This may have been the least enjoyable match I have ever seen Aston Villa play. At no point did it appear as though Villa had the least bit of interest in winning this game, and despite there being nearly half an hour left when Manchester City took the lead Villa didn't show much interest in getting an equalizer until it was far too late. There was at least a point for the taking in this game, as this was far from City's best side and they never really looked to be in rhythm, but you've got to get out of your own half a time or two before you can score a goal. The visitors had to sweat a bit at the end, but it's a lot easier to deal with a five minute onslaught with a lead than it is to fend off the opposition for a full game, and City were equal to it.

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In any loss, you can point to a moment or two of poor play and brush aside any claims that the effort was good enough to deserve better; that was certainly the case today, be it Demba Ba left unmarked by Carlos Cuellar in front of goal or Richard Dunne whiffing a chance to clear and letting the ball fall to Papiss Demba Cisse. Two goals that could have been prevented, and it turned out to be all that the home side needed to take three points. But you could find moments like that in every game for either side, and ultimately Villa's efforts today deserved more. This was a very frustrating loss on the heels of a very frustrating draw, but it was frustrating in large part because it took two tremendous individual efforts from Newcastle strikers to nullify a strong performance from a severely weakened Villa side.

Villa yet again came out playing a very high-pressure style early on, sitting medium-deep in defense and looking to force errors and spring counter-attacks in midfield. It's something they've been doing for a little while now, (especially playing away) and I'm a big fan of the approach; it's not something you'd want to do for 90 minutes with this personnel, but it's been successful in throwing the opposition off of their game and keeping them from controlling the pace early on. It kept Newcastle from getting into any sort of rhythm in the attack, but Villa wasn't able to get much going early on in their own right and the result was a quarter-hour or so of fast-paced, chaotic pinball more or less. Eventually things settled down a but and Villa ended up in control of things for the most part, but the home side's superb defense ensured keeper Tim Krul didn't have much to worry about.

Newcastle then illustrated why they're generally content to settle back and let the opposition hang onto the ball for a bit when they unleashed a flurry of counter-attacking play that instantly changed the mood of the game. Demba Ba's acrobatic finish of a deflected Ryan Taylor effort (during the course of which the winger appeared to sustain a serious leg injury) gave the home side a lead that seemed miles away just a few minutes prior, and Newcastle would continue to threaten for the remainder of the half. The roles reversed pretty quickly, but the Villa defense never looked as comfortable with the hatches battened down as Newcastle's did, and the Toon were very close to grabbing a second and effectively killing the game off before the interval despite Villa having a fairly strong first half-hour.

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If all you know about this game is the score, you're missing a whole lot of information. Queens Park Ranger's first goal came after a fairly harmless shot was blocked, falling right to Djibril Cisse. Their second came when Stephen Warnock headed a completely harmless cross past Shay Given to score one of the worst own goals in the history of own goals. Neither moment was particularly flattering for the Aston Villa defense, but 99 times out of a hundred neither of those end up being goals. For a total of about five seconds in a game that went on for 95 minutes, things went right for QPR. And as frustrating as it was to get only a point from this game, especially seeing as how it was down almost entirely to mental errors, there's a whole lot to be excited about.

Villa had 70% of the possession, something I would never expect to see, not even in my wildest dreams. And this wasn't an instance of Villa dominating possession and doing nothing with it, either. 23 shots, 15 of them on target. QPR spent the vast majority of the afternoon pinned back in their own area. There were three legitimate claims for hand ball in the area, one of which was absolutely undeniably a penalty that was not awarded. Tactically, Alex McLeish got absolutely everything right. In the attack, the players were tremendous. If not for two defensive blunders, this would have been a convincing win, a statement almost. But those defensive blunders happened, and this is less of a pattern now than a theme. Something has to change.

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Well that sucked.

Actually, the first half was awesome. The second half sucked.

Despite Arsenal bossing the game early, two goals before halftime, from Richard Dunne and Darren Bent, had Villa fans dreaming about a deep Cup run.

Some horrific defending early in the second half killed those dreams, then dug up the body and killed it more.

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There's really no other way to put it; this was the weirdest game of the season. A penalty for Villa; a penalty that never was for Wolves; what appeared to be a serious injury for Emmanuel Frimpong; a sending off for Wolves; and two of the most lovely goals you'll ever see courtesy of on-loan striker Robbie Keane. At the end of an excruciating eight minutes of stoppage time, Villa had somehow managed to hang on to a 3-2 lead and claimed a fairly massive three points, boosting them to 11th in the table and closing out the month's Premier League slate on a high note.

Villa came out trying to force it down Wolves throat, and it worked; Villa went ahead 1-0 in the 11th minute after Darren Bent converted a penalty, one which was awarded under fairly bizarre circumstances. Christopher Berra dawdled on the ball at the edge of his box, giving Bent time to run up on the ball from behind. When Berra went to make the clearance, he was likely quite surprised to see Bent's leg where the ball should have been, sending the Villa striker tumbling and the referee to point to the spot. I can safely say I've never seen a penalty awarded without the defender ever technically losing possession of a non-moving ball, but as weird as it may have been it was every bit a legitimate penalty. Unfortunately for Wolves, so was James Collins' challenge against David Edwards which occurred just two minutes later and went un-called.

