BigJim

9 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

And I don't think it bothers most Villa fans. It certainly doesn't bother me.

I think we all knew when we hired Bruce that we weren't going to get free flowing, attacking, tiki taka football. What a lot of us thought we would get is direct but effective football that would bring results.

The problem has been that until this recent run of form, we've had BOTH a lack of "good" football AND results (or at least results good enough to get promoted.

 

If our current run of form continue then I couldn't care less if we win every game 1-0 with one shot on target.

IF he gets results, then Bruce can play however the **** he likes, imo.

Most people are happy as long as the results are coming. I get that. I'm thoroughly enjoying the wins myself, much as I'd like to see them achieved with a little more style. It feels good to be in the top 6, no matter how we got there.

What worries me is your IFs.  I happen to think he won't keep getting results unless he improves the way we play in possession, especially in the final third.  It's been worrying me for a long time now, and I no longer think he is able to change it.

Hope I'm wrong obviously.    During one of our promotion seasons many moons ago, after a dour 1-0 away victory, the opposing manager said something to the effect that he'd rather sweep the streets than ask his team to play like we did. Sour grapes, of course, but I think I understand him better now.   

42 minutes ago, srsmithusa said:

Please don’t lose my point in the simple illustration.   The manager can and should be blamed when the players aren’t performing.  He has a (not unlimited) but extensive array of tools and techniques at his disposal to fix poor play. Including benching, fining, teaching, selling, loaning away.  If remi had the excuses this guy is given he would still be here.  So would  Mcleish.   ITS HIS TEAM.  HE IS RESPONSIBLE. !!!  

Trouble is, I'm not sure he sees it as poor play. He has put all his effort into turning us into a side that will soak up pressure and stop the opposition from scoring. We have to give him credit for that. If it's ugly to watch that doesn't bother him at all.

I just wish he would hire a coach to do a bit of pattern and creativity work with the forwards, so that when we do break with the ball we can make it count a lot more often. Somebody said we are devastating on the break.... if only.  If that had been true last night we would have had six.

20 minutes ago, vreitti said:

Absolutely delighted with the result, which at this point is all that matters. However, I simply can't understand how we're winning with this predictable and terrible brand of football. It just looks to me like we somehow 'get out of jail' every game, and sadly I still don't think we'll go the whole nine yards.

Me neither. Fabulous result but we are still shockingly bad at going forward in possession. Great work by the back 4 and GW kept Preston out, but considering how they had a second or third choice defence we should have cut them to pieces.  We had a number of chances to do so but never  looked like playing the right ball at the right time, apart from Onomah's pass for the 2nd.

I think we need a striker to cover for Kodjia's eventual injuries.

Hogan isn't doing it and McCormack won't come back (at least not under Bruce). I'd flog them both for whatever I could get and go for Alfredo Morelos from Rangers.

1 hour ago, One For The Road said:

So you can eliminate the lottery element by doing some research on t opponent? Does't that prove that far from being a lottery it's actually about skill and hard work?

Penalties are not a lottery. If you put the ball in certain spots at certain speed then no keeper can save it.

The play offs are not a lottery because you have to play a fair game of football against your opponent. Is the FA Cup a lottery? Or the World Cup?

To bring this back on topic, over the course of a season or long cup competition, the better teams obviously finish in the top positions. "Luck" is eliminated as it evens out over time. In a one-off game however, anything can happen and a lowly team can "get lucky" against the favourite, with a deflection, or whatever it may be. We've all seen it happen, whether you call it a lottery is irrelevant.  With penalties, no-one can put the ball beyond the reach of a goalkeeper every time, however much they practice.

As for Villa in the playoffs, the common opinion seems to be we are unlikely to play the better football  in 3 consecutive matches against other high placed teams, so we would need that element of good fortune to win through.   

10 minutes ago, One For The Road said:

Sorry to pick on your comment but I hate it when people say that. It's so ridiculously untrue. It's the same with the "lottery"  of penalties. That's not a lottery either. There is no spin of wheel, no coin toss, no raffle or balls out of a bowl. You have to play football and the winner of said football is the winner. 

Where is the lottery in that?

Can you totally eliminate the element of chance in football?

I think it's fair to say playoffs are a bit of a lottery in that a lesser team can "get lucky" in a very limited number of games, much like they can and often do in cup ties.

With penalties I'd suggest there is an element of lottery as well in that if the keeper chooses to go the right way he will quite often save it. If he does so you can say he's been a bit lucky, unless he's done loads of homework on the taker and "knows" which way to go.

2 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

Because we failed to take all 3 points today, Preston, a much better team than Birmingham, now becomes more important.

That's the problem with not playing every game on the front foot, succeeding games become more important.

If we do not win on Wednesday Bruce will lose a lot of the goodwill he has built up recently.

The results are simply too inconsistent for a team hoping to get promoted.

I'm afraid you're right and I'm afraid it will come to pass. Preston are no mugs and they will deal with us quite comfortably.

2 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Relegation material just like they were against Cardiff last home match?

