Aston Villa Blog

Tonight’s game at Ewood Park is an incredibly important one for both teams. Blackburn see the Carling Cup as an excellent opportunity to improve on a currently dismal season, while Villa are looking to establish themselves among the Premier League’s best and win their first trophy for 14 years.
The postponement of the fixture last week [...]

While there will surely be changes made to the starting 11 in both teams’ next meeting, the outcome of this game was always interesting to note ahead of the upcoming Carling Cup semi final.
Martin O’Neill and Sam Allardyce made seven and nine changes respectively from their previous fixtures. Rare starts were given to Habib Beye, Fabian Delph [...]

Fans will soon be getting sick of this fixture; today’s game is the first of three meetings between these two sides within January, the other two making up the Carling Cup semi final. And, while the FA Cup remains an important competition, both teams will undoubtedly have an eye on the first leg of the Carling Cup on [...]

Cast your mind back to September 8th, 2001 – the last time Aston Villa beat Liverpool on their own turf. Dion Dublin’s header was cancelled out by Steven Gerrard, the midfielder sent off later on for a malicious tackle on George Boateng, but goals from Lee Hendrie and Darius Vassell ensured a 3-1 victory.
And so [...]

A lot can happen in a couple of weeks. Peace Cup champions, victories against three Champions League regulars, and two new additions to the squad. There are not many better ways to prepare for the new season. Confidence is rocketing at the moment down at Villa Park, and with a few more quality signings, there [...]

After the retirement of Martin Laursen and a series of costly defensive errors during last season, most Villa fans would have assumed that at least one new central defender would be top of Martin O’Neill’s summer shopping list.
Instead, our sole signing so far is a midfielder injured until December, and the squad has now lost [...]

After losing to Malaga earlier in the competition, Villa were given a lifeline going into their match against Atlante, after the Mexican side beat Malaga 3-1. All that was required to continue into the semi-final was to win by two clear goals.
However, judging by the first 45 minutes of the game, this wasn’t going to be the [...]

Paul Brown and Jack Woodward’s ‘Bullring to Bullring’ expedition ended yesterday, providing the fans with a first glimpse of the home kit for the upcoming 2009/10 season.
The club’s journalists were set the challenge of driving from Birmingham – setting off at 7am on 21st July – all the way to the team’s training camp in Malaga, where they [...]

Two goals in under 10 minutes earned Villa a 2-2 draw with an impressive Colchester United side, who provided a tough test to a claret and blue 11 made up of a number of senior players.
Friedel started in goal, behind a first team defence of Cuellar, Knight, Davies and Shorey. With Albrighton, Reo-Coker, Sidwell, Osbourne and [...]

…there’s finally been some action on the transfer front. Stewart Downing has officially joined from Middlesbrough for a fee £12million, becoming Martin O’Neill’s first signing of the summer and fuelling the hopes of even the most pessimistic Villa fans that there will be an influx of good quality signings to follow.
In Downing we have a potentially excellent [...]