Aston Villa Central

How Does Man City’s Squad Stand Up Against The New Home Grown Rule?

Dan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:29:54 +0000

After revisiting how the new Premier League “Home Grown Rule” impacts Aston Villa and confirming that we’re comfortably able to comply with the rules, I couldn’t shake my curiosity about Man City. After all, they must be among the worst offenders in terms of the number of foreign players and I keep hearing about how many they’ll have to offload, right?

Well, unless my understanding of the rules is way off, I didn’t find them to be in bad shape at all. That’s as things stand today of course, there’s a lot of transfer window left, but they’ll have a pretty good idea who they’ll be willing to sacrifice if they bring in new players that take them outside the scope of the rules.

Quick recap of the rules for the purpose of this analysis: clubs can use as many players under the age of 21 on January 1st 2010 as they like, regardless of nationality. Clubs must name a squad of up to 25 players who are aged 21 or over on January 1st and within that squad, no more than 17 are allowed to be not “Home Grown”. Logically, that means that a squad of 25 will contain at least 8 home grown players, but it’s frequently misunderstood that clubs have to name 8 home grown players. They do not.

I’ve gone through the Man City squad as listed on their official website (their player section, in keeping with the rest of the website, is excellent by the way) and classified each player into one of 3 groups as shown in the table below; Under 21 (yellow), Over 21 – Not Home Grown (Red) and Over 21 – Home Grown (Green).

The only exception in this table is Gunnar Nielsen. You’ll remember him I’m sure, he was the goalkeeper who was deemed not good enough for the Premiership just before our visit to Eastlands and City were given special permission to sign a keeper on emergency loan to replace him. He’s just signed an extension to his contract and will be going to Tranmere on a season long loan.

As you’ll see from the table (you can click for a full sized version), City currently list 6 players who are under 21. They have 31 players who are over 21; 16 are not home grown and 15 are home grown. Therefore, they’re inside the maximum number of players who are not home grown and over the minimum required number of home grown players. They simply have 6 more than the maximum 25 players aged over 21.

City could easily let some of their younger players such as Logan, Etuhu, Johnson, Caicedo and Jô go out on long term loans or restrict them to domestic and European cup competitions. (The Europa League has similar 25-man squad rules, but there’s no reason why the two squad lists have to be identical). With Gonzales likely to be 4th choice keeper, he’ll probably be used in the reserves only.

There’s six players off the list right there, leaving a 25 man squad of 13 not home grown and 12 home grown players. Well within the rules.

Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, the situation is extremely fluid, more players will be arriving at and departing from Eastlands. The point though, as it stands, is that City most certainly do not have to “offload” a dozen or so players to meet the requirements of the new home grown rule, which is the claim I keep bumping into lately.

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Delfouneso Heading Out To Bolster The Strikeforce In The Algarve

Dan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:01:32 +0000

Martin O’Neill revealed today that Nathan Delfouneso will be travelling out to Portugal tomorrow to link up with the rest of squad and he’s hoping the striker can play some part in Sunday night’s match against Benfica at least. Even if he doesn’t play this weekend, just being with the squad and not stuck at home is good for him ahead of the new season.

The same thinking applies to James Collins who is nursing his calf, but a little Algarve sunshine, golf and team bonding can work wonders I hear.

It’s funny how quickly things can change. Unable to field a recognised striker until young James Collins came on for the final third of the first pre-season game against Basingstoke, MON now has his complete strike force at his disposal; Agbonlahor, Carew, Heskey, Delfouneso and Weimann.

With Delfouneso and, to a lesser degree, Weimann both trying to force their way into MON’s first team plans, it does beg the question about the likelihood of any new strikers joining without someone heading for the exit door.

Incidentally, Sunderland played Benfica on Tuesday and were beaten 2-0, with the Portuguese side putting in a very impressive performance from all accounts. It might be an interesting benchmark to see how we compare so soon afterward. Steve Bruce fielded a 4-5-1 with Kenwyne Jones ploughing the lone furrow, but with 5 strikers at his disposal, MON is surely more likely to field 2 up top.

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Portuguese Shorts – July 29th

Dan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:45:56 +0000

The 22 man squad arrived in Portugal ahead of the weekend’s Guandiana Cup friendlies against Feyenoord and Benfica on their own private jet yesterday. That includes Luke Young, James Milner and James Collins, who was cleared after a scan on his calf Wednesday morning.

