ozvillafan

Liverpool being ahead at home early, then losing by a comfortable margin.....

... are they Villa in disguise?

1 hour ago, Tayls said:

Yea we really do need a mentality switch. Mindset has been a bit thing for us over the past few seasons and some players just cannot change theirs to what we need it to be - ie, a winning mentality. 

Aye - we are missing a ruthless streak. How many times have we been in good positions in games and we let it slip? Apart from the past 2 home games, how about Man City away last year? Or Wolves at home?

How many times do we score, only to concede within the next 5-10 minutes?

Thankfully, I can see what Unai is trying to do. He wants to control games and to do that, you need to control possession. Our play out from the back and general movement of the ball is much better than under our former managers.

I'm hoping it all clicks soon

6 hours ago, est1874 said:

How did we concede 4 goals to these **** clowns 

Simple. Against us they were clinical - 4 shots on goal for 4 goals (their 5th and last shot on goal came in injury time).

Against ManUre? Nope.

Typical

Did nothing wrong today. Was unsighted for their first, unable to get to an excellent shot for their second and unlucky for the 3rd.

Yep - he wastes time but if you are then going to say it's his fault we lost in extra time you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

7 minutes ago, AV82 said:

We gifted them 4 goals today and we still looked like we could win. That's progress. Eliminate the mistakes and we'll be well up there.

Not having that.

We gifted Leicester 4 goals - sure. But their first 2 were well taken, the 3rd one just desperately unlucky and the 4th is an all-or-nothing goal

On 09/02/2023 at 04:10, OutByEaster? said:

The Alfa looks lonely here, like they've forgotten where they put it and it's been left behind when they all went on holiday. 

It's an Alfa.

You could put it in a crowd of the most amazing and interesting things and everybody will still only see the Alfa.

Sooooo pretty!

2 hours ago, The_Steve said:

Jack clipped himself. JJ didn't generate enough contact to warrant a foul let alone Jack doing this bizarre thing.

See those clumps of grass in the air between the 2 players? (odd shapped black things - there are 3 of them)

They came from Grealish's boot. They got dislodged by the contact Ramsey made.

That contact is enough for Grealish to fall, as it forces his trailing leg against his standing leg. If you've ever seen a Rugby League game - that's what's called an "ankle tap". Guaranteed to bring a player down no matter how big.

Sure - Grealish exaggerates the contact to make sure the penalty was awarded - but it would have been awarded by VAR anyway.

Why? Because it was a penalty. Poor from Ramsey, tbh.

We don't win without him.

He's being carried along with Ramsey and, potentially, Buendia. That makes our right hand side the weaker side, and easy to exploit.

Needs dropping.

We can't keep gifting sides goals.

First goal - Martinez blew it (gotta cover your near post, but he was static)

Second goal - Chambers blew it

Third goal - Ramsey blew it

Of all teams, Man City do not need gifts. Yes we played better 2nd half but the game was already over.

The acorns deal was one of the few decisions Lerner got right. Made me immensely proud to be a Villa fan.

In fact, I only own a few Villa tops - acorns being one - and none of them have a gambling company on the front of the shirt. I wonder if we sell more shirts without a betting company main sponsor than we do with?

3 hours ago, TomC said:

Because he's inconsistent. (I like him, but that's why some don't, and even I can find him frustrating.)

I understand the frustration, but for mine it comes from other sources in the team - mostly Bailey and Ramsey

I think inconsistency comes with the role. Going back through some of our more creative central midfield players, it seems it was ever thus:

• Merson
• Hendrie
• Delph
• Holman
• Ireland
• Hourihane
• Lansbury
• Barkley (though he was the most consistent: Almost always poor)

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

A lot of posts in the thread giving reasons why nothing will happen. 

Just for the sake of argument, and playing devil's advocate rather, it might be worth considering some reasons why something more than nothing might happen:

• If the PL wanted to bury this story, they could have done. They didn't have to charge City, they could have just arranged a fine behind closed doors. But they didn't. Related to that:
• They have to have considered that they couldn't publicly charge City with breaking more than 100 rules violations over more than 14 years and then expect that they could just give up or fold it all neatly back into the box and forget about it. Further to that:
• The league is an institution that needs to look after its own credibility, and the credibility of its rules, at least as much as it looks after any of its members. And we have to assume that if they can charge a club with all these breaches over this long of a time and then fail to make anything at all stick, then the rules City have broken would have to be considered dead. 
• The charges are actually serious. Match fixing is considered a serious offence (rightly), but if I arrange a bent referee to get our next match then I'm scamming a maximum of three points for my efforts. City's financial doping stretches over around 500 league games, probably another 50-100 domestic cup games. Cumulatively this is a *lot* of impact from this cheating. 
• Other clubs in other leagues have faced serious punishments, at times, for serious violations. It's not impossible for the PL to come down hard if they want to, and if they play their legal cards right.

