Stoke City win Braggers' League with Wolves close behind

As we enter the final day of Premiership football in the 2010/11 season, Stoke City win the Braggers' League having won four of their eight West Midlands derbies and drawn two. The Potters can also be rightly proud of being finalists in the 2011 FA Cup final last weekend, being beaten 1-0 by Manchester City in the final.

Amazingly, Wolverhampton Wanderers finish the Braggers' League in second position, also with 14 points and coming second only on goal difference. I say 'amazingly' as Wolves go into 'Survival Sunday' today, fighting for survival in the Premiership. Which does go to show that performance in local derbies doesn't always reflect wider performance in the premiership.

Albion leap-frogged Villa for 3rd place in the Braggers' League with a recent and historic win over Villa at the Hawthorns. Villa's own performance in local derbies reflects a poor season generally for Villa in the Premiership - they have won only two of their eight derby matches and also lost a Carling Cup quarter final against rivals Birmingham City at St Andrews.

Blues themselves have had the worst season in terms of both the Bragger's League and the Premiership. They only won one derby match this season and are fighting for Premiership survival this afternoon against Tottenham Hotspur at Whitehart Lane. Having said this, by winning the Carling Cup against Arsenal at Wembley this season, if Blues can avoid the drop today then Blues fans will have cause to celebrate a successful season in terms of picking up silverware for the first time in many years.

Below are the results from all 20 of the local derby games in the West Midlands region this season. What the Braggers' League does reflect is how close our local teams are to one another generally with no single team dominating the derby games in terms of winning all eight of their fixtures. Indeed, the one derby that Blues won was against Stoke City, bottom beating top. 

Well done to Stoke City on winning the league and good luck to Blues and Wolves this afternoon, if either or both teams were to go down today it would completely ruin the Braggers' League next season! So as a Villa supporter I can genuinely say, bring it on for next season, fingers crossed that we can go at it again in 2011/12 with all 5 of these teams staying up for another exciting season of West Midlands Braggers' League.    

Wolves 3 West Brom 1

Blues 1 Wolves 1

Albion 2 Villa 1

Stoke 3 Wolves 0

Villa 1 Stoke 1

Villa 0 Wolves 1

Blues 1 Albion 3

Stoke 1 Albion 1

Albion 1 Wolves 1

Blues 1 Stoke 0

Blues 1 Villa 1

Wolves 1 Blues 0

Villa 2 Albion 1

Albion 0 Stoke 3

Stoke 3 Blues 2

Villa 0 Blues 0

Wolves 1 Villa 2

Albion 3 Blues 1

Stoke 2 Villa 1

Wolves 2 Stoke 1

Wolves earn vital points to move above Villa

I make no apologies for the length of time it has taken me to post up the very latest update of the Braggers' League table following the Wolves1-0 defeat of Villa last Saturday.

To put it bluntly I'm still a very unhappy Villa fan, especially as I was there at Villa Park with all the other claret and blue supporters chanting "you don't know what you're doing" to Houllier when he took Albrighton off and then all the Wolves fans also started singing "you don't know what you're doing" in sympathy.

Like we need sympathy from Wolves fans.

But fair play to you, at least your players looked like they were vaguely interested in playing Premiership football next season. The only silver lining that day was hearing that the Noses had lost at Wigan.

Perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to start the Braggers' League this season. Stoke are the only ones doing any good in the Premiership and I only included them in the Braggers League to make up the flamin' numbers. (Only joking, we love our northern cousins in North Staffs really!)

And yes, I am a moaning Villa fan.


Collins and Dunne spotted on the Holte End







Well anyway, well done to the Dingles on your first win at Villa Park for over three decades as well as gaining a boost to your own survival hopes, even if it did add to Aston Villa's relegation worries.

Matt Jarvis scored the only goal of the game after Wolves had seen two first-half efforts disallowed.

