danceoftheshamen

40 mins of our season left for me unless Spurs sort it out

This Wigan v Spurs result is so important today. If Wigan win i don't like our chances much tbh We effectively need 2 wins from Sunderland, Norwich & Wigan... Forget the Chelsea game we seem incapable against any team in the top 6. Which is quite odd when our immediate rivals always seem to pull out a result against them on occasion.

Worst Villa defence i can remember Vlaar is average at best but just a big unit which helps him, Clark is not a Centre back in my opinion Baker is for me the best we have although learning his trade so a tad error prone (but then so are they all) The left backs are poor & not Premier League quality. Lowton again has promise but is riddled with errors still So no, i don't envisage any clean sheets this season at all.

I've been there a few times & never really been overly impressed really..Agree that their fans are pretty dire really & are in the main just the kind who chose to support them because they get some childish buzz out of patronizing people, a behaviour which usually starts in the school playground... which is what they do all the time... just like your mate did to you! Quite sad really but then thats what glory hunting fans do.

Looking at the list of Prem clubs if we go down makes for grim reading it really does.. Remove the sky 4 & the "larger" clubs with large fan bases & you are left with Stoke City Wigan Athletic Cardiff City Swansea City Hull City? Watford? Southampton Norwich City Sunderland West Brom Fulham West Ham The only really big games being The 2 Scouse clubs, The 2 Manc clubs, Spurs, Arsenal & Chelsea Gotta say those fixtures hardly make me clamor for a season ticket

This is it now folks isn't it?! . By Tuesday morning we will have a much better idea of the future... S*** or bust now! Really don't know how to call the Wigan Spurs game.. Spurs are rather inconsistent it has to be said which is scary.. I pray that they are really pepped up after the City win & they go up there & hammer them i really do... Very difficult game on Monday however too which will most likely be decided by the odd goal either way... just hope & pray we get lucky or something & nick it.

I agree with the call for hawk eye to be in charge of offside decisions... has to be much better than the current set up which consists of officials with "red eye" To be fair a 3-0 defeat was about as good as we could have hoped for at OT last night considering the 14 v 11 scenario with the officials. Especially with going 1 down so early it could easily have been another Chelsea... So now to the Sunderland game.. our season now depends on this game it is a must win.. lose & we are down in my opinion.

Had enough.. yet another game i have lost interest in before we even reached the midway point of the 1st half.. I;m done.. off to go & watch the news or something much more interesting than watching this s***

Well not all of us actually, i had us down for a 1-5 loss..Although looks as though Benteke skied our chance so i will revise that to 0-5.... it was a 100% certainty this would happen tonight. It is effectively 14 against 11 with the officials no doubt wanting to be able to tell their grandkids "i was the ref When Utd won the title at OT in 2013" or something along those lines... It is no surprise whatsoever that at least one of their goals was offside & not given... it was inevitable.

Corrected for you

An utter embarrassment of a football team. Relegation fodder.

Well it's always 11 against 14 up there anyhow with the ref & linesmen.. now they will all be looking forward to a party too?! Not a cat in hells chance! It's 99.9999999999999999999% a loss for me.

I think it's affected the atmosphere in the Holte maybe, but it's improved the atmosphere in the ground. Aye you may be right, perhaps as a die hard Holte Ender it just pains me to have lost that passion from that end?.. Never been in the DE Lower so perhaps i ought to give it a try? Still doesn't explain the dismal home form since the changes though?!.. I won;t quite believe it until i see us go through a season with a decent home record ... i guess thats the time to make judgement proper? Sales of Barry, Milner, Young & Downing maybe? Thing is wasn't our home form poor even then? I seem to remember us all saying how we had no plan B or being unable to break teams down who came & parked the bus etc even with those players.. Fact is our home form has been poor ever since we changed the stadium round... It may be nothing do do with it of course, but it may be a contributing factor too to a point. Surely the Holte end in full voice was very intimidating for any visiting team...indeed it was always said that the Holte End could practically "suck the ball into the net" such was it's impact & yet now that advantage has clearly gone we say it doesn't have any effect? .. Can't be both ways.

