First pre-season game is currently underway and we are losing 2-0 to Basingstoke.

The starting XI is

Parish, L Young, Shorey, Hogg, Cuellar, Davies, Albrighton, Osbourne, Forrester, Bannan, Herd.

Subs: Lichaj, Siegrist, Clark, Collins Jr, Berry, Deeney, Flanaghan, Halfhuid, Burke, Taylor.

Can be followed on the Villa twitter site

So basically a reserve side with some of the up for sale players playing and hardly stating a decent case not to be sold !!

Should not over react to these games though, but clearly the reserve forward strength is weakened by the absence of the Fonz and Wiemann on UEFA U19 duty.

A youngster who I never heard of – Graham Burke scored Villa’s consolation.

this report from Richard Moore on H&V

Just back, a relatively meaningless workout in the sun to be honest. 2-1 the final score, we dominated but had no one up front to put the ball in the net. The pressure on their goal increased towards the end and we could have had 3 or 4 in the last ten minutes, instead of just the one we did get. No one stood out significantly, though Shorey had a useful second half and was instrumental in most of our best moves. Our big centre forward – forgotten his name – certainly made an impression when he came on too in the second half and gave us much more of a focal point. Davies was pretty composed at the back and played the full 90 minutes. Good turn out from the Villa fans, plenty all around the ground and even some singing! When Carlos went off and walked around the ground, it took him about 20 minutes to get to the changing rooms for signing autographs and having his photo taken! The kit looks just ok in the flesh, I can’t abide claret socks and the top looks alright.

The big centre forward that Richard mentions I presume was Halfuid

Another report on VT from ‘Garethrdr’ here with some decent pictures.

He says Davies was very poor and this may be significant that he along with Young and Shorey played the whole game indicating they are not going to play against Peterbrough tomorrow, which is the proper first team squad start to pre season.