switters

thought for a second we were finally getting a piece of luck. no.

suspect Sinclair is better as impact player off the bench, but yeah I'd definitely have picked two of them over Gabby + Zog myself.

Sanchez struggled badly in 2nd half but we were just outnumbered in the middle so I don't know if he deserves all the blame for that. Sherwood needed to make a change in formation 'cause Sinclair and Agbonlahor were not in the game at this point and we were losing it in CM. the approach was a positive one to start with but when you lose control of the match, you have to switch things around.

how much pain are we supposed to endure? seriously. and how many times do we get mugged in the last minute by that scummy club? we really are going down. could not have got a kinder first fixture for new manager but still managed to conspire to lose it.

finally putting some pressure on but just can't get the breaks..

yeah, he had a chance to put a cross in with his right a few mins ago and instead went backwards. a bit frustrating when players don't trust their weaker foot.

There was another Villa player there (Gil?) who let Ireland get past him. think he was as much/more to blame for Ireland having that space.

poor defending all round. crappy time to concede

Sanchez been strong in midfield. Winning headers & taking control of situations. Good stuff. expect to see Crouch come on at half time.

WOOHOO!

Sinclair, Richardson, Sanchez and Gabby in, looks like adding pace/dynamism has been a big decider. Seems a good idea - everything about our play has been too slow lately. would be great if we can get a goal early and really play on front foot. Don't exactly trust Richardson defensively but Cissokho is pretty limited at going forward and often slowed our play with his one-footedness. I'd guess Gabby, Gil and Sinclair will be switching between the central and wide positions, so it could look 442 sometimes and 4231/433 at others. Need Delph and Sanchez to have a big game today.

Much improved second half. Great to be in the QF. Vlaar MOTM for me.

Rather thinking experience of Cole might've been better than Grealish in this situation.

WOOHOO! great work by Vlaar: he's got more eye for a pass than all our CMs..Lovely finish Bacuna.

Hopefully that turd Konchesky can get another yellow soon. Bring on Grealish or Sinclair to run at him.

twice the ball has gone into Benteke and he's had a defender making some physical contact with him without touching the ball. Is Savage going to bang on about how they should be penalties too?

I remember when we were quite good at counters. that was painfully bad. defending has been messy. we're lucky to still be 0-0.

Gil is a big loss. No creativity in that midfield - would've brought in Cole in place of Gil personally I'm really praying we can eke out a win somehow. this club needs a morale boosting cup run like no other

FFS.....just what did you expect from Sinclair?.....he was only on for about 12 mins....lol more like 20 mins. all I said is he didn't make any impact and tbf, he has been brought in to be an impact player - to add pace, to provide crosses or shots. he didn't have much to work with as the whole team was flat after Ivanovic goal and Chelsea are strong defensively, so I'm not writing him off or anything.

A bit better, but frustrating: caught Chelsea on a bad day where they were pretty poor in final third in particular & still gave them two soft goals. Hutton's defending was criminal for the 1st; the 2nd was messy all round & it was disappointing (if unsurprising) how deflated the performance was in the last 20 mins. just don't look like a side who has any belief that they can get back. lack of winning mentality. Gil was a big positive - superb assist. he could really be the difference for us against the weaker clubs. Clark was good & I thought Westwood had a decent game too. and at least we've got the goalscoring monkey off back before this run of fixtures against rivals. downsides: you'd hope a dropped Benteke would come on looking fired up with a point to prove, but he was just as anonymous as previous games & kept just doing pointless one-twos rather than driving forwards. neither Sinclair or Cole made any impact either, though they only had fairly short time. Delph was good for first hour but faded and made some sloppy errors later on, perhaps still not 100% matchfit. Gabby & Weimann both worked hard, but neither seems to have any composure.

This is some prime timewasting. Wait until the moment the clock comes up so the time probably won't be added on properly. not that we're looking threatening, but this is cowardly.

yup, it's always chasing-the-game subs rather than proactive. was the same with Martin O'Neill.

he's still adjusting to pace of this league - this game will be a lesson as Chelsea just do not give you time or space.

yeah needs to be taken out of firing line, esp with the yellow card. Joe Cole would make sense. Drogba is an embarrassment these days. will still probably score though

looks like a carbon copy of Arsenal game so far - concede very soft early goal, make moderate show of resiliance til half time without actually looking like getting back into it. so, another 2nd half capitulation?