tom_avfc

Agreed other than the fact that his second yellow wasn’t even a foul. I did think he could have gone earlier and would rather see repetitive fouling punished more consistently.

Thought this one should get bumped up. Giving us 3 points and then beating Watford has done us a huge favour.

These really hate us don’t they. Genuinely seem as obsessed with us as Wolves and Albion have been lately. Don’t really get it with Leeds. Couldn’t care less how well or badly they do to be honest.

Why would Watford sue? We finish above them even if that goal stands.

I thought it was a pretty good showing from Till to be fair. It’s the best he’s looked in a long time and he could easily have won the fight against a very strong opponent.

Pretty strong overreaction here. Similar to when Hourihane made his comments. I don't get the difficulty in realising that if Jack gets the chance to go to City or United that it'd be a good move for his career. Gabby probably should have left himself when the likes of Arsenal were showing interest so he's pretty well placed to comment.

I can't agree with this - surely its just people being realistic. Jack Grealish is one of the best players in the entire Premier League. Any team would struggle to keep hold of him when he is performing at the level he is. If he has the opportunity to go to one of the top 3 or 4 teams in the country what makes you think that he'll stay? In reality about 5 or 6 teams have a realistic hope of winning trophies in a season with the odd surprise thrown in every now and again. Why would Grealish not want to go to a team who have a genuine chance of winning trophies year on year. As long as we get the price we want for him I have no issue with him moving on and wish him all the best. Hopefully he can perform for us in the last game of the season and keep us up. Maybe if we can convince some top drawer players to sign for us we may be able to persuade Grealish that we are going somewhere.

What a man! For a relatively uncelebrated player, my love for this guy is bordering on weird. Already asking the wife what the female version of Frederic is for the unborn child. Having seen Freddie’s celebration for the goal Kick today Freddie has actually made the boys name list now.

That would have been the perfect send off for Jack tonight. A man of the match performance in a crucial game. Just a shame that nobody could be there to see him off in style. What a Villa career he’s had already to be fair. If we didn’t have him we could have easily sunk without a trace. Its been a pleasure watching him play. Without a doubt the best player I’ve seen at Villa and I hope he goes on to achieve great things wherever he goes. Its going to be painful wanting whichever of the Manchester teams he joins to do well though!

This has got to feel good Dean. All those stats thrown at you of not winning games against top half teams. All those late goals conceded and the repeated reminders of near misses earlier on in the season. With two games to go you pull off a deserved victory in a massive game like that. I’ve never wanted us to win a game as much as on Sunday purely for the amount of crap that smith has taken from Villa fans before today. Do we have the squad to survive in the Premier League? Probably not. Do we have the desire and the tactical set up to keep us up? I don’t doubt it at all. See this through and we’ve really got something to build on here.

This. Its another example of something which is turning the conversation away from the real issues. It seems to be almost every week now that one of these stories comes out and everyone can spend a few days debating the merits of names in a film rather than actually address the serious issues around racism in this country and elsewhere.

Brighton drew with Southampton so its already wrong!! Only kidding as Brighton's results really don't matter. If you've got Bournemouth's, Watford's, and our's right I'll be happy.

Yeah I think there has to be some margin of error built into the offside decisions. I think you stick with the on field decision and overturn only in cases where the technology can prove without doubt that the wrong decision has been made.

Just looked at the xG for the El Ghazi miss which is at 0.34. I'm not an expert on xG but does this mean that they're saying that that goes in 1 in 3 times. That seems ridiculously low for how simple a chance it looked. Off topic the header that Walcott scored has an xG of 0.09. Kind of sums up our luck that that goes in to be fair.

I'm not sure how much of that money they'll actually be able to spend given the financial difficulties they've faced. Looking at their run of form they need a serious squad overhaul and I just don't see how they go about doing it. They seem to be a bit like we were before we got relegated from the Premier League first time around but in a lower division. There's only so many times you can hang on just above those relegation spots before you drop. I'd back Coventry to have a better season than them next year to be honest.

I think they hide behind "clear and obvious" a lot of the time. Not singling out United but both the penalty they won against us and the penalty that Palace should have had against them were as clear and obvious errors as you'll ever see. The commentators and pundits just gloss over it with a throwaway line of "the clear and obvious rule has meant VAR hasn't overturned that" and we move on. Then we get 1mm offside decisions which the technology can't even be sure on whether its right or wrong and all of a sudden clear and obvious doesn't come into it any more. Its easy to see how the system could be manipulated in the favour of bigger teams and the subconscious bias that was supposed to be eradicated by VAR is actually made worse.

He didn’t win the header over him. Targett got absolutely nowhere near him to even challenge him. If Walcott is being challenged at all for that header he doesn’t score it. Targett got caught ball watching (not for the first time this season) and it’s cost us big time.

We paid £15m for Matt Targett. If that’s not a sign of the wasted money over the summer then I don’t know what is. Defensively I think he’s worse than Taylor to be honest. Bottles challenges regularly and gets caught ball watching far too much.At £15m I’d be expecting a lot more than what we’re seeing. As for him being the least of our problems I’d argue he was the biggest of our many problems today. If he doesn’t make the mistake that gives Walcott a free header we wouldn’t have faced a shot on target all match.

Shocker in the Palace United game too. Absolute stonewall penalty on Zaha not given. VAR is genuinely starting to look like a tool to help the bigger teams at the moment.

It’s an awful miss but I much prefer to watch us with El Ghazi in the side than without. He’s one of the few players in our squad who actually looks like he might make something happen and takes up good positions. He’s missed a lot of chances but if he was the sort of player who tucked them away he’d be in double figures for goals this season and on his way to a top half team in the summer. Hes got potential and he’s one I’d rather we stick with than play Trezeguet who genuinely looks like he’s not sure what he’s trying to do most of the time.

If Smith had brought on Nakamba or Lansbury and we’d concedes you’d be the first to blame him for that. If El Ghazi had scored from a yard out we’re 2-0 up and the game is won. If Targett doesn’t get caught under the ball we see out the game and win 1-0. I’m not sure how either of those are things which Smith has any control over. He’s made mistakes this season but today is not on him at all.

I’m not sure shouting at players that are clearly mentally weak would have the desired response. Equally I’m not sure an exhausted Mcginn isn’t better than the alternatives of Lansbury or Nakamba. We’re crap and for me the fact that we actually compete in the number of games we have is more surprising than the fact that we lose more often than not.

I’m not really sure what he can do which is why I feel sorry for him. He can bring on Nakamba, Jota or whoever and they all have regular mistakes in them. I just genuinely don’t see how many stupid mistakes players can make before some people realise that this squad just doesn’t have the capability to stay in this league. If it’s not Hourihane making mistakes in the middle, it’s Nakamba or Douglas Luiz earlier in the season. If it’s not Targett making mistakes at the back it’s Mings or Hause or Engels. If it’s not El Ghazi missing sitters it’s Wesley, Samatta, Trezeguet or Davis. The players have regular individual mistakes in every position on the pitch. How can you win games of football when that’s the case every single game?

I just feel sorry for him at this point to be honest. How many times can individual errors cost us?

Targett has to go down as the biggest waste of money of this season for me. Everton offered no threat at all and his lack of basic defensive ability costs us two massive points. How much did we pay for him again as he’s not a drastic improvement on Neil Taylor?