Heroes v Villans
Posted by Ian Marshall's Double in Aston Villa, Everton | 17 March 2006
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do. Dale Carnegie
So next up Everton welcome Villa at home. In many ways a similar club to us, good history, decent support and, ahem, eccentric chairmen. In fact, the biggest difference is that we spend a lot less time moaning than they do.
The tone for this is of course set by their manager David O'Leary. He is conspicously quiet at the moment. Could this be that he has stopped going on about what great progress he made after Graham Taylor left them in a mess because he's going to finish in exactly the same place? Even Radio Five Live West Midlands sycophant Pat Murphy has failed to 'big him up' recently. That said they gave us a proper do-ing at Xmas, surely this season's nadir (although Bolton home, West Brom away and Bucharest away are also candidates). We've come a long way since then. Hopefully, they haven't.
With the Blues still on course to finish in the top half, adding another north west defeat to Villa's recent reverses at City and Blackburn is critical. We really need to go into the derby with maximum momentum. Villa are pretty much injury ravaged at the moment, and looking at the likely side they'll put out, they've got a good midfield, with Barry, McCann and Davis all pretty decent, but the rest of the side looks eminently beatable.
Elsewhere Blues-wise, James Vaughan is out for the season, which is a pity and we appear to be ready to table (why is it called that) a big bid for Andy Johnson. Despite his wholly unpalatable bungee-dive attempts to get penalties, he could be just what we are looking for. It was interesting to note that Steve Bruce went back in for the player he'd previously thought was inferior to Clinton Morrison. Surely you'd just keep your gob shut and go for someone else.
Othe transfer news suggest Yobo could be on his way. Pre Nations cup he was our outstanding player of the season, now he is quite rightly being kept out of the side by the rejuvenated Stubbs/Weir combo. They are a short-term option, but we really need to push the boat out to keep Joey. Robert Green you say? No, not sure at all.
As for tomorrow, a repeat of last Saturday will do just fine.