[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Aston Villa
The Sky Bet Championship
Tuesday March 7th - 19:45 ko
at The John Smith's Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Aston Villa to the John Smith's Stadium on Tuesday night, hoping for more luck with the crucial refereeing decisions than they had on Saturday in the 3-1 defeat at home to league leaders Newcastle Utd.
Town have injury doubts hanging over keeper Danny Ward and the in form Phillip Billing. Crucially perhaps though, we will have our inspirational leader, David Wagner back on the touchline after we lost both of the matches when he was sat in the stand following his totally unjustified two match ban.

Villa come here on the back of a 2-0 win at bottom side Rotherham, courtesy of an own goal and a last minute effort from Jonathan Kodjia. This was only their third away victory of the campaign though and they are the division's lowest scorers away from home so far this season, only scoring ten goals from eighteen matches.
They too have injury problems. Birkir Bjarnason and Jack Grealish have both been ruled out after Saturday's game and Scott Hogan and Andre Green are still doubtful after missing the trip to the New York. Gabriel Agbonlahor and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy are also out. Leandro Bacuna is suspended.


A brief history of Aston Villa: They are one of only two clubs in the Championship who can genuinely claim to be called Champions of Europe (Forest being the other), after they won the European Cup in 1982, with a goal from Peter Withe beating Bayern Munich 1-0.

They were formed in 1874 and by 1887 they had won the FA Cup. The following year they were one of the 12 founding members of the Football League and were the most successful club of the Victorian era, winning five league titles and three FA Cups before old Queen Vic popped her clogs in 1901. In 1897 they moved into Villa Park.
Not much silverware followed with just another FA Cup win in 1920 (beating us 1-0) before they were relegated to division 2 in 1936.
After the war they rebuilt and won the FA Cup again in 1957 and then became the first winners of the League Cup in 1961. But things were soon to get worse. Relegated again to division 2 in 1967, they went down to division 3 at the end of the 69/70 season, the year Town won promotion to the First Division. So yes, the following season, we were two leagues higher than the mighty Aston Villa. Could this possibly happen again this time around?
The slump wasn't permanent though and by 1975 they were back in the top flight, as we were dropping like a stone in the other direction. They won the League Cup twice, beating Norwich 1-0 in 1975 and then Everton in 1977 in one of the most memorable Finals of the League Cup's existence. Back then, replays were used for drawn matches and after a 0-0 draw at Wembley the teams replayed at Hillsborough and once again drew, this time 1-1. So onto a second replay (can you imagine how modern footballers would whine about having a 2nd replay?), this time at Old Trafford. Brian Little and Chris Nicholl scored for Villa as the match once more went to extra time. Then in the dying seconds as the match headed for a third replay, up stepped Little to score a dramatic winner.
Ron Saunders was the manager now and he took them to the 1st division title in 1980/81, but surprisingly quit halfway through the next campaign and so it was Tony Barton who led them to the aforementioned European glory. They followed that up by beating Barcelona in the final of the European Super Cup, but that was the end of their glory years and relegation followed soon after in 1987.
Straight back up though the year after and the runners up spot the year after that, under the leadership of the recently deceased Graham Taylor.
Since then they've won the League Cup twice, beating Man Utd 3-1 in 1994 and then Leeds 3-0 in 96, but that's their last trophy, despite reaching Wembley Finals three times since.
Last season they were relegated.

Peter Withe winning the European Cup for Villa

Head to Head

Villa lead in the overall head to head with 31 wins to Town's 20, with 20 draws.

As mentioned above, our first meeting with Aston Villa came in the FA Cup Final of 1920. This was the season that Town nearly folded after Leeds United had tried unsuccessfully to steal our club in an MK Dons style takeover. It looked like we were going under earlier in the season, but by the end of it we had won promotion and reached the Cup Final. The dream didn't have a happy ending there though as Villa beat us 1-0 at Stamford Bridge. Billy Kirton scored the winner in extra time and the Villa team was captained by future Town legend, Clem Stephenson.

They knocked us out of the Cup the following season but we got our first league victory over them when Jack Swann scored in a 1-0 win at Leeds Road. We got our Cup revenge in 1930 at the quarter final stage, (2-1, with goals from Billy Smith and Alex Jackson) on route to the famous Zeppelin over Wembley Final against Arsenal.
Matches against Villa happened all the time back then, but since 1973 we've only had one more season in the same division up until now. That was in our disastrous relegation season of 87/88 when in a 1-1 draw at Villa Park, Duncan Shearer became the last Town player to score against the Villa until Michael Hefele did so with his magic arse  back in August.

de de de de de de Michael Hefele

So what's new at the Villa Park? 
Managed nowadays by Steve Bruce, a fat geordie lad who once managed Huddersfield Town.

Notable players in their squad:- Jonathan Kodjia, scored three goals against us last season as a Bristol City player. One at the John Smith's and two at Ashton Gate.
He was born in France but represents Ivory Coast at International level. Came to Bristol City in 2015 scoring on his debut at Brentford's Griffin Park.
He scored 20 goals in his first season there before being transferred to Villa for the ridiculous sum of £15m and has scored 10 goals for them in 24 Championship matches so far.

