Villa’s Euro vision seems like pipe dream now as they need points
ASTON Villa’s priorities this season will have to change. After spending plenty of transfer money for manager Steven Gerrard, the club’s aim was European football next season.
Now after Sunday’s 2-0 home defeat by Chelsea Villa are one point above the relegation zone, albeit after just nine games.
But with only two wins, Thursday’s match at Fulham followed by Brentford at Villa Park on Sunday takes on extra meaning. They need to be won.
It is difficult to think why a team of good talent is not doing better... until you ponder a few things.
Does central defender Tyrone Mings make some occasional errors that make opposing forwards alert to them?
Sunday’s disastrous header to Mason Mount for the first goal a prime example. Then his secondhalf foul on Mount led to the latter’s second from a free-kick although the Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez can be blamed for wrong positioning.
Up front surely you need to play Ollie Watkins and Danny Ings in every match. Goalscorers are the rare gems of the game.
True chances were missed plus Chelsea’s goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga was in stunning form. The Spanish keeper made the save of the season from Ings close arrange header and other fine stops as well resulting in his manager Graham Potter calling him ‘world class’
Gerrard will be given more time. Quick wins would change things but you have to question some buys.
Emi Buendia was already there. Was the signing of Philippe Coutinho, a similar player, really necessary?
Villa played really well in the first half on Sunday despite trailing 1-0 but were nowhere near as good after the second-half changes including those two midfielders.
Let’s see what the rest of their week brings Villa but pressure is mounting and that is not a pun!
Two Birmingham sporting characters slipped under the radar over the weekend. One was in the corner of the British boxer in the biggest ever female contest in the UK; the other are the football club chairman and vice-chairman who own the auction house selling the £3 million World Cup football!
First the boxing. On Saturday night the brilliant American Claressa
Shields beat the hardpunching Hartlepool fighter Savannah Marshall in an outstanding unification of their six versions of their world middleweight titles – the English boxer held the WBO titles; the USA selfstyled GWOAT held the others. GWOAT standing for ‘Greatest Woman Of All Time.’ Shields won the 10-round contest at London’s O2 by a unanimous points decision.
It was a non-stop hard-punching fight – the hardest of both careers. It restored some credibility to a
sport damaged by the drug scandal of Benn v Eubank junior. Sky’s hyped commentary failed to mention the quiet unassuming Brummie who had been brought into the Brit’s corner.
Jon Pegg, 48, born in Marston Green but now living in Tile Cross, is a successful promoter, manager and matchmaker.
Marshall had been sparring in Pegg’s Eastside Gym in the shadows of the St Andrew’s football ground.
Her coach Peter Fury is so impressed with Pegg’s knowledge of the sport that he asked him to be in their corner on Saturday night.
During the fight, I noticed Pegg leaning in during a round break and advising Marshall to calm down and box her own fight during what was a frenetic affair. Pegg is an interesting character who steered a journeyman boxer, Sam Eggington, to a world title. He combines his successful boxing with completely different roles as an award-winning writer and director of short films.
His latest of eight, The Bench, has just won a Short Films award in the USA. An earlier film called The Quiet One (a British gangster tale) won four awards at a film festival in Venezuela.
Pegg helps keep the small hall shows in the West Midlands alive, and his story of such outstanding ability outside the ring is even more remarkable when you learn that he was a failed professional featherweight boxer – eight contests, one win, six loses and one draw all between September 1994 and November 1995.
Meanwhile you may have read or heard that the referee in the notorious 1986 ‘Hand of God’ World Cup match in Mexico between England and Argentina has put the match ball up for sale.
Tunisian Ali Bin Nasser, now 78, was the referee who failed to spot Maradona’s deliberate handball that scored past England’s Peter Shilton.
He has kept that same ball in a cupboard for 36 years and has picked the top London sports auction house, Graham Budd Auctions Ltd to sell the ball off. The estimate sale is £3 million!
What you will not know is the Solihull Moors FC chairman Darryl Eales and his vice-chairman Tim Murphy bought the auction house earlier this year. Nice percentage if you can get it... and they keep getting it! Will they get the £3 million for THE ball? Stay tuned!
I went to the Moors on Saturday to see them make hard work of beating an amateur team from Nottingham, Basford United 1-0. In last night’s first round FA Cup draw, Moors got a home tie against League Two Hartlepool United. Very winnable!
I return in the Sunday Mercury with IMPACT and another nostalgia column.
It is difficult to think why a team of good talent is not doing better... until you ponder a few things.