http://astonVilla.blogFootball.com/CaptainVulture/ en-us Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:00:00 GMT Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:43:09 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss UserLand Frontier v9.1b4 rssUpdates mark.smith@pgen.com (Mark Smith) mark.smith@pgen.com (Mark Smith) Quick note on the manyoo cup loss. Absorbing game and the defence were v.good – until the goal and then all 4 were culpable to some extent. Davies for a poor pass. Mellberg for not dealing with it. Laursen (maybe) for not anticipating the low ball across the box and Bouma for losing Ronaldo. Carew clearly wasn’t fit (otherwise that ‘tight’ plan might have worked) and the difference in the end was them bring on Rooney and us having Luke Moore come on. Not the first time a manyoo sub has turned a cup tie at VP. The Reading game was a lot easier. Looks like all their 6ft+ centre-halves were either injured or off to the African Nations cup. And with our effectiveness at set-pieces it was a pretty inevitable outcome. Rennie (ref) did his best to spoil it with his attention-seeking antics, but, as usual, we didn’t come out of it, too badly. First goal was perhaps offside and the second came from a corner which was clearly a goal-kick – balanced by a missed pen, missed red card for their keeper and a wrongly disallowed ‘offside’ goal. And the worst interpretation of the advantage rules I’ve ever seen. Carson: Made a few decent saves. A couple of nervy juggles, too. I still can’t see a &#163;10M goalie.<br> Gardner: They didn’t play an out-and-out left winger, which quite suited him. Did well at the back.<br> Bouma: Looked fairly solid, but the least effective of the back 4.<br> Davies: Very good. Hardly noticed him – which is exactly whay tou want from your mopping up player. Couple of crunching interventions when required<br> Laursen: Clearly enjoying his ‘attack every ball’ role.<br> Reo-Coker: Effective at beaking up play (his main job), less effective in possession (his 2nd job)<br> Barry: Not his absolute best game, but good enough.<br> Petrov: OK, the rest of the team are adapting to the ‘narrow right’ formation, but it’s a bit limiting<br> Young: A few over-elaborate ‘beat the same player 3 times’ efforts, but great tracking back and excellent set-pieces<br> Agbonlahor: Dealt pretty well with man-marking (UDLC), but looks a bit jaded. Unslefish pullback for goal #3 and the ‘offside’ predecessor<br> Carew: The manyoo game was too soon after his injury. Too powerful for Reading’s midget centrebacks<br> For Reading - Doyle didn’t impress, but Hunt looked lively. They were very ordinary, and made a big mistake in trying to defend (with no big defenders) rather than use their attacking strengths.