Simon Dawkins our latest loan from Spurs Lending Library

Villa have captured wide man Simon Dawkins in a last gasp loan move to the end of the season from Spurs  giving the player a chance to revive his career in England following a successful spell in Major League Soccer with high flying San Jose Earthquakes.

The winger played some exciting stuff in  Earthquakes's record-breaking campaign in which they set a new regular-season record for goals scored and achieved the highest points total in the league.

Simon says "Tottenham have been great with me and the past two seasons with San Jose have really kick-started my career. I never lost my belief and everything I've been through has made me stronger mentally as a player and as a person.

"I'm really focussed on what I need to do for the rest of this season and I'm looking forward to training with my new team-mates ahead of a big game against Everton this weekend."

Dawkins has been handed the Number 24 shirt.

Everton v Villa: Former Glories Video

England Squad for Brazil clash:

Hodgson's Squad

Goalkeepers: Jack Butland, Joe Hart.

Defenders: Leighton Baines, Gary Cahill, Ashley Cole, Phil Jagielka, Glen Johnson, Joleon Lescott, Chris Smalling, Kyle Walker.

Midfielders: Michael Carrick, Tom Cleverley, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Aaron Lennon, James Milner,Leon Osman, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jack Wilshere.

Forwards: Jermain Defoe, Wayne Rooney, Daniel Sturridge, Theo Walcott, Daniel Welbeck.

Signed, Sylla Delivered, He's Ours

Yacouba Sylla's signing from French club Clermont Foot is now complete.

The 22-year-old defensive midfield player had earlier passed a medical and all the paperwork is now sorted and Sylla's registration is lodged with the Premier League.

He will train tomorrow at Bodymoor Heath with his new team-mates and will be eligible to play in Saturday's Goodison Park clash.

Sylla said "Playing at Villa Park will be unbelievable. It is a huge stadium with a great history and the crowd will be incredible. You dream about this when you become a footballer.

"I can hopefully help the team when we're defending against our opposition and to get the ball moving forward. I know the fans are very passionate and it will be great to get started as soon as possible.

"The Club has made me feel very welcome already. The facilities at the training ground are first-class and I will be very proud when I put on the shirt and play my first game. I am looking forward to this very much."

Sylla's squad number will be 18

Everton v Villa: A foot in both camps

Away trip to Ajax in the Next Gen

Aston Villa have been drawn away at Ajax in the last 16 of the Next Gen Series.

The Under 19s tournament has now reached the knockout stage and game will be played over a single leg.

All the English teams have been drawn away with Chelsea facing a tricky trip to Barcelona, Spurs go to Paris St Germain, Arsenal face Inter Milan and Liverpool take on Sporting Lisbon.

Dates and times are still to be arranged but some ties will be live on Eurosport, while the Villa-Ajax clash is highly likely to be live on the Ajax website.

NextGen Series last 16 draw

Paris St Germain v Tottenham Hotspur
CSKA Moscow v PSV Eindhoven
Sporting CP v Liverpool
Barcelona v Chelsea
Internazionale v Arsenal
Olympiacos v RSC Anderlecht
Juventus v Rosenborg BK
Ajax v Aston Villa

Villa v Newcastle as it was tweeted...

Three points tonight please Mister Lambert: No pressure

Randy effectively gives Lambert the dreaded vote of confidence...

Statements from Randy Lerner are almost as rare as hen's teeth, so it's a sign of how serious things are that he has issued an official statement today:

"In the time that I’ve come to know Paul what is clear above all else is his strength of character and belief in his approach to football.

"Fortunes can shift quickly in this game and a sense that one has it right can become grave doubt in a matter of a few games.

"The Villa board knew that with Paul we would begin to address the club’s multi-year lack of competitive stability by reshaping the squad with seven new signings in the summer.

"It has been rewarding at times this season although certainly frustrating as well, particularly recently.

"During January Paul and the board have discussed a variety of players although nothing has yet materialised, which I know also can be frustrating as fresh players always give at least a sense of progress and optimism.