So there we go. I'm not saying they will end up with a massive punishment; the league may lose the legal battle or they may bottle it. But if you're looking for reasons why a serious punishment *could* occur they do exist. 

My problem here is that this is football.

We had an investigation into corruption regarding the voting around the world cup being held in Qatar. The outcome? Despite there being corruption, a couple of scape goats took a fall and the WC went there anyway.

Their lawyers will win.

It will be a fine....

... and certain PL power brokers receiving a sudden unexpected windfall to keep a straight face in front of the media

Be interesting to see the reaction of the players to this. I wonder who plays them next?

Bugger.

3 hours ago, MaVilla said:

kamara wasnt pressured easily, Emi made a hospital pass, Kamara was too confident and didnt offload when he could have, got swarmed and dispossessed, it was the good old swiss cheese model scenario. (ironically it was very similar to both the Dendoncker one versus Stevenage, and the Luiz one versus Brighton), we really need to learn from these mistakes, 3 players have effectively made the same mistake in 3 different games, and Emi made the poor pass twice, Olsen made one of them.)

If you look at a freeze frame of the Kamara one, Emi shouldnt have even passed to him, he was surrounded by 3 Leicester players, where as the CBs were completely open and free either side, even then, Kamara should have realised immediately that it was a bad pass and offloaded it to the left or right CB, its just multiple mistakes leading to one outcome, and we need to learn from them and not continue to do it.....

We just need to make better decisions, be less complacent, etc.

emery wont change his tactics, he had implemented them everywhere he has gone, if the players cant play his system, they wont be here long.

I know Kamara was a bit silly trying to hold on to it (but he usually can), same as Donk and Luiz, but the GK shouldnt be making that pass (either Emi or Olsen), they should have chosen a different option.

The other thing i have observed generally with Emi 1, is he slows it down too much, allows the opposition to close players down, close passing channels and allow them to set for their press, rather than recycling the ball and keeping things moving, i love Emi 1, but he needs to stop standing on the ball and allowing all the opposition players to set themselves, it would be more effective overall if we kept the ball moving, kept pulling players around and didnt let them settle or set a press.

 

This one baffles me. The ball to the edge of the box in the middle of the field is schoolboy stuff.

Your fullbacks are split. One of them even has his back turned (Mings) as he's "moving to his position". If something goes wrong (the pass is a little off, the first touch is poor or - in this case - 3 opposition players are waiting for it around the "D") then there is no way for the 2 CB's to recover in time.

I can't honestly believe they do this in training. Its suicide!

Not a single defensive player had a good game. That includes Kamara and Martinez, who made his first save in the 94th minute. Every other attempt on goal was a goal.

Also singling out Bailey and Ramsay for being poor in that game.

The real issue? We looked pretty good - but had so many players having bang average games that we gifted the a win.

We look lovely in possession

But we switch off for periods, especially after scoring. After their first it took about 10 minutes before we had possession in their half.

And with 3 minutes to go before half time, half the side were looking to the break.

Need to wake up

Seen him score a ridiculously good goal and slice a simple clearance 20 metres straight up in the air in the same game.

He's superb and horrible in equal measures. True Jeckyll and Hyde

1 hour ago, Delphinho123 said:

Kamada - Free
N. Williams - £40m
Guendouzi - £40m

To start. 

Would love Kamada if for no other reason than putting him on the pitch with Kamara makes for a nice commentator tongue-twister.

Add the Ramsey brothers, Ashley Young and Kadan Young and now we're talking!

1 hour ago, MachoFantastico said:

Their spending is absolutely insane. They've discovered a loophole basically, I suspect the likes of Newcastle and City are watching to see how it turns out to see if it would work out for them. Definitely risky, it could be an absolute disaster if it doesn't work out or it could be a stroke of genius. 

 

Smacks of Leeds.

While I can't see Chelsea getting relegated and ruined like Leeds did they are still setting themselves up for a massive fall.

Can't wait to see it happen

3 hours ago, AshVilla said:

Brighton are not Kang-in about are they and gone straight in with a bid.

Shame i would have liked him here.

I'm on the fence. If he turns out to be crap, I like him there