ANGEL IS HEAVEN SENT
A £9.5 million price tag creates enough pressure in itself, but additional family problems contrived to blight Angel's introduction to the country and the Premiership. He mustered just two shots on target in more than 500 minutes of top-flight football last term and was being branded a flop amidst another mediocre season at Villa Park.
But as he freely admits, Gregory never lost faith in his star signing: "I always maintained that he signed a four-and-a-half-year contract and it was the four years I was concerned about rather than the initial six months." And a summer of acclimatisation seems to have worked wonders for both player and club.
Angel scored in the back-to-back wins over Southampton and Blackburn, which helped Villa storm into the top four in the table and they remain one of only three unbeaten teams in the Premiership. Even at this early stage of the season his 15% goals-to-shots ratio is more than double what he achieved last year and his overall shooting has become evidently more ambitious.
The former River Plate star has pulled the trigger more times than any other Villa player and landed three times as many shots on target than during his inaugural season. He has forced the 'keeper to save 23% of his efforts - nine percentage points better than his rate in 2000-01 - and while this represents an all-round greater threat than he posed back in January, there is still room for improvement.
Young Villan Darius Vassell also seems to be profiting from Angel's newfound confidence, as he has fired home two goals alongside the Colombian international. Gregory admitted that Angel's 'movement is good' and this is backed up by the fact that the forward has found a claret-and-blue shirt with 70% of his distribution in the opponents' half - six percentage points better than last season and equal to the Premiership average.
Of course the most noticeable difference is Angel's liveliness in and around the penalty box. It was his masterful flick that set Lee Hendrie free to create Villa's second goal last time out and the fact that he is scoring at a rate almost three-and-a-half times more frequently than last season could be key to Villa's success this year.