"Finally, and on a very personal note, I would reiterate that Paul has achieved success at many levels of professional football and I believe, given support, he will continue to do so for us.”

Villa v Newcastle: A foot in both camps

This week's "a foot in both camps" features Peter Withe and Nolberto Solano.

Millwall v Villa as it was tweeted...

Fantasy Villa Team No.6 : Burns Night

It's Burns Night, and what better to celebrate than picking a fantasy Villa team full of Scots. It's got to be more fun than all that tossing around with kilts, bagpipes and haggis and wandering about shouting "Hoots mon" and "it's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht the nicht"

So while we are desperately hoping that Paul Lambert can instill some Braveheart passion into our battered side, here's our Villa Scotland eleven. Well ten actually, we couldn't remember a Scottish keeper so we cheated and included Carson, he's a "Scott" after all.

We've also included Alan Hutton at right back, though we were severely tempted to stick Colin Calderwood over there. No controversy over the rest of the defence with Charlie Aitken a shoo in at left back while who else would we pick than Evans & McNaught at the heart of defence?

We reckon a midfield of Bremner, Blair and Rioch would guarantee more than our fair share of possession and Shaun Maloney would provide plenty of ammo for our iconic strike duo of Gray and McInally.

Aston Villa : The Bradford Showdown..as it was tweeted

Fantasy Villa Team No. 5: Eng-ger-lund

Fairly simple criteria for this one, our basic premise was to pick a team largely based on how many England caps our heroes managed to pick up while actually being on Aston Villa's books.

Pizza flogging, penalty missing Gareth Southgate easily comes top of the pile cap wise so despite him eventually buggering off to Middlesbrough "to win things" we're making him captain.

Special Mentions should go to Emile Heskey (12 caps while with Villa), who may well have made our team had we not already decided to shove Ashley Young (15 caps while with Villa) in the forward line rather than wide, while Steve Hodge qualified as of right ahead of Gordan Cowans, but we love Sid and "We Hate Hodge" is still one of our favourite ever chants.

We had heard of Villa legends Billy Walker and Charlie Athersmith but we'll admit we had to Google Sam Hardy and Jimmy Crabtree. If you want to know more, we suggest you do the same. Oddly we could find no footage of the quartet on You Tube...Charlie was a right winger, not a right back but there seems to be a distinct lack of right backs at the top end of the list and hey, him and Milner can always interchange and we can't put John Gidman in every team.

Fantasy Villa Team No.4: 'ello John, gotta new motor?

Well, we thought, this one would be dead easy. John is a fairly common name, or so we'd imagined; pulling together a fantasy Villa team full of Johns should have been a total doddle, right?

Wrong!

There doesn't seem to be a single John on the entire current playing staff. We could - at a push - have included Jean II Makoun, but if three successive managers have ignored him, why should we be any different?

John appears to have been most popular with 70s era players so a large chunk of our squad comes from that decade. We had to have Budgie of course, total legend; John Gidman was shoo in at right back and the much missed John Robson gets the call at left back. Struggling for centre halves, we've gone back to the 1920s for Scottish hero John Johnstone.

In the middle of the park we use utility man John Gregory, flanked by Sixties wing wonder Johnny MacLeod and legendary 19th Century Captain Fantastic John "Jack" Devey.

We'll take any excuse to sing "He's bigger than me and you" hence Carew's starring role along with FA Cup hero Johnny Dixon and part of Villa's exciting mid-seventies forward line, John Deehan.

Frankly there weren't many options. There just aren't as many Johns as you'd think.

Happy Birthday to Gary Shaw

Fantasy Villa Team No.3: The Media Pundits

Okay, we were gonna call this one the TV pundits, but we struggled for a left back so drafted in Pat Heard off the radio.

We've also managed to pick a team featuring Paul Elliott, which is a bit of a worry, but hey he was on  Football Italia so he counts...and we are using Martin Keown, but feel free to throw snowballs at him.

What we couldn't bring ourselves to do was select Tony Cascarino. Yeah, we know it was over twenty years ago but we still have nightmares. Fortunately, Brian Little does a bit of punditry for Setanta Sports over in Ireland so he qualifies. We seriously considered Frank McAvennie for a moment there.

