Straggler

Funny game this one. Our outstanding performances were from the ones that I least expected. Downing was my man of the match, he put a proper shift in today and we were all the better for it. Honorable mention to Warnock who was close to Downing for the MOTM award. I was impressed by the way he pushed our defence up the pitch making several tackles and interceptions whilst stood further up the pitch than Petrov.

Collins was really solid again, in this form he would be worth a place in almost any defence in the Prem. NRC impressed me today, I'm not his biggest fan, but if he plays like that week in week out, he will change my opinion of him. A shame about the finishing, but I can forgive him that as in this instance the rest of his game made up for it. It may be that he is now getting enough games to look like a real player again.

Petrov was brilliant first half, not so in the second. Admittedly Chelsea came out with a real energy and purpose in the second half and it would be hard for anyone to deal with, however I don't like that Petrov drops back into the defence. Warnock showed that we could continue to press higher up the pitch by consistently making tackles infront of Petrov. Dropping backwards hands the initiative to the opposition and believe that if it was not for the rest of the team stepping up to the plate it would have been a much more backs to the wall second half than we experienced.

Carew seemed to be struggling, not the player that he was last year, however he was did better than Fonz when he came on. Young had decent energy today and contributed to the overall defensive performance, although he didn't have quite the impact going forward that I would hope from him. This is not too much of a critisism as he was well worth his place, it is more that he has done so much so well that expectations are higher for him.

Ireland looks like he is ready to pick a team apart, we just need to find him a little better. I think we are struggling to make the best of him as he is often making a run that will take a very good / high risk pass to find him, and he seems to be looking for runs that others are not making yet. I fancy that given some time to gell with the team he will get more and more effective, however today he was a bit of a luxury.

I just had a think about this. I earn just enough to have this benefit taken away from me. Not much more than the limit, but a bit and I always did think it a little strange that I would get child benefit. Now here is the rub, I knew as soon as the crunch hit exactly who would have to pay all this debt back. It is me and people like me. The bankers are all rolling in cash again as the very rich do (and will find creative ways with expensive accountants to avoid paying their share). The poor by definition can't pay so it is middle income Britain again who like me has a mortgage that gets paid, saves money, has a pension and behaves in a sensible, resonsible way and was in no way at fault that gets it in the neck financially.

I'm not arguing that I should not have to play my part, but I am very frustrated. The various changes in taxation and benefits are costing my family around 4 to 5 grand a year. We will get by, but it does hurt. I work very hard and earn that money, however my income is going backwards rapidly in real terms. Equally the insentive to earn more is slipping away, again with the changes I have to earn another £10k (less than £5k after tax and NI etc) from my employer to stand still. Do you have any idea how hard I have to work to earn an extra £10k? It is pretty bloody hard and employers are trying pretty hard to keep costs down themselves. I'm inclined to say that this will not happen.

So the question is "what do I want?". I can't help but pay as I believe in a society that helps the weak and protects the vunerable and I am in a position to do my bit. What I want is:

To know that the steps have been put in place to make sure this never happens again (not the bollocks rhetoric but the clear and defined laws).

To know who's head is on the block if it does go wrong again so I know where to turn up with the angry mob, torches and pitch forks.

To know who was responsible for the last crunch and to have them held accountable. These contemptuos **** have brought down most of the worlds economies and had the rest of us clean up the mess with as far as I can tell little more than one or two getting a bit of an uncomfortable questionsing in public. They have reached into the pockets of every hard working person in this and many other countries and stolen the money to pay for their gambling debt.

And I want the lot of them, not just the bankers, but the politicians who let Britain burn whilst they fiddled (and not the nice musical way either). I want their Ferraris' I want their houses, and I want them in the dock not just facing an uncomfortable question, but an uncomfortably long time in a cell with their minimum wage job contributing to the mountain (funny that the word mountain seems insufficient here) of debt.

Then when we have worked our way of debt and we sell our publicly held banks back into the private sector I want them to get a fair price for them. We the public want our money back from the investment that we have made and I for one am watching this one as closely as if I had chosen to invest the money myself. The problem for me is I believe all polititians of any party once in power become self serving rocket polishers, with principles and truth ejected at the first whiff of the No 10 leather seats. The bankers..... well they seem to revel in the self serving wankerdom world in which they live and it is these toss stained rags that will be making the decisions that the rest of us will have to live with.

Screw the individual policies, we all have to pay and we have very little choice about it, let us devote our energies to the witch hunt and make the bastards who have us wittering over the +'s and -'s of the next shitty policy desined to fleece us of a little more cash feel the pain they are putting the rest of us through.

