I'm going to go out on a limb here; Aston Villa will not be favored to take a point from this game. I know, I know, I'm a terrible fan for even thinking that. But I just can't shake the feeling that Manchester City is the better side, especially given the questionable fitness of Marc Albrighton, Gabby Agbonlahor and James Collins - not to mention the potential doghouse-dwelling of Stephen Ireland and Charles N'Zogbia. From as objective a standpoint I can manage, I feel pretty comfortable saying that City's second team would probably beat Villa's first team eight times out of ten.

But! The nice thing about being the heavy underdog is that it's nearly impossible for it to lead to disappointment. I mean, no matter how bad things get this can't be worse than the day Newcastle had at White Hart Lane, can it? (Don't answer that.) And though absurd levels of confidence are almost mandatory for professional footballers, so too is a certain pragmatism. I don't worry that a loss (even a lopsided one) in this game would be as big a risk to derailing the progress that's been made this season in the same way a loss to Wolves or Wigan might. Knocking on wood and assuming Villa make it through this game with no major injuries or additional player/manager blow-ups, this game is pretty much all upside.

Continue reading this post »

Some questions we'll just never know the answer to: Why does Emile Heskey get so much playing time? Why did the BBC revamp their football site into something entirely unusable? And why do Aston Villa and Newcastle always play the early match on Sunday?

Another fun question to answer: Why is the Newcastle - Villa preview so damn late? Sorry, guys, but the answer is simply that I am terribly lazy and was hoping someone else could write it. But after a break yesterday in which I didn't watch one minute of football, I'm feeling itchy, ready for a return of the Villa.

Continue reading this post »

The nice thing about fixture congestion is that when you only have two days between a disaster like Sunday and the next game, you have the opportunity to minimize the hangover effect. In general I think professional athletes are pretty resilient and the impact of past performances is minimal, but that's not the way fans experience it. I want the next result to think about and I want it now, because unless QPR manage to lay down a 5-0 whipping it can't possibly be as painful as the way Villa knocked themselves out of the FA Cup against Arsenal.

Villa have a bit of momentum going in the league; after a nightmare stretch that ran from mid-October to early December, Villa have put growing fears of yet another relegation scrap behind them and now look pretty firmly poised to finish mid-table. Not especially thrilling, but at least a bit less nerve-wracking than last season which I personally would consider to be a plus. Still, it would be nice to finish as a high-mid-table team than a low-mid-table team and QPR is the kind of competition Villa need to beat out in order to make that happen. That might sound silly seeing as how they're currently five spots and seven point below Villa, but QPR has been significantly better under Mark Hughes and probably did more to improve over the past few days than any team in the league. Heidar Helguson has been solid, but when the second leading scorer on your team is Luke Young then you've definitely got a need for more attacking talent. So what did Hughes do? Went out and got Djibril Cisse and is, at the moment, reportedly very close to landing Fulham striker Bobby Zamora. That's in addition to the loan signing of Federico Macheda earlier this month. It's not just strikers, either; QPR has also landed promising young midfielder Samba Diakite from Nancy, former Marseille left back Taye Taiwo and secured some depth in defense with the signing of Nedum Onuoha from Manchester City.

Continue reading this post »

Things are shaping up quite nicely in the FA Cup so far; only ten Premier League clubs remain in the field, and before the 5th round begins that number will be no higher than nine. Both Manchester clubs are out as are Newcastle and Swansea, two other clubs that looked more than capable of making a deep run. Spurs, Chelsea and plenty of other good top flight clubs are through, so it's far from a minnow party, but the with a lot of games left to play the odds of a non-elite team making a deep run are as good as they're going to get at such an early stage. That's excellent news, because Villa making a deep run in the FA Cup would go a long way towards making this season one on which we'll look back fondly. Unfortunately, Arsenal are one of the three elite clubs remaining in the competition.

I'm sure some of you are scoffing at my use of the word elite to describe Arsenal, but it's true. This has been a poor season by their standards, but a poor season for Arsenal still involves a trip to the knockout stages of the Champions League and a top-four finish well within reach. It's clearly been a rough go for the Gunners of late; losers of their last three league games, it took a late Thierry Henry goal to put them past a poor Leeds team into this round of the Cup. Arsenal's defense has been mediocre at very best this season, and as of late they've had trouble getting things to click in the attack. It wasn't all that long ago that Villa ran out a weakened team and arguably outplayed them; by any account, Villa were unlucky to leave that game without any points to show for it.