The Aussie Bozzie is a  regular Premier League pundit as any of you that have watched those 3pm games in those naughty pubs will know, while the excitable Paul Merson remains the best thing on TV.

Fantasy Villa Team No.2: The BlueNose Connection

For our second fantasy Villa team we've bitten the bullet and cobbled together a team of players that have pulled on a Birmingham City shirt as well as playing in the old claret and blue.

Unlike our PFA team, there were plenty of options when putting this one together. We were spolit for choice. We could have included four members of our European Cup Winning Team but it still pains us to think of them in blue and white.

We could have included the likes of Noel Blake or Robert Hopkins, but we must have hurled so much abuse at them during the eighties that mere mention of their names resulted in a volley of four letter words. No Curtis Davies either. The mere mention of his name reminds us of just how much of Randy's money was spunked up the wall by Martin O'Neill.

We were tempted to include Kevin Poole, still thought of as a hero by those of us old enough to remember Villa's triumph in the Daily Express 5-a-side tournament in which he was truly heroic (well, he made a few saves). We went with the much missed Les Sealey instead. Loved a laugh with the fans did Les. Top bloke.

Some of these only get in by the skin of their teeth, Rioch, Charles and Small made less then ten appearances between them for the noses, but to avoid allegations that we've made a Blues related team weak on purpose, we have picked a strong forward line...and David Geddis.

Here's our line-up:

West Brom v Villa as it was tweeted...

Fantasy Villa Team No.1: The PFA Team of the Year criteria

In the first of an occasional series, we pick fantasy Villa teams using players from times gone by.

This first one virtually picks itself as our criteria was that players had to have featured in a PFA Team of the Year. We were genuinely struggling to get a full team here, hence the five at the back, but as both John Gidman and Alan Wright were quite happy bombing forward it might sort of work.

Hard done by here is right back Kenny Swain who doesn't make our team despite that the fact he appeared in PFA Teams twice. He was trumped by John Gidman who appeared an impressive three times.

The team also boasts two Andy Grays.

Game on

This evening's crunch derby game is on.


West Bromwich Albion have confirmed that match goes ahead unless there is a major change for the worse in conditions. So further earthquakes or unexpected blizzards not withstanding it looks like all systems go.

Mark Miles, Albion’s head of snow shovelling, said: “The ground staff and extra help we’ve hired in have done a terrific job in clearing the snow and we’re now making all of our usual pre-match preparations.

“Unless there is a sudden deterioration in the weather, which is not forecast, the game will go ahead as planned.”

Last night's Leicester v Middlesbrough kick off was delayed after it took Boro's team coach two hours to travel the two miles from the team's hotel.

Baggies battle to save local derby

West Brom officials are battling the elements in hope of saving the eagerly anticipated derby clash with Aston Villa.

Friday's white-out has had an impact both inside and outside the stadium though the pitch is in perfect nick.

“We were fully aware that the adverse weather would be arriving during the past day or so and we did everything we could to prepare for it,” said Mark Miles, Albion’s head of facility operations and development.

“We hired gritters to service both inside and outside the stadium yesterday and they will remain on site for the rest of today and tomorrow.

“The under-soil heating has been on for several days, which is keeping the pitch temperature at ten degrees celcius.

“We are making concerted efforts to remove the heavy snowfall from in and around the stadium and this operation will continue tomorrow morning.”

Port Vale v Bradford OFF

Saturday's League Two game between Port Vale and Bradford City has been called off because of a snowbound pitch.

Bradford City's players will now be that bit fresher when they leap into action in Tuesday night's Capital One Cup semi-final second leg against the Villa.

The postponement may also have a bearing on Bradford City boss Phil Parkinson's team selection for the big one.

Lambert on WBA clash

listen to ‘Lambert on WBA clash’ on Audioboo

Southampton sack Adkins - Twitter reacts

Sky Sports continue to bugger up our fixture list.

