Aston Villa

pic. Courtesy of Daily Mail. Aaron getting clattered by Dunne for pen. no.1

Definitely a “Good News, Bad News” sort of day. Even so, some events are questionable…like “Marouane will be returning early as Morocco are knocked out of the African Cup”…is that good news or bad news? TR7 produces yet another lively performance, but when it comes to scoring…”Cow, Arse, Banjo” comes to mind. Good or Bad?

The crowd don’t boo when the Ox is substituted. Do boo when AA is named as substitute. Neither were they impressed with our first half performance. Which, in fairness wasn’t bad but ….Given looked like he was about to do another MOM performance; the first goal we let in was almost a clone of the one we saw last week; Bent scoring from an “impossible” angle and Flapianski ensuring that our other Polekeeper can sleep easy. Time to look up the last time we lost four games on the bounce. Would you believe a month or so after GG was sacked, 1994/5? I thought I’d have to return to the 50s/60s. That 94/5 run was 6 losses out of 7 btw.

Walcott is developing a habit of getting lippy at others when he screws up …again. We saw it last week and again yesterday. But there was but one person to blame…again. A dreadful first half from him, but much livelier in the second. Credit Theo where credit is due…his equaliser was a class act. Having wriggled his way clear, to then manage that 1-2 with Hutton was something special. Not a goal you will see often. :o)

Similarly put in your memory banks the day that Arsenal were awarded two penalties and scored from both. Both in a way were lucky. Aaron had absolutely no chance of getting the ball when Dunne upended him. A stone cold penalty but Dunne gets all the credit. Alex Song though provided a lovely pass for Aaron to mis-control. Likewise the second. Lovely run from Kos, again following good work from Alex. Bent’s clumsy challenge was enough to send him flying and Mike Jones didn’t hesitate to point to the spot. Had Bent waited a split second, in all probability Kos would have been legally tackled by a covering defender.

But can we complain? Can we hell. Three goals in 7 minutes? More of that please even if they have to be scored like these three were. But you do make your own luck and we were so much more impressive, not to mention threatening when we speeded up in the second half. Villa simply were no match up until we took our foot (?feet?) off the pedal. And then Flapianski was sound and not in an error mode.

Now for the Trotters. Hopefully they will be well pickled on Wednesday.