Without a doubt, Arsenal have been underperforming for quite some time. They had a spell of similarly uninspiring play earlier in the season. But it would be hard to make the case that Arsenal's true capabilities lie at the lower end of their performances this season. And the thing with an underperforming club is that it's really impossible to say when they'll turn it around. This could be the day Arsenal remember they're actually pretty good, and if that's the case it's going to be tough for Villa to make their way past them. Not impossible by any stretch, as Villa's performances have been quite a bit better (on the balance) over the past month or so. And the odds are just as good (at least given the information we have) that the Gunners are still in a funk and therefore vulnerable. In any case, that's not something anyone but Arsenal can control; depending on your beliefs regarding the cause of poor runs of form, perhaps not even they're in control.

Continue reading this post »

I don't normally clamor for new signings that much, but I think the biggest single thing over which Arsenal have control right now is finding anyone who can play a creative role in the midfield. Since players like that are few and far between, they could turn to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. I know he's only 18, and there's no need to put undue pressure on him, so it would take some patience and understanding of dips in form from the supporters, but he seems the most likely option to make an impact at this point.

I've given up on our defending improving until injuries stop happening, by the way, so scoring more and finishing chances is necessary.

Continue reading this post »

We're now well into the "return fixture" segment of the season, and given the number of boring and eminently forgettable games Villa played during the first half of the season that's not necessarily the best thing. That's especially true in this case, because Villa and Wolves played one of the most boring games in the Premier League back in late August. If you'll recall (you won't) Wolves were the better side for about 15 minutes, then Villa's oppressive drabness overtook Wolves fleeting desire to be interesting and those watching were treated to more than an hour of punting and kicking and general despair.

Since then, Villa has been busy losing more than their level of talent would indicate is likely and Wolves have been busy losing to our dear friends Birmingham City over 180 minutes of the most awful, soul-crushingly-terrible football you've ever seen. Wolves manager Mick McCarthy sees headlines about Alex McLeish being on the hot seat and laughs bitterly; McLeish isn't going anywhere this season (as anyone with a firm grasp on reality knows) but McCarthy (despite pulling Wolves out of a gigantic mess and back to the Premier League seemingly through force of will alone) is skating on incredibly thin ice these days. Wolves are in the quite unenviable position of hoping that everyone below them in the table continues to be just as terrible the rest of the way as they have been so far, because Wolves don't really have the look of a team capable of making a real charge up the table.

Continue reading this post »

If you'll allow me to oversimplify a bit, you can make a pretty accurate guess about a team's collective fortunes before a season begins, provided you have a decent grasp on that team's personnel/quality of management relative to the rest of the league. In Aston Villa's case it's reasonable to say they're firmly in the middle of the pack, with something like 6-8 teams clearly ahead of them and a similar range of teams below. Over the course of the season, they're going to beat some teams they shouldn't (Chelsea!) and lose to some teams they shouldn't (Swansea :/) and the odds are good it's going to balance out in the end.

You can do the same for pretty much every club up and down the league, but there's enough variance in there that you're going to end up with clumps of teams; City, United, Chelsea (and Spurs, it turns out) at the top or Wigan, Blackburn and QPR at the bottom. The equation will clearly change as the year goes along (it certainly did for Villa last year, as it has for Bolton this year) but the larger point is this; the majority of the time, how well you do against teams that are at or near your level of true talent is going to be crucially important in terms of where you are at the end of the season. That's not universally true but it's a very good rule of thumb, and with Villa in the most congested group of teams in the league (that would be "relatively mediocre" in case you were wondering) there's a pretty significant amount of variance at play.

Continue reading this post »

I'll be honest; I know very little about Aston Villa's 3rd Round FA Cup opponent Bristol Rovers. I know that Nick Frost was wearing a Rovers shirt in Hot Fuzz, I know they just fired their manager and I know Ian Holloway spent 11 non-consecutive seasons playing there. They play in League Two and they've been members of the Football League since 1920 (though they've come close to relegation to Conference on a few occasions.) They presently sit 19th of 24 teams in League Two, and they've lost four consecutive league games by a combined score of 14-5. They're a bad team even within the context of the fourth tier of English football, in other words. And that's about all I know of them.

But with all respect due to Rovers and their fans (who have a reputation as some of the most loyal and exuberant in England) that's probably more than any of us need to know in order to form our expectations. This team is, in every sense of the word, a minnow and though Villa aren't exactly giants at the moment a failure to advance here would be a pretty massive embarrassment. Even the most pessimistic of Villa fans (and good lord are they out there) cannot realistically expect anything other than a comfortable victory, especially given Alex McLeish stating that he would be bringing a full-strength side to Memorial Stadium. That doesn't mean we're going to see a fully first-choice staring XI, but it does mean we'll be seeing numerous first-choice players and several others that have spent a fair amount of time on the pitch.

Continue reading this post »