Merry Christmas Everyone

I know I am..I'm sure I am....

Unbeaten in five games? Five points from three games in ten days including two tricky aways? It's all good isn't it?

Isn't it?

Not really.

The fact is, in recent games we've been absolutely dire to watch. Indeed for vast tracts of the “unbeaten run” there's been nothing to watch at all. We hardly keep the ball long enough to create anything in the way of entertainment.

Some people seem to think this is fine and dandy as long as the results go our way. They do. Honest. Though you have to wonder whether their seats are actually facing the pitch. Football is supposed to be fun to watch. You are not supposed to spend the ninety minutes grinning inanely because the opposition (hello Mackems) is as woefully ineffective as you are.

We simply won't get away with letting the other team have the lion's share of possession forever and even if that were possible we'd be doing it in front of ever more dwindling crowds because frankly the level of performance served up at Villa Park this season has matched McLeish levels of dullness and ineptitude.

Paul Lambert describes nigh on every one of these performances with a bunch of superlatives. "We were outstanding” he enthused after the Southampton game. Paul, we were not outstanding. For vast periods of the game Southampton barely let us have a kick and we seemed incapable of doing anything about it. We won because we were brutally clinical when chances came our away, and because Brad Guzan was in sparkling form. On another day we'd have got thumped. Certainly we played better in the games against Spurs and Everton at Villa Park but didn't get anything.

I'm all for Mister Lambert staying positive and doing all he can to keep our players' confidence up but there has to be some relation between his flowery language and what is taking place on the pitch.

Are you really happy Villa pilgrim? Are you enjoying the fare served up at Villa Park? Were you so entertained by our Southampton performance that you didn't want the game to end or were you screaming at the ref to blow the whistle so we could creep back up the A34 with all three points, like a thief in the night?

A Southampton regular informs me that he was amazed that his team had managed to lose that game, citing it as one of their best performances of what has been a pretty remarkable start to the season. He felt mugged, just as Albion had done the week before. Even rock-bottom Sunderland boss Gus Poyet felt hard done by.

The issue is plain and simple and frustrating in the extreme. When in possession we don't seem to have a clue what to do with the ball. The defence are often reduced to passing the ball dangerously between themselves because there is too often zero movement from the midfield to ensure a safe forward pass is on.

Fabian Delph has been by far our most effective midfielder this season but his long awaited return from sick leave didn't instantly provide the instant fillip required in the middle of the park because he now seems shackled to the left, as a sort of pseudo-deputy left back, stationed to cover the positional inadequacies of Ciaran Clark or Tony Moon.

Form is also an issue. Matt Lowton has managed to lose his place to a bloke who a) is still getting used to the pace of the Premier League and b) isn't even a real right back while Benteke has lost his mojo and Andi Weimann has been a shadow of the player who consistently had us all out of our seats on a regular basis last season.

There was much cause for optimism in the summer, with Lambert's shiny new signings from across Europe giving us hope of a stronger squad and a brighter future. To a man, they've yet to settle.

Tonev's penchant for a pot shot as soon as he's within a nine iron of goal has become a standing joke amongst the Villa faithful while Nick Helenius seems to have disappeared completely. His rare appearance for the Under 21s as Fulham knocked them out of the cup asked more questions than it answered. Up and coming teeny-boppers Callum Robinson and Jordan Graham looked far more impressive.

Maybe I'm worrying over nothing. Maybe I should stop fretting about the quality of the performances. Maybe I should be more concerned about the points on the board, even if most of our current football is painful to watch.

There's a problem with that.

I am watching it.

And it is painful.

Movember

You can donate at : http://uk.movember.com/donate

Why BT getting into bed with UEFA could shaft us all

Not everyone is happy with BT

"Money is the root of all evil".

That could prove to be true if the new TV deal for UK coverage of the Champions League is anything to go by. Some people may think it's good for football that the best part of a billion pounds will come into the game.

They'd be wrong.

For a start, that billion pounds doesn't appear out of mid-air, it has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is more than likely going be YOUR wallet – whether you actually pay for your football coverage or not. Secondly, all that money goes to the elite clubs, the ones that are so awash with cash already that they pay obscene salaries and ludicrous transfer fees, making life even tougher for the cash strapped clubs lower down the food chain.

