Thanks Martin and good luck

As I posted a couple of weeks ago it appears the very sad news that Martin Laursen will announce his retirement tomorrow has been published. The news has been posted on H&V by Dave Woodhall and he would not normally post this unless he was very sure of his information.

Martin for the past two seasons has been an inspirational leader for Villa and we will miss him greatly. He is a buccaneering central defender who never gave up a ball, was magnificent in the air and of course scored the odd few goals. He will admit himself he was never the stylistic player but he for sure made up for it and I doubt in Villa’s history there has been a player who has made such impact and yet played less than 100 games.

Martin was signed by David O’Leary for £3,5m from AC Milan in the summer of 2004 but a succession of injuries in the first three season meant he played very few games for us but when he did you could tell he had something. Only last season did his quality show up properly as for possibly the first time in his career he was fully fit. Not only did he lead the defence brilliantly he contributed 6 goals in typical fashion. The crying shame for him is that he played less than 350 league games and his injuries were always there.

I will miss Martin and against Newcastle I hope we will (I am sure we will) give him the send off he deserves and the players on the pitch respond in the proper way.

I personally thank Martin for all his hard work at Aston Villa and good luck in the future.