Aston Villa new manager Dean Smith wants the referees to protect his best player Jack Grealish more. He said that the player suffers numerous tactical fouls during games and it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to play in this situation.
Yannick Bolasie has said that he is keen to help Aston Villa secure promotion to the Premier League, now that he has joined the club on a season-long loan. The Congolese footballer fell out-of-favour under new Everton boss Marco Silva during the summer and he has now been offered the chance to revive his career with the Villains.
There are media reports that Tottenham Hotspurs are interested to sign Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish. The player who plays for the England Under-21 national team has impressed last season and is set to attract a number of bids from the Premier League.
Aston Villa arguably has had the most difficult set of fixtures during the opening stages of the Premier League as the squad of Paul Lambert has already faced off against Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City within these past 2 months between September and October.
Even with all of these tough matches and opponents that Aston Villa has played with, they have still managed to hold their ground and main themselves in the center of the Premier League standings and are fairly safe away from the bottom relegation zone.
This achievement is even more impressive for Aston Villa if you take into consideration the passive transfer window that they enjoyed in summer as the club stayed within a budget of around €7 million after having signed: Joe Cole, Phillipe Senderos, Keiran Richardson, Tom Cleverley, Aly Cissokho and Carlos Sanchez.
Those aren’t bad players at all but do not bring a sense of excitement or thrill to the fans of the club. The transfer window will re-open in January and there are a few coaches that already are talking with the respective chairman’s of the club and have begun to establish a budget for their winter targets.
Lambert said, “I’ve spoken to the Villa chief executive Tom Fox about January. It all depends on personnel and injuries and ultimately the decision will come from the chairman and what he wants to do. But he’s never once said to me ‘you can’t do x, y or z’. You put it to him and if he thinks it’s fine, he will do it. He’s never once had any rejections. If he thinks it’s right and it’s right for the football club he will do it, if not, he will tell me so. That’s what you want someone who is being honest.”
One of the potential winter signings of Paul Lambert is Cagliari’s Albin Ekdal. The Swedish player from Caglari has made an impressive start of the season after scoring a hat-trick a few weeks ago when playing against Inter Milan and Paul Lambert has started to take an interest in the 25 year old midfielder.
Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert says that despite putting the club up for sale, owner Randy Lerner is still very much in love with Aston Villa. The American businessmen arrived at the club in 2006. At the start of his regime, he was willing to put in a lot of money and this was demonstrated by the signings of players like Darren Bent and James Milner for large sums of money. They were also able to retain star names like Gareth Barry despite interest from the likes of Liverpool. The huge investments made under Martin O’Neill’s managerial leadership, though, did not pay dividends as they were unable to qualify for the Champions League.
Qualifying for the European Champions League will have helped Villa to build on the success due to the substantial revenues provided by this competition, but the failure to do so saw the club enter into a period of recession. Lerner substantially reduced the investments over the last few years to the point where Villa no longer sign top names. They have been keen on producing talent from the youth academy and this has had an effect on the team’s performance on the pitch. Lerner recently put up Villa for sale, but he has been unable to find a buyer. Lambert, though, has reiterated that the American still likes Villa a lot.
“He always has loved the football club. The situation is that the club is for sale and that is the same, but he has been great since the players came back for pre-season. He has always been great with me and, since we came back, the feelgood factor has been due a lot to him. The football club, for all that doom and gloom that was out there before a ball was kicked, is in a really good place at the moment,” said Lambert.
Alan Hatton has played a huge role in the remarkable upturn of fortunes that Birmingham city have experienced in the last few weeks. He recently converted the one-month loan deal into a deal that takes him till the end of the season at the St Andrews. This was a positive news for the club, as they look to finish the season on a high.
Birmingham are almost certain to finish without any troubles this season after the good run of results has lifted them comfortably above the drop zone. Since there are several points below the play-off positions, they are unlikely to bother with much in the remainder of the season. Continue reading HUTTON HAS ROLE TO PLAY
Former Liverpool and Manchester United striker Michael Owen says that Luis Suarez has been the best player in the Premier league since the days of Thierry Henry. The former Arsenal man is widely regarded as one of the best players to have graced the Premier league. He is the club record scorer for Arsenal after having represented them for almost a decade. Even though there have been several great players since then – the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo come to mind, Owen says that they have been not long enough to create a mark.
