Players Must Live Close

Alex Mcleish has imposed a new rule at Villa that every player must live within a 30 mile radius of Bodymoor Heath. He hopes that this rule will help to reduce the number of injuries within the squad.

Now it was much publicised last year when Gerard Houllier tried to do something similar. His attempts failed though as players such as Stephen Ireland refused to move closer to the training ground because they felt it wasn't worth it if they knew that no matter what they did, they would be training with the reserves. Good news for Mcleish however as both Ireland and Warnock have both recently relocated closer to Bodymoor. Obviously that is down to the fact that they are being given game time so they actually have a good enough reason to move.

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

Player Profile - 3. Stephen Warnock

Some rate him, some think he's hopeless.  But one thing is for sure, nobody can question his work rate on the pitch.  Every game I see him in he is racing up and down the left wing, getting forward whenever possible whilst also tracking back whenever the opposition comes forward.  He puts in some crunching tackles, admittedly a lot of them result in a yellow card, but he never backs out of a 50-50.  But for me there are 2 major problems with his game.

The first problem is his distribution/execution of passes.  Over the past couple of seasons I have seen far too many loose passes from him which puts us right on the backfoot or wastes good opportunities coming forward.  The other problem I have with him is his constant misjudgements of the ball when it's in flight.  A few times already this season I've seen a simple hoof upfield end up in a chance for the opposition as a result of Warnock charge at it to try and cut it out and the ball ends up going straight over his head.  At this standard of football that is simply unacceptable.  I think it was these traits which caused Gerard Houllier to banish him from his attempts to create "total football".

Despite these flaws I believe we have a pretty good left back and we shouldn't be in a hurry to replace him.  There are clearly better left backs availible but we have much more important positions to find replacements for in the short term.  I suppose he could be described as a marmite kind of character, you can love him or hate him.  Therefore I'm going to play it safe and sit on the fence and open up the floor to other people's opinions!

Rating 7/10