Luke Young’s agent has confirmed that he is discussing personal terms with Liverpool. Meanwhile, Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson insisted on showing his Macedonian hosts the courtesy of discussing tonight’s Europa League match against Rabotnicki, refusing to discuss Luke or any other Anfield transfer business.

To confuse the issue, The Sun claims that Luke Young didn’t make the trip to Portugal and the deal has “collapsed“. Up to their usual standards of journalism then. He definitely made the trip.

Plenty more speculation about Milner of course, nothing really worth addressing though. He looked relaxed and happy enough from the pictures and videos I took a look at. I don’t know what can be read from that, probably nothing. Just saying.

Player transfers aside, we won’t be in action until Saturday night’s game against Feyenoord, but Benfica will kick off the three way tournament on Friday night against the Dutch side before meeting Villa on Sunday night. Until then, training in the Algarve sun. Not a bad life, is it?

And finally, some product placement… Steve Jobs, Dr. Dre and the Greek goddess of victory are grateful for Habib Beye’s endorsement.

That’s checkmate by the way, Habib.

[Photo credit: AVFC OS]

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Liverpool’s Bid For Luke Young Apparently Accepted

Dan — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:30:55 +0000

Liverpool have reportedly made a £2.5m bid for Luke Young and Martin O’Neill has confirmed the club have received a bid from an unnamed club with Young currently “mulling it over”:-

Martin O’Neill
There has been an offer from a football club, which Luke is mulling over and if it doesn’t materialize then he would also join us [in Portugal] because he needs to play some football soon. We will see how that develops.

My personal opinion is one of slight disappointment, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. I like Luke, always have done, but in the “Tale of the Tape” I put his performance at right back against Carlos Cuellar’s in the same role statistically and showed there wasn’t a whole lot between them. Carlos certainly isn’t anywhere near the appalling right back some insist on portraying him as.

On the more positive side, in the “Inside-out Wingers” I made the case that we need the overlapping forward runs we would associate with Young and Warnock to unlock the real benefits of playing Ashley Young and Steward Downing on the “wrong wing”.

You pays your money, you makes your choice I suppose. It seems overly simplistic, but it’s become a truism that Cuellar offers the stronger defensive options and Young offers more in attack, at least in open play.

I do hold a lot of value in full backs as auxiliary attackers. In fact I tend to think of them primarily from that perspective, but it’s impossible to dismiss the defensive nightmare Young had at Stamford Bridge and the number of times that Cuellar snuffed out any threat down his side of the pitch, it’s become difficult not to imagine that Cuellar helped save more points than Young could have contributed to gaining.

All Things Considered

As The Guardian points out; Luke Young had a horribly unfortunate start to last season. Firstly he was injured when the squad were out in Spain for the Peace Cup and, before he was fit again, he took another knock back with the terrible personal tragedy of his brother’s death.

Rumours about a falling out with Martin O’Neill persisted, but I’ve never seen anything to convince me, frankly. MON rightly or wrongly brought in Warnock, Dunne & Collins since he was also dealing with the fact that Curtis Davies required shoulder surgery at the time and, as far as I’m concerned, once fit, Luke Young fell to 5th choice among the defenders. Yes, it’s true, the way MON operates, that could also be interpreted as “5th favourite”.

Once the foursome of Cuellar, Collins, Dunne & Warnock were thrown together for the first time against Birmingham City, it was clear that we had a rock solid defensive unit. Until Collins picked up a knock a little while later, Young was unable to get his way back in and frequently relied on filling in at left back rather than right.

Young publicly expressed his frustration during the close season at what he saw as not getting a fair crack at playing and I can certainly understand his perspective. However, I take the view that collectively we had one of the best defenses in the league and if it ain’t broke, why fix it? We did struggle for goals somewhat, but you’ll never convince me that was because Luke Young wasn’t playing so, in final analysis, I have to place greater value on Cuellar’s defensive abilities over Young’s attacking qualities.

Show Me The Money

Luke Young is apparently also one of the club’s highest earners, I don’t think I’d be far off the mark if I claimed he was earning £45k/week. That’s over £2m per year and with our wages to revenue ratio being what it is, this has to be viewed pragmatically.

