A Blog For Aston Villa Fans

The activity of Joe Allen in Liverpool's midfield has been a wonderful sight, and one of the club's best midfielders of all time has taken notice, as Jan Molby praised the early displays of the young Welshman: "What Allen does above anything else, and it's Barcelona-like, is he moves the ball so quickly. At no stage does he indulge himself and think, 'I'll do a little bit for myself'. With Joe it's always about doing his bit for the team...it's about moving the ball to the next player as quickly as he can and then always making himself available." With Steven Gerrard struggling for form and Lucas out for a couple more months, Allen's going to be the foundation in Liverpool's midfield, so we'll remain hopeful that he can continue to produce in the manner that Molby highlights here.

With midfield reinforcements of greater quality and fit arriving this summer, an exit for Charlie Adam has seemingly been on the cards for a while. Most of the talk previously centered on a player swap deal with Fulham to bring Clint Dempsey to Anfield, but that proved to either be untrue or something that simply couldn't be worked out. So at risk of running something else that might not be true or can't be worked out, Ben Smith of the BBC is reporting that Tony Pulis and Stoke City have tabled an offer to bring the Scottish international aboard. Also included is talk of a loan deal for Jay Spearing and renewed interest in Clint Dempsey, which would be boosted by the money Adam's sale would raise. Basically Friday's going to be really boring.

Liverpool was found to have pursued a cross-heavy game last season in the league, which proved ineffective. A very interesting statistical analysis by user WillTGM from EPLindex, as well as very interesting finds. While many football theorists have often stated that crossing is inefficient, not only did LFC pursue this way of playing, but we were terrible at it. Using the ratio of passes in the attacking half to crossing, Liverpool were one of the teams that passed the least in the attacking half before crossing, with only 14 passes per cross. Arsenal in comparison had 19, Man City with 21. Only Sunderland Wolves and Stoke, unsurprisingly passed less before crossing. Shockingly, Liverpool were the worst in the league at scoring from crosses, needing more than 400 crosses to score a goal. Norwich and Man Utd needed less than 50. Most teams hovered about a hundred. Brendan Rodger's Swansea had about 19 passes in the attacking half per cross though, so our problems may be somewhat at an end, though this might go some way into explaining our troubles last season.

There have been rumblings about the future of Liverpool big man Andy Carroll since Brendan Rodgers has taken over at the Merseyside club. Rodgers has plans for Liverpool that don't involve a player like Carroll but apparently Aston Villa's new boss Paul Lambert thinks he'd be a great fit in Birmingham. Could Villa look to bring on Carroll in some kind of season long loan? Would a team of Darren Bent and Andy Carroll work for you? Let us know what you think.

Check it out.