I think it's affected the atmosphere in the Holte maybe, but it's improved the atmosphere in the ground. Aye you may be right, perhaps as a die hard Holte Ender it just pains me to have lost that passion from that end?.. Never been in the DE Lower so perhaps i ought to give it a try? Still doesn't explain the dismal home form since the changes though?!.. I won;t quite believe it until i see us go through a season with a decent home record ... i guess thats the time to make judgement proper?

Odd! I hope you weren't blaspheming now!? I got it too actually in the lower Holte.. We got a bad call off the ref & i jumped up & shouted something at him... & the looks i got ... Weird!... I actually thought i had stumbled upon the opera by accident rather than a football match.

I think it could be improved. One way of doing that, is reverting the north stand lower back to away fans. Knock the ticket prices down in the Holte, and get those fans back in there. Weve basicly split our vocal support, which is ok when your doing well, but when your struggling? Holte is a like a morgue at times. No way!! The further away the away support are the better! Can't afford to give teams more of an advantage through their supporters! Plus, why would we want them hurling abuse at Guzan??!! Thing is the proof of the pudding is in the eating & our results have been consistently poor at home since this move.. Even under MON we struggled at home. I can understand the folks who go in the new DE lower wanting to keep it as it appears to be the only part of the ground with atmosphere now usually but overall impact is not good from what i have seen.. Ok we have been poor for years now which doesn't help of course... But you have to ask why a team that was always reasonably strong at home has now gone to one of the worst home teams in the division since the changes?

I think it could be improved. One way of doing that, is reverting the north stand lower back to away fans. Knock the ticket prices down in the Holte, and get those fans back in there. Weve basicly split our vocal support, which is ok when your doing well, but when your struggling? Holte is a like a morgue at times. I'd like to see cheap seats in the Upper Trinity too - let something form up there. That would upset quite a few lol Ive tried singing up there, and been looked upon as an alien! North upper and HDE are far worse in my experience, but its hard to get any atmosphere going when your struggling, and thats the same everywhere. :lol: I had the exact same thing happen.. Talk about got dirty looks!

It was just destined to be this season was it not.. that we would have to be the team who Man U needed to beat to confirm the title.. This is how the season seems to have gone for us in general.. playing teams at the wrong time.. Now we have Sunderland who 2 games ago would have been an ideal fixture... now they come here in buoyant mood... Typical! It will feel like we have gatecrashed a party tomorrow sadly & i see nothing but a big defeat. 4-0 loss for me. As for the home fans debate i agree it is nothing like it used to be at Villa Park. The Holte end is a pale shadow of itself & for me our home form has been absymal since we had the away end moved. For me when the away fans in the old Witton were singing it used to be aimed directly at the Holte end whereas now its aimed at the Trinity road which is the quietest stand in the stadium. This has an effect as you can't really hear the away fans in the Holte end very well & this perhaps has impacted the response from the Holte end thus having an overall quieting effect.. As well as half of the old Holte enders now being at the other end of the stadium of course.... It's like it's altered the dynamics of the stadium in a negative way overall... Thus affecting the atmosphere & our results maybe? I preferred it in the old layout personally.

Wow that was close & to be fair Wigan deserved a result tonight... but then how many games have we had this season when we deserved a result only to f*** it up!.. About time it started to happen to some of those clubs around us for a change!.. So to Man U on Monday.. who are now on the back of a defeat & a draw & could be playing us to win the title if Spurs beat City!! & i wouldn't bet against that watching City tonight!!... Why oh why do we always come up against clubs just at the wrong time like this?!..Bizarre!.. Big win for Chelsea too tonight.. so glad they too are finding their form just as our game against them appears on the horizon.

