poitier

 

 

"Can't fault there effort". .. Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhhh the wife can't fault my effort in bed but I still don't make her cum 

Like Villa, too reliant on route one perthaps?

 

 

Like Villa, lacks decent penetration.

 

Truly relegation form at the moment, we are being bouyed up by the fact that there are teams below us incapable of even the occassional upset.

Teams below us get a change of mentality or a lucky buy in January and we are in the shit.

Another injury, Guzan out for instance and we are again in the shit.

 

Right now, in all probability we'll likely stay up courtesy of others superior shitness. But that's no way for my Aston Villa to drag its sorry arse through life.

 

Currently, there are not 3 teams playing worse than us.

Absolutely terrible.

We don't even play counter attacking football, we play all hands to the pump defending and hope we can nick something. Shouldn't getting an early goal and Swansea pushing on have played right into our hands if we really were the masters of counter attacking football, rather than failing to create another decent opening in the entire remainder of the game?

Think we need KEA to break up their play.

The team are currently playing so badly that it is difficult to defend Lambert. However, we would surely be better if we had our injured players fully fit - Vlaar, Okore, Benteke and N'Zogbia. So for those saying we would be better having a few quality players and some dross to make up the rest of the squad, this is how it feels when your quality gets injured and you are left with the dross.

Saying we should have kept Bannan etc rather than bringing in new players who are no better, go back and read the threads from last season saying that if he doesn't get rid of Bannan he has no idea what he is doing.

I'm not saying Lambert is doing a good job, but hindsight is 20/20, so slagging him off for some of his signings when at some point or another they have all been highly praised on this forum (Bacuna, Westwood, Lowton etc) isn't really fair.

I'm really not sure if Lambert is the right man to take us forward, but I can't see Lerner sacking him and he certainly won't walk. I think things will get better, like they did last season. But i could be wrong.

The MOTD highlights of this game flattered us.

I thought KEA was our best player in the first half but disappeared in the second. Delph was poor throughout, and his defending for the goal was unbelievably poor.

Luna looks like more of a liability with each passing game.

Sorry for Guzan, did well to keep us in the game and stopped Bannan from scoring.

Haven't seen Lambert's post match interview yet, perhaps we were actually " excellent", like in the first half against Stoke.

I remember reading somewhere that Helenius's best position is behind the striker, where we lack creativity.... And he's 6ft5 which means he can hold it up

Absolutely unbelievable that we bought on Bowery, in such a big game too.

To bring Bowery on was a questionable decision, to bring him on for Kozak was lunacy.

I think we will end up 12th - 14th. I can imagine we will spend a fair bit of time looking over our shoulders worrying about how a few bad results will leave us in trouble, but if we have a fully fit team (including Benteke) I don't expect us to ever be in serious trouble.

Some people don't seem to understand what 'reactionary' actually means. Not trying to be a dick, just saying it seems to get misused a lot on this forum.

The more goals he scores, the more i like him.

He had shown some signs of improvement, not necessarily in terms of his ball control/shooting but in his overall contribution to the team and adding some balance to the formation etc. Last few games have been a step backwards.

If Lambert honestly believes that we were "excellent" in the first half, then he's an even bigger moron than I gave him credit for.

I would hate to see us when he thinks we are poor.

I wouldn't expect us to pick up many points without Vlaar, Gabby and Benteke, but Stoke were absolutely dreadful today. I don't even think they were better than us, it was just two terrible teams and it hurts to come out of a game against such poor opposition with nothing.

Looks like a very poor team on paper, but not a lot to fear from Stoke. Anyone's game.

I think moving him into the hole was a bad move. I got the impression that he wanted to play a No 10 type role rather than as a winger, but he wasn't really cut out for it.

Great post VillaChris. Although I think Man City always look better when Milner is in the team, and his recent match winning performance against Bayern showed that he hasn't regressed.

Some people want Sylla to replace our top tackling, top scoring midfielder. Please just show me one thing he has done this season to justify that.

Genuinely intrigued at why people are not worried that he will be "poached"

 

I am. I think he's the best of what spurs could get at the moment. Premier League experience, kept us up last season with comparatively little investment, overachieving with us considering the wages and transfer budget.

 

I think it'd be a low risk choice for them and I hope they don't see that.

So Lambert has overachieved with us.

 

Its like Lerner has employed a hypnotist and put certain fans in a trance.

Why would any bigger club want to poach Lambert? His strength seems to be building a squad on a very small budget, he is not a great tactician and has no experience of managing a big club, European competitions as a manager etc. he doesn't seem to tick any of the boxes that a bigger club would want.

useless. 

cant play him with sylla and westwood.

2 years nd i dont understand what he does 

Then don't play Sylla, easy.

KEA is our best player at disrupting the opposition, he's also got a couple of goals and an assist this season. Obviously he is never going to win you over if you still don't understand what he does, but that doesn't mean he isn't doing anything.

How is KEA still getting game time ?

I think he was one of the best first half ..

Really? I thought it was a toss up between him and baker for the worst!

Per opta stats, successful tackles that game:

KEA 5

Albrighton 5

Westwood 2

Sylla 1

Tackling isn't everything, but it all helps.

Without Vlaar and Delph we were never going to get anything out of this. At least we gave them an awkward first 10 minutes before completely rolling over.

Albrighton motm by a mile, Gabby gets marks for effort if not end product, and KEA put in a useful shift. Not a lot of positives other than that.

Sylla was a lot better on the ball than he has been in previous games, but he offers surprisingly little in terms of breaking up the opposition play.

I like Baker, but it's difficult to keep making excuses for his errors.

Be nice to have him available to us late in the season when we are comfortable mid table (!) with nothing to really play for, be able to blood him with less pressure.

If you go to whoscored and go through all of Villa's fixtures and go to the "player positioning" tab, you can see the complete regression in terms of keeping our width. Against Arsenal, Chelsea, and London, Gabby and Weimann both take up good wide positions not too close to Benteke and spread out the opposing defense. As the season goes on, our "wide" forwards gravitate more and more towards the middle until there are almost no options out wide in terms of average positions. It's no wonder the back four shuttle it amongst themselves before passing it back to Guzan. They have no one to pass it to!

 

It's quite stunning how easy the problem is to see. Who are you supposed to pass it to when your forwards are within 5 meters of each other?

 

When I get home I'll try to photoshop all of the images together just to show exactly how problematic it is.

Last season there was a nice fluidity about the front three too. The were all on the same wavelength and engaged in some intelligent interchange which most defences they faced couldn't cope with.

This season the front-three are shockingly static, predictable and one-dimensional.

Completely agree with this. On Sunday we had a very brief period where Benteke seemed to move out to the left and Gabby was in the centre, and it led to a couple of our better passages of play.

"Gabby is not a good choice for captain, in my opinion. He is good at leading by example but other than the bollocking he (rightly) gave Bacuna I don't think I saw him communicating with anyone else on the pitch."

When even Gabby is telling you to 'THINK!' you know you have done something very silly indeed.

Niall Quinn was the most annoying co-commentator since Houghton on Wenesday. Didn't know the villa players names, spent the entire match jacking off about Berbatov and then didn't give him motm.