tom_avfc

Completely agree with this. We get these games every qualifying campaign when teams show no intent to do anything against us. It's impossible to judge anything on them and it's just a case of winning them and moving on.

Lingard, Walcott, Bertrand, Henderson, Stones and Sturridge all hardly played under Hodgson. Walcott hasn't been good here but has done well for Arsenal lately. Haven't really seen to much overhyping of England players lately to be honest. Italy beat Malta 1-0 twice in their last qualifying group. A routine 2-0 win is hardly embarrassing IMO. Their keeper was pretty decent in the first half too. This could have been 4 or 5 easily.

This is fair enough but Rooney is a better fit for a game like this than a player like Dier who isn't as good on the ball. I'm not suggesting we build a team around Rooney in centre midfield but as an option in the squad and in matches like today's I have no real issue with him playing. I don't think he's great but he's not keeping anyone very good out of the team as far as I can see.

Don't get the Rooney hate to be honest. He's playing in centre midfield and is doing as good a job as anybody else we could play there. He's playing fairly deep but if Alli is right up with the striker and both wide players are high up the pitch then that's no issue for me. As for the "red card" challenge, if that's a card of any kind we might as well get rid of tackling from the game!

Had a few good games on the bounce but was dreadful dealing with high balls tonight. Seemed to want to punch everything which would be fine but his punches failed to get the ball anywhere near away from danger. Big mistake not signing another more experienced keeper to at least give us the option of taking Gollini out of the firing line for a bit. As it is he'll keep his place by default and there'll be a few more of these errors. I think there's a good keeper in there but his mistakes are proving far too costly for us.

There were eight minutes of injury time because of a bad injury. In a game with no goals and little real action until injury time itself, there would have been next to no injury time if it wasn't for said injury. The game was relentless Ipswich pressure for a total of about 5/10 minutes at the end of the game during which they had a couple of shots cleared off the line (one was actually Cissokho) and hit the post as you said. Additionally during this 5/10 minutes Gollini made a decent save. Bringing on Adomah probably led to that spell to be honest as we lost a bit of shape with him in right wing back, a position where he clearly shouldn't be playing. Barring that 10 minute spell the game was very even with Ipswich quite happy to stick as many men behind the ball as possible and block any shots that we did have. I think McCarthy was happy to keep it tight and then to try and nick the 3 points at the end which he very nearly did. For a game of relentless Ipswich pressure and one way traffic, our 58% of posession and 14 shots to their 17 seem rather odd particularly considering they must have had 6 or 7 of their shots in the last 10 minutes of the game. Difficult game to really draw too much from. A point at Portman Road won't be one to look back at as a bad result when/if we don't go up but in light of the results we've had so far its disappointing.

I'm not one for getting rid of RDM at the moment either but he does need to pick up a couple of wins fairly quickly to buy himself some time IMO. Like I said, I've seen something in the vast majority of our games to suggest we can turn it around but there's only so many games you can say that for when you're not picking up the wins. At the moment we're on track to win a grand total of 7 games and thats rounding up (small sample size admittedly!). To put that into perspective, only Bolton won fewer games than that last season. Yes we've drawn a lot but we need a win or two to get us the confidence to turn a few of these draws into wins.

We've actually lost 2 out of the 7 games played so far (Bristol and Sheffield Wednesday). We're scoring bang on a point a game in a league which is far inferior to last year. Our next home game is against the team many expect to win the league by some distance and we haven't won an away game since August last year. We're nearer the relegation zone than the play offs. If this constitutes stopping the rot then we're accepting failure. I'm not actually all doom and gloom as I've seen signs this season that we may turn the corner. However as DDID said it is incredibly depressing going to match after match and coming away feeling as if we've lost.

He's a decent player in a number of positions without really being brilliant in one (although he has done well at RB this season). I like having him on the bench because I can see his versatility being pretty useful over the course of a season. Having said that, I'd have no real issue with him starting as he's done pretty well this season so far wherever he's been played.

As said, we are unlikely to be without all of the players listed for a particular game. You've ignored Chester completely so even if all of those things happened Richards still wouldn't be playing. I'm not too sure why McCormack has any higher chance of getting injured than anybody else as he's played in all 6 of our matches so far and completed 90 minutes in the most recent few. From what RDM said pre Forest we had a few with minor injuries which were likely to clear up within the week. In reality this discussion is a bit silly and I'd wager that the starting eleven you've put for us is stronger than what it would be for almost any other team in the Championship if you removed their best player in almost every single position.

I like the one to the Heartbeat theme - "Albert, Albert Adomah runs down the wing for me". Was a video posted of it somewhere on here. Everton were singing it for Bolasie on Monday night and I thought it sounded decent.

I'm fairly confident with RDM - he has done it before after all and that was with a dominant Newcastle side also in the division. I think we're agreeing about Hughton to be honest. I was pointing out that even if Newcastle do dominate the league under Rafa its not going to be a massive achievement and I said that Hughton achieved the same from a poorer starting position. I'd like to see that upturn in form quickly but to be honest at the moment I'm enjoying the way we're playing and its nice to look forward to our matches. Yes the results haven't been good but for me its more frustrating than anything else as the level of performance has been good for the majority of the season so far.

I'd suggest that whilst people may have seen him play in televised games or highlights, people will not have seen him play at the match more than a few times. He plays in a position where it's much more important to see the full picture as to how he is impacting a game. In short, he's not going to stand out from the highlights and his work off the ball is almost more important than what he does when on the ball. Palace fans loved the guy and he's been a good Premiership player. I'm more than prepared to give him a chance and see what he offers rather than writing off the guy after one poor half at Bristol where the whole team played badly. He may turn out to be a bad buy but let's at least see what he has to offer us before we start to get on his back.

