Howard will be here at around 3.45pm ahead of the 4pm kick-off.
Team news: Obviously, it's all Gareth Barry versus Rafa Benitez, but here is the supporting cast:
Aston Villa: Brad Friedel, Luke Young, Martin Laursen, Curtis Davies, Nicky Shorey, Nigel Reo-Coker, Stilian Petrov, Gareth Barry, Ashley Young, Carew, Agbonlahor. Subs: Brad Guzan, James Milner, Marlon Harewood, Zat Knight, Moustapha Salifou, Wayne Routledge, Craig Gardner.
Liverpool: Pepe Reina, Alvaro Arbeloa, Jamie Carragher, Martin Skrtel, Andrea Dossena, Dirk Kuyt, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Leiva Lucas, Robbie Keane, Fernando Torres. Subs: Diego Cavalieri, Daniel Agger, Fabio Aurelio, Yossi Benayoun, Ryan Babel, David Ngog, El Zhar.
Referee: Martin Atkinson (W Yorkshire)
In case anyone is in any doubt as to how this one is being pitched
Sky just began their broadcast from Villa Park with a montage of Gareth Barry to the musical accompaniment of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want", a song released in 1984, when Barry was three years old. This reveals two things: firstly that a generation of miserable teenagers is now employed by Rupert Murdoch to make video montages, and secondly that this country has been starved of real creatively-anguished artists for the past 25 years.
Getting the excuses in early
This minute-by-minute application is seriously knacked with the technical gremlins causing all kinds of havoc. It took me half an hour to write that last entry which, let's face it, wasn't worth 30 seconds of anyone's time.
And another ten minutes for that last one. Anyway, James Milner is on the bench for Villa; Barry starts. Liverpool have gone with ... well, the teams are written down there, figure out where they're all playing yourself. Assuming they've not been deleted from your screen by this destructive application, which is erasing everything I write as if a PacMan gobbling fruit.
1 min: Liverpool get it under way in their ghastly all grey kit with red socks that is scarcely improved by the fuzzy picture on this telly.
9 mins: I haven't seen any of this match yet, thanks to the computer knack. But it's getting me some love from you lot: "I feel sorry for you with the I.T problems," sympathises Danny Cassidy. "Do you think it is the millennium bug finally hitting?" Could be, although on the other side of the desk Lawrence Booth is characteristically unruffled during his OBO cricket coverage, which is using the exact same software that broke Paul Doyle's resolve earlier and is putting mine under some strain. "Villa to win 3-0, Gareth Barry hat trick," continues Danny, who also conveniently adds: "He has to score and without Stevie G MBE Liverpool don't have a clue," which gives you some more team news, no thanks to me.
13 mins: Villa seem to be having most of the possession in the early stages, although Torres wins an early corner when he tries to drag in a cross from the left and it's deflected behind. Martin Skrtel and all the other big men go up, only to watch Martin Laursen make a comfortable clearance.
"This day is finally here!" proclaims George Templeton. "And oh how I've waited for this match to arrive. For months I've had to watch my team's club captain get tapped up in the most brazen way imaginable and watched my club be treated like trash and had to listen to Liverpool fans blather on about how they are in the Champions League and they are a proper big club and blah, blah, blah! Well after all of this bull Gareth Barry is still a Villain despite the best efforts of the Scouse show pony $teven Gerrard and his fat maitre'd manager, Rafa Benitez! Well its a damn shame that Gerrard isn't fit today because that will be the excuse the Aston Villa stuff the Scousers into the Villa Park turf like a sledgehammer driving in a railroad spike!"
Oh, and Saun Wright-Phillips has scored for Man City to put them 2-0 up.
15 mins: Martin Skrtel goes through the back of Gabriel Agbonlahor and picks up a yellow card. The Villa front men are dropping off well to collect whatever they're being fed from the midfield, although getting wide with the likes of Ashley Young would certainly seem to be the best policy against the narrowest of all narrow sides in the Premier League this year.
19 mins: Barry finds some space in the middle and lifts a pass onto the noddle of John Carew. He tries to flick on for Gabriel Agbonlahor, but the three-time love rat (according to a red top newspaper that is not endorsed by the Guardian in any way, and might not actually be telling the truth) can't get onto it. Back at the match, Lucas fires a shot hopelessly high and wide.
21 mins: Robbie Keane is playing out on the left here, which seems to be a token attempt, at best, to give Liverpool some width. Torres is more isolated than ever up front and, Liverpool fans, this is not looking to be any improvement on what's gone before so far this season, I'm afraid.
25 mins: Liverpool are playing at the very edge of the final third but getting nowhere else as Villa have the edge of their penalty area well policed. They go sideways right, sideways left and nowhere else.
