Take a look, rub your eyes, blink a few times and look again. It hasn’t changed. We’re above Chelsea!
Don't try this at home
It’s pretty hard to believe but it’s true. Aston Villa are above Chelsea in the league, by 2 points, two thirds of the way through the Premier League season.
Before the season began I had hopes of us giving Everton a good run for their money and us finishing 5th. Being 3rd in February, above Chelsea and 3 points off top (shhh! don’t mention Man U and their games in hand, it spoils the fun), never really registered as a realisable dream.
It’s happening though. We can’t seem to stop winning. We haven’t lost a Prem game since Middlesbrough in November. Tomorrow (as well as being my auntie Gill’s birthday – Happy Birthday Gill) will be 3 months since we lost in the league. It’s a fantastic run.
We have also broken a club record of 6 away wins in a row with yesterday’s win at Ewood too.
Tearing Blackburn apart
Many of the games in our run have been argued to have contained a lot of luck. Whilst I won’t totally disregard the luck element I think it’s unfair to take anything away from how hard the team have worked, even in the games when they didn’t play attractive football.
Yesterday though, blew all that out the water. We played excellently yesterday, cutting through Blackburn’s midfield and defence like a knife through butter (warm butter) many times. Ashley Young tore down the left flank so many times I lost count, Barry and Petrov played umpteen dissecting through balls, Agbon ran at them till they wanted to go home and have a hug off their mom and Emile Heskey, well Emile Heskey did what Emile Heskey does; not all that much, but important stuff all the same.
Blackburn had a couple of legitimate penalty shouts, but other than that troubled us very little. We had 2 goals disallowed, the first of which was an Emile Heskey header that was disallowed for a push on Samba, but the slo-mo shows that it was Robinson who shoved his own defender and the goal should’ve stood.
Milner seems to have got the hang of this scoring lark now and got himself his 4th Villa goal, having never scored for us 6 weeks ago. His goal came from a short corner in a sneaky idea, presumably cooked up between him and Barry, where Bazza fed him the corner and Milner ran into the box and shot, totally unmarked by a bemused Rovers defence.
The second goal was late in coming and this time the provider was a poor Blackburn clearance. Gabby pounced on the ball, broke into the box and buried it, with the help of a deflection.
All in all, Villa were excellent, attacking very quickly and defending very solidly. The pace of Ashley Young, Gabriel Agbonlahor and (though not as fast) James Milner perfectly complements the experienced passing game of Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov and Emile Heskey and, at the back, we are even getting some great form out of Zat Knight, so Villa are looking great to continue this unbeaten run.
And guess who’s up next?
Chelsea. Bring on the battle for 3rd!!
And just cuz I love you…
Here’s the highlights of the Blackburn game:
Comments
3 Comments on Take a look, rub your eyes, blink a few times and look again. It hasn’t changed. We’re above Chelsea!
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Liverppols number 9 on
Sun, 8th Feb 2009 11:33
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Simon Preston on
Sun, 8th Feb 2009 13:44
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Football Rumours on
Sun, 8th Feb 2009 18:50
Well done Villa. Hats of to you! You are mixing it with the big 4, so we may as well call it the big 5!
Arsenal must now be sweating on the 4th spot. I actually think villa can now win it.
I love watching Gabby and Ashley tear through defences like that. Last Villan I remember that did that was Paul Merson who just managed to completely switch from defending to attacking and casue trouble for teams. But now we have 2 of them! This team should only get better with each season.
What do you guys think about the football rumours of Barry heading to liverpool?
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
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