Please Stand Everyone, I Give You Mr Shortland
Hurrah, Shortland is back, and now he's syndicated. Yes, that's right. As I still have no internet access, CT has selflessly offered to post my musings for me. Cheers mate. I feel like a proper journalist now, submitting my reports for someone else to print. Cool. I suppose an update is in order. The last time I blogged, we hadn't signed anyone, and the coming season was looking as gloomy as the last. Now, six weeks on, we've made two signings, and things could be looking up. With no internet access, I've kind of lost touch with the whole thing a Villa. No blogs read to gauge opinion, no Sky, and of course no press down here in London, so I'm out on a limb on my views at the moment. Hopefully though, I still sound like I know what's going on in B6. The first glimmer of promise was the trip to Scandinavia. from all accounts, this was pretty promising, with good team performances, and getting a few results. Even McCann scored, more on him later though. Then came the Walsall debacle, with Merse scoring the winner, and Hendrie throwing his toys out the pram. from all accounts it's because some of the Villa lot were calling him a Bluenose. Now OK, maybe that was wrong, but the guy should be able to handle a small section of the crowd barracking him. For gods sake, I've been at VP when he's had stick, and he's coped, so why lose it at the Bescot? Surely it's not because the crowd are nearer? He was wrong for reacting to it. the best way to shut them up is to perform well. They can't get on the back of him then. Then we walloped Scunthorpe (was it?) 5-0 and suddenly it looked like things had turned. to be honest, if we hadn't have walloped them, then this would have had a completely different tone, but as it was, 5-0 was quite acceptable. The last weekend, we won our first bit of silverware for the season. The Dublin Tournament saw us drawing with Leeds, and beating St Pats. Have Leeds improved on last season? I hope so, otherwise 2-2 sounds a bit of a worry for the season. If we can only draw against Leeds, then what hope against the rest of them? The end of the day though, we won, and went though to face St Pats. And Angel scored, and everyone rejoiced. And again, and Allback got a couple. Fantastic. Overall, I'm reasonably optimistic for the season. With only a few days to go, it seems like O'Leary has done half the job already - we're playing like a team again. Even Alpay has been given a second chance, which in my opinion is good. I didn't like what he did after the World Cup, and was quite rightly punished for it, but now with a top class defender, cus that's what he is, with Olaf beside him, Samuel on the right, and a choice on the left - I'd take Delaney, but Edwards proved last season he is almost as good. Up front we seem to be scoring goals, already a vast improvement on last year, but it still seems a bit weak in the midfield. Gavin McCann has been bought in, but surely he's no better than who we have already. Sorenson has come in as well, and from all accounts played reasonably well. But the fact is we bought them from the bottom club last year. What caused Sunderland to go down in the first place? 1 - Not enough goals. These are created in midfield, where does McCann play I wonder? Oh yeah, midfield. 2 - Let in too many goals. Who was in goal? Sorenson. However, they need to be given a chance to win the fans over, and hopefully they can do that. So all in all, with just a few days to go until 12-30 on Saturday, hopefully we can be the first leaders of the Premiership. Thank god football is back. All I need now is a PC with net access.......
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