Sadly i just can't see it though with Wigan... Their whole ethos is conducive to getting results in these sticky situations.. We are now hoping that they lose their next 3 games i believe? assuming we suffer the usual embarrassment at OT that is. They may lose to City... but they may not as City are kind of on the beach now in the Prem table & will be most likely focusing on the FA cup now. Their only objective was to win at OT which they did & finish 2nd which they will so they have little to play for really. The West Ham game could go either way too & then they will still have a game in hand against us should we lose to Man U... it's just looking a bit like fairy stories to expect them to fail 3 times... in fact 4 times if you consider they will then have another chance to relegate us when we play them at theirs! So for me our best chance is not Wigan.... but Sunderland or Stoke. Sadly it looks as though Sunderland have gotten lucky with the managerial change though. It's flick a coin time for me to see who goes & who stays... but at least we have a chance!

I think we are favorites to go down now....but only by a gnats whisker... it could so easily turn again. We have a chance of course but then so does every team apart from Reading & QPR... So difficult to call & i i was not too despondent about not beating Fulham as they are a better side than they are given credit for & needed points... It was a disappointment though of course. In effect it nullified our advantage gained in beating Stoke... But i think 4 points from Stoke (a) & Fulham(h) most would have been happy with. Our biggest problem in my opinion is every time we seem to be digging ourselves out of it the teams around us either change their manager & get a bit lucky or we/they are playing teams at the wrong time (for us).. This was evidenced again today with the Sunderland win playing against a Newcastle team who had lost after extra time as recently as Thursday!! So obviously Sunderland were at a huge advantage in that one.... Even then they got lucky with the disallowed goal... & that is just how it is falling for us this season. so many things seem to have gone against us at critical times & how many own goals are we scoring too for goodness sake!? It's an uphill battle but it's not quite over yet. I do think we will need around 39/40 pts though with the way all our rivals are nicking results & getting the rub of the green.

Yes if it had ended up 1-0 to Sunderland there could be a case for blaming the linesman but not when its 3-0 Nonsense... if it had gone 1--1 the game would have changed.. Sunderland could easily have panicked especially after going 1-0 up at Chelsea last week & losing plus it would've lifted Newcastle & they may well have started to play a bit better.. Sunderland could just as easily have gone on & lost the game had that goal been allowed... It's all ifs buts & maybe's but to say it "wouldn't have mattered as they won 3-0" is nonsense as it was only 1-0 at the time of the decision... A game changer That's true but I think Sunderland should have had at least 2 penalties. I know what your saying but those happen in every game pretty much & sometimes they are given others not & also if they had of had a penalty who's to say they would have scored from it?...The difference here is that goal was 100% a good goal & changed the course of the game... Should not happen when there is so much at stake in the Premier League. Anyhow it happened & Stoke are losing already

Yes if it had ended up 1-0 to Sunderland there could be a case for blaming the linesman but not when its 3-0 Nonsense... if it had gone 1--1 the game would have changed.. Sunderland could easily have panicked especially after going 1-0 up at Chelsea last week & losing plus it would've lifted Newcastle & they may well have started to play a bit better.. Sunderland could just as easily have gone on & lost the game had that goal been allowed... It's all ifs buts & maybe's but to say it "wouldn't have mattered as they won 3-0" is nonsense as it was only 1-0 at the time of the decision... A game changer

Not a cat in hells chance we will get anything from OT next week.. they will get at least 4 against our dismal defence.

Disgusted... Newcastle scored a perfectly legit goal & had it gone 1-1 this would have been a different game... Yet again an incompetent official could potentially cost this club £60m... Its frankly a disgrace especially as the technology is out there to prevent this kind of thing Well thats Sunderland out of the equation the lift they will get from this will most likely push them to safety now. So out of Us, Wigan, Stoke & a long shot of Norwich... Having said that this could just pull Newcastle into things if it knocks the stuffing out of them & having lost their keeper to injury.