80 minutes is a ridiculous exaggeration. They had us wobbling for about 15 minutes 2nd half.

and a few spells in the first half, when they simply looked a better side (which is saying something as they are really not very good at all)

Terrible first 60 mins, made Bloos almost look good.  Snodgrass and Hourihane rightly substituted as both were very poor today, though Onomah can count himself lucky he wasn't taken off.  We were a bit better with Davis on, but overall it was pretty dire and we've come away with a point we probably didn't deserve.

3 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

Because football is more complicated than "set up attacking = Goals". Otherwise every team in the world would just play 10 strikers.

Yeah, but he didn't say = Goals, he said we didn't look likely to score. In other words, if we were set up as an attacking unit, we sure didn't know how to play like one.

11 hours ago, Johnnyp said:

He needs to stop and get set on his left to do everything that goes through him. Slows everything right up.  Not meaning to have a cut at him, he's contributed with lots of goals, but his general play....iffy at best.

Quite. He is nearly always half facing the right touchline when he receives the ball.  So as he is incapable of playing a pass with his right foot, he inevitably knocks it square or backwards most of the time. I find him incredibly frustrating to watch.

He's obviously got a shot on him, but doesn't show a lot of drive to get in a position to use it in open play. And from dead balls, we've also got Snodgrass whose left foot is at least as useful. I'd say Hourihane is close to being surplus to requirements.

@TRO   Are you saying if some of the players "are not up for it" we can't blame the manager ?  

Surely if a player doesn't put a shift in (and I don't disagree with you about some of them) then he must get dropped, simple as that. We have plenty of promising youth who will at the very least work their socks off.

If the manager continues to pick players who won't roll their sleeves up then we have a real problem.

41 minutes ago, lexicon said:

I remember him giving the ball away once. Scapegoats, yeah!

Certainly contributed a whole lot more than Hourihane. Not that that's saying much.

Clutching at straws a bit maybe, but I reckon if he'd have come on earlier (like instead of Hogan) we might have made a better go of the last half hour.  Not to mention if he had started instead of Kodjia (where tf was he today?)

A victory for attractive football.

Wolves will deservedly go up; we, equally deservedly, won't.

Pleasantly surprised at so much positivity on here going into this one.

Unfortunately I can't really share it. We've been on a great run but not played particularly well IMO most of the time, and the opposition has not been great. While we haven't conceded many, even Burton managed to create chances against us, so I can't see us keeping Wolves at bay very long. And I can't see us getting enough of the ball at Molineux to put much pressure on them. We will need to convert a very high percentage of our chances to win this.

3-1 Wolves. Hope I'm wildly off beam, obviously.

NV... I was expecting someone to post a pic of Maradona 

We may see him selected at least for the bench in derbies and other games which SB considers are likely to get very physical. He can take it and dish it out better than most in our squad.

SB has changed things more than I dared believe he could. Long way to go though, as has been said many times.

One probably unrelated thing I find pleasing is that we're getting a lot of the rub of the green lately: Penalty decisions, that "save" by Johnstone against Forest, the 2nd (mis-hit) and 3rd (deflected) goals against Burton, just to name a few things. The sort of thing we have seen go against us a lot in recent seasons. Fortune favours the brave?

He's doing what we bought him for and that's great but....

He is just so weak on his right side he will never make a top class midfielder.

8 hours ago, macandally said:

Outplayed again at home, Forest 64% possession and more shots on and off target.  The only score that mattered though is the goals and most will be satisfied that we won.

For me, it just reinforced how much better we would be with better coaching and structure.  We would win this league easily with these players and a decent Manager.  Instead we rely on individual moments of brilliance to win games.

Forest kept and moved the ball better, had better shape, movement and awareness and were the far better side in the second half.  Our sitting midfielders are in our back line allowing the opposition to pick up the second balls outside our D.  We are expecting our forwards to drop in and pick up those balls meaning they are turning and running from too deep.

There are so many individual elements wrong and we will get turned over by decent teams.  Bruce still needs to go with his inept coaching team.

Pretty much agree with all of that, and the highlighted bit especially worries me. If you take out Kodjia's contribution to both goals we would have been nowhere, who knows how we will cope if (when) he gets injured again.

 On the other hand.... I am fairly sure there is more to come from us. Davis is improving all the time. Kodjia will get better and better as he recovers, Snodgrass has a lot more to offer which will come as he gets fitter and used to his team-mates.  Onomah had a howler but he's already shown he has a lot of class.  Then we've got Grealish to come back in; and Jedi who must manage at least some games.  

Question is, can we bungle our way through like we did yesterday until it all comes together?

6 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

How about: We were well in control for the first half after an initial Forest flurry; lost the initiative badly at the start of the 2nd but came back strongly after the Forest goal and defended staunchly if nervily against Forest's attempts to get an equaliser?  Played sloppily throughout but good enough to see off Forest.

Is that a slightly more balanced account of the game?

How about  a combination: Played sloppily throughout but somehow won.  

Playing sloppily throughout is just not good enough by any measure.

Very, very lucky to take all the points today.

Thank your lucky stars SB.

Sorry, I now see its an old story.

Supporters demand to know what the chairman is going to do, RIGHT NOW.

Chairman, quite rightly, has no intention of letting them know.  Probably hasn't made a definitive decision yet.

Give the guy a break.