As you may have gathered, I have some closure issues with the credit crunch that I probably should deal with.

There you go, for all the Petrov doubters, take him off and we score. If only we had known this before, we could have won the league last season.

Well you could colour me yellow and call me bananna, Petrov has come off

60 - 40 possession in this half! That is shocking.

Yep, we have lost the ability to pass again. It invites pressure onto us and has done in pretty much every game this season bar the West ham game.

Yep, Young to left back and Lichaj on is spot on

Definitely agree that Warnock needs to get subbed off before he gets sent off. No idea who we'd bring on though.

Lichaj to right back and L. Young to left back?

I beg to differ, you know exactly what needs to be done

Yep, sub Warnock right now.

I wonder what the Petrov and Downing detractors are thinking at the moment

Petrov has barely touched the ball

They are also thinking that this is just half time. Most commontators of any sort prefer to wait until the end of the game to come to any conclusions. Also people like myself who have said that we can do better make their decision over many games and in his case seasons. 45 mins of action good bad or indifferent will be added to the database from which an overall decision will be made.

Oh and I had big Brad as my man of the match, he was critical for the point we won today. A big mention for Luke Young, so happy to have him back. Don't be too harsh on Gabby, his was an impossible task today with no protection at all from the clearing in the woods of a ref.

The ref really did start the decline for us today. Knight might as well have handcuffed himself to Gabby, because he didn't let go of him all day. This allowed Bolton to stop us playing by foul means and the ref saw nothing wrong. It totally destroyed this as a game of football and made it really turgid stuff to watch. That said, we really needed to adjust to this and I'm sad to say it, but we needed our players to stop being so honest and riding the fouls and start hitting the deck.

I recall one challenge in our defense with Collins giving I think it was Davies the same shove in the back Knight had been doing to Gabby at every contest. The difference was that Davies flung himself to the ground and the ref gave the free kick. Gabby stood up to it all and tried to keep playing, Carew when his shirt got ripped in half, not only stayed up but shook off Knight and ran on to win the ball. With a ref so incompetent it was up to the players to take matters into their own hands and ref the game for him. If fouled fall down and grab the ball, don't wait for that pilllock of a ref to blow up.

Sounds like a job for Emile....

I don't know if it was my head or the players that dropped first due to the poor ref, but it had an impact, I for one have lost my voice from singing "you're not fit to referee". What we needed then was leadership on the field, someone to bring heads up and keep us in the game. There was none of that to be found and the substitutions left me baffled. To end up with Downing, Albrighton, Young and Petrov as our 4 in midfield in a game where we are loosing the physical battle is astonishing. I'm not a fan of NRC, but this was a game crying out for him to come in and step up to the scrap, yet we finish the game on the ropes with an unused substitution.

There are some good players here and a good coach will make a difference to the results we will see, but I think we can forget about this season and start building for next. I'd like to see us get enough points to avoid relegation then get the kids blooded so they can play a bigger part next season, in particular Delfonso and Delph when he returns.

I'm not pissed with Kmac though, he is a good man, I am however royally hacked off with MON who for my money is responsible in the main for the shit I had to watch today. If we ever play a team with MON in charge I'm going to get all Kevin Keegan about it.

Not a fan here. Having Nigel in midfield is like playing Cuellar at right back. When the ball gets to him he either looses it or the momentum of the move is lost. He can't play with his head up, can't make a decision on the ball, does not have the technique to make a pass even when not under pressure, he is caught several times a game in possesion normally as the last defender infront of the back four putting the whole team under pressure. His own team don't want to pass to him, leading the defence to play it over him rather than through him. As a destroyer if he is at best average, which does not make up for the other areas in which he lacks.

Against Everton we were winning the ball in the back 4 not in the midfield. Everton played through us like the midfield was not there, this should not be possible if the midfield is doing its job. To be fair I think we were sent out without a plan to close them down effectively as a team, but as an individual I saw nothing in Nigel's game to change my mind.

I may be wrong, but if anyone our there can tell me what the plan to beat Everton today was I will be all ears.

to score more goals than them

Very good

Sounds like we have been going to Kevin Keegan for advice then

I am chuffed to bits with this win, but I don't really feel that we have too much to shout about here. Our defence won this today, and I mean the back 4 by this, not the covering infront. There was loads of hard work done my Petrov and Reo, however it was so badly misplaced that they might as well not have bothered. As a team we shut down everton really poorly, with single men chasing the ball around. There was no sense that we were closing the ball down as a team, which allowed Everton to pass the ball around us, and they weren't even passing the ball all that well on average.

