Aston Villa 0 Birmingham 0:THERE ARE signs that Gerard Houllier's honeymoon period could be over at Aston Villa.
The Villa manager stretched his unbeaten run in derbies to 14 matches, but more damning statistics will have been playing on the minds of the disgruntled home supporters who drifted away yesterday. Villa have won only one of their five Premier League games since Houllier took over and have failed to score in 344 minutes of top-flight football.
The new manager needs time to mould his own side, but it was still alarming to see Villa set up so defensively and play with so little ambition until the final half-hour when John Carew arrived to join the isolated Emile Heskey in attack.
Chances came and went during that period, the best of them falling to Ciaran Clark and Ashley Young in the last six minutes.
Clark, who is a centre half by trade, but was deployed as a holding midfielder and was one of the few Villa players to emerge with credit, bravely beat Ben Foster to the ball only to head wide. Young, who was a picture of frustration for most of the afternoon, later tore clear on the right, but his powerful drive clipped the outside of the upright.
Yet, for long spells, Villa looked laboured and devoid of ideas.
The dynamism and creativity James Milner provided last season is sorely missed and the man who was a makeweight in that transfer and expected to fill the England international’s boots, cannot even get on to the pitch.
How galling for Stephen Ireland that two academy graduates, Clark and the substitute Barry Bannan, who have started only four Premier League games between them, were selected ahead of him.
Birmingham, who deserved to end a run of six successive defeats to Villa, were the better side before the interval and were unfortunate not to be awarded a penalty in the 38th minute, when the ball clearly struck Nigel Reo-Coker on the arm. But Howard Webb, the referee, was unmoved.
