Weimann’s goal again seals win for Villa reserves
Andreas Weimann’s 10th reserve goal in 12 games sealed a good win away at West Ham to keep Villa top of the Premier league reserve south.
Villa now lead from Arsenal by two points with two games in hand going into a ding dong tussle with Arsenal at Villa Park on bank holiday Monday.
In game which Villa dominated but did not create enough chances to show that on the scoreline, Weimann in the 34th minute with a natural goalscorers instinct he has sealed the game with a goal from his own saved shot. He is certainly one for the future and may be on the bench on Saturday given our injury issues.
A good result for Villa in what has been a bad week.
Bouma missing from reserves against West Ham
The reserves play at West Ham tonight looking to take a giant step to clinching the reserve title against a very tough West Ham side who beat arsenal in their last outing.
The side is
VILLA: Andy Marshall, Stephen O’Halloran, Ciaran Clark, Curtis Davies, Jonathan Hogg, Marc Albrighton, Isaiah Osbourne, Moustapha Salifou, Dominic Hofbauer, James Collins, Andreas Weimann. Substitutes: Harry Forrester, David Bevan, Samir Carruthers, Ellis Deeney
So can Weimann carry on his terrific form and propel us to further victory.
However interesting to note the absence of Bouma from this team with no real explanation, is this injury or more encouraging could he be lined up for a place on Saturday instead of Warnock who is suffering I believe from numerous head knocks recently.
UPDATE:- On Villa reserve feed when asked had no answers for Bouma’s absence.
World class quality, names please
Today’s game did not really tell the Villa fans and management anything we did not already know. We ar a fantastically hard working team, we never give up and have a fair amount of quality. However in tight games as we saw against Arsenal & Liverpool we lack the ultimate top quality to seemingly take us storming into the top 4 places.
Sometimes when you go to Villa Park you know things may not pan out as you think they should. News that Reo-coker was not even on the bench suggested that he may have another club lined up but MON denied this and apparently he injured an ankle in training. The game though from our point of view started very slowly and it was not until we got to the second half we started to play like the team we know we are but unfortunately for Gabby he lacked the quality to put three quality chances away. The last chance was typical of his game today, I think when he does not have time to think he is very good as he has shown against the ‘sky 4′ and local derbies. However after Carew’s flick on he had time to think, last minutes and frankly he messed up the chance.
That sums up what I mean by the title of this post we have seen how quality hurts us and makes the difference between three points and one. However it does seem that maybe money like at the vast majority of clubs is rather limited so to get this attacking quality and fit our team spirit and play I am open to names on who it could be.
Hammer them
The games are coming thick and fast now and West Ham on Sunday (KO 13:30) gives us a great chance to extract revenge on the shirt stealers after they stole the game from us last November. This game comes on the back of two defeats over Xmas of which damaged our league chances but clearly not our morale as witnessed on Thursday.
Even though we have three games in 6 days, the players have had a 2/3 week break and a few will miss the FA Cup game against Brighton so I fully expect a full strength side against West Ham. The only debate is whether Luke Young will return in the place of Cuellar who will replace Collins. There may also be a change up front with Carew possibly replacing Heskey but I would not put much money on that !
As we showed against Blackburn with some very good fluent passing football in the first half we are creating chances and just need to take them and get more convincing wins. West Ham are clearly going to be struggling against relegation all season and with injury problems all over the field (Franco the latest now) then a convincing win is required to set us up for the game against Blackburn.
The vats majority hate early Sunday kick offs nad the crowd could be low (sub 35,000) so lets get behind the lads and roar the Villa onto a much needed victory in the league.
Deal or no Deal, £20 to watch Villa
Well done to the Villa management who today reduced seats around the ground to £20 for Adults and £10 for Children.
This is likely due to a number of factors
- low advance sales
- 4 home games on the trot
- poor weather
- unattractive opposition
- January being generally a very tough month for household budgeting.
- and the nuisance and liability of a 13:30 Sunday KO which I know of no fan actually liking and is the worse KO time for any game.
So we have responded to these concerns in a generous way and hopefully the Villa fans will respond in the right way and sell a few thousand of these tickets.
A win for the ref but large question marks over Villa
Well a lot happened today the referee was awful and has a lot of the blame on his shoulders but we can ultimately only blame ourselves for the defeat.
The first half was very good from our point of view, we controlled the game, passed the ball well and created quite a few chances. However if you fail to take the chances then I am afraid you deserve to struggle but the game swung on a last-minute penalty decision which was just awful, it cost Beye a yellow card for a fine tackle and ultimately his sending off.
However the second half even allowing for the penalty miss and a fluke goal by Young was very poor, lack of control, lack of goalscoring chances and for MON some serious thinking in how we can create goals. Simply put we should not be conceding last-minute goals at either end of the halves and we should not be losing to the likes of West Ham.
Look at who we have lost to now, Wigan, Blackburn and West Ham and it is simply not good enough, when I previewed the game I expected a win, I never expected a defeat and this one will hurt us a lot. It was a massive missed opportunity to go fourth the kind of ones we have missed on regular occurrences recently and it HAS to stop.
Final word, Carew offers us nothing at all, Heskey is well Heskey, what the hell can we do up front with just Gabby ?
Win at Upton Park will set us up for a great season
The final game of the 4 away games is at Upton Park against a West Ham team struggling but you can see that they can create chances. It is a game that after a run of draws we should be winning if we are serious about our chances of making a serious challenge for the top 4.
What we know about the team is that with the additions of Warnock, Collins and Dunne, defensively this is the best Villa side since the Brian Little days of Ugo and Southgate. James Collins of course will be returning for the first time to Upton Park, he will get a decent reception there and he has proved to be the bargain of the summer of any team.
However we are lacking something up front the lack of creating good chances is worrying but there were signs against Everton of Ash young starting to regain his form and the we have the enigma of John Carew. It will not be clear until KO if Milner and Petrov will be fit to start which would leave some interesting choices in both personnel and formation. I would really hope that Marc Albrighton if Milner is unfit will start and not push Gabby to the right instead of staying up front where he has been so effective.
If we win this game, which is our game in hand we will find ourselves going into Bolton which is a winnable game in a very good position, a draw will simply put too much pressure on for that game. We can and should win but with Villa as we know it is never that simple !
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