Player Profile - 5. Richard Dunne

Richard Dunne has only been at Villa for 2 years but he has been such a headline maker that it feels as though he has been here forever.  When he joined he had an amazing first season where he surprised us all with his standout performances, and he was even a bit of a goal getter early in the season with goals against Man City, Chelsea and Hull.  Overall it seemed that at around £5 million he was bargain of the season, especially when Jolean Lescott cost Dunne's former employers more than 4 times that amount.  Unfortunately his mistake in the Carling Cup final defeat to Manchester United which led to Owen's goal seemed to be the start of a dramatic fall from grace.

With the arrival of Gerard Houllier the following season, Dunne became the prime example of hero to zero.  Returning to pre season completely out of shape following the departure of MON, and he never seemed to get back to peak physical fitness all season.  He looked, to put it bluntly, a bit fat.  Far from what you would expect a professional footballer to look like.  This was followed by a string of shocking performances where he was being outpaced by almost everyone and tripping over the ball at every possibility, and simply looking like a pub player.  He was then dropped by GH for a few weeks until it appeared that GH was advised to make up with senior players he had fallen out with in order to try and catapult us back up the table from the worrying position we were in.  Despite reclaiming his position for the rest of the season, he never came close to recapturing the form he showed in his first season with us.  He was also involved in a bust up in a spa with team mate James Collins, where the less said about that the better.

However the departure of GH due to health reasons was a huge relief to Dunney and new manager Alex Mcleish has reignited the centre half.  He looks in peak physical condition and has so far been as solid as ever, claiming many MOTM awards and getting high recognition on International duty from a certain Paul Mcgrath.  One thing is for sure, if he can keep his performances consistently high quality then we will be keeping plenty more clean sheets than last year.

Rating 8/10