I mean we had 33% possetion today, which is awful by any standards, it basically means that we had the ball for our own throw ins, goal kicks etc then propmptly gave it away. I don't care how hard the team works, if you give the ball away that much most teams will murder you. The bigger concern is that we did not look like a team that has the technique within the team to pass the ball. We have a team of technique have and have nots, but there are too many have nots to allow us to pass effectively. Reo is the classic example of this, I believe his reputation has improved by sitting on the bench, like many of the players that missed out on England selection. Today he worked ok to get the ball back, but it is all for nothing if when he gets the ball he gives it away, which happens more often than not. It means his own team mates loose faith in giving him the ball, which in turn gives them less options making them more likely to pick a harder pass and give the ball away. It also encourages the defence to lump the ball further up the pitch as they would rather defend a ball on the half way line than have Reo give it away 25 yards out from goal.

For me though this game nails it down that I don't want Kev as the full time manager. The team did not play as a team. The back 4 defended brilliantly as a unit, but this is a good well established unit. Everything infront of that defence was poorly organised, held together with the odd bit of effort and individual skill. If we continue on this path we will get murdered by much worse teams than Everton (as we were by Newcastle). I don't want to get too down on individual players as I want to see all the members of this squad given a chance under a manager who can set them up to play in a much more organised manner.

I may be wrong, but if anyone our there can tell me what the plan to beat Everton today was I will be all ears.

I don't think its quite sank in yet! How can you go from playing the best in years one week to playing the worst in years the next? We simply went far too attacking. Ireland can't play in a 2 man midfield! He needs to play further up, it's him or ash, not both. We need a new CM.

I think we need 2 CM's. I have said pretty much for the whole of the time Petrov has been here that he is not good enough. We can't play 4-4-2 because we have Petrov in the team and it does not matter who plays with him. We need a defensive midfielder behind him and an attacking mid infront of him. This being the case why the hell do we need him? Fletcher and Scholes cope, Lampard and Essien cope, Fabregas and anyone of many cope, Gerrard and Mascerano cope,Felliani and Cahill cope, bloody Huddersfield and Palacio cope.

Petrov and one other does not work which makes Petrov a luxory. It's like taking a bar of dairy milk to the jungle. It may be nice to have, but in context it is bloody useless.

The new set up is a better mid for us. With the line up we sent out we are always going to struggle to compete in midfield. Reo should give us a bit more of a backbone to build from. The only downside is the moment when he will give the ball away right infront of the back four.

So is the penalty not an attempt at goal?

Oh I forgot the result was pretty good too. Can we keep Milner please.

Hello General

I paid my first visit to the Holte pub since it has been renovated today. I would like to let you know how pleased with it I was. The staff including that on the door were freindly and efficient, the atmosphere was lovely, the sort of thing I would be happy to bring the family to, which is some way distant from what is traditional outside a British football club. I've not forgotten all the good things that have been done to this club in the community since Randy has taken over, but it was nice to really experience a part of it first hand. To have the bar manager come over as he did not recognise us (my father and I), introduce himself and wish us a good experience there was a very pleasent surprise, and again feels so alien in a footballing environment, but in a good way. I have been coming to the Villa since the early eighties, so I remember what it is like to be treated as a cross between cattle and a prisoner as a football fan, so to be treated as a valued customer and to be welcomed is a world apart. For my father and I this sort of improvement is so welcome, long may it continue. I hope that you, Randy and the team are here for many years to come.

Quick question for those who watched the game.

The football we played today was it similar to or better than the kind we displayed against Bolton when we beat them 4-0 in 2008?

It's the one where Gabby finished off an exquisite passing move from the team.

It was similar, but this was a little less direct than that. The other thing that really made me happy was that we didn't revert at any time to smacking it at Carew. This may change under pressure from a better team, but we kept the ball really well today

This was the team that MON could have sent but never did. The right formation, players playing in the positions they fit best, made me happy and proud. Man City can keep their money, on this performance we are getting stiffed with the offer on the table. To Ireland I would say you go and hold out for that 2 million, I'd even suggest that perhaps you could go for 4 million. Milner was Paul Scholes today, how much would you pay for Scholes in his early twenties?

Absolutely outstanding read. It really does put to shame the mind numbing drivel that we get in the press these days.

I was on the time the place and got to meet rosie lee. She was very nice.

Give me a decent % of the place I work for and I will service any damn one. Man, woman, animal vegitable, miniral, it is all on.

I am not a proud man.