There are others in their squad who have given us grief in the past. Scott Hogan scored twice for Brentford in our poor end to last season. Henri Lansbury has scored on three occasions against us for Forest. Albert Adomah scored for Middlesbrough at the JSS.

One player, still injured but familiar to Town fans, is Jed Steer who played 38 times in goal for us last season.


Line up for match v Rotherham:

34 Johnstone
21 Hutton
12 Chester
2 Baker
3 Taylor
25 Jedinak
37 Adomah
5 Lansbury
14 Hourihane
20 Bjarnason
26 Kodjia

Substitutes
4 Richards
6 Elphick
16 Bree
23 Amavi
31 Bunn
39 Davis
40 Grealish

Recent Form: Town are 3rd in the league with 65 points and Villa are 13th with 45.

Last 6 matches:

Town 1-3 Newcastle
Man City 5-1 Town (FA Cup)
Barnsley 1-1 Town
Town 1-0 Reading
Town 0-0 Man City (FA Cup)
Rotherham 2-3 Town

Rotherham 0-2 Villa
Villa 2-0 Bristol City
Villa 1-0 Derby
Newcastle 2-0 Villa
Villa 1-3 Barnsley
Villa 0-1 Ipswich

Oooooooaaah AAAY AAAY AAAY AAAY AAAY!

[theo_luddite]

Well stepped in M'lud with another top notch thread. :doff's cap:

Vanilla will have some confidence from a 3 game winning run, but when it's Derby, Brizzle and the Windy Millers that those wins came against and two were at home it's hardly massively insprational is it?

Expect Tony Xia to be tweeting more than Forest Gump in the White House does on Twatter. A club that has spent somewhere around £50m on raiding players from elsewhere in the Division should be doing a lot better than 13th and 20 points behind Town, even if £12m of that was too lazy to get out of bed for training (or climb his 4' high fence) and is now at Derby on loan.

[jjamez]

tell you what that pic of the pitch looks a lot better than the one we are going to get! the pitch is shocking, especially for a side that is looking to get into the premiership. would we have this problem if we were to get up or would we sort the egg chasers out?

as for the game itself, it'll be scrappy, they will set up much like newcastle did on saturday, they'll be using the pace and physicallity of kodija to trouble our back line.

i would imagine that town will make 2 changes with coleman and hogg coming in for ward and billing. i'd be inclined to put scanz on the bench so that we have a different option should we need it

[theo_luddite]

State of the pitch is nowt to do with the egg chasers - give it a rest will ya? They've played League matches on it twice, 12th and 28th of Feb and maybe a warm up match, we've played on it at least twice a month, sometimes 3 or 4 times since August. It always looks like this in February. It's winter - grass don't grow too well in winter, fact of life, never does. Just an observation I've made over the last 50 odd years. Leeds Road were never as good as this pitch at this time of year and for many a year it had no grass by the end of October. I give my lawn mower 3 months off for good behaviour, 4 if I can at this time of year waiting for the first cuckoo of spring to fire up his mower.

My lawns also get a bit boggy and soggy in Jan-Feb, just like the pitch does, funny how that works isn't it? Sum'at to do with the weather, though there were nowt wrong with the way the ball bounced up and over Coleman's head for their third on Saturday. There's a reason why Deano bought those big lamps, to try and warm the soil up and get the grass growning again. They should run up a nice big fat leccy bill and the soil will quickly return to ambient temperature once they move them onto the next bit of turf. Our ground staff insist on cutting it after every match so there's barely a blade of grass on it, real or plastic, just so it looks nice and stripey for the tellybox camera's. A very light roller would create the same effect. It'll be fine by April, like it always is and they can start throwing some seed down to keep it lush.

No I don't support Fartown if you are asking, the lads in Blue & White hoops north of The Ainley's get my support if anyone does.

[jjamez]

the only observation i've made theo is that against manc it wasnt great but decent for the time of month. saturday it looked bare. i dont think having a day between games helps, i just hope that the period of rest it is going to have after tuesday helps it recover, maybe in preseason it can join the players on the trip and get some extra fitness! xD

[theo_luddite]

Well jjamez it's looked exactly the same at this time of year ever since we switched to the Desso pitch as far as I can remember (give or take my years in Canada, but I did get back for an annual winter footy fix). The first season when we opened the ground it was even worse, which is why we went to the Desso pitch in the first place. Blaming the egg chasers is complete bollox. I'm not saying it looks great, it certainly doesn't look like it did in August, but why would it? We can still play our style of football on it (unlike say at Rochdale). Didn't really see any odd bounces of the ball or anything else against City or Newcastle that could be blamed on the pitch - not exactly a mud bath is it? We play football on it, not crown green bowling. All the attention came from one wag in the Man City presser (just to wind up Guardiola and he bit on itbig time) bringing up the fact that the egg chasers were playing on Friday and we were playing on Saturday. Like that's never happened before.

[Lord Snooty]

If Wagz says the pitch ain't good enough then that's good enough for me.
Gerrit sooarted 'Oyle!

[theo_luddite]

Apart from that - I hope the ref is crap for both sides instead of just us this time.

---

and it's KSDL that should be sorting the pitch out, not Olive's lad.

[Lord Snooty]

Get them sooarted art then, 'Oyle!

[jjamez]

At least it aint as bad as when grayson wrecked it!