We must win today for Laursen – Boro match preview

May 16, 2009 by Martin Banks
Filed under: Aston Villa 

middlesboroWith the sad news of Martin Laursen’s retirement from football yesterday, today’s game must be won as a tribute to him. Since he went out injured we have not managed to maintain the great form we were having. Whether things would’ve been different with him fit is something we can never know, but you can’t help but fancy that he wouldn’t have allowed such a slide on his watch. The Dane was an inspirational captain and was greatly missed from our backline, that has been a source of much frustration for Villa fans of late.

A win today would confirm our opponents’s relegation to the Championship, and probably cost their manager, another former Villa captain and centre-back, Gareth Southgate, his job. But it will definitely not be our fault if you see Southgate up the Job Centre, he has done a very poor job managing Boro and should never have been allowed to get them this far into the mire.

Onto the game, both sides are in their own battle so it may well be a scrappy affair. We are fighting for 5th place and they are fighting in desperate hope of avoiding relegation. They need wins and also results elsewhere, whereas we only need to rely on our own results if we get 2 wins. If we beat Boro and Newcastle we finish 5th, but if we fail to win either we will be watching and hoping that Everton drop points.

I’m going to draw it to a close there with the preview cuz I typed out shedloads more and it came up with some BS ‘nodes’ error message and lost most of the post, which has p1ssed me clean off! Hopefully it won’t be a persisting problem. See you tomorrow.


Comments

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!