tom_avfc

2 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

I've found at Villa Park. Like Wesley recently. If you don't make the ball "stick" then regardless of work rate goal return you're going to get it from the crowd.

I mean he’s hardly comparable to Wesley but seems to get more stick than him (at least where I’m sat in the ground). His inability to make the ball “stick” isn’t that surprising when he’s quite often having to run 40 yards across the pitch to get to wherever the latest punt upfield is landing and then has no team mate within 30 yards of him.

He didn’t struggle to make the ball stick from the hit and hope pass that led to his goal. I really struggle to see how he’s the player that’s taking so much criticism when you look at his performances over two years and his commitment to the cause. 

Just now, villa4europe said:

He's not the £60m CL striker who is guaranteed to score 30 goals a season and win us the league who is dying to join Aston Villa of only we sold Watkins first 

So we should sell Watkins to Arsenal (a CL team...) and buy this superstar 

Or like you say play Keinan Davies 

I'm interested to see what we do in the summer and who we buy / sell but I think we should definitely keep Ollie, people might be disappointed when we actually don't do anything upfront in the summer... Watkins, Ings, archer and Davies should be good enough for a top 10 push if we sort out the midfield and the shape of the team, then the next year we can look to see who that next level striker is

Watkins is our level, that's the honest truth imo, he will be until we are a top 10 team 

I agree with most of this but would also say that Watkins has the potential to improve as we improve. He got 14 goals in a team that played much more to his strengths last season and had much more creativity just for Grealish’s presence in the team.

Reading on here it’s as if Watkins is regularly missing chance after chance but his xG is roughly one goal above what he’s scored. It’s why the argument “he only scored goals because of Grealish” is so stupid. Striker scores more goals when given more chances shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anybody.

8 hours ago, Mark_1989 said:

Let’s not ignore fact he should have wrapped game up a couple of times second half.

 

yes he made a decent tackle in build up to Ings goal but let’s not kid ourselves over him.

shot probably wide if not deflected and almost certainly saved if not.

not good enough to challenge for Europe next year

Should he have wrapped the game up a couple of times? Had a couple of breakaways but there were far clearer chances for others.

Ings chance from his 1-2 with Watkins, Buendia’s chance from just outside the box and Ramsey’s one on one (albeit the rebound eventually went in) were all far clearer opportunities. I’d also add in the poor pull back from Ramsey when he got to the byline inside the box as a clearer chance than anything that Watkins missed.

It seems to me that Watkins attracts far more criticism than others no matter what happens in a game.

12 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Scored one and caused one today, both through his own work effort 

Of course its nothing but negativity on here 

This place is a proper **** cesspool at times, no wonder half out players are lacking in confidence and look half arsed 

It’s the same at the ground where I sit. I’ve never known a player who has generally served us as well as Watkins has to take so much stick from fans. I don’t really get it to be honest.

He’s a young promising striker who is likely to hit double figures in both of his premier league seasons yet people are calling for Kienan Davis to start ahead of him. His work rate is generally exceptional so I’m not sure what he does that rubs people up the wrong way to be honest.

1 minute ago, Mantis said:

How are Southampton safe on 40 points from 34 games played yet we're not safe on 37 points from 32 games?

In reality, both teams are highly likely to be safe. Not sure I'd define that as "in trouble".

I’d imagine because the original poster is expecting survival to be somewhere on 37-39 points which looks reasonable with the table as it stands now.

In all reality we should get the 3 points or so that we’re probably going to need. However having watched us recently it’s far from as guaranteed as it should be.

39 minutes ago, Genie said:

Very weird mental gymnastics, 25 goals for any striker is great. It’s one area of the pitch going well. If the team finishes 8th it isn’t because of the striker who scored 25. 

This sort of argument always reminds me of Ross McCormack. Always scored 20 odd goals for teams that never looked like going up from the championship. I don’t think that was entirely down to those around him and McCormack was never the player that his goal return suggested.

Just now, jacketspuds said:

Good to see Spurs not turning up against someone that isn’t us. Shock horror.

Good to see another team that isn’t us beating a top 6 team. Shock horror. Brighton haven’t given them a sniff here.

10 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

His general behaviour looked very prickish, but in that instance, I often envision that if I was playing and an opposition player was rolling round pretending to be injured on the touchline, I'd go over and give him the little nudge required to no longer be on the field of the play.

Yeah to be honest I had no issue with him doing that either. He'd get yellow carded for it but its an understandable reaction. Headbutting Sterling and then continuing to try and fight in the tunnel after the game are unacceptable though. 

22 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Talk of sacking him is very premature. Next season is where he proves it. 

 

My issue with that is whether he’s the best man we could get to overhaul the squad in the summer as it seems we are set to do. If we are going to go big at it in the transfer window then we can’t afford to get it wrong.

Nothing that I have seen since he arrived leads me to believe that he will get it right. I worry that we’ll be moving on players that we will come to regret and that a bad start to next season could lead to it all becoming toxic pretty quickly. 

3 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Two managers in one season giving us a 5 game loss run would just be insane but 1 game away from that.

Fortunately the Liverpool game has been moved as that would be more than likely 6 losses on the bounce if we still had that one to play. 

Just now, dubbs said:

Not every one of them were routine. 

I’d expect a premier league keeper to make every one of those saves. Our best chances were ones where we didn’t hit the target (or even the ball in Ings’ case). 

Just now, thabucks said:

Said it in the the transfer thread, We weee a championship team in dire straits on and off the pitch not so long ago. Now 3/4 seasons in, with a new manager some players signed during this period will be replaced with better players. That’s how football works universally…  

Also the