This massive influx of what will inevitably turn out to be YOUR cash, will do nothing to help beleaguered clubs struggling to stay in business or local community projects trying to get kids away from their games consoles and on to the pitch.

Let's look at some of the implications:

ITV

Do you know that there has never been as much live football available free-to-air as there is at the moment? This deal sees the end of that.

Adrian has bugger all left to do

ITV may not be everyone's cup of tea but they have invested in football in recent years and their Champions League coverage and Europa League coverage on ITV4 gives viewers the chance to see not only the top English teams but the cream of Europe live and without subscription.

This has not only been a good thing for viewers, but also for advertisers and UEFA's sponsors who've got maximum bang for their buck from a large mainstream audience. This coverage has also been to Sky's benefit over the years, with many viewers choosing to pay for Sky Sports to get more of the football they develop a taste for from the terrestrial offering.

ITV will lose the FA Cup as well as the European games thanks to BT Sport's land grab of sporting rights. They have retained the England games, but it is highly likely that quality of ITV's England offerings will start to fall if this is the only football they can offer. With less games, there's nowhere to amortise the costs.

There's no point them paying out the big bucks justified by covering several tournaments when they only have a few internationals to cover. A denigration in the quality of their product is all but inevitable.

Bad news for us viewers.

Sky

Those people living under the delusion that their bill for Sky Sports will decrease thanks to them losing Champions League are living in cloud cuckoo land. The upwards pressure BT Sport is putting on sports rights will surely only push the price in the opposite direction.

James and Rupert Murdoch

More bad news for sport fans is that Sky are not going to use the money they would have spent with UEFA on other sports rights, but are going to invest in “original programming” which will undoubtedly mean drama.

This is bad news because Sky have always had a vested interest in nurturing a sport rather than just slapping it on the screen, because they wanted the best product possibly to attract the biggest number of subscribers, sport being at the very heart of their business model.

Sport isn't the beating heart of the BT operation, more of a weapon. It would appear that they've only got into the television to attempt to stop the inroads that Sky (and others) have been making into their core communications business (i.e. Broadband).

This seems to be a long term strategy to damage Sky (check what the deal did to Sky's share price if you're not convinced) and strengthen their own position.

BT has the financial clout to scupper Sky but once they've done that, there's nothing to stop them hiking up their price for their sport channels. Check in your small print and you'll probably see that if you're a BT Broadband customer, you are not going get it free for ever.

The Premier League

Even "dodgy" rich Russians won't help

An inevitable consequence of this massive increase in fees for the broadcasting rights to the Champions League, is that those clubs at the top table are going to get even richer, even more unstoppable.

Even if a rich Arab sugar-daddy or Russian playboy oligarch comes along to invest in a club not at the top table, FFP rules will make it very difficult for that club to compete with the clubs at the top soaking up all the Euro-gravy.

As the gap between the top tier and the rest gets bigger, the actual viability of the Premier League will come into question and inevitably, talk of a breakaway into a European Super League will become more and more of a likely proposition. There have been whispers for years that this is the ultimate aim of the elite European clubs and has been been for the last two decades.

England

The deal won't help Greg's commission much

More money for the top clubs and the threat of losing out massively financially if they can't stay at the top will inevitably lead to them utilising that financial clout to buy ready made players, rather than nurturing and bringing through home-grown English players.

Further more, as they splash the cash on the best foreign players available, established English players get less game time. You've only got to look at Manchester City to see the truth of this.

We've already seen the damage this does to the quality of players available to the national team.

This deal makes the situation worse.

The Fans

Currently you can get two live free to air games in the Europa League every matchday on ITV4. BT Sport's commitment to showing these free to air is not entirely clear, other than the final, the only guarantee of free games appears to one each for the three English teams (should they all qualify), so a lot less than currently.

For the Champions League, ITV currently gets first pick of the Tuesday games to show live free-to-air. Again BT's only commitment is show one live game from each domestic club involved and there's no commitment to the quality of the opposition in those games, so they'll likely keep games against Barca or Bayern to their paying customers and leave the likes of Plzen for the freebies.