So this is assuming that Gollini, Elphick, Chester, De Laet, Jedinak, Tshibola, Ayew, Adomah, McCormack and Amavi are all injured/suspended at the same time. I know we've been pretty unlucky but that's pushing it a bit. Even if this was the case I doubt that would be the team we played. Additionally, in Kodjia, Gestede, Grealish, Cissokho and Bacuna you've got players that have started this season pretty well. In Baker, Westwood and Gardner you've got players who are more than capable of doing a job as squad players. Basically you've put Hutton, Richards and Bunn in who are not good enough. In reality Hutton and Richards are unlikely to see much action this year. This highlights the main issue for me in that it only takes a Gollini injury to have us playing Bunn regularly.

I think its difficult to compare the job that Rafa had to do at Newcastle to the one that RDM is doing at Villa. Newcastle are largely a settled side who could afford to make a few big money signings to improve on what they had. Villa have a new player playing in almost every position. If Rafa takes Newcastle up by dominating the league he will have achieved the same feat as Chris Hughton last time Newcastle were in the Championship having spent more money and with a better initial squad to work with. I'd imagine that if RDM had the Newcastle job when Rafa took over and if Rafa had taken us on when RDM got the job the two side's league positions would be largely the same. We don't have the points that most would feel we deserve and it is still too early in the season to be assessing how well a manager has done

This is an excellent post and shows that both Gardner and Westwood are capable of playing a role in this team. My main issue is that the two cannot play together and that is what led to the weak midfield against Forest when it came to defending. As long as we have one of Tshibola or Jedinak who are a bit stronger in the tackle and impose themselves more on the game I think that Gardner or Westwood would be fine. The real issue in midfield is going to be the fitness of Tshibola and/or Jedinak. We need a large number of games out of both of these. As far as Westwood is concerned I thought he was his usual tidy self on Sunday but was partly at fault for both goals conceded. I also thought that Gardner was the better of the two in the Forest game but this was probably the first time this season I'd have said that and I'm not too sure why people feel the need to constantly criticise certain players.

I'd agree that he gets unnecessary stick about his attitude. I don't doubt for one minute that he cares and he's giving his all. However, to get one yellow card for dissent is understandable but picking one up every match is stupid and it shouldn't take 4 yellows for him to grow up and get on with it. None of this takes away from the fact he had a great game and is one of our better players. He just needs to cut out the needless bookings.

I thought he had an excellent game today and was certainly man of the match. However this is exactly what I'd be criticising him for. He has managed to pick up four bookings in six games without putting in a bad challenge. I don't see how picking up pointless yellow cards is showing he cares. He's not the only one in the squad culpable but our disciplinary record is horrendous this season with a stupid number of yellow cards for dissent and the like and it will hit us hard with suspensions in the future.

I heard that Option File sharing is back this year though so shouldn't be too difficult or time consuming to get all of the teams, kits, squads etc. up to date.

There was abuse aimed at everyone as they walked off. As Jack was near the tunnel at the final whistle he was on his own coming off so took more than most and gave a look and looked to have said something back. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make as even if he did give some back nobody is criticising him for it. It's the small minority of fans who are in the wrong.

I can tell you that it did happen as I was stood 3 rows from the front. A small number of our fans were congregated by the tunnel abusing absolutely everybody connected with Villa as they left the pitch regardless of how they played etc. Grealish looked gutted by the result before he walked off and then gave a small response to the abuse he was getting before disappearing down the tunnel. He genuinely looks like he cares a lot, as do a few others to be fair. I'd imagine his tweet commending the fans is simply ignoring the morons who felt the need to act so aggressively and rightly appreciating the majority who travelled and supported superbly.

It doesn't help that a section of our support seemed to think congregating around the tunnel and hurling abuse at everyone involved with villa was a helpful thing to do. We played a truly terrible half of football but this is a new team and needs positive support.

Completely agree with this. He has been doing the same all season and McCormack seems to be getting increasingly frustrated with him. It doesn't help that when he does actually look up he seems to be incapable of making a decent pass/cross. For me it's his attitude that is most disappointing. I find it difficult to support a player who clearly thinks he's better than he is when he offers as little as he does. Even Bacuna got another assist from right wing yesterday and for me he offers more than Ayew. With a new right winger and a striker I don't see where he fits in and if he does get dropped to the bench I can't see him scrapping for a place in the side.

This doesn't seem at all like Westwood from his time here to be honest. He's not the strongest in the tackle but I think he's done a decent defensive covering job for us so far this season. I don't think I have ever actually seen him put in a tackle which I would describe as nasty or cowardly and he doesn't seem that type of player at all to me. If you have any examples of this then I'd be genuinely interested because he's the last person I'd expect to be accused of this really. I think he's doing perfectly fine so far this season. If he drops to the bench below Tshibola and Jedinak then I think we'll have a very good midfield at this level and he can still do a job when necessary.

We weren't losing to lower league opposition and it was Lescott (Richards was playing I think). For me this is another one of those blown out of proportion moments from last year. They were playing a silly game with chewing gum for about 20 seconds. If he told a Villa fan to **** off then he's a bit of a prat but that's all hearsay. Guzan tried his hardest for us and gave us a good season and a half or so. He ultimately wasn't good enough and he's moved on so I bear no grudge against him. On a side note, I don't really get the obsession with booing former players from some of our fans. I saw two fans having an argument/fight due to one booing and one applauding Darren Bent at the weekend. All seems a bit petty to me.