With Carlos Cuellar likely to resume his position as first choice at right back, Eric Lichaj likely to be signing a new contract and making a serious attempt at staking a place in the first team squad, Habib Beye offering a slightly less effective, but probably considerably cheaper version of Luke Young, and Young himself unhappy, it’s an absolute no-brainer that a significant offer would have to be accepted.

By significant offer, I mean a sum that wouldn’t be far from his residual value on the balance sheet, and that’s what we seem to have received from Liverpool. It will be interesting to see how it pans out as Young is no more likely to be first choice ahead of Glen Johnson than he is ahead of Carlos Cuellar, but perhaps he will be happier knowing that to be the case up front and feeling he has a fair chance of competing.

Ultimately, as I said on Twitter when the news broke and received a negative response or two; it’s a shame, while I’ll be saddened to see him go and I do value him as a player, £2m off the wage bill isn’t to be sniffed at, we do have options and we’ll be fine.

If Luke does go, I’ll simply say thanks and best of luck.

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Walsall 1 Aston Villa 2

Dan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:52:50 +0000

3,000 Villa fans made it to the Bescot tonight to see a mixed Villa side turn in a comfortable 2-1 victory over Wallsall thanks to a brace from young Andreas Weimann just back from international duty.

As rumoured prior to kick off, Steve Sidwell was included tonight, partnered in the middle by Nigel Reo-Coker wearing the armband, with the side returning to a more familiar 4-4-2, giving the new away kit its first airing.

James Collins lasted all of three minutes before being replaced by Carlos Cuellar, rekindling a centre half partnership with Curtis Davies which I don’t think we’ve seen since the 3-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield early last season. ~~Hopefully it’s nothing major and just precautionary measure.~~ Update: Collins felt discomfort in his calf and awaits a scan to determine the extent of the injury. He may miss the trip to Portugal.

While Nathan Delfouneso was still packing his bags in France, Andreas Weimann proved he was suffering no hangovers from the European Under 19 Championships, opening the scoring 25 minutes in with a deflected effort.

Eric Lichaj came on for Habib Beye and Shane Lowry took Nicky Shorey’s place for the second half, quite impressive since both started in a friendly against Chasetown last night.

Andreas Weimann made it a night to remember for himself, doubling the lead 20 minutes or so into the 2nd half, following up on Albrighton’s shot which was parried by Walsall keeper Brain.

Immediately after the goal, Ciaran Clark came on for Davies and then the one, the only, the Togolese Zidane himself, Moustapha Salifou came on in place of Reo-Coker. The crowd naturally went wild.

4 minutes later, Jonathon Hogg gave Marc Albrighton a well earned rest after a number of impressive performances again this pre-season and Brad Friedel made way for Elliott Parish.

Walsall grabbed a consolation thanks to substitute Alex Nicholls with his first touch after coming on with 15 minutes left on the clock. Although Walsall applied a little late pressure, there were no further goals.

Job done, nice to get a good win under the belt, now it’s off to Portugal tomorrow. A special mention again for Marc Albrighton and also John Carew who have both won the plaudits for their performances in the last couple of games.

Starting XI: Friedel, Beye, Collins, Davies, Shorey, Albrighton, Reo-Coker, Sidwell, Bannan, Carew, Weimann.
Substitutes: Lowry, Clark, Lichaj, Parish, Hogg, Salifou, Cuellar.

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England Dumped Out Of European U-19s By Dominant Spain

Dan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:59:34 +0000

Spain coasted into the final of the European Under 19 Championship in France with a commanding performance against an England side who are clearly not in the same league technically.

Nathan Baker limped off midway through the first half with what looked like a pulled hamstring, Nathan Delfouneso may have wished he could have joined him after seeing very little of the ball during the first 45 minutes.

Spain held the majority of possession during the first a half and converted that into two well worked goals. Liverpool’s Pacheco got the opener after some find work on Spain’s left drew England’s back line in before the ball was cut back to the far post for Pacheco to casually side foot past Declan Rudd. Captain Keko got the second, again following some nice build up on Spain’s left, drifting into space in the middle and firing in from 12 yards.