Also, even though the coverage will be “free-to-all”, it'll be tucked away in the far recesses of the EPG which means it won't pick up the casual viewer and will inevitably score far less highly in the TV ratings than coverage on ITV would.

Champions League will effectively become ghettoised and Europa League games will reach a minuscule audience (some Wigan Athletic games on BT Sport have barely registered any viewers). This can't be a good thing. Look what ghettoisation has done to boxing.

The biggest impact for fans will be financial, because sooner or later, BT will need to get that money back from somewhere, be it higher prices for the sport channels or an increase on the cost of broadband.

Even if you're not with BT, you'll probably end up forking out. Virgin Media had to broker a wholesale deal for the channels to stop sport obsessed fans jumping ship and you can bet your bottom dollar that'll increase on the back of the Euro-deal and Sky will have to bid big to retain the Premier League and or they'll be in big doo-doo.

A few parasitic football agents will no doubt think all this is fantastic but it's bad news for the rest of us.

It might even be bad news for the parasites.

One of these days, the football bubble is going to burst.

This deal could very well turn out to be the pin.

Excellent? Pull the other one...

“I thought we were excellent” sayeth Paul Lambert.

The fezzed-up author of this article

Again.

He's like a stuck record these days isn't he? I didn't think we were excellent. Or that good. Or even passable. Maybe Paul Lambert has a different dictionary to me.

The game may have given us a desperately needed and all too rare home win but on performance terms it ranks alongside some of the worst home displays. We've played far better and lost frankly.

Just like at Upton Park a week ago, we didn't seem to have a clue what to do with the ball when in possession, so the plan seemed to be to let Cardiff have it at every available opportunity, safe in the knowledge that they didn't know what do with it either. The Premier League prides itself on being one of the best leagues in the world, yet here were two clueless, feckless teams, seemingly intent on doing precisely nothing for the best part of 75 minutes.

It was a woeful display from both teams, jittery in defence, terminally uncreative in the midfield and devoid of spark and movement up front.

It's true to say that - if we include Jores Okore into the equation – Lambert was without more than half his first XI. However, football is a squad game these days and he has spent a few million quid on the players expected to come in to fill the gaps. Some of them need to do better.

To me, the inclusion of Kozak in the starting line up was part of the problem. So few teams set up with two out and out central strikers any more, which means that any team that does is putting themselves at serious risk of being out gunned in the middle of park and suffering possession-wise as a result. This certainly was the case against Cardiff, with our share of possession dropping to less than 40% at one stage of the game. Less than 40% at home against Premier League newcomers is completely unacceptable.

It would be unfair to blame Kozak himself though. Indeed, he seemed the livelier and more mobile of the two strikers, Benteke looking dejected as he struggled to shake off the manacles imposed by the extra defensive manpower his growing reputation has created. You have to wonder what the deal is with Helenius, who- it seems to me - would be more suited to dropping off the main striker and must be frustrated at not getting a chance even in Gabby and Andi's absence

The midfield so badly missed Fabian Delph that it hurt, Westwood and Sylla too often going for the safe rather than creative ball (and even then sometimes giving it away) and El Ahmadi being so vanilla as to be barely noticeable at all. Tonev scampered about the place like an excited puppy, all energy and goodwill but with very little in the way of tactical nous. Having a wayward hopeless shot from miles out when there are far better options is rapidly becoming his trademark and he's already garnering such an unfavourable reputation amongst the Villa faithful that will prove hard to shake off. Reading his name out on the team sheet now creates an audible groan, which is most unfortunate.

A lot of people expressed dismay at Lowton's omission, but I wasn't one of the them. I thought Matt Jarvis had made him look quite ordinary at West Ham. The issue here is that while Bacuna can do a competent job at right back, what we really want to see is him hurting opposition defences at the other end, so it is to be hoped that Lambert can be convinced to give young Matt an extended run in the team to get his mojo back and utilise Leandro to give us some much needed creativity further up.

Bacuna seems to me such an adaptable player and now he's settling in to the league, a role with more freedom could give us the spark in the midfield we're so obviously missing. They'll certainly be a great buzz whenever we get a free kick from here on in.

