briny_ear

Enjoyed that a lot. 

Good use of squad and good performances all round. Bit worried about Ollie. Please be OK for Sunday. 

Could have given MOTM to anyone from 6-7 but gave it to Diaby for being so much more effective than in recent matches and for a sublime goal.

DIIIAAABBBYYY!!!

So pleased for him.

Bye bye Mannswerk

Superb from Bailey. Now bring this home guys.

4 minutes ago, thunderball said:

It’s not working out for him, but today he turned out one of our better performances. No lacking in effort or determination, if anything he was channelling what seemingly only McGinn had in the game. 

Don’t know why it hasn’t clicked, I don’t get the impression he wants to be here though. But I cannot accept anything negative against him today.

I agree. I thought he tried hard to make a difference today - and to an extent succeeded - in very difficult circumstances.

Ugh, that was horrible to watch. We did OK in the first half but capitulated in the second.

I’m not going to name a man of the match because I honestly don’t think any of our players deserved it.

Quite a lot of recovery needed to get us into shape for Thursday 

Reaches nervously for Spurs fixture list for the rest of the season.

That was a horrendous tackle. Not surprised at the red.

Our only real objective now is to try to keep the score down.

Just **** throwing it away now!

Oh bums 

These first 15-20 minutes of the second half are my least favourite. So often we seem to lose energy and play too passively.

We have defended very well. Spurs barely managed a shot all half. 
 

 Now just need to be a bit calmer in attack. 

So close!!!

If we sit back all game and let Spurs do all the attacking we will lose this.

Ha! Oliie dishing it out as well.

Never cease to admire how Emery is managing our rather stretched resources this season. That was a reasonably strong side with some players key to the Spurs game sensibly starting on the bench. It seemed the plan was to play a low key controlling game and hope to snick a goal or two as Ajax tired. Unfortunately we didn’t control the game well enough and never really got enough counter attacking momentum, though we might have had a great goal at the death via Zaniolo and Watkins.

Thought Lenglet had a good game and Emi saved our bacon not for the first time. There was some quite sloppy passing in midfield and we were muscled out a bit before McGinn came on.

I wonder if Morgan Rogers and Tim Iroegbunam were a bit overawed by the occasion. Both emphasised after the match what a massive iconic club Ajax are. Lads, you are playing for a massive iconic club yourselves and the sooner you start drinking that in the better. No room for inferiority complexes.

We got a bit better in the second half, and the substitutions helped, but were still oddly sluggish throughout.

However, we are going home from the first away leg of a European tie at 0-0 so not too bad a result all in all.

Shame the ref was a complete and utter headbanger and I am very sorry for Konsa who shouldn’t have been booked once, let alone twice in my opinion. We will miss him in the return leg.

6 minutes ago, May-Z said:

Nothing wrong wit that. Just a bit boring to watch.

We're away at what people considered one of the most difficult teams left in the conference.

We haven't expended a lot of energy.l, we're getting minutes into Pau and Konsa after injuries, and we're giving Tim and Rogers some experience. 

This puts us in a good position for Spurs on Sunday and to control the second leg once that's out of the way.

Seems like it's all going to plan to me..

 

Those people may be wrong. Ajax are a shadow this season and lost to AZ a couple of weeks ago.

Pretty poor match so far. Ajax are no great shakes and shouldn’t really present much of a threat. But we have been a bit passive with some sloppy stuff in midfield .Interesting to see what changes Emery will make. Think this may all be too early for Morgan. Bailey for Diaby.

2 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Just listened to that Claret and Blue podcast with the finance guy.

So sounds like there has been slight meltdown over not much.

Basically, if we want to make big purchase we probably have to sell, but we are nowhere near doomed 

He intimated that after all the deductions our losses could come down to the 80 - 90 mill mark ( allowable is 105 ).

This is all without our expected new deals and hopefully Champs League money etc Al kicking in.

As we figure, the choice will be ours, do we prioritise keeping our best players and building further? Or do we cash in on players while their values are high and build Villa 2.0 ?

Also said ( As out owners and Heck etc have said ) Villa have, and are moving away from selling club status,  and we still have the room to make sure things happen on our terms.

I think the BBC reported this in a very ill-informed and misleading fashion and that may have helped fuelled the meltdown. Last time I looked, they are still raising it as if we are the next Everton/Nottm Forest, so they are still slightly embarrassing themselves.

1 hour ago, DJBOB said:

I think the key is that what we have (Unai) is what the other clubs are missing. Respect to Howe but he’s got a ceiling and Palace, Forest don’t seem to understand the manager is the critical part of maintaining sustainability. 
 
I believe that’s why NWSE pulled the trigger fast with Gerrard. They’re no Xia idiots and knew the upward trajectory had to continue immediately given the revenue and spend. I think that’s also why Deano got the sack and no time to turn it around. 
 
If we can make UCL for 3-4 years in a row, the combination of revenue, exposure, and commercial increases can make us competitive. 

1 hour ago, ender4 said:

Yep, realistically we need CL 3 years in a row and at least on one occasion need to make it to the knockouts.  That will then start to build some global recognition of Aston Villa which will then bring in the large sponsorship deals.

I hope very much the NSWE business plan isn’t expecting us to achieve CL football for the next 3-4 years continuously. There are about 8 clubs with a realistic chance and we can’t guarantee it will be us every year. We need to be able to build sustainably or another Xia-style crash is on the cards.

3 minutes ago, paul514 said:

It is an option but seriously, clear out the players that should be cleared out and sell one of our circa 100m pound player bring in 5 more and the whole situation is hunky dory. I posted this on the transfer thread a couple of weeks back with details. It is so obvious

I’m not convinced that “clearing out the players that should be cleared out” is quite as straightforward as you make it sound.

21 minutes ago, TRO said:

Another good rendition.

We all was Jas.....everybody was happy with that first half.

I could wax lyrical, until midnight, about some of our play this season.....its been scintillating at times....but I am slow, to state the obvious, because it is repeatedly stated...where defending seems to be the necessary evil.

but some of our defending, does need attention, and that's where, I think the conversation should be open.

Its as if we have to state the obvious, in order to qualify ourselves to debate the defending, in fear of being ungrateful or unappreciative.

 

We do need some perspective here.

We have the 5th equal best defensive record in the premier league and the 3rd equal best attacking record (equal with Man C), so I guess we must be doing something right. 

You wouldn’t think so to read some of the posts on Villatalk.

The team who have the fourth best defensive record are Man U who have conceded 36 but have only scored 36. And we are actually equal 5th with Everton who have conceded 37 and scored just 29 - we have scored more than double that.

I know which club I would rather be following.

I think there is a puzzle about why we often seem to start the second half so slow but I wonder if this is actually part of a plan to slow the game down and try to get a stranglehold on events. Unfortunately we may not have players good enough to play that way, so maybe that is where things are going a bit wrong.

But to claim we have some sort of defensive crisis at Villa seems a bit OTT.

Ok, got it. 

He is absolutely brilliant and we should sell him at the first opportunity.

Balanced.

I fancy a default of having Moreno on for the first half and Digne on for the second.