Somehow England managed to get one back when John Bostock, who had replaced Baker, shaped himself well to volley in a loose ball from just outside the box. (see video on the left)

Canales scored Spain’s third goal to cap a clever free kick routine that England stood and admired as much as the crowd and TV audience. (video at bottom of post)

Delfouneso did get a couple of opportunities to show his ability with the ball at his feet during the 2nd period, but England never really threatened Spain’s goal, despite playing with a back three to chase the game.

Even if they’re back in time, I would doubt that either of the youngsters will be included among the squad heading to Portugal tomorrow, so their first, and only, chance of any pre-season action with the first team will be the final warm up against Valencia at Villa Park.

Incidentally, it will be interesting to see what sort of team Valencia play at Villa Park since they’re going to be playing a second friendly the very next day at Eastlands against Man City.

Random Villa Factoid: England Under 19s manager, Noel Blake, made 4 appearances for Aston Villa during his 3 years at the club between ‘79 and ‘82. Remember?

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Revisiting The Home Grown Rule

Dan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:50:43 +0000

Last September, I wrote an overly lengthy post which stumbled its way through the then recently ratified rules introducing quotas on numbers of “home grown” players and squad size limits on Premiership teams from 2010/11. The conclusion I eventually came to was that it would not adversely affect Aston Villa in any way. It just took a while to get there.

As we head ever closer toward the start of the 2010/11 season, with much speculation about the likes of Man City suffering as a result of these rule changes, I thought it worth a quick analysis of our squad against the new rules.

The first thing to understand is the definition of “home grown”:-

Premier League
A home grown player is defined as one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Welsh Football Association for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

Players Aged Under 21

Each club can use as many players as they like who are under the age of 21 on January 1st 2010, regardless of nationality.

25 Man Squad

Clubs are restricted to registering a maximum of 25 players over the age of 21 on January 1st 2010 for use in the Premier League and must submit a squad list on the day after each of the two transfer windows have closed.

Within that 25 man list:-

a maximum of 17 players not home grown.
a minimum of 8 home grown players.

Note: The minimum of home grown players can be regarded as a “soft minimum”, meaning it is not obligatory. For instance, it’s fine if teams are only able to list 6 home grown players, but they can not name more than 17 players who are not home grown, so they would only be able to register 23 players in that case. Remember, there is no restriction on the number of players under 21.

If teams do not have 25 players, they are able to add free agents outside of the transfer windows. However, if they do have 25 eligible contracted players, they must be named.

Current Aston Villa Squad

This is the current first team squad with reserves and some of the more senior academy players included for analysis purposes:-

Under 21 (Unlimited)

Marc Albrighton, Nathan Delfouneso, Fabian Delph, Andreas Weimann, Elliot Parish, Shane Lowry, Barry Bannan, Ciaran Clark, Nathan Baker, Chris Herd, James Collins, Harry Forrester. 12 Players

Over 21, Not Home Grown (Maximum of 17 Players)

Brad Friedel, John Carew, Moustapha Salifou, Stiliyan Petrov, Brad Guzan, Habib Beye, Carlos Cuéllar. 7 Players

Over 21, Home Grown (Minimum of 8 Players)

Luke Young, Steve Sidwell, Richard Dunne, Stewart Downing, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Curtis Davies, Emile Heskey, Nigel Reo-Coker, Nicky Shorey, Stephen Warnock, Isaiah Osbourne, James Collins, Eric Lichaj*, Jonathan Hogg. 16 Players

* I believe that Eric Lichaj will meet the home grown requirements, but it’s clearly not a problem if he does not..

Conclusion, The 6+5 Rule And Europe

Given MON’s frequently berated policy of favouring young British players, it’s hardly surprising that we have absolutely nothing to be concerned about with the new rules. With only 21 players categorized in the over 21 age group, we have room to add more without anyone leaving, but with the likes of Luke Young, Steve Sidwell and James Milner all looking likely to be heading for the exit, we’ve plenty of wiggle room.

Also, just in case you missed it, FIFA quietly announced during the World Cup that they would be dropping their pursuit of the 6+5 rule since it was clear that it would be impossible to get past the EU’s freedom of movement for workers laws.

Personally, I was delighted to hear that as I felt it was going a little too far. Encouraging youth development through reasonable quotas within a squad context are one thing, determining starting elevens based on nationality was something else altogether.

