QldVilla

We were better, or they let us be better?

I was willing to write the Leeds game off as a blip, they’d been waiting to play us for two seasons, and as predicted Leeds lost the following week. But we weren’t good against Southampton. I don’t agree with the we were better in the second half, we were down 4-0 , Southampton switched off. Ive always said I don’t believe Smith is the finished article as a manager and at times it shows on the pitch. He’s put good people around him to help make good decisions and we need to support him and believe this is working. I believe we can get at Arsenal in the next match for the same reason we rolled them late last season, backing up 3 days after a match. They still don’t have the depth of the Top 4 sides and may be a good time to catch them. I’m expecting a reaction and think we might get something from the game.

I don’t think your too far wrong in your thinking in freshening up the squad with 2-3 changes, it was Leeds they are still relatively a Championship squad, having others play for 50-60 minutes sends out a message to the squad. The other possibility was treating the game like a cup game with the players to get them up. If you noticed that’s how Leeds played it. They and their supporter base have been carrying round a large grudge ever since that notorious game 18 months ago. They’ve been waiting to play us. The only negativity to this is we probably are down for the Southampton game. Will be interesting whether Leeds can get up for their next game.

Reading a lot about how we didn’t get our tactics right, Smith should have done this or that. It’s a mute argument if the team isn’t emotionally up for the game. It’s happened to nearly every PL team this season in COVID with no crowds, that teams are just having an off day. Having teams emotionally ready to play week in week out with no crowds is very hard to achieve artificially, game day, the opposition and the crowds play a huge part is this response. If you don’t get it right, you look lethargic, slow to the ball, poor decision making etc etc. We had that day today and when that happens it doesn’t matter whether your tactics are right or spot on, your going to get towelled up. The Villa team that beat Liverpool and Leicester doesn’t get beat by Leeds today. Let’s get ready for Southampton.

We knew what we were getting with Barkley, he can be brilliant, world class, but consistency week in week out has always been an issue. But everyone was off tonight, it’s going to happen in the current climate and we need to put it down to an off night, rather than critiquing Individuals.

I think people are reading too much into the performance. We’ve had our off game like every other PL club this season, bar Everton. It’s going to continue while crowds aren’t in the stadiums. We’ve had a great start, it whatever happened this week, we were flat today. Hopefully the coaching staff will correct it for Southhampton.

Like every team in the PL this season, we are going to see these type of results. We’ve been able to manage the excitement levels for the first 4 games but it was quite obvious that we weren’t up for the game tonight. Getting the physical and mental preparation balanced to perform is an art, be off by 1-2% in the current climate and you can be well beaten. We were off the pace, hopefully it’s a one off.

Well done guys, had a good listen to the last episode and really professional and offering something different to the other podcasts. Keep it up.

There all winnable games, think we’ll get around 10 points from those games. If we just had those 3-4 quality players on the bench to rotate the squad, you would be really confident. It’s just keeping those excitement levels in the squad week in week out.

We just need to define speed properly. I believe he is deceptively faster than people believe he is, but more importantly he travels with the ball at his feet far quicker than most players. So when it comes to people like Southgate I believe it is a wrong narrative that Jack is slower than others, I’ll back him over most players with the ball at his feet. When pundits talk about speed, maximum velocity in an athlete is completely different to speed of play, when you have a ball at your feet.

Jack isn’t the finished article, he is still improving. Anyone who watches him regularly as we all do can see the improvements in his games, year on year. There’s still parts of his game that need improving, the coaches know that and more importantly he knows that. While he continues to improve the club need to put better players around him and we will see the benefit of these improvements. It’s a dream at the moment but to be playing regularly in Europe at the highest level is where Jack will be someday, let’s just hope it will be with Villa.

Just outstanding so far.

Have to give credit to the lad, thought he was quiet during the game, but that bit of quality and courage made up for it. Plus to hear he was 50-50 in playing just adds to the performance.

I like Wesley a lot. You could see the snippets of quality in his play similar to Luiz, he just needed time. It’s going to take a while to come back from the injury, but with Watkins we can slowly introduce him until he gets up to full fitness.

Sorry my knowledge is limited to sports medicine, not when your drunk as f@#$!!

Yep, depends on the severity of the tear, it’s supporting rotational movements of the knee/body, so that’s where the instability occurs.

PL have to do something about these tackles they go unpunished, look at Wesley, no different.

It’s been a good window, we didn’t spend as much as we reportedly had to spend, but a good thing that we didn’t spend funds on lesser players. Only 12 games to January, we should be ok and hopefully Wesley will be back by then. Its been a long time since I can honestly say I’m happy with the 11 players on the pitch, I wouldn’t swap our midfield, our front 3 and even the back four and GK. Yes we can have conversations over an upgrade to Trezeguet or Targett, but they are doing their jobs. Really exciting.

These owners are caretakers of theIr clubs and does not give them the right to determine the future of the PL and the rest on English football. If they are going to say the top 9 clubs it has to be over the period of the PL, not what is convenient at the time. It shows the lack of consideration for the game, it’s fans and the future of football. Football and sport is cyclic, some clubs have benefitted from rich owners in the past 20 years which has inflated their significance. If this is supported in will slowly kill the PL. I don’t have an issue with reducing the PL to 18 clubs, I don’t disagree with a different revenue model to reach all clubs, but as per the original PL every club should have an equal vote.

The thing about Smith for me Was when he first came in was the way he talked about the team and his philosophy, you could tell there was a methodology there. He lost his way a little bit last season, probably through a little inexperience at PL level, but he was able to correct it, where a lot of managers would have failed. The other thing that says a lot to me is John Terry. He has been coached by some of the best managers in world football, he doesn’t suffer fools and has been a loyal assistant and hasn’t taken the easy route to management. Says a lot to me that Terry sticks around and continues his apprenticeship and that he feels he is learning from Smith as part of his own development.

I could say the same. Someone made a comment and I responded with my thoughts, I thought that’s what this forum was for? Just because you don’t like subject matter, doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed. PS I hadn’t responded for 5 days it’s my first time back on.

I believe cov-19 has made a difference in how teams normally prepare for a game and the psychology of crowds is having an impact on the excitement levels of players that their adrenaline isn’t as high as normal. Not a full preseason and in Liverpool’s case they had two tough games against Arsenal last week, so physically and psychologically down and all adds together into Liverpool being off by 5%. I don’t think Villa are a better team without a crowd, we are just a better team than what we were before lockdown. The club and coaching staff is really handling our preparation for games well in the current environment and you see that on the field. We would have beaten any team on the weekend, we were in that zone and hopefully we will see more of it over the season.

I don’t disagree. But the argument from the club was they didn’t want to improve a players worth. For example, say they tried to buy Barkley rather than a loan and the fee was $25-30m, if he has an outstanding season for Villa, most likely other clubs will come a knocking and drive up the price and Vila could be paying $50-60m? Or Lampard has a second season shocker gets sacked and another manager goes into Chelsea and has his own opinion about Barkley. it was the clubs argument, obviously something changed their mind, we all saw the difference Barkley made against Liverpool. This argument would be mute if a fee had already been agreed at the end of the season, but all reports are they haven’t. The club can do what they want, just seemed a strange decision when they were so vocal about not going to loan without a buy clause.

No, not really. Just used to people jumping in and making comments without actually thinking about what was said and what it means.

That would be the conclusion of someone out of their depth and not understanding the context of the comment.