To be a Villa fan - a quick postscript

Conceding four goals at home tells one story, but that's not the one those in replica claret and blue will be taking home from Villa Park - or even just watching on the box - tonight.
A central midfield of James Milner and Stiliyan Petrov was proven to be defensively lightweight during a difficult first twenty minutes, but, with that attacking six on the pitch, it was only a matter of time until the home side got on the scoresheet - and then they scored six.

Martin O'Neill's side has a brilliant combination of discipline and youthful exuberance. A growing maturity was displayed when they used their man advantage to play keep-ball early in the second half, before the tie had gone away from Blackburn. They kept their heads after conceding two within the first 15. The boys know the jobs they've got to do, but they've also been given the freedom to go out and express themselves, with all their abundant athleticism. Milner, Young, Downing, Agbonlahor are always willing to take their man on.

Ashley Young's last-minute sixth provided the story I will remember. The corner flag was gaping; it seemed an obvious choice, into injury time with a two-goal aggregate advantage; run the clock down and you're in the cup final. It didn't cross his mind. He drove towards goal from the left-hand-side, curling the ball home from the edge of the area. Villa Park was alive.

Spot the difference

He's got his own - increasingly successful - company.

He's just about to get the sack.

It's all in the smile?
(I got into work early, thought I'd make good use of my time)

To be a Villa fan

When the first-half goal that put Aston Villa firmly in charge of their Carling Cup semi-final tie with Blackburn nestled in the back of the net, four players embraced by the corner flag. James Milner, Stewart Downing, Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor are the scintillating young Englishmen who form the arrow in Martin O’Neill’s well-shaped bow.

The goal was typical Villa, a brilliant but brutal breakaway starting on the edge of their own area. Downing to Milner, Milner galloping over the halfway line, out to Downing, back to Milner, and into the net.

I’ll start with Gabby Agbonlahor though. The Villa Academy graduate has 8 league goals so far this term, including the winner at Old Trafford. He added a greater physical presence to blistering pace over the summer, and so was able to be deployed by O’Neill as a lone front-man early in the season. He’s normally up top with Heskey or Carew nowadays though.

Into the midfield, and Ashley Young, who moved from Watford in January 2007. ‘Is he really worth £9 million?’ many asked of O’Neill. The 2008-09 PFA Young Player of the Year can shape a cross like David Beckham, but has got pace to go with it.

Young now interchanges wings with Stewart Downing, who has finally got up and running after his signing from relegated Middlesbrough in the summer of 2009. ‘Why sign him when you’ve already got Young and Milner?’

O’Neill has given Milner his head in the centre of the park, and been rewarded by a series of fine goal-scoring displays from the tireless, intelligent former Leeds and Newcastle man. A one-time youngest ever Premier League player, he’s ready to fulfil great potential.

Rounding off a four-man midfield of some intent is captain Stiliyan Petrov, a manager’s favourite from his spell at Celtic. He’s hardly a holding man. Very few Premier League sides play with two in the middle anymore, let alone those two. But whilst ‘on their day’ they have shown they can overrun the best, being soft in the centre has resulted in defeats against lowlier sides Wigan, Blackburn and West Ham.

With Heskey and Stephen Warnock – part of O’Neill’s rebuilt defence – also pushing for places, it could be a Villa-dominated squad going to South Africa.

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So it turns out Fabio Capello is superstitious after all. The England boss has banned his players from making a World Cup song, the first time there will be no official supporters’ chant since 1966.

No, no, no. The Italian has stopped the players making a rival ‘Three Lions’ or ‘World in motion’, because putting together a song adds to the whole ‘isn’t this an exciting adventure?’ feeling around an England party at an international tournament. This summer, Capello’s boys have got a job to do.

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It’s not exactly the fashionable thing to say, but referees and their assistants are bloody excellent. Yes, we all like a good moan on a Saturday evening, but, for the vast majority of the time, in the vast majority of the millions of decisions made every weekend up and down the country, they get it spot on. And that’s despite refereeing officials, the media and fans scrutinising their every move, players conning them and, possibly worst of all, managers lambasting them in every press conference.