Two more vital home games have been shunted out of their 3pm Saturday slots by Rupert Murdoch's evil henchmen Sky Sports people.

The daunting home clash with Manchester City has moved from Saturday March 2 to the massively inconvenient Monday March 4, with an 8pm kick-off.

Our opportunity do the double over Liverpool now has to wait until the distinctly unfamily-friendly timeslot of Easter Sunday, Sunday March 31, with a 1.30pm kick-off. Put your tin-hat on before you reveal that lovely news to your wives, girlfriends and mothers.

Rodgers not best pleased as Suarez confesses...

Anfield head honcho Brendan Rodgers is unhappy at controversial Uruguayan Luis Suarez's confession of diving deeming it "unacceptable" and claiming it will dealt with "internally" by Liverpool Football Club.

The 25-year-old "professional" fessed up to "inventing" a foul during the clash with Stoke City at Anfield in October during an Argentinian interview. He was described as "an embarrassment" by Stoke's Tony Pulis at the time, but claimed in the Fox Sports interview that "falling" deliberately is part of the game.

Rodgers pledged the club would be taking action against the little cheat.

He said: "I think it is wrong. It is unacceptable. I have spoken to Luis and it will be dealt with internally."

Blizzard Conditions Place Baggies Clash in Jeopardy

With some forecasters predicting 14 hours of non stop heavy snow on Friday, and more snow predicted to fall over the weekend, it appears that Saturday's early evening clash between Villa and Albion at The Hawthorns could be in jeopardy.

While there is thought to be very little danger of the pitch not being playable, the sheer amount of snow predicted is expected to play havoc with local travel, with trains particularly subject to disruption, while the health and safety monsters will be poised to scupper the fixture if the roads and pavements around the stadium are deemed dangerous.

The Hawthorns is the highest above sea level football stadium in the country and the snow is expected to be at it's heaviest and most disruptive on high ground.

Ironically, the fact that the game is due to be televised may help it go on as the 5.30 pm kick off time gives the authorities longer to deal with any weather related issues.

If the game does go ahead it's sure to be dry inside the ground, as there will no alcohol on sale in the Villa end.

West Brom v Villa: A foot in both camps.

Villa U21 v Middlesbrough U21 tweets

Millwall Ticket News

It's a bit complicated but here we go...

Millwall v Villa
FA Cup 4th Round
Friday January 25 - 7.45pm
Allocation: 2,000

Prices: £20 [adults], £11 [over-60s], £10 for [U16s], £5 [U12s]

Monday January 14 [from 12pm]: On sale to Cup Scheme members and/or season card holders who attended the Ipswich Town round three fixture and at least two Premier League away fixtures in 2012-13 season

Monday January 14 [from 3.30pm]: On sale to Cup Scheme members and/or season card holders who attended the Ipswich Town round three fixture AND at least one Premier League away fixture in 2012-13 season

Tuesday January 15 [from 9am]: On sale to current full season card holders who have held a consecutive season card for five years and attended the Ipswich Town round three fixture

Tuesday January 15 [from 2pm]: On sale to current full season card holders for the 2012-13 season who attended the Ipswich Town round three fixture

Wednesday January 16 [from 9am]: On sale to current full season card holders who have held a consecutive season card for five years and attended at least two Premier League away fixtures in 2012-13

Wednesday January 16 [from 2pm]: On sale to full season card holders for the 2012-13 season who have held a consecutive season card for five years

Thursday January 17: On sale to current full season card holders and at least one Premier League away fixture in 2012-13

Friday January 18: On sale to full season card holders for the 2012-13 season

Monday January 21: On sale to supporters who attended the Ipswich Town round three fixture

Tuesday January 22: On sale to supporters with ANY booking history in 2012-13

Wednesday January 23: On sale to supporters with ANY booking history

Coming soon...

Villa v Southampton as it was tweeted...

Paul Lambert: I feel like any other Aston Villa fan

Southampton v Villa: Blast from the past

Joe Bennett apologises on Twitter

Joe Bennett has taken to Twitter to apologise to fans after his and the team's poor showing in the Capital One Cup Semi final.

