Fascinating football facts
Curiosities of Midlands football, with Tony Matthews
• Aston Villa’s Peter Whittingham had the pleasure of scoring the first-ever Premiership goal with the newly designed and distinctive yellow ball – doing so in a 3-0 home win over Portsmouth in November 2004.
• Newcastle United had three players sent-off when Aston Villa won 3-0 at St James’ Park in April 2005. They included Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer for fighting each other!
• After a break of twelveyears, Aston Villa finally played a home friendly ahead of the 2007-08 season when they took on and beat Serie ‘A’ side Inter Milan 3-0 before a crowd of 36,239.
• Gabriel Agbonlahor became the first Aston Villa player to score a hat-trick on the opening day of a League season for 78 years when he bagged a treble in a 4-2 home win over Manchester City in August 2008.
• History was created at the start of the Aston Villa versus Bolton Wanderers Premiership game on the opening day of the 2005-06 season. Four goals were scored in the first nine minutes, two by each side … and surprisingly this was the final result (2-2).
• Striker Luke Moore won £10,000 for charity when he became the first player to score against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in season 2005-06.
He later netted in the return game at Villa Park and was, in fact, the only player to score in home and away games against the champions that season. Later in the campaign, Moore became the first teenager to net a Premiership hat-trick – doing so against Middlesbrough (away) in February 2006, a game Villa won 4-0.
Dozen
• Birmingham were the first team to claim two 12-0 League victories – beating Walsall Town Swifts in December 1892 and Doncaster Rovers in April 1903.
• Terry Connor (then Wolves boss) is the only manager (so far) to take charge of more than ten Premiership matches without seeing his team register a single win.
• During his four-month reign as Albion’s manager – from 29th November 2017 to 2nd April 2018 – Alan Pardew gained just four points from 21 Premier League games. He was sacked with Albion bottom of the table, having suffered eight successive defeats. Explayer Darren ‘Dave’ Moore was then appointed caretaker-manager and in his first four Premier League games he bagged eight points with 1-0 away wins at Manchester United and Newcastle and home draws with Swansea City (1-1) and Liverpool (2-2).
Moore was subsequently named as Baggies head coach/manager but unfortunately he couldn’t keep the team in the top flight.