Two key decisions in the two FA Cup third-round games played between Liverpool and Reading highlight this. In the replay, won 2-1 after extra-time by the Championship side, Reading were awarded an injury-time penalty after Yossi Benayoun inexplicably fouled Shane Long. Contact was minimal, Long went down softly. In this instance, technology can be of no help. There was no right and wrong decision, and yet Phil Dowd still got it right in pointing to the spot. As Reading’s caretaker boss Brian McDermott said, it wasn’t a ‘brave’ decision – in the last minute, at Anfield – but just a good one.

In the first game, at the Madejski, Liverpool’s equaliser was scored by captain Steven Gerrard, whose 36th-minute cross went all the way in past Adam Federici, its intended target, Dirk Kuyt, cleverly letting the ball go under his foot. Kuyt was five yards clear of the defence by the time the ball arrived, and certainly interfering with play. The linesman had a decision to make, or, in fact, he’d already made it. When the ball was played, Kuyt was a body-width onside, and thus the linesman kept his flag down. The linesman’s job is actually an impossible one, as he is not able to look in two places at the same time, and so know what’s happening ‘along the line’ as the ball is played. But he gets it right anyway.

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First game of the season, Paul Lambert’s Colchester beat Norwich 7-1, at Carrow Road. Lambert made the switch from Essex to Suffolk soon afterwards, and when his Canaries returned to the Weston Homes Community Stadium this afternoon, they won 5-0. Not a bad turnaround.

Burnley's new boss

Owen Coyle’s decision to turn down the chance to manage his childhood club Celtic, and quadruple his Burnley salary, before accepting the top job at struggling Bolton six months later provides nothing less than a damning reflection on the state of Scottish football. But I’m not going to dwell on that.

As Clarets fans continue to spit vile towards south Lancashire, their chairman, Barry Kilby, has reportedly drawn up a four-man candidate list for the Turf Moor post. Eyebrows have been raised; those names might not look like a statement of intent. It makes fascinating reading.

Leading the pack is Brian Laws, who started his playing career with Burnley back in 1979, and left Sheffield Wednesday by mutual consent a month ago. He began his managerial career at Grimsby, and nine years at Scunthorpe included two promotions.

Next up is Sean O’Driscoll, who ended 23 years as a player, coach and then manager at Bournemouth with a move to Doncaster in 2006. The 2007 Football League Trophy and promotion to the Championship during his first full season in charge followed. Expansive football on a low budget can’t be far off the perfect fit for Burnley.

Leeds United manager Simon Grayson’s stock has risen since he masterminded the famous FA Cup Third Round defeat of Manchester United, but he takes his place on Kilby’s shortlist thanks also to guiding Blackpool to League 1 promotion in 2007 in his first manager’s job.

Lee Clark, who has taken his Huddersfield side into the League 1 playoff positions since he arrived at the Galpharm Stadium in December 2008, is also in with a shout. The gritty former Fulham midfielder was previously first team coach and reserve manager at Newcastle, and Glenn Roeder’s assistant at Norwich.


Just last week, the former executive director of the FA, David Davies, presented a 90-minute show on 5 Live entitled ‘A Lost Generation of English managers.’ Terry Venables and Tony Adams joined him to consider primarily the absence of English names in the ‘Big Four’ hotseats and a shortage of home-grown candidates for the England job when Fabio Capello steps aside.

If it was up-and-coming English managers they were after, they were looking in the wrong place. Why should England international players make great managers? The demands of the jobs are completely divergent.

Tony Adams was a suitable choice as guest. The former England skipper was given the Wycombe job in November 2003, resigning after relegation a year later. Yet when Harry Redknapp walked out on Portsmouth in October 2008, Adams was handed the reins of a Premier League club. 10 points from 16 games told its own story, Adams gone and Joe Hart to the rescue to keep them in the division. The failure of another former England captain, Alan Shearer, to keep Newcastle up showed that even the weight of a Geordie army is not enough to turn a novice into a managerial genius. But Barry Kilby is not Mike Ashley, none of it’s for show.

Burnley’s shortlist is hugely refreshing, prioritising as it does managerial success over a name. All four candidates have built strong CVs that are management – rather than playing-days heavy, making the most of their chances, not being afraid to drop down the divisions to learn their trade. Coyle of course was a virtual unknown when he was given the Burnley job in 2007, ironically recommended to Burnley by Bolton chairman Phil Gartside after successful spells up in Scotland with Airdrie, Falkirk and St Johnstone.