Adam James has got a big wooden spoon out, stuck it into a bubbling pot of claret and blue ire, and stirred: "What a lot of Villa fans such as George Templeton don't understand is that most Liverpool fans a) have the utmost respect for Villa and always have done even though truthfully they aren't in the Champions League and b) didn't really want Liverpool to sign Barry because Alonso is better. What price at the bookies for a Barry own goal?"
27 mins: This from the bad-to-worse department: Fernando Torres has just hobbled off with obvious hamstring knack. He tried to spin around Nicky Shorey to latch onto what might be described as a through ball, but pulled up obviously injured. No $tevie Mbe and now no Torres. Ryan Babel is on.
31 mins: Scrap that, actually it's David Ngog on for Torres. He's a huge, young French striker with bags of promise, according to the Liverpool website. He is also the cousin of Jean-Alain Boumsong, which brings all the former into doubt. "George Templeton sounds to me like the kind of guy who blames the new lad when his girlfriend leaves him," says Johnathan Kaszynski, who I won't be calling for a pint the next time I'm dumped. "Liverpool didn't have to tap Barry up, he wanted to go."
33 mins: Ngog leaves Martin Laursen looking like cousin Jean-Alain as he turns him inside out on the right flank and dumps the Dane on his rear. He gets no further, though. At the other end, the first clear cut chance of the match falls to John Carew who is fed the ball eight-yards out from Ashley Young after the winger wriggles to the byeline. Carew only has Reina to beat but side-foots straight at the Spanish keeper who saves with his legs.
39 mins: Dirk Kuyt thwacks one into the side netting after a long cross from the left grazes Nicky Shorey's hair and falls into the Dutchman's path. Robbie Keane was screaming for it in the centre, but Kuyt has a dig. Meanwhile: Outraged Liverpool fan writes: "Perhaps you can pull your thumb out of your [rude word], and try and give some balanced opinions. How many times a season does a top four team only take control of a game like this in the second half? How often to opposition teams put everything into the first 60-70mins? You've clearly got it in for LFC just admit it you [very rude word], kindly remove yourself from this coverage and get someone who's actually interested in the game not LFC bashing to take your place." I'd love to remove myself from the coverage, believe me, but I'm the most impartial we've got, since I actually hate Villa as well.
42 mins: Ngog has looked lively up front and lifts a shot onto the top of the net after muscling Curtis Davies off the ball. Soon after, Javier Mascherano has a surging run from midfield but leaves Kuyt with too much to do from a poor layoff to his right.
45 mins: A disappointing first half dribbles to a close with Reina plucking a fairly aimless free-kick out the sky. The big news is the Torres injury and still a lack of width from Liverpool, despite Benitez deploying Keane on the left and Kuyt on the right. Your emails are coming during the break.
George Templeton versus the Villa baiters: "I know Johnathan Kaszynski's statement is a windup, but I will respond anyway. Barry's head wasn't turned until the England friendlies. Before last season was over Martin O'Neill made it clear that he wanted to give Gareth Barry an extension and keep him at the club and Barry sounded pretty receptive to it. Then come the qualifiers (and all that quality time with $tevie MBE) and all of sudden Barry is coming out in the press, criticizing the manager and in general acting like a prima donna (which he's not). The idea that Gareth Barry wanted to go from the start is flatly untrue!"
Ian Truman self-deprecates: "Is Rafa somehow trying to assemble the slowest team in the league? We spend £30m (somehow) on two less than pacey strikers and then put them on the left and right wings. We then replace two slightly underperforming but decent fullbacks with two slow and [rude word] ones. I want to cry."
From the "Why doesn't Rafe Benitez get this simple point" department? "It's incredible, it really is," says an incredulous Samuel Zakowski in an email headlined "Ryan Babel". "You have the guy who gives you width, ideas, penetration; who gave you one decent cross in midweek against
the champions of my country; who is the only player in your squad besides Torres with imagination and unpredictability. You put him on the bench. Babel on, if Liverpool want to win. Or they should buy Wilfried Dalmat, Standard Liège's right winger, who absolutely murdered Fabio Aurelio."
47 mins: Liverpool get an early corner after Luke Young heads a Xabi Alonso hoist into the penalty area high over his own goal. Make that two, when Young does the same to the first corner. The second effort is better and has Brad Friedel ambling into no man's land and the American is grateful to Curtis Davies who beats Kuyt to the cross and clears.
50 mins: Another Alonso corner, this time from the right, precipitates a game of ping-pong after Dossena drives one into the mixer. It falls to Reo-Coker who powers up the other end and eventually wins a corner for Villa. Carew wins the header in the middle, but it glances off Skrtl and over.
