the first signing of the transfer window. The rumours were abound for a while, but then it meant little as there was a rumour out there on the blogs and in the papers linking every half decent player the world over with Man City. Their endless bags of cash will ensure that rumours will swarm around them like flies around… errr… doo-doo!
It came out yesterday that Barry was in talks with City, but I doubt many expected it to all be wrapped up so quickly. It kind of makes you wonder if this was already half-arranged during the season.
Barry has gone back on his original reason for leaving Villa, which was an ambition to play Champions League football, to join a team that arguably has the same chance of reaching that goal as Villa. He has said that he wanted to join the Manchester club as they have ambitions that match his own, despite joining a team that aren’t in Europe at all but Villa being in the new Europa League.
Life without Barry
It will be odd to see us line up without Barry in the team, after being such a huge part of the team for a large part of his 12 years here and how we go about replacing him will be fundamental to whether we can continue to build on the success we have been enjoying since Randy Lerner purchased the club.
It was reported in the papers yesterday that Martin O’Neill has told Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker that they will play much bigger roles for the club this coming season. This reeks of ‘I’m not going to replace Barry’ or maybe ‘I’ll replace Barry with a young up and coming player for the future’.
Sidwell has not proved too useful for us to date, so a big improvement from him would be required to keep us where we are, never mind grow.
Nigel Reo-Coker has shown promise for us, putting in good performances when he gets the chance, but he has generally worked best when alongside Barry. He may have it in him though, I have more faith that he could fill Barry’s boots than Sidders and he will like the chance to play as the more attacking one in the middle. So maybe NRC is the answer. Can you tell I’m more trying to talk myself into it than anything else?
Rumours about replacements will now be rife though, no matter what MON hints at, so we’ll take it as it comes, keep our fingers crossed and hope that Barry wasn’t as fundamental to our success as we fear. Cuz he’s gone now, he’s no longer an Aston Villa player (how weird is that?!).
Injuries mount up ahead of the visit of the Ruskies
With the UEFA Cup knockout round against CSKA Moscow now upon us, Villa are feeling the pinch of our small squad as the number of injuries stack up in our physio room. In the Premier League, Villa have so far only fielded 19 different players, 10 less than the league leaders, a sign of the slimness of our numbers.
The injury concerns on MON’s plate for tonight are as follows Read more
Micah Richards link, transfer talk and injury news
Sky Sports News are today claiming that Villa are looking into a bid for Micah Richards. It’s not on their website yet, but it’s on the Latest News round-up.
Richards stormed onto the scene at a very young age for a defender, getting into the Man City team and then the England team. He then got injured and was out for a while and, since his return, has failed to recapture the form that made him so successful. Whether his lack of good form is caused by the unrest at City or whether he has ‘lost it’ remains to be seen.
MON is reknowned for getting the best out of players and Richards is also a versatile defender who can play full back or centre back, so the deal makes logical sense. The sudden out-of-the-blue-ness of the rumour, however, makes me a little sceptical of there being any actual truth in it.
N’Somnia… Zogbia… Charlie… errr…. you know the guy I mean… Thingymajig
Villa vs Portsmouth starting line-up
Quick post with the team for tonight’s game against Pompey. As expected, new boy Emile Heskey is in the starting line-up and we have reverted to the 4-4-2 formation that we were using often before Carew’s injury.
Three changes have been made for this game:
- Luke Young comes back from suspension in a straight swap with Nicky Shorey for the left back spot.
- Emile Heskey replaces Steve Sidwell in the formation change from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2.
- Nigel Reo Coker doesn’t make the team and Craig Gardner fills James Milner’s role and Milner fills Ashley Young’s role on the left side of midfield.
So Barry Read more
Juicy transfer gossip
Considering we spent over 3 weeks to make our first big signing, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Emile Heskey was the extent of Villa’s spending in this transfer window, but would you be right?
The last few days are always a hub of activity and, with over £100m already spent, this is shaping up to be more of the same. With the rumours that are flying around, it seems that Martin O’Neill treats signings like I used to treat my English Literature homework; leave it to the very last minute.
FA Cup fourth round draw
Villa have been drawn out of the hat to face Read more
Transfer Window – The heat is on
The transfer window couldn’t open soon enough for most Villa fans, desperate to bring a striker in to bolster the squad and provide cover when Carew is out, but 2 weeks in and nothing has happened really. Then on Saturday we lost Ashley Young for 3 games and suddenly it’s battle stations. The alarm bells are ringing now, because with no Young we are going to have some worries.
The first solution would be to bring in Gardner either as a straight replacement or move Barry out to his old position on the left and put Gardner in the middle with Petrov and Sidwell. If MON is feeling brave we could see a reversion to 4-4-2, with Gabby up top with Delfouneso or Harewood. The fear though is that if any more suspensions or injuries came our way we’d be in a real struggle to maintain our winning ways.
MON has been saying he wants Read more
Villa vs Sunderland – Is Kenwyne Jones playing against his team-mates-to-be?
With Kenwyne Jones being one of the main links to Villa during the transfer window (although it seems Spurs are determined to outbid us), how will he feel about facing us on Saturday? The tall striker had been linked with a £5m move and now a vastly improved £12m bid from Villa, a rumour which O’Neill hasn’t denied, but at the same time he hasn’t confirmed it either.
That’s the thing with MON, he’s very cagey about transfers. He doesn’t admit to anything in press conferences, so us Villa fans are left murmuring about the rumours we’ve heard in papers or on websites or down Honest Joe’s Cafe. Maybe he’s pondering a move for teenage whiz-kid Masal Bugduv! Bugduv is believed to be the next big thing, taking the world of Fantasy Football to new realms.
The game
West Ham vs Villa – Match preview
Saturday sees Villa travel to Upton Park for the annual game where the opposition wear our colours, for a 5.30pm kick off and it’ll live blogged here on Aston Villa Blog, so make sure to tune in here and get hitting F5 for the action as it happens.
Villa haven’t won this fixture in over twelve years, drawing the last two and the time before that we completely embarrassed ourselves in a shoddy 4-0 beating which included a hat-trick from a bloke called Marlon Harewood.
We go into the game pretending the Hamburg shambles never happened, instead focusing on our league form. December so far has brought us two wins in two and we’ll be hoping to make that three and keep the pressure on the top four and also take advantage of the fact that Man Utd are out prannying about in the FIFA World Club Cup, so if we win we go 3rd.
Team
Transfer Gossip 12 Dec 08
This time of year is great, the rumourmill is running at full strength and the tiniest little smidgeon of an inkling of a grain of possibility is enough for the papers and blogs of the media to launch into stories of how a certain team are ‘definitely’ going to sign a certain player. If they end up happening then you have the old classic ‘You heard it here first’ shoved down your throats, for some reason though the papers don’t seem to remind you of the ones they got wrong. Here at AVB we know that 90% of it is either bullshit, over-presumptious or just straight outta dreamy-dreamworld, but we enjoy the speculation all the same. Read more
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