The four contenders all had solid yet unspectacular playing careers. Sean O’Driscoll is the oldest at 52; Clark is just 37, Grayson 40. Although he was capped for the Republic of Ireland, O’Driscoll was English-born. The others are all English. While Grayson at Leeds – who will always be news, whatever division they’re in, Laws at Wednesday and Clark as a top-level professional in the Premiership era have experience in dealing with media scrutiny, O’Driscoll, a reserved man, is less accustomed to the spotlight. An increasingly significant part of the job, this is the one area where the former big-name player has the edge.

O’Driscoll provides further interest as another to graduate from the Brian Clough school, of which Martin O’Neill is the chief alumnus. O’Driscoll played under Clough – who actively acknowledged the influence of his own teacher, Sunderland boss Alan Brown in his autobiography – at Forest between 1988 and 1993. The Sir Alex Ferguson apprenticeship has provided a great number of young managers in recent years. Bryan Robson and more recently Paul Ince and Mark Hughes have shown promise but not had things all their own way, but Alex McLeish has come into his own at Birmingham and Sunderland boss Steve Bruce remains a top English prospect. Another Englishman with a bright future is Steve Clarke, a top-tier professional but far from a star. The former Chelsea man, heralded for his defensive organisation in particular, is Gianfranco Zola’s assistant at West Ham.

Pep Guardiola’s spectacular success with Barcelona must be the exception to the rule that it doesn’t require a great player to make a great manager. If only more followed Burnley’s example and recognised hard, and successful, graft as the key ingredient. But who will Kilby give a shot at the big-time to?

That Saturday morning feeling

Club colours around town, up the motorway with the club sticker in the back window, scarves and songs on the train, ‘who will he pick up top?’, ‘surely we can’t be as soft at the back as last week’.

Lights of the city suburbs on the way home, the darkness warmed by the voices of fans on the phone-in. ‘Did you see that? What a goal.’ ‘He’s got to go; it’s just not good enough.’ Watch it all again on the telly that night.


And FA Cup Third Round Saturday is no normal Saturday. English football’s finest day of the year, it’s 11 against 11, snowy pitches, so many stories…

Premier League vs non-league. Barrow have never reached the fourth round of the FA Cup, have never knocked out a Premier League club. Maybe today will be the day, Sunderland the victims.

York City still talk of their great day, when they Arsenal in the fourth round in 1985. Unbeaten in 11, the Minstermen go to Stoke, who haven’t scored in their last three. Surely not.

Reading haven’t got a manager, if they win this afternoon maybe Liverpool won’t have one either.

The fans finally forced Gary Megson out, so caretaker Chris Evans leads Bolton against Lincoln, 22nd in League Two.

Paul Ince back at MK Dons, but no tail between his legs. A big-time boy, a first chance to show them he’s not finished. Burnley don’t enjoy playing away, their afternoon won’t be an easy one.

Billy Davies played under Alex McLeish at Motherwell. Birmingham haven’t lost in 11, Forest in 16. Only one will play in the fourth round.

Pompey bottom of the league, an uncertain future. 2008 FA Cup glory seems a lifetime ago, Coventry won’t have any sympathy.

Three all-Premier League games, Villa and Blackburn will play again in the Carling Cup semi-final on Tuesday. But this is the FA Cup.

Seven all-Championship ties. Newcastle go on an 820-mile round trip to Plymouth.

Tomorrow is derby day. Hammers haven’t forgotten beating Arsenal in the 1980 final. United – Leeds, now two divisions apart, rivalry undimmed.

Some footy shorts...

I dunno if anyone’s ever said this after a keeper has conceded nine, but Chris Kirkland for England! The Wigan keeper – desperately unlucky to be attributed an own goal after Spurs’ eighth cannoned in off the post and the back of his head – somehow limited Spurs to just the one in the first half, and kept the score closer to ten than fifteen in the second. The Wigan players are personally refunding their travelling fans, but their keeper should not have to share in the embarrassment.
Kirkland’s only England cap came back in 2006, his family famously winning close to £10,000 after his father placed a bet that the young keeper would one day play for England when he was just 13. He’s since become the forgotten man of the England goalkeeper’s set-up. But with neither David James, Robert Green nor Ben Foster convincing when Capello asks them to step up and seize hold of the No.1 jersey, I might just put a little bet of my own on that the Wigan stopper will be on the plane to South Africa. One thing’s for sure, with that defence in front of him, he’ll be getting a lot of practice the next few months!

