Aston Villa 0 - 0 Liverpool

During football season I spend most of my Saturday and Sunday evening at Syafiz in Desa Hartamas. What's good about it? Dependable mamak food and football shown on a huge screen with a projector. Damn good stuff, if you'll excuse my language.

The match tonight is the one both my friend Adzam and I always look forward to. I'm an Aston Villa fan, he's a Liverpool fan. Both of us have been disappointed with our teams last season, for fairly different reasons. He was unhappy for not making the Champion's League, I was unhappy for not winning enough games. As I said tonight, "It's a reached a point when I don't care how we win, we just need a win".

Well, it wasn't completely satisfactory tonight, but at least it was hopeful. I won't give a blow-by-blow, but it was a closely matched game, with Villa having an upper hand for most of the second half. Mellberg played amazingly well, containing Owen, and Whittingham was impressive when delivering crosses from the left. In fact, the whole team played quite well overall, and except for a few indecisive moments when Mellberg and Sorenson tried their best to lose the game, it was an encouraging performance. Shame Angel doesn't feel confident with his left foot, and tried to round the keeper instead of slamming it home when faced with a one-on-one situation. Villa look really good when the full-backs can make overlapping runs, but they need speedy centrebacks to cover the gaps they leave behind.

Liverpool, on the other hand, must be getting a bit worried. They would have thought of this as a win, but they didn't do enough. Kewell was almost anonymous - he doesn't quite fit in with Liverpool's style of trying to spring the offside trap with Owen. Djiouf was absolutely amazing and really looks like the player he was during the 2002 World Cup.