Still hard to take last night! Dont mind bit of stick defo wasnt at it last night.. #apologies
— joe bennett (@joebennett27) January 9, 2013

Matthew Lowton drew abuse for an element of Villa support after tweeting about making cakes with his daughter, while several of the defeated Youth Cup team took to Twitter to express their disappointment at the teams early exit from the competition.

Sorry if ive offended any of you tonight, was just annoyed about our result! Just gotta keep going n move on! #avfcfamily

— Jack Grealish (@JackGrealish1) January 8, 2013

The morning after is the worst.

— Jordan Graham (@jordandakid) January 9, 2013

Second Leg Scenarios...

We lose the second leg by any margin  - Elimination 

We draw the second leg by any scoreline  - Elimination

We win the second leg by a one goal margin - Elimination

We win the second leg 2-0 - Extra Time will be played, if no further goals are scored, we qualify for the final on the away goals rule.

We win the second leg 3-1 - Extra Time will be played, if no further goals are scored we go to a penalty shoot out.

We win the second leg 4-2 or 5-3 - Extra Time will be played, if no further goals are scored we are eliminated on the away goals rule.

We win the second leg by three or more clear goals - Qualification to the Final

N.B. In the event of a draw, away goals will only be counted as double AFTER Extra Time.

Villa v Southampton: A foot in both camps.

Bermondsey on a Friday Night...

The date for Villa's FA Cup clash down at Millwall has been announced.

The game will now be played on Friday 25th January at 7.45pm on police advice.

Ticket info not available as yet but match has not been selected for TV coverage by either ITV or ESPN.

1994 Semi Final Heroes...We need this spirit now!

Miracles DO happen...

Bradford City v Aston Villa as it was tweeted

FA Youth Cup: Posh v Villa as it was tweeted...

Villa & Bradford: A foot in both camps

We celebrate the semi final with a "Ciggy Card"  tribute to some of the players who have graced the teams of both Bradford City and our beloved Aston Villa

Cup Fever and not just the first team...

It's not just the first team in cup action tonight as the U-18 boys take on Peterborough United in an away tie in the third round of the FA Youth Cup.

If successful, they face Leicester City in the fourth round.

The tie was due to take place before Christmas but was postponed after the M6 was closed due to a fireball style accident.

The match kicks off at 7pm, though most Villa eyes will be focused on Bradford when it takes place.

Under 21 Fixtures and Venues Revealed

Following the Under 21s decisive thrashing by Spurs at the end of the first phase of the Barclays U21 Premier League competition, we are now in Group 2 for the second phase.

Fixtures are as follows:

Mon Jan 14 - Middlesbrough - H - Hinckley United FC - 7pm
Mon Jan 28 - Everton - H - Bodymoor Heath - 1pm
Mon Feb 4 - Blackburn Rovers - H - Villa Park - 7pm
Mon Feb 11 - Sunderland - A - Academy of Light - 1pm
Fri Feb 15 - Chelsea - A - Brentford FC - 7pm
Mon Feb 25 - Fulham - H - Villa Park - 7pm
Mon Mar 4 - Middlesbrough - A - Riverside Stadium - 7pm
Sun Mar 17 - Everton - A - Southport FC - 2pm
Mon Apr 1 - Sunderland - H - Hinckley United - 3pm
Mon Apr 8 - Blackburn Rovers - A - Leigh Sports Village - 7pm
Mon Apr 15 - Chelsea - H - Villa Park - 7pm
Mon Apr 22 - Fulham - A - Motspur Park - 7pm

We would need to win the group outright to qualify for the knockout stage of the competition in May.

Villa v Bradford: Blast From The Past

As Villa take on Bradford in the Capital One cup, footage from the vital League Division Two clash with the Bantams on 2nd May 1988, as David Platt strikes to keep our promotion hopes alive in front of a lively 36,423 Villa Park crowd...

Villa v Millwall: Blast from the Past

As we look forward to a cup-tie with Millwall, we look back at a great night at Villa Park with Alan McInally in his pomp, though sadly only witnessed by 17,648 fans