The Villa Observer - Ghosts of Villains past!

Did they really play for Villa?

As a bit of fun I thought I'd do a regular listing of some of the players who played for our beautiful club - that are long forgotton, strange, odd, or just plain awful.

Forgotten?
No 1: Mathieu Berson

Took an eternity to actually sign from Nantes for the princely sum of 1.7mil made around 9 appearances for Villa, was sent out on loan for a season to Auxerre and then duly sold the next year to Levante.

Memories: A bit slow, but seemed to have good passing ability and as I recall many of the fans called for him to be given a run in the side. Sadly we never really got to see if he was any good.

Odd
No 2: Øyvind Leonhardsen
Signed for free from Spurs - the Liverpool old boy spent almost 2 years with Villa before heading home to Norway.

Memories: Seemed to spend most of the time injured or way past his best, yet somehow had a knack of scoring some pretty important goals for Villa so not a total waste of time at all.

More Ghosts of Villa past to come - but what are your memories of the above and other classic misfits who wore the shirt. I mean even O'Neill managed to bring in the totally past it Didier Agathe and Moustapha Salifou.... a player certainly not without talent yet strangely I'm more likely to get a game than the man once branded the Togolese Zidane!

Other news:

The good
Collins is fit again and Downing is well on the way

The bad
Heskey is fit again (only joking). Bouma has a toe injury that has set back his return (although I thought he had been fit before this?).

Shotgun News Summary
Capello loves Milner, Dunne and the rest of Ireland hate Henry, NRC would love to start on Saturday and if not will leave (according to the Mirror). Pearce loves Delph but wants him to play more club football, Delfouneso thinks he'll start some games this season, Albrighton wants to follow the example of Milner and Young. Stan gets Hogg. Downing may play in the centre for Villa, Milner may play in the centre for Villa - Harewood bemoans lack of Villa opportunity and wants to join Newcastle permanently. QPR might try and sign 3rd choice keeper Andy Marshall and that's all so far folks!

I'm off to Bratislava - good luck to the boys for Saturday - lets hope we succeed where Everton and Man Utd failed!