Wolves now go up to second place in the Braggers' League, Only goal difference with Stoke keeps Wolves off the top, but they do have a game in hand.

Blues win the cup but are certs for bottom place

Euphoric after their victory over Arsenal in the Carling Cup final, Birmingham City may be the only one of our 5 Premiersip teams from the West Midlands to win any decent silver ware in the 2010-11 season, but in the Braggers' League they look certain to finish in bottom place having lost four of their seven local derbies so far this season with only one derby left to go to gain three points.

Just one week after their big trip to Wembley the feelgood factor was knocked out of the Blues by the Baggies in an incredible 3-1 win to the Black Country visitors. The win took Albion off the bottom of the Braggers' table and puts them on level pegging with Villa with the slimmest of goal differences seperating 2nd and 3rd place.

Albion had earned an additional Braggers' League point at the end of February with a 1-1 draw at Stoke.

The reality of the Braggers' League has been that there is very little between our 5 West Midlands teams in the Premiership and even leaders Stoke can still be easily leap-frogged by Villa, Albion or Wolves for the champions place at the top. Amazingly Wolves still have 4 local derby matches to play this season and will face Stoke, Villa, Albion and Blues in the remaining couple of months.

It's all still to play for in terms of Braggers' rights in this monumental season when 5 West Midlands teams met in the top flight for the first time in decades. But will they all survive in the Premiership on the final day of reckoning? 

      

Black Country derby a stalemate

Two local derbies in the West Midlands in the past two weeks saw Birmingham City move off the foot of the Braggers' League table for the first time this season after a win at St Andrews against Stoke on the 12th February.

The pre-Carling Cup final feelgood factor seems to be high at the Blues in recent weeks and a stoppage time goal from Nicola Zigic helped the noses to keep up their good form. 

Meanwhile at the Hawthorns this afternoon, Carlos Vela saved Baggie pride with a last minute goal in the first ever Black Country derby of the Premiership.

Jamie O'Hara had earlier given Mick McCarthy's side the lead from a superbly-worked free-kick.


Today's game was Roy Hodgson's first in charge at the Baggies.

It's still anyone's title in the Braggers' League, with just 5 points between Stoke City at the top and Albion at the bottom.

Coming up in the Braggers' League, just eight more West Midlands derbies:

26th February

Stoke v West Brom, 15:00

5th March
Birmingham v West Brom, 15:00

19th March
Aston Villa v Wolverhampton, 15:00

16th April
Stoke v Wolverhampton, 15:00

23rd April
Aston Villa v Stoke, 15:00

30th April
West Brom v Aston Villa, 15:00

1st May
Birmingham v Wolverhampton, 12:00

7th May
Wolverhampton v West Brom, 15:00

Stoke are looking strong contenders to win the Braggers' League as things stand at the moment with two of their remaining three fixtures being home matches. Villa also have two home matches out of three remaining whilst Blues have two matches remaining, both at home.

Albion and Wolves both have four matches remaining, so in actual fact it is very difficult to call the positions of all five clubs at the end of the season. The final three derbies of the season will be fascinating not just in terms of the Braggers' League but also in determining whether any of our teams are relegated from the Premiership.

The final game, the Black Country derby, is set to be an absolute corker!

Villa fight back to save Houllier's scalp

It was end to end stuff today at St Andrews in the 10th West Midlands local derby of the season and goals by the two centre halfs, Roger Johnson for Blues and James Collins for Villa, settling the final score at 1-1.

Villa may be the happier side with their point away from home after pressure mounted on them to equalize in the cauldron of St Andrews. The point means they have climbed out of the relegation zone whilst keeping their 2nd place in the Braggers' League table.

