Sheffield Steel or was it?

Ok I've been to Sheffield today, been to see a football match, but hey I do that whenever I can. Villa were playing Sheffield United in the third round of the FA Cup, we were our usual unorganised selves but in the first half we just went 2-0 up without trying. Debutant loanee Kyle Walker got the first and living up to his name, he literally just walked through the Blades defence and passed the ball into the back of the net. His girlfriend, stood two rows in front of us, in a fur hat, just "couldent believveee itttt!" in some foreign dialect from below Watford Gap services, Walker to his credit, didn't celebrate the goal as he's a born and bred blades fan. We scored another through Albrighton on the half hour (yes that kid that Houllier keeps dropping that is in fact probably our best player this season) and all seemed rosy if a little pedestrian up to half time.

The second half however seemed to be Villa jumping out of second gear into neutral, combined with the Sheff Utd team realising that they were meant to be playing football and they had given Villa too much respect in the first half. Villa were under threat, we were losing it in the middle of the park and with Houllier playing his patented 4-6-0 formation we had no-one up front for our players to aim at? Still not sure how the centre forward playing left wing is meant to get us goals but hey, its only the cup. The ref clearly had designs on grabbing the headlines today though as he seemed to be making the rules up as he went along, making strange decision after strange decision. Eventually after many attempts to give the Blades as much advantage as he could he gave them a penalty. Yes there was contact but Greg Louganis would have been proud of what followed. They scored from the spot, then Villa defended like... I don't know what it was but it wasn't trojans. The Blades sensed an upset might be on the cards here and stepped their game up again but Villa braved the onslaught. The ref then sent off Ashley Young for two of the most innocuous fouls possible, neither was a yellow and the first was a shoulder charge! (yes I know people might struggle with the imagery there). Villa were down to ten men, mind you we'd only just gone up to eleven after Pires got subbed. Towards the death Petrov scored a great goal after coming on as sub, he was probably our most potent attacker today, he had three shots which is probably two more than anyone else, should have buried the first too but he suffered from the age old "too much time" syndrome, on that one. Anyway it mattered not with that goal the game was dead and Villa had won, which was the intention at the start (I hope?).

So we trekked back into Sheffield and resumed our berths in the pub, drank a few nice Thornbridge Ales and went home. Pete got off the train in Manchester and I had to share the table seat with...





A good day had by all and thanks to Ian and Pete for being such excellent company. On the way home, something I witnessed on Twitter last night seemed to take a life of its own and any Villa fans on twitter reading this I implore you to read this and tweet with the hashtag #reocokermustgoginger so we can get it trending. Its funny and apparently NRC has seen it and laughed. Go on, you know it makes sense!

No music today because I've been rather preoccupied with the football so maybe Monday for another Album recommendation as we have visitors tomorrow and I think I may just have to help out with the doings.