Appeal lodged, Milner sort of says sorry and win one of three t-shirts

First off, we've appealed against the red card brandished at Brad Friedel against Liverpool yesterday and we'll know tomorrow if the one match ban will be overturned or not.

You've got to fancy that it will be, especially if, as someone kindly pointed out yesterday, the Fat Frank one against Liverpool was also overturned. Still, we'll find out tomorrow.

Moving on to my mate and yours, James Milner. The lad hasn't directly offered up an apology, nor should he, but he's not happy about the drubbing yesterday and he's spoken about it, which is nice. It surely can not be easy having to talk about yesterday, I know I am still struggling.

Have we let the club and ourselves down? Of course. Losing any game is disappointing. To lose 5-0 is not good enough, especially for a club like Villa and especially because of how well we have done this season - and where we are in the table.

You should not be losing by that scoreline. We were going there feeling well prepared, even though results haven’t gone our way recently, and we were looking to win this game. Obviously that hasn’t happened and to lose 5-0 is unacceptable. I don’t think there was a 5-0 difference between the two sides but they obviously wanted it more on the day.

James Milner, March 23rd 2009

Now, he has acknowledged that it is unacceptable and that shoes character. In my opinion, Milner just has to slow down a little and not be too concerned about having to beat his man every time. He can create space with his trickery but I often see him running into his man, it's not necessary.

When it is working for him, he's got one of the best crosses in the league, but he is often crossing when maybe he should be just thinking a split second longer to see what is around him - even though he is a winger, maybe the best option isn't to always get it across, sounds silly, but when you're playing with four in midfield it is a little different to when you are playing five.

I'm sure it will come good for him again, I'm convinced. It took him time when we started playing five in the middle and just as he started to flourish, the manager changed it all around and he's now getting used as an emergency right back, but he's young and he's just got to get used to these changes.

But enough of the James Milner love in, onto a competition and thank you again to the guys over at SoccerPrint for offering this up.

We've got three free t-shirts from the site (no special printing or anything) and to stand a chance of winning all you have to do is answer this not so simple question; what is the total attendance at Villa Park for all fifteen first team matches this season?

Okay, it's not the easiest I've ever done, but I don't want to make it too easy and just to make things more fun, it's not necessarily the first three but at 9am tomorrow morning they'll be more more entries and if more than three of you get it right, names will be put into a hat and I'll have my son pick them out.

I should also add, as I am, that if three don't get it right, it will then be the three closest, so for fun, you could just have a lucky guess!