Shortly after the non-penalty call, Wolves began to boss things. Ciaran Clark got the start at left back today, and Michael Kightly made the first 45 minutes of his afternoon a living hell as he torched the young defender time and again. It was Kightly that got the equalizer in the 21st minute, latching onto a great cross-field ball from Frimpong, leaving Clark flat-footed with some nifty footwork and finishing past Shay Given. Wolves continued to boss things, the frantic pace of the game leading to a lot of disorganized play and cheap giveaways from Villa. Almost exactly ten minutes after the first goal Roger Johnson headed Kightly's excellent corner to an unmarked David Edwards in the center of the box who left Given with no chance. Wolves didn't stop, and when the whistle blew to end the first half it was more than a slight relief to see that the score had stayed 2-1.

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This morning, as is usually my routine on matchdays, I woke up around 8:30, drove my wife to work, came home, made breakfast and watched Aston Villa. Some days, I kind of wish I'd found out the score by accident. Today was one of those days. That's not to say this was a bad result; it's good to stop the losing skid at home, and the team's performance today reinforced some beliefs about their struggles I've developed recently which I've hoping to write about soon, but suffice to say I think confidence is the overwhelming factor in every Villa performance (good or bad.) I'm not unhappy, it's just that save for a few moments of real brilliance (Donovan's ball to Anichebe, a few very clever touches and moves by Ireland) this was just a dreadfully boring game with Villa being far from alone in their culpability.

With that said, I present to you a non-comprehensive lists of things I would have likely found more enjoyable (or at least a better use of my time) than this game.

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It wasn't the gaudy scoreline I may have been hoping for, but Aston Villa were well and truly in control of Bristol Rovers for 90 minutes and never really got out of first gear in defeating the struggling League Two side 3-1. It would have been 3-0 if not for a careless Richard Dunne back pass that was intercepted and finished by Rovers striker Scott McGleish far too late for it to matter. Villa's goals were provided by Marc Albrighton, Gabby Agbonlahor and Ciaran Clark with all three the result of some horrendous defending by the home side and nice skill by the scorers. Albrighton's in particular was the result of a nice team move that saw the young winger latch onto an inch-perfect through ball from Stiliyan Petrov to put Villa on top just before half. Agbonlahor, who came on at the start of the second half as a substitute for Emile Heskey, used his speed and dribbling skill on a run through seemingly half of Bristol's defense before finishing low from outside the box. Clark took a pass near the halfway line, was met with no pressure at all and decided to give it a go, using some nice footwork to find space just outside the box and curl a shot past Rovers keeper Michael Poke.

It was evident pretty early on that the pitch was an absolute mess. With that in mind Villa came out playing some very direct football, forcing the home side very deep and giving themselves the space in which to play a bit more of a patient, possession based game for the final two-thirds of the game. On a different day on a less terrifying pitch we might have seen a bit more attacking ambition from Villa, but it was established rather early that Rovers weren't going to be doing much in the way of threatening goal and the visitors were more than content to knock the ball around casually and wait for openings. When they came Villa did a decent job of capitalizing, and with some better finishing it could have been an uglier final score.

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Just two days after the best performance we've seen from them in years, Aston Villa promptly nuked every single positive feeling lingering from the away win against Chelsea by putting on a stunningly incompetent display and handing Swansea City their first top-flight away win since 1982. The visitors took the lead in the 4th minute after Stephen Warnock all but put the ball in the net himself, passing back to no one and letting Nathan Dyer run right past him into space (which would become a theme) before finishing past Brad Guzan. Swansea put the game out of reach just after the start of the second half, Wayne Routledge capitalizing on a poor clearance and far poorer positioning from Brad Guzan to double Swansea's lead in the 47th minute. Villa looked up for it until the second goal, but at that point the deflation was evident and the rest of the way saw sloppy passing, aimless crosses into a box packed densely with white-shirted visitors and the increasingly audible roars of disapproval from the Villa Park faithful.

There's plenty of blame to go around in this one; Stephen Warnock was heroically good against Chelsea, but his performance today was so poor it could have easily led to several more Swansea goals. Brad Guzan had to this point doing brilliantly in relief of the injured Shay Given, but he really could have done better on the first goal and the second was largely his responsibility. Charles N'Zogbia and Stephen Ireland both started well, but Ireland looked gassed before the hour mark and was nearly invisible by the time he was withdrawn while N'Zogbia's frustration became pretty clear as the game wore on and his effectiveness suffered as a result. Gabby Agbonlahor had what was probably his poorest game of the season and Darren Bent got quite a few touches today and did absolutely nothing with them, more often than not losing possession almost immediately. The fans seemed to turn their ire towards Alex McLeish, and when Ireland was withdrawn the excruciating "You don't know what you're doing" refrain made it's first (at least that I have noticed) appearance of the season, despite the fact that Ireland looked ready to fall over dead at any given moment and hadn't done anything positive in nearly half an hour. McLeish is certainly deserving of some blame, but the performances from so many players were so unbelievably bad that I'm not exactly sure what else he really could have done once the game began save for bringing on Barry Bannan a bit earlier; the game plan was what I think everyone wants to see more of, and before everything went to hell I was actually quite pleased with the tactics. This was just a terrible performance by a team from which more should be expected.

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