While some say the defence has improved with two clean sheets on the bounce, I remain unconvinced. Cardiff and West Ham merely lacked the operatives to pounce on the silly mistakes that are still being made by both Clark and Baker, though I will concede that Vlaar is looking far better now he seems to have curbed his tendency to go wandering off.

So do I trust Paul Lambert to sort it all out? Well, I do actually. I'm sure he's aware of areas where we need to improve and was probably as frustrated as we were at half-time yesterday. It's our job to get annoyed and his job to fix it and put smiles on our faces. I think he can, but it is gonna take time and dodgy performance or not, the three points his team put in the bag yesterday does give him some more time and should muffle the burgeoning "Lambert Out" faction for a few weeks longer. Wins against the Tesco boys and the Mackems and everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.

I suppose it's the done thing to describe your team as “excellent” when talking to the media and you don't wash your dirty linen in public. Doesn't stop me swearing at the radio though.

And just remember the next time he describes the fans as “excellent”, he has a very loose interpretation of the word...

A win is a win is a win

What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.

I couldn't help thinking how aggrieved I'd felt that we'd got nothing at Stamford Bridge in our second match of season. That Kevin Friend had helped Chelsea to three points and they could so easily have been ours. Because yesterday, the balance of the universe was restored as we mugged Manchester City of three points, ably assisted by the lino and shampoo salesman Joe Hart.

The positivity that has been emanating from the Villa faithful as a result of the unlikely victory is undoubtedly a good thing, but some of you seem to have watched the game through claret and blue tinted spectacles. For vast periods of the game Manchester City played truly wonderful football. For vast periods of the first half, Villa were abject.

Indeed we never truly got our attacking play going in the way we had against Arsenal, Chelsea or even the second half against Liverpool. The Liverpool match, which disappointed most was actually a more coherent performance, but it didn't glean any goals and if your slick build up play doesn't produce the required results, large swathes of the crowd are never going to love you.

After the cup game against Spurs, in which a disjointed ragbag of Villa players had failed to show anything like cohesion, I was expecting far better as a more recognisable line up took to the pitch, even given the quality of the opposition, but in that desperate first half, we just couldn't get going. Weimann and Kozak found it impossible to hold the ball up, leading to wave upon wave of Man City attacks. The pluses for us were that there was no Aguero to take advantage of our opponents massive possessional advantage and that James Milner now looks a shadow of the player that had bloomed in his final season at Villa Park. Nasri was a constant problem, although his short temper makes him his own worst enemy.

Thankfully, Lambert's decision to go with three centre halves solved the problem of our full backs being caught dangerously out of position and while our defending may have lacked technical quality, it was full of energy and determination, meaning that our illustrious visitors were finding it nigh on impossible to fashion chances from their dominance in open play. What they were able to do though is win an awful lot of corners, and from these, they always looked dangerous.

We could debate for hours the benefits of zonal versus man-to-man marking, but whichever system you plump for, you need to make sure that your team is capable of playing it. We are still worryingly unsecure at set plays.

Yaya Toure, the intimidating architect of many of their best moves, finally managed a goal that for a long time had seemed inevitable. Half-time, I thought, would be brief respite. It turned out to be a turning point.

Your reaction to the El Ahmadi equaliser was different depending on whether you've actually played football or not. Those who can't remember when the last time was they pulled on a pair of boots went into instant celebration. The rest looked straight at the linesman to check their hadn't been a flag, because they were certainly expecting one. Like I said though, swings and roundabouts. On other days, an offside would definitely have been given, but with the  number of dodgy decisions that go against us, we're surely entitled to the rub of the green occasionally.

Being level at this stage was a definite bonus and if only we could hold the line, we might get an unlikely point. If only we could hold the ball and stop giving set pieces away. We couldn't. Another dangerous Nasri corner wasn't dealt with and Dzeko met with little resistance as he headed home.

Dead and buried? We would have been last season. If anything, going behind again proved to be the catalyst that stirred Villa in a more meaningful passage of forward play. Suddenly, Pellegrini's expensive charges seemed jittery, and as Villa advanced up the pitch, tackles became more reckless and ill-thought out.

