Aston Villa doesn’t know how to lose
Posted by disappointmentzone on 24 October 2006
Now that Carthon is gone perhaps things will improve with Cleveland’s #2 football team, the Browns. Probably not. But you never know. For happier times, look across the pond to Cleveland’s #1 football team, Aston Villa, which just won another game (Carling Cup, not EPL, but still). Soccer Spot, never fear, is here with a recap. His words follow.
Carling Cup Review: Aston Villa 3 – Leicester 2
It took a 119th minute goal by Gabriel Agbonlahor to put Leicester away, but Aston Villa have moved on in the Carling Cup. Leicester put up a fight, twice equalizing and they had goalie Paul Henderson to thank for blocking a 90th minute Gareth Barry penalty (the scoring was opened by Barry netting from the spot). What does it take for Villa to put away penalties on a consistent basis? I don’t know if fatigue will be a factor in Saturday’s game at Anfield, but it’s certainly a larger question now that Villa had to go a full 120 minutes rather than the regular 90 if Barry had put the PK away…1/2 on the day is okay for intramurals, but not good enough at this level.
It was nice to see Baros starting alongside Angel again up front and hopefully this parternship will now begin to bring good results, as both are great players and superb finishers. Angel grabbed a goal in the Leicester match, a move which started with Baros, which is better to see. They’ve started alongside each other for the last 3 matches because of Luke Moore’s injury and they might just be starting to gel as a striking unit. They’ll need to be on form against Liverpool.
[By the way, the correct pronunciation of Baros seems to be Bahrosh since in Czech it's Baroš -- anyone who speaks Czech, please correct me if I'm wrong. And since we're on the subject, Angel is not pronounce Ahn-gel like the FSC commentators keep saying it, it's in Spanish, so it's Ahn-hel.]
A “Carling Fact” from Carling.com: “Carling lovers in the UK happily drink almost 1.7 billion pints every year. That’s over 4.5 million pints per day. We’re a thirsty lot.” Sure, that sounds like a lot of beer, but since there are just over 60 million UK residents, that’s only 0.075 pints per person! That can’t even get you tipsy! Unless you’re 4 or something like some of those 60 million, though as I remember it Pip from Great Expectations was fond of beer with his breakfast…
[Disappointment Zone chimes in: .075 pints per person per day of one brand of beer is damn impressive. The UK puts the US to shame--to absolute shame--when it comes to beer drinking. God save the Queen.]
Isaiah said
Well not to mention the fact that I’m sure those between 0 and 14 don’t really factor into this statistic. I didn’t do any digging to see what the census breakdown was for 14 and older in the UK, so it’s actually more than 0.075 per person per day.
That and yeah, 1.7billion pints sounds like just so much. Just another cursory glance around the net revealed this:
http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/factsheets/harm_ukeu.pdf
which suggests that as of 2003 in the UK each person consumed 9.6 liters of pure alcohol, making them 7th in the world. The USA ranked 26th with 6.8 liters per person. We all seem to be holding up our end of the bargain, but the people in Luxembourg are kicking our asses in terms of alcoholism: 12.6 liters per person.
The surprise to me was Mexico coming in at 45th with 3.1. I thought it would be higher, but perhaps that is only because I lived in the bar district of Puebla.
And if you think any of this is an endorsement of binge drinking, please refer to pages 6-8 of the above link.