Jermain Defoe's five goals stole the headlines after Spurs’ drubbing of Wigan on Sunday, but his supply-man from the right wing deserves an equal share of the plaudits. As well as bagging the fifth himself, Aaron Lennon got a hat-trick of assists, displaying a mastery of the final ball which he so frustratingly lacked a year ago. Spurs’ fourth goal showed a telepathy between the pair: Lennon reached the by-line and delivered an inch-perfect cut-back, Defoe showing brilliant movement to dart from the back post to the front and sweep home on the volley into the near corner. Their irresistible in the white of Spurs, and yet put in relatively meek displays in the white of their national side. Forget what colour your boots are Jermain, why not try and send the boys out there wearing their Spurs shirts for England.
Except that, knowing our press – who have been the 2018 World Cup bid’s worst enemy in a way totally abhorrent to the bid rivals’ media – we’d be the ones that dob them in!

The self-fulfilling prophecy of Darren Fletcher:
The Scottish midfielder has gone from also-ran to main man in the United midfield, and it seems to me, all because of that red card in the Champions League semi-final. As Xavi, Iniesta and co. brushed United aside in Rome, both Red Devils’ fans and press commentators bemoaned tough-tackling Fletcher’s absence, forgetting that he was never exactly first name on the team-sheet. Except this year, he is, and delivering the kind of performances – and the kind of sumptuous half-volleys needed for any best-bits package – that will put him in the running for players’ prizes at the end of the season.
Thankfully, when we’re told that John O’Shea will one day emerge from the shadows to be one of Europe’s best defenders, we’ve always got this to fall back on, the quip that I saw filling many a billboard in America: ‘Economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions’.

Finally, the group stages of the Champions League seem worthwhile. And I don’t say that just to gloat at Liverpool’s elimination.
The 2005 winners travelled to Debrecen last night knowing that their qualification for the knockout stages of the premier club competition was not in their control. They did their bit, but Fiorentina’s defeat of Lyon taught Rafa Benitez a hard lesson - that no longer can an English side turn up to the group stages with comfortably short of their ‘A game’ and take qualification for granted.
Group F was the most fascinating, though, where, despite the presence of Barcelona and Inter Milan, it is the Russians Rubin Kazan - enjoying their first Champions League campaign – who held the cards going into the penultimate round of games. They handed Barcelona – and particularly Inter Milan, who went down 2-0 in the Nou Camp – a reprieve by failing to score at home to Dynamo Kyiv. As it stands, a victory for Jose Mourinho’s side in the San Siro in two weeks’ time will still ensure qualification. But, putting paid to the old excuses that Russian and Ukrainian teams will only cause problems to the big boys when they’re at home – factors such as weather and travel time making the east of the continent ‘a hard place to go’ - Rubin beat Barcelona in the Nou Camp last month. Interestingly, Group F is the only one where all four teams were domestic title winners.
Alongside Rubin and Dynamo – who may still qualify themselves – come CSKA Moscow, still in with a chance of making it out of Group B, and Romanian side Urinea Urziceni – managed by former Chelsea winger Dan Petrescu – sitting pretty in second place in Group G. Eastern Europe is having a strong season in the Champions League. Are the rest getting closer to the best? And, if the number of games played in Europe is eventually reduced – as it surely must be – will it be the third and fourth place teams from England, Italy, Spain who miss out, as opposed to the champions of ‘lesser’ footballing nations who are increasingly holding their own?
Of course, we’ll be oblivious to all of this, as ITV show the almost completely irrelevant Man United – Besiktas game this evening.

Blackburn midfielder David Dunn is a joy to watch – boundless energy, enthusiasm, a new-found defensive work ethic now he’s been given more responsibility as part of a central-midfield pairing, and fantastic ability on the ball in a charmingly loping, not-a-natural-athlete kind of a way. That is all.

'A replay would be a farce - I would have put my hand out'

Barack Obama has this evening called an emergency meeting with FIFA President Sepp Blatter to demand that France’s World Cup play-off victory over the Republic of Ireland be replayed.

No, not really. I wouldn’t be too surprised though, after a week in which a footballing debate has looked like boiling over into a major diplomatic situation. Irish PM Brian Cowan waded in, backing up the Football Association of Ireland’s (FIA) demands that the game be replayed. Thankfully, his counterpart Mr Sarkozy stayed well clear.

Yesterday, in Ipswich, Roy Keane added his penny’s worth as he has done so many times before. Asking the former Ireland captain of an FAI that had asked for the sympathy of the world is like leaving your four-year-old unattended in front of his Christmas presents. I haven’t seen footage of the interview, but I doubt he needed a second invitation to unleash another torment of spite.

This time though, I agree with Keano. A replay would be a farce, setting a terrifying precedent. Where would it stop?

It was easy to call for a replay after Henry’s handball, so closely connected to the scoring of the decisive goal, in extra-time of the decisive game for qualification for South Africa. The last time we saw the French captain’s bad side on the world stage was in the second round of the 2006 World Cup, when he went down clutching his face after receiving no contact from Carlos Puyol. A free-kick was awarded, which led directly to France’s second goal in a 3-1 win. So how about replaying that one?

I’ve thought about this quite a bit in the past – chain reaction within a football match. What if, when I receive the ball at left back in the third minute, I decide to pass precisely infield to the holding midfielder, and not, as is customary, lump it up the wing towards the striker? Every single event in that match would unfold differently thanks to that one decision.* So, what if there’s a mistaken refereeing decision in the opening minute… which leads to a free-kick to the blues, a throw in to the reds… and fifteen minutes later the goal that decides the trophy? Can you appeal that one?

Where, and when, would the replays stop? As I saw suggested yesterday, why not replay that match in… 1986, was it?, when that little Argentinean chap scored a goal with his hand? Great entertainment perhaps, just in seeing if that now slightly larger Argentinean chap can still run about, but ludicrous. You’ve got to play the game, accept it for what it is. FIFA - please FIFA don’t buckle – have got it right in refusing the replay this time.

So, if we aren’t going to give Ireland another go, what are we going to do to make sure the poor underdogs can’t be ‘cheated’ out of their dream by the big, bad World Cup veterans in the future?

Get the decisions right in the first place. Predictably, this latest high-profile incident has brought renewed calls for video refereeing technology, alongside the labelling of Thierry Henry as a ‘cheat’. I say no to both.

The Telegraph’s Henry Winter – and he is a long way from being alone – is of course paid to give us his opinion, but in calling for Henry ‘to be banned from playing in the World Cup’, he should have kept quiet.

Rather than ‘cheat’, the word I want to use for Henry is ‘human’. I believe that he handled the ball using little more than instinct, an urge that we all have to stop a ball that’s going past us, any way possible. If he did have just the split-second to think, then the striker chose goal over fair play. If he had time for perspective, then he chose to try and escape the scathing judgements of an expectant nation – and probably his manager’s job – over honesty. Who could blame him? I’ll put my hand up – or perhaps out – and say that I would have done it.

Like the referee and his assistants who missed the infringement, he got it wrong, made the wrong call. The human errors made by player and officials, although different, are inextricably linked.

Calls to turn the officials into robots are far from new, but, what about the player? We could turn him into someone who wouldn’t break the most fundamental rule of outfield football in order to assist and score goals, who wouldn’t dive or even ‘make the most of’ an opportunity to convince the referee he’d been fouled, who wouldn’t bend any rule in order to win, to fulfil his ambition, escape the pressures that demand victory and the fears of failure.

But then, he’d never yearn to feel what Marco Tardelli did**, he’d never be able to improvise, come up with the unfathomable like Ronaldinho did, never push himself beyond the edge of human exertion like Roy Keane did***, or, for that matter, come up with the unpredictable brilliance of Thierry Henry.

If we want to accept the best our, human, footballers have to give us, then we’ve got to accept the worst too. And Mr Henry’s actions on Wednesday night were an awful long way from the worst.

* Of course, it goes on from there outside the game – what if Mark Robins hadn’t scored that goal to save Fergie’s job in January 1990?

** My favourite goal celebration of all time - Tardelli scores for Italy in the 1982 World Cup Final and runs back shouting his own name, like a child living out his dreams

*** Fergie's comments on Roy Keane's heroic performance against Juventus in the 1999 Champions League semi-final:
"It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him. I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player."