Beware Ronny's rocketsAston Villa may be renowned for their success from set-pieces, but John O'Shea says they had better watch out for Cristiano Ronaldo’s near-perfect free-kicks.
“He spends a lot of time working on his free-kicks after training,” O’Shea told 1413AM Manchester United Radio ahead of the game.
“But it’s not as if he needs to work too much more on them. He’s got to the point where he’s consistently hitting the target and the swerve he generates means goalkeepers don’t know which way it’s going.
"We’ve seen keepers just hold their hands up and admit defeat because they don’t know how to deal with them. Maybe we’ll see teams employ some new tactics in order to try and stop him. We might see a team form a wall and also put a player on the line. At the moment, a wall on its own just isn’t enough!”
Whether Aston Villa will heed O’Shea’s advice when they visit Old Trafford on Saturday remains to be seen. We do know, however, that the Midlands outfit are more than capable of producing some big results. Martin O’Neill’s men have taken four points off Chelsea this season and were seconds away from beating Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium recently.
“I’m not surprised Villa have taken points off those teams,” O’Shea said. “They have a good mixture of power and pace and they’ve managed to steer clear of injuries.
"Martin Laursen has scored a lot of headed goals from set pieces, so we know they’ve worked a lot on their delivery from corners and free kicks. Just like Cristiano, they’ve reaped the rewards from a lot of hard work on the training ground.”作者: wei23 時間: 2008-3-29 04:05 PM
28/03/2008 07:08, Report by Nick Coppack