It’s the final weekend! Villa face Newcastle, with a beady eye on the Fulham v Everton game
Everton have lost every game they’ve played at Fulham since the Premier League’s inception. That’s 7 league losses and 1 cup loss. There we go. I started with something positive. So will it be a case of ’start as you mean to go on’ and this’ll be a positive post? I’ll come back to that question innabit.
Sunday we find ourselves intwined in the battle to stay in the top flight, as we play a team that are sitting 18th. The drop squad find the weekend as follows:
- Newcastle face the drop unless they get a better result than Hull, and could even still face the drop if they win.
- Hull face a Man Utd side that have already won the title and that have the Champions League final on Wednesday, so may well be a little easier to beat than normal.
- Middlesbrough can still survive mathematically but it’s very unlikely that all the pieces of that jigsaw will fall into place.
- Sunderland are the highest placed team that can still go down but they are playing Chelsea, so it’s by no means going to be easy. If they lose and both Hull and Newcastle win, they will be down.
As you can see it’s going to be an exciting finale, so can Villa resist the Toon’s desperate surge for survival or will we crumble to a loss that will cap off a terrible second half to what was looking to be a terrific season? It would certainly fit the bill of the last few months. We steam-rollered all the way through to Feb, winning games for fun but then it all came falling down.
It’s been quite a heartbreaking few months to be a Villa fan; the torrid run of losses being so much harder to bear after all those wins and then Martin Laursen announcing his retirement. I can honestly say that I was even more upset than when Take That split up!!
Prediction
A draw. I’m not just being boring when I say this, I honestly think it will be a draw. Newcastle will play scrappily in pure desperation and we will reply with much of the same as we struggle to take hold of the game when we aren’t on fire and running at teams. There will probly be goals but I think this has draw written all over it. Which means bye bye Newcastle, which will be just crazy. They are one of the most supported teams in the country and they won’t even be in the top flight. If it happens they may well implode because they have high profile and highly paid players that will be outta there (including Owen, Martins, Duff, Smith, Nolan, Viduka)
Sunderland 1-2 Villa – It wasn’t pretty… in fact it was ugly
Not this ugly though
It took 2 debatable goals and 2 penalty let-offs for us to win yesterday and Sunderland fans will be raging. Villa were already getting criticism for being lucky and now we will be hammered with jibes, but the majority of the ‘luck’ we have received in the last month we have worked very hard for. You make your own luck, as they say.
Four penalty related incidents
Yesterday, Mike Dean twice waved away handballs in our box, that on another day could’ve both been given as penalties, and, at the other end, gave us a penalty that could be argued was outside the box and allowed a goal that even James Milner admitted might’ve been put in with his hand. It’s not hard to imagine this game ending as a 3-0 win to the home side, with the four major decisions going the other way.
Controversy, luck, shocks and last minute turnarounds – what an amazing 2 hours in the life of the Premiership
No. Freaking. Way.
Villa were trailing a goal to nil at half time up in Sunderland, and then turned it round in the second 45 with a goal that looked more like handball than a header (though he was tumbled over by Chimbonda and would’ve got a penalty if not a goal) and a second goal from a penalty that debatably should’ve been a free kick outside the box.
Ashley Young saw red for a challenge that looked more like a yellow, so we finished the game without him and will be without him for some big upcoming games.
Down in London, a game was taking place that all Villans had one eye / ear on; Chelsea vs Stoke. No-one really expected Stoke to get anything from the game but a pipe dream couldn’t help being conceived by us, where Chelsea’s turmoil continued and they slipped up. Villa would go 3rd with a win if so.
With just 2 minutes to go Read more
Sunderland vs Villa – How to watch the action
It says "Ha'way the lads"... the air is thinner up there!
Today at 3pm GMT, Villa face Sunderland and hope that it won’t be grim up north. There are a number of other games that affect us this weekend (Monday night is now part of the weekend, didn’t you hear?) too:
- As hard as it is to believe, we will actually be challenging Chelsea for positions this weekend. Now if you’ve been in a coma for 6 months and just woke up and read that sentence, you may question just how long you’ve been gone for, but if we win today and Chelsea don’t, we go above them. Honest. No games in hand or anything like that either, just a string of great results for us and some less than convincing games from the boys in blue.
- Talking of boys in blue, Everton may be 6 points behind us, but with the steam train they’ve been riding recently we can never take our eyes off them. They play on Monday night in a new venture for the Merseyside derby and though it’s at Anfield and though they may end up giving Tony Cottee a start if any more strikers get injured, I think they may well nick it.
- Man Utd are away to Bolton and would need to lose 6-0 while we win 6-0 for us to go above them. If you put a pound on those 2 scores and they happen you’ll be rich, but I think you’d be better off spending the pound on half a pint to be honest. Man U are in winning form and they have top of the league
- in their sights so don’t go expecting us to be above them by tonight.
- Finally 2 teams who have been our main rivals at different points this season are facing each other today; Hull host Arsenal. Hull’s drop in form has seen them fall from rivalry with us for places but Arsenal can go above us if they win and we lose. We stay above them as long as we get a point but that gives them a chance to close the 3 point gap. Watch it live on Setanta from 17.00 GMT.
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
Transfer Gossip 6 Jan 09
January’s here, it’s a new year and we’re all back at work, we’re all still writing ‘08′ when we date anything and we’re all gonna have a birthday in 09 and get a year older. But on the bright side; January’s here, the transfer window is open!! Yes, it’s fun time in the football world, when speculation, rumours and sometimes just plain made up lies are everywhere, linking Ronaldo to Man City, Kaka to Man City and err… well just lots of people to Man City really.
They may be the new media darlings, and they would go and do it the season we break into the top four and steal our limelight, but there’s still a few new buzzes coming out each day about the Mighty Villans Read more
-
Categories
-
Archives
-
Links
-
Meta
-
Sponsors