So, these rules are probably about as tough as we can expect for the foreseeable future then, but as I mentioned last time, they’re practically identical to the squad requirements for the Champions and Europa Leagues in any case. In fact, those rules, if anything, are slightly tougher since UEFA requires that at least 4 of the 8 home grown players submitted in the 25 man squads for those competitions to have come through the club’s own academy.

I haven’t looked at City’s squad in this detail, but if they are going to fall foul of rules that have existed for European competition for some time, they certainly haven’t thought things through very well.

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James Milner Will Be Included In Guadiana Cup Squad Travelling To Portugal

Dan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:21:18 +0000

I bet you would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at Bodymoor today, right? Well, the plot thickens. After the James Milner, his agent, Martin O’Neill and Paul Faulkner sat down for talks described as “amicable”, the following statement was issued by the club:-

AVFC Official Site
James Milner trained with the rest of the Villa squad today at Bodymoor Heath. He and the manager, along with chief executive Paul Faulkner and the player’s representative, Matthew Buck, had an amicable conversation and, while James will not play in tomorrow’s game at Walsall, he will fly with the squad to Portugal on Wednesday ahead of the Guadiana Cup in which Villa will compete with Benfica and Feyenoord this weekend.

Perhaps, like fattening the Turkeys before Christmas, it’s in our own interest to keep the player fit before selling him. Or maybe the whole thing has been an elaborate act to fool everyone into thinking he’s leaving, thereby stalling the entire transfer market, before we swoop into action, getting the jump on everyone in the process.

Maybe I shouldn’t think so much. Now, where’s my tinfoil hat?

On a more serious note, if he doesn’t prove a disruption, there’s no real harm in him travelling to Portugal I suppose. I’m not sure there would be a whole lot of logic in playing him if he wasn’t going to be part of the team going into the season, but then again the window does close after the new season begins.

Ironically, I’ve seen one or two others around the Villa sections of the interwebz expressing a frustration and boredom with what they see as a “saga”, when the reality is that very little of any real substance has actually happened so far. At least in the public arena in any case. For me, it’s only just started to get interesting, but then I make a point of sticking as far away from those tabloid rumours as possible.

That said, a swift resolution one way or t’other would definitely be welcome.

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England U-19s Live To Fight Another Day In France

Dan — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:11:54 +0000

I didn’t get to see any of the Under 19’s today, but as I was leaving the house earlier I did note that England were losing 1-0 to the extremely impressive French and Holland were being held 0-0 by Austria. Even if England could get back on terms it wouldn’t be enough, they needed Austria to win.

Well, that’s exactly what happened.

With three minutes left in Mondeville, Ricky van Rhijn brought Georg Teigl down in the box and Hertha Berlin’s Marco Djuricin converted from the spot to give Austria the unlikely win.

Wycombe’s Matthew Phillips popped up three minutes into injury time in Saint-Lo to grab the late equaliser for England, setting up a semi-final appointment with Spain on Tuesday.

To be frank, I both expected and hoped to be writing a post entitled “England’s Loss Is Villa’s Gain” which would have focused on the bright side of having our three players back in time to take part in some of the remaining pre-season schedule.

As it turns out, the two Nathans get the opportunity to play against a very good Spanish side heavily supplied by the Barcelona academy, but Andreas Weimann’s tournament is indeed over.

As I’ve mentioned before, both of the English lads missed all of pre-season as England went all the way to the U-19 final last year, but Weimann did take part and was part of squad took part in the Peace Cup tournament, starting in the final against Juventus.

I’m not sure if MON would want to give him some additional time off, but maybe he’ll be included in the party travelling to Portugal for the games against Feyenoord and Benfica. Those two games will take place within 24 hours of each other so a full squad would be useful and firepower has been something we’ve been short on so far.

Next up, Walsall on Tuesday. I wouldn’t expect Weimann to be involved in that one, but we will have Heskey, Warnock and Guzan coming back on Monday.

As for Milner, well it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be in Bescot next week, especially after the reaction just hearing his name drew from the Villa support at half time in Dublin today, but we shall see.

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Goals: Bohemians vs Aston Villa

Dan — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:32:39 +0000

The goals and post match interviews from 2-1 loss against Bohemians in Dublin on Saturday.

Once again, kudos to my new friends at extratime.ie who put this video together in good time.