BigJim

19 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

I still play 5 a side at 41 and honestly think I'm better with ball control and picking a forward pass

Well, you've had a lot more years to practice....

3 minutes ago, Reivax_Villa said:

Should we hang on to him?

We might end up with a manager that could get the best out of him..

I feel that Mac  is worth holding onto. He may have been to blame in the fall out, but SB shouldn't have cut him out of the picture. Football aside, we're talking about a major financial asset going to waste. Poor management from that point of view alone.

I'm not a betting man, but can someone point me to where I can get odds on us not getting promoted? 

My av stream (or internet connection) was poor but I saw enough to think he should have started.  He set up Gabby for our best chance (that I saw), that Gabby managed to put over the top (ok, it was deflected.) 

5 minutes ago, TRO said:

you are right Jim, but too many mouths are shut at times, protecting their fancy little jobs.

somebody at B6 must know something about whats happening here......this is not normal.

A lot of loyalty in the old boys ' network as well. See SB and Warnock praising each other.

@genie

It's a very reasonable point.  But I'm  not so sure everybody thought it would be a good appointment.  You are unlikely to have pundits coming out and saying they thought SB was past it. Those who thought he would struggle maybe kept their mouths shut. There were certainly a fair few supporters who were anti from the start, having seen the football Bruce sides play.

Anyway, at least we can agree it hasn't worked out. 

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

If Xia brings Messi in next week and he only scores 5 goals all season is it Tonys fault for signing him?

 

I like the good Dr as well as the next man, and I sympathise with the situation he finds himself in, but that's two poor managerial decisions he's made. I don't see how anybody can say otherwise.

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

??? That's not what I said at all, I said at the time it was pretty unanimous it was a good appointment.

Sure, but it wasn't a good appointment, was it? And who is to blame? The fans who said it was a good idea?

You can only blame the person responsible for making the decision.

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

Can't blame Xia or Little or Taylor for hiring Bruce, I bet if fans had a vote on it at the time 90%+ would have said it was the right thing to do.

So it's just our bad luck that he's turned out crap?

I don't think so.

It was always a big ask to get a result at Cardiff today - having watched the last 2 games I would have been astonished if we had got anything here.

I think Bruce felt the same way and was scared before we even started.  

I'd give him the next 3 games and pull the trigger if he doesn't get 6 points.

Misplaced a few passes is putting it very mildly. I still have high hopes for him,  but they are being diminished every time I see him. 

I'd still take Hutton for the moment. Haven't seen anything remarkable from this lad yet.

Certainly built on a good 45 mins in Germany. Excellent prospect.

If he can't do it against Colchester you really have to wonder if he's worth a regular place. Agree with DCJ, we need more wide options.

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

To be fair to green there seemed to be a fair few times where he tried to knock the ball past his man and the conditions stopped him, certainly in the second half, he did hit one absolute peach of a cross with his left foot that was perfectly in to the middle of the box...over hogans head by about a foot, a benteke etc (samba up top ) would have smashed that in all day

Yes, agreed, that was one hell of a cross. But it was the only dangerous one I can remember. And this was against Colchester.

Steer motm obviously.  Of the rest, Onomah is the one who continues to impress me. Composure way beyond his years and quick thinking in tight situations. Rarely wastes the ball and put probably our most dangerous ball into their box.  He's twice the player Hourihane is on this showing. I'll give Hourihane some credit for a couple of nice free kicks but in open play he was hopeless.

Callum O'Hare could be good. I'm not convinced at all by Green.

No drive, no commitment. He has the ability to take games like today's by the scruff of the neck, but looks to me like he isn't bothered most of the time.

We should count ourselves lucky their manager decided to take off Campbell and bring a defender on when they were bossing the game.

 Lansbury the biggest disappointment for me. Never seems willing to bust a gut to win a ball or take up a position.

  Bruce’s tactics after bringing Samba on nothing short of embarrassing.

Didn't see much of the game today but it sounds like we were worse than ever.  If I had a pound for every time I've read "that was the worst I've seen" (or words to that effect) this season I'd be laughing.   How is it possible we are this bad?

Sorry, Steve, I think your time's up.  I'm afraid we've all seen what you're not capable of. I'm not a fan of chopping and changing managers but I think the time to do it is now, rather than at Christmas when we will leave our next manager with a mountain to climb again.

At what point does an AWOL footballer get his contract torn up?

Not saying RM deserves such treatment - if he has mental health issues then obviously he doesn't.

But the situation does beg the question.

1 hour ago, briny_ear said:

Those focussing obsessively on possession stats are worrying about how this can possibly be happening.

I hope I'm not obsessed but I do certainly worry that we won't be able to keep winning with poor possession stats, or until we improve on the ball, which is not necessarily the same thing I suppose.

I haven't seen that much of us tbf, only on TV and not whole games at that. I'm happy to accept that you and others say we are improving.

2 hours ago, BOF said:

We don't do well with possession.  It tends to mean the other team are sitting back, and we struggle against that.

We've only 14pts from the 14 games where we've out-possessed our opponents this season (1.00ppg), scoring on average 0.93 goals and conceding 1.21.

In contrast, in the 25 games where we've had less possession than our opponent, we have 40pts (1.6ppg) and have averaged 1.12 goals and 0.88 conceded.

Thanks for the research BOF, very revealing.  Almost makes it seems like we have sussed out what we need to do:  "Give 'em the ball lads, bring them out, then we'll get them on the counter"

16 hours ago, briny_ear said:

The only problem with this line of argument is that by all objective measures Norwich are a better side than us. They have won more games, scored vastly more goals and have a better goal difference and points total. So the drift into an argument that says, "thank heavens we were playing such a poor side" doesn't really wash.

It's also worth mentioning that Norwich dominated possession, in the way that a few vociferous posters have been calling for over the last few pages as the way to win matches.

And yet they lost.

Odd, isn't it?

Not odd at all. Norwich lost on this occasion, but are still above Villa in the table. This, by your own admission, is because they are a better footballing side who have won more matches. Yet you still seem unwilling to concede that, to do better in the long run, we need to be playing better football.

37 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

our passing was appalling and a better side would have buried us

Perhaps this is the essence of it?

To take it to the absurd, if you were playing a team of 11 year olds, you could kick the ball to them 99% of the time, and still probably win the game. 

Do the same against a top team and more often than not you will end up losing. Possession would therefore seem to be increasingly important as the standard of the opposition rises.

So while it may be right to dismiss it as a factor when the opposition is only semi competent, we need to vastly improve our passing and teamwork with the ball if we want to stake a claim to being a top team in the division. 

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I would also be interested in an answer to the question. It's not obvious to me that having more than 50% possession at home is important in any way whatsoever. 

Well, there are more home wins than away wins and I thought it was obvious that the team with the most possession is more likely to win. Ergo, if you are at home and have more possession statistically you should win.

I don't have any real stats to back this up, though. In fact I was surprised to find, looking just at today's Championship results, that four teams won with less possession and four teams won with more possession. I still doubt that the % possession is a random factor of no significance. But I am open to persuasion to the contrary.