Then the moment of magic. A free kick outside the area. Ron Vlaar looked as if he was lining up but Bacuna was lurking ominously. In came the kick, a thunderbolt, perfectly placed. Even if Joe Hart hadn't made life difficult for himself with his positioning and hadn't stayed rooted to the spot, he might not have got near it. It was a glorious moment for the young Dutchman, who some fickle Villa fans had instantly written off after his shaky start against Liverpool. They are easy to spot, these trolls, the same ones who also think Tonev is a waste of space.

Not that it's their fault, it's hot-wired into a Villa fan's DNA to be hyper-critical of our own players. People round me used to catcall Gary Shaw and Tony Morley for not doing enough while we were in the process of winning the league. Some people just like being miserable sods.

After all the hot air about Villa being a long ball team, the style of the winner was delicious. It couldn't have been more route one if it had been scored by Graham Taylor's Watford in the 80s. What you have to admire is Brad Guzan's vision. Manchester City's defence had a Chuckle Brothers moment, Kozak's flick on was sublime and Andreas Weimann was the epitome of cool as he calmly went past the charging Joe Hart and rolled the ball casually goal-wards. Slightly too casually for my nervous ticker, but hey it eventually rolled over the line.

They say time moves quicker as you get older. That last twenty minutes didn't go quickly. Not at all. Manchester City wanted it, we didn't want to let it go and scarily Yaya Toure looked as good in the game's last knockings as he did in the pomp of City's first half dominance.

The final whistle. Three points against the favourites for the league title – and I'd maintain, justified favourites on this showing – but most importantly for us, a taste for our players of how sweet Villa Park can be when we graft out a win.

So yes, it wasn't pretty. Yes, we were completely outplayed for long periods of the game. Doesn't matter. Without, you could argue, four of our key players, we've beaten a quality team. 

Let's build on it. 

Let's give Potatohead a torrid time, use the international break to recharge the batteries and then show Spurs that this time, we won't get caught with our pants down.

Aston Villa? Cup Winners in 1985? Wednesfield Social?

In the last "Dek's Rant" I wrote about the Bradford Fire in 1985 and the subsequent charity game featuring the late, great George Best.

Now, as you'll appreciate, that game took place over twenty eight years ago, so although the bulk of the piece came from memory, with such a long gap, I thought it well worth trawling my archives to check out the facts.

Dragging out the mid-eighties stuff, I came across two pieces of A4 paper that were in fact, the official programme of the 100th Birmingham County FA Senior Cup Final, a game which I attended.

This game was treated very much in the same way as a Central League Match and Bill Shorthouse's charges didn't play that well on the night, but did enough to claim the cup, so this is a perhaps forgotten piece of Villa achievement.

Though Dean Glover was reserve team captain, Dennis Mortimer - making one of his last ever appearances in a Villa shirt - was allowed to pick up the trophy.

Like the George Best match which would follow just a few days later, there seemed to be little to no information about this small piece of Aston Villa history on the web, so I've scanned in some pics, wrestled the villamad.co.uk Twitter account off the news minions and shone a light on it.

The trophy is actually very nice, far nicer than that thing the size of a coffee mug that they handed to Paul Merson when we "won the Intertoto"...but that's another story....

Those tweets are here. Enjoy.

Blast from the Past: "Programme" from the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup Final. Charged 15p for 2 sheets of A4 #avfc pic.twitter.com/1FaokCzPjA
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

Blast from the Past: Teams from the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup Final: #avfc pic.twitter.com/MzRaTTl82C
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

Blast from the Past: Dennis Mortimer accepts the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup as #avfcbeat Wednesfield Social 3-1 pic.twitter.com/81JdTwpC6A
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

Blast from the Past: The Villa team celebrate winning the 100th Birmingham Senior Cup in 1985 #avfc pic.twitter.com/duDBzsfGN0
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

Although Bernie Gallacher was listed in the programme for the Senior Cup win, a Brian Little shot in a 5-a-side broke his wrist...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

...and Matthew Hellin played instead...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

For the record, Villa ran out 3-1 winners, Dean Glover, Ray Walker & Dennis Mortimer getting our goals. Dave Morrison scored for Wednesfield
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

Despite missing the final, Bernie -who had played in every other round - was still awarded a medal
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013

It was the 19th time that Villa had won the Birmingham Senior Cup...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013