European dreams begin to fade as Villa’s small squad starts to stutter

Portsmouth 2-0 Aston Villa15^th March 2008

It’s shit being a Villa fan; not so much a strong of disappointments, as a string of false dawns followed by crushing disappointments, as the team is shoved into the dirt and buggered relentlessly.

For a season that promised so much, the result today signals a shift in momentum as Portsmouth move above Villa into 6^th place. Whispers of a Champions League place a few weeks ago are now beyond reach, and, with the Cup upsets meaning none of the big four will win the FA Cup – thus denying that elusive UEFA Cup place for the team finishing 6^th, even qualifying for the Special Needs Cup (Intertoto) is looking murky.

Results haven’t been that bad, but the team’s form has dropped significantly when compared to the free flowing football of the early season promise. Today’s result against Portsmouth was evident of that, but Wednesday’s fortunate draw at home to an underperforming  Middlesboro side even more so.

It’s clear to see the massive advances the team has made under O’Neill and Lerner, but the problems Randy Lerner’s chequebook must overcome this summer are all too obvious.

Beside the fact that Villa’s squad lacks any right-sided players and can barely fill a subs bench, the team is over-reliant on set-pieces and the aerial prowess of ‘Big’ John Carew. Villa have scored more goals by set-pieces than any other team in the top flight this year, but when we come up against a defence – such as Portsmouth today, that is comfortable in the air and can starve Ashley Young of the ball, it’s difficult to see where chances will come from.

What was all the more disheartening at Fratton Park was the fact that Jermaine Defoe – the player Villa should have signed during the January transfer window, was behind both Pompey goals. Clearly Spurs were willing to let him go at a price, but the seeming inability for Villa to close a deal means we’ll never know the outcome of Carew’s strength and height teamed up with Defoe’s pace and clinical finishing.

Again, the ludicrously small squad, over-reliance on a few key players such as Young and Carew, and familiar nature of Villa going forward, sadly results from the distinct lack of activity during the summer and winter transfer windows. Let’s just hope it doesn’t cost Villa our best chance of a European place in almost a decade.BrummieDave

Scouse folksters latest effort seems awkwardly over-polished

 

AmsterdamArm in ArmCIA Records/Universal

 

Best known for anthemic bit of beauty ‘Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?’, which happens to be the last song ever played on John Peel’s festive fifty (isn’t it weird to hear his name without it being prefixed by “the late, great”?), Ian Prowse’s Amsterdam have been gathering up famous fans aplenty. Even if Christy Moore and Elvis Costello aren’t exactly the coolest celebrity fans a band can have.

Coming from the anthemic folk angle, this band of Scousers, lead by have more in common with the polished Celtic folk The Frames or even Christy Moore than the rugged, urban, anti-folk of Jeffrey Lewis. In fact Moore’s cracked Irish brogue delivers a spoken word poem on stand-out song ‘Nothing’s Goin’ Right.’

But when they’re not going all Celtic, Amsterdam go the other extreme and adopt kitsch merseybeat to mixed effect (‘Lifestyle’). It’s odd to hear a band with such a blatant disregard for music fashion. And frankly it’s kind of refreshing.

 Yet despite some likeable tunes and the odd dark lyric (‘I took a real kicking/I don’t know why’ on ‘Hatred is Wasted’), it all just seems disappointingly middle-England. There just doesn’t seem to be a sizable set of testicles to give Amsterdam’s dreamy 60’s pop kitsch melodies any real edge or invention.

www.amsterdam-music.comDAVE ALLEN3/5

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