Birmingham's form in the derbies this season continues to be poor with just two points gained from 5 local derbies. These are the results from the 10 West Midlands derbies in the Premiership thus far this season:

Blues 1 Villa 1

Wolves 1 Blues 0

Villa 2 Albion 1

Albion 0 Stoke 3



Stoke 3 Blues 2


Villa 0 Blues 0


Wolves 1 Villa 2


Albion 3 Blues 1


Stoke 2 Villa 1


Wolves 2 Stoke 1

Bonus points 

Whilst bagging a bonus point for their streaker this afternoon, Blues would be docked points for a case of "empty seats m'lud, empty seats", with 4,000 unsold seats resulting in huge gaps in the stands on Match of the Day. This was in spite of an allocation of only 1500 seats to Villa supporters. Not great for a derby. Clubs should be able to ensure the safety of supporters without banning away fans and then not even being able to fill the reusultant gaps with home fans. This is small club mentality from Birmingham City who clearly have a problem with stewarding St Andrews and I speak from the experience of having plastic seats raining down on me and my children from the top tier of the Railway End housing home fans who were also kicking down their own safety barriers on the pitch in front of us at the end of our last encounter, whilst freelance stewards who admitted to me that they had never been in St Andrews before in their lives stood by looking as helpless and scared as we felt.

Apparently two flares managed to get through the turnstiles again today and security men only made themselves known after the streaker managed to take off his kit and leap onto the pitch. If Blues are to continue playing Premiership football next season, they need to put the amateurish Brady Bunch / Trevor Francis 'toys out of pram' days behind them and start behaving with a bit more class. Birmingham are fast becoming the Milwall of the West Midlands. 5 bonus points docked.

Blues v Villa - Houllier's last stand?

Birmingham rivals Villa and Blues go head to head at St Andrews at lunchtime today and following on from the dramatic Carling Cup semi final a few weeks ago which saw the Noses snatch the win with home fans flooding onto the pitch as if they'd won the Champions League, Villa will surely be up for revenge. 

But with both teams desperate for points at the embarrassing foot of the Premiership, it could go either way and we should at least be guaranteed more of a contest than the boring draw at Villa Park back in October.

Following recent criticism from brain-of-Britain Ian Holloway, which Villa legend Stan Collymore has since labelled disrespectful, Villa boss Gerard Houllier should aslo have a point to prove as well as a job to hang onto in the middle of a continuing global economic crisis. So how brave will French man Houllier be in defending his dodgy wicket especially when we all know that the French don't understand the game of cricket anyway, let alone play it?

Villa fans will be hoping that Gabby Agbonlahor does the business today and that another lifelong Villa supporter, Marc Albrighton brings some much needed derby day enthusiasm into the encounter. But with Ashley Young and Emile Heskey suspended, Houllier may have to start his out-of-favour striker big John Carew.

Alex McLeish of course has his own giant front man these days in 6ft 8 inch Nikola Zigic, although Zigic's recent failure to make an impact on games has led to McLeish looking to bring Spurs hero Robbie Keane to St Andrews, though not in time for today's clash. Anothe former Spurs player, David Benntley, will be playing for the Noses today, though defender Scott Dann is out with an injury. Blues should still take the points today as the passion of the home crowd will be the vital 12th man in this high stakes game. Though having said that, there were several notable occasions some years back when Villa were favourites for the home victory and we all know what happened then.  

Local pundits are suggesting today's match will be brutal with Birmingham fans relishing the prospect of cementing Villa's place in the bottom three.

Shame Villa were only allocated 1500 seats for this game, although this is in keeping with the tactical meaness of Birmingham as a club in the days when the Brady Gang hiked prices up for the fixture over and above what Villa charged both sets of fans. 

Villa announce incentive scheme to get new fans

Aston Villa have launched an incentive scheme to encourage season ticket holders like myself to recruit new fans.

Villa will be giving tokens to all season ticket holders who book seats for non-season ticket holders between now and the end of the season.

The official Villa website says that the scheme should help to fill the ground and raise the atmosphere.

But I've got an even better idea...

...why don't we ask the rich over-paid players to actually play a little bit bloody better? That might bring in a few new fans.