52 mins: Twice close from Liverpool, the first time Robbie Keane gets some space in the box, back to goal. He feeds Alonso, whose shot clips Nicky Shorey's heels and goes over. Then Dossena whips in a deep cross from the left that has Friedel scrambling beneath his bar to paw away.
55 mins: I'm not sure if this is a new thing, but Sky now have a scrolling "fact bar" that sometimes pops up on the screen containing, well, facts. This latest fact tells us that Villa have not been involved in a goalless draw for more than a year, which actually sounds more like a desperate plea to viewers to stay tuned in rather that just a harmless info nugget. Pressure from Villa, meanwhile results in a corner which Ashley Young sends drifting over the heads of Agbonlahor and Carew and away for a goal kick.
57 mins: Robbie Keane has given up on the left wing and is now scampering across the field up front. He gets a kick in the ankle for his troubles and loses out as Agbolahor tries to break. He's upended by Skrtl, who is already on a yellow.
59 mins: This game has got 0-0 written all over it. There, I'm prepared to say it if it will ensure a goal.
61 mins: Dirk Kuyt wrestles Ashley Young to the ground wide on the Villa left Young gets up to whip a perfect free kick onto Curtis Davies's head. But the centre-back might have got a slight nudge in the back as he nods wide. Nothing given.
63 mins: James Milner makes his (second) debut for Villa
The former Newcastle man jogs on to replace Luke Young to very quiet chants of "There's only one James Milner!" from three or four Villa fans.
67 mins: Dossena gets booked for throwing the ball away after a throw-in is (wrongly) awarded to Villa. Yep, apart from an almighty hoof out of defence from Martin Laursen, that's the most exciting thing that's happened in the past four minutes.
70 mins: This has descended into some woeful long-ball stuff, which is more forgiveable from Villa since they at least have a couple of big men up front with a slight chance of winning a header. Stilian Petrov's name is heard on the commentary for the first time - is there a more anonymous player in the Premier League? - and Rafa Benitez finally makes another substitution. It's Babel, right? Wrong. It's Fabio Aurelio, for Dirk Kuyt.
73 mins: Is that brilliant by Nigel Reo-Coker or absolutely awful from Robbie Keane? A bit of both, probably, but the former Tottenham man misses a great chance to open his Liverpool account. Mascherano (I think) hoiks a massive long ball over the Villa defence and Keane is clean through. But he waits for ages for the ball to drop, to steady himself, and to pull the trigger, by which point Reo-Coker has scampered across and got his leg in. Keane miskicks and it skews wide.
"I hate the way this game is going," says George Templeton. "Villa (much like Standard Liege) should be ahead but haven't taken their best chance and even though Torres and Gerrard aren't on the field I have this very sick feeling about another late goal from Dirk Kuyt allowing Liverpool to get away with the points." Kuyt's off, but the email came through before that, and is otherwise valid, I think.
78 mins: Yossi Benayoun is on for Robbie Keane, who fails to see the end of another match. Craig Gardner, who has had the odd goal from the bench in his time, is on for Villa in place of someone I didn't see. "It's frustrating, isn't it?" says Alan Cooper, who also noticed that I'd been talking about Martin Petrov instead of Stilian, so earns internet publication as his reward. "If this potential 0-0 draw for Liverpool were following a 0-0 draw at Sunderland (almost happened), a home draw, or even loss, against Boro (ditto), and a Big Cup exit as well (ditto), then it would be crisis time at Liverpool. Instead, a 0-0 here is a decent result. And, knowing them, they'll probably score a late, lucky winner." It could happen. Yep, it definitely could happen.
82 mins:Slightly more excitement now as both teams seem to realise that there are a shiny three Premier League points up for grabs if anyone has any interest in claiming them. There's an anxious moment for Martin Laursen, who is forced to play it back to his goalkeeper after being hassled by Benayoun. Then a snap-shot from Milner is comfortably collected by Reina.
84 mins: A long free kick from the half-way line lands on the head of Martin Laursen and his header loops that far over the bar with Reina beaten. Actually, it was actually only this close, rather than that close, but we've been so starved of action today that that counts as excitement.
87 mins: Petering out, or preparing for a last-gasp Gareth Barry in-your-face thunderbolt? Er, the former.
89 mins: Chance for Barry to write all the headlines as Fabio Aurelio fouls Ashley Young and allows the Villa pariah to hoist one into the box. It misses all the Villa heads, but a Liverpool one heads it towards his own goal before it's cleared.
90 mins: David Ngog, who started brightly but fizzled like a wet sparkler just had a chance to run at the Villa defence, but instead thumped it at the corner flag. Two painful minutes of injury time, in which any Liverpool shot would be their first on target of the match. Villa have been scarcely better and I wish those techie gremlins had permanently nixed this.
92 mins: And that, mercifully, is that. Let's forget this ever happened, all right.
