Villa’s plus points

Saturday, 08/10/2011

by Steven Green, Shoot's Aston Villa blogger

Well I know I signed off last week with the promise of more moaning but shock horror; I’m not going to do any… this week.
The game last week against Wigan showed that we really can play now we’ve dropped the 4-2-3-1 formation. It still wasn’t an orthodox 4-4-2 but three glaring positives emerged from the victory.

1.     Barry Bannan can thrive in a diamond formation - Once again the diminutive Scot pulled the strings in the middle. He showed the he was comfortable against QPR but this time out he had more freedom to cause havoc with the opposition defence.

2.     Gabby and Bent can play together – Both scored terrific goals and looked more menacing as the game wore on. Gabby still continuing his fine form scored another contender for goal of the month and created Bent’s goal with a delightful floated cross.

3.     The defence is solid – Even though we won 2-0 Wigan played a great passing game and had their moments. With Shay Given in goal and the ‘four nations’ defence in front of him you know that they’ll be full of grit and put everything behind the ball. There surely won’t be a repeat of last year comical efforts.

We’ve been waiting weeks for something to click into place, we witnessed the false dawn against Blackburn and so many near misses since.

No disrespect to Wigan but we should have won that game, even though we haven’t managed to beat them on home turf since they joined the Premier League.

Of course though, the real test comes next week away to Manchester City. Most will be expecting a heavy defeat but with the same core of players from last season they’ll be looking to set the record straight after ‘FA cup-gate’.

It’s a shame Gabby wasn’t able to join up with the England squad this week, his form has been nothing short of incredible so far and he’s certainly justified himself, hopefully he can continue over the season and book his seat on the flight to Ukraine & Poland next summer.

On a final note, there has been mixed messages coming from the Villa board this week. Plans to renovate the North stand have been scrapped but an insider on twitter was told that McLeish would have some money to spend in January.

Classic Villa huh? Still playing their cards close to their chests, I for one will be looking forward to the latest developments.

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