However, Suarez has been at Liverpool for the last three years and looks set for more. He is on course to guiding the club to their first league title for almost 25 years. He is the club’s top scorer with 29 league goals, which is itself a remarkable achievement considering that he had not started the season due to ban carried over from last campaign. It was only during September that Suarez came back to playing in the league. Owen was a remarkable goal scorer during his playing days. He is regarded as one of the famous players to have wore the number seven shirt, which is currently won by Suarez.
“Suarez has been the best player in the Premier League this season. Yes, there are others who’ve done well – Yaya Toure, Steven Gerrard, Adam Lallana and Eden Hazard. But, when it comes to Suarez, I don’t think I have seen anything that good since probably Thierry Henry was playing in the Premier League. He has been absolutely outstanding. And it’s important to mention he has been absolutely exemplary this season. His discipline has been great,” said Owen.
The former Manchester United man also believes that the presence of Suarez gives Liverpool a huge advantage over Manchester City in the title race.
According to the Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert, the teams securing less than 40 points in the Premier League this season might also end up surviving.
Generally, it is believed that 40 is the magic number that the teams need to get in order to stay in the league, but, Lambert believes that the number is going to be a bit lower this time around.
Villa is not looking in danger of relegation at the moment though. They are at the 12th position in the league table with 34 points and they still have to play 7 more games. So, one can assume them going past that number of 40 pretty easily. Continue reading SURVIVAL AT 40
Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert has heaped the praise on striker Christian Benteke after the Belgian international scored two goals in the 4-1 win over Norwich during the weekend. The striker was subjected to much transfer interest in the summer after he scored a spectacular 23 goals in his debut season with the club last season. However, he rejected the opportunity to move to clubs like Chelsea and Tottenham and decided to stay with Villa. He even signed a new five-year contract, which was rumoured to double his wages.
Benteke began the season in extraordinary fashion after scoring five goals in as many games. However, he suffered a hip injury just a few months into the new campaign. Since then, his form nosedived and he went without finding the back of the net for 12 matches. Now, though, he seems to be finding his form once again and the Norwich match showed the best of the striker. He scored two goals in the space of just three minutes to setup this impressive win.
After the match, Lambert praised Benteke to http://www.ftbllr.net by saying that the striker could become a world-class player if he manages to reproduce the form from last season. Tottenham were rumoured to be ready to pay around £ 25 million for the striker, who was signed for just £ 7 million from Genk in the summer of 2012.
“I think if he does over the second half of this season what he did last season then we’re talking about having an absolute world-class player on our hands. This season was always going to be hard for him. He’s only been in Britain for a year and a half, and I think people forget that, and they forget his age as well. He’s got the ability to be a top, top player,” said Lambert.
Aston Villa is looking to secure the services of the veteran English striker Grant Holt who is currently a contracted player of Wigan Athletic.
Lambert has worked with the 32 years old striker before as well and he reckons that his experience can help Aston Villa to finish the ongoing season on a high.
Villa’s performance in the 2013-14 Season hasn’t been too bad. Yes, of late, their game has dipped down a bit and they have suffered some defeats, but, still, their position in the league table is quite respectable.
As far as Holt’s recent form is concerned, he made his way to Wigan during summer after leaving Norwich City and has done a reasonable job for his new club. He has got the opportunity to feature in 16 championship matches for the Latics so far and he has scored 2 goals in those games.
Villa’s strikers including their superstar Christian Benteke have been out of form in the recent past and that’s one of the reasons why there has been a dip in their performances. Although Benteke found the net against Arsenal a couple of days back, but, he looked far from his best. So, they clearly need the arrival of an in form forward.
In one of his interviews yesterday, when Lambert was asked about his interests in Holt, he said, “We have worked together in the past. Grant is a fantastic bloke. I have seen reports of him coming here. That’s definitely a possibility, but, there is nothing concrete at the moment.”
When asked about Christian Benteke finding himself amongst the goals again, Lambert said, “It was nice to see him scoring again. If he gets back to top form, it would be a big positive for us.”