Dave Woodhall on Villa’s week.
Two games, one point. That was Villa’s week, but it could have been much better. Queens Park Rangers on a bitterly cold Wednesday night attracted a surprisingly large crowd of over 32,000, partly explained by price reductions and a welcome decision to give away tickets to local schools for the rest of the season.
The poor kids might have been wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off doing detention for the first half hour as Villa’s cataclysmic defending plummeted new depths, culminating in Marco van Warnock’s clinical strike to put Rangers two up. Then, for some reason, Villa started to play football. Their best of the season, in fact. Darren Bent pulled a goal back on half-time and the second 45 was target practice. With more luck in front of goal and the sort of referee Manchester United relied on at the weekend they would have rattled up a higher score than the England cricket team, but had to settle for one more goal and a share of the points.
Off to Newcastle, and another lesson in frustration. Villa played well in the first half and got a deserved equaliser but fell apart after the break, not helped by a couple of strange substitutions which saw Ireland and N’Zogbia replaced by Bannan and Heskey. Another Cisse, another debut, another goal. Their keeper was much busier than Shay Given, but it was our man who had to pick the ball out of the back of the net.
The aftermath of the game saw all sorts of Twitter-inspired stories doing the rounds, most of them based around what Ireland supposedly said to Alex McLeish during the game and a tweet from N’Zogbia afterwards. Anyone who reads anything at all into a player swearing at his manager in the heat of the moment couldn’t have been watching Villa in the heyday of Tony Morley and Ron Saunders. Stan Collymore then leapt in with a story about how the players have been showing dissent – and when it comes to dressing room friction he should know. It’s annoying that yet again, unverified stories are being blown out of all proportion and treated as Gospel. It’s also annoying that every defeat is regarded as a disaster.
Newcastle are a better team than us at the moment. They’re on a high and everything is going for them, yet we matched them in most areas of the pitch. There’s a decent team in there given the chance.
