Villa and Viola






On Saturday we went to Villa v Fiorentina. The previous two encounters between the 2 teams were also both friendlies, with Villa losing 2-1 in 1992 in Florence and 4-0 in New York against the indominatable team of 1999. Villa were to make amends for these poor results with a fine display on Saturday. The game in 1992 was played in front of only 4,939 fans, so it seems strange that the Birmingham papers were moaning about a crowd of 22,915 on Saturday. I think that they were forgetting that it was only friendly and is probably the first season that Villa aren't expected to improve on their previous positions. The previous pre-season friendly at Villa Park was 2 years ago against Inter of Milan. This was seen by a bumper crowd of 38,000, but although Fiorentina have cemented themselves as Champions League regulars they are never going to have the same pull as Inter. The papers were blaming Villa's lack of pre-season signings on the poor crowd, ironically they were also praising Villa's new signing from Leeds, Fabien Delph for his performance.

Delph certainly looks like a decent signing and was definitely man of the match. Milner, who on Sunday was called up to the full England squad also impressed, as did youngsters Albrighton and Delph when they came on in the second half.

Villa dominated most of the match and a wonderful goal from Emile Heskey put Villa ahead on 13 minutes. Craig Gardner also had a good match and peppered the Viola goal with a number of speculative, but dangerous shots.

Villa didn't have it all their own way, although they certainly deserved the 1-0 victory. In the first half Brad Friedel was nearly beat by a shot that hit the crossbar and in the second half substitute goalkeeper Brad Guzan helped steer Villa to victory. Guzan saved a penalty after Marco Marchionni's cross hit Curtis Davies on the chest, however a penalty was given -- this was given after Villa had had 2 good penalty shouts turned down for fouls on James Millner and Ashley Young. Anyway, no harm was done when Guzan pushed Alberto Gilardino's penalty on to the post and it went out of play.

So it finished 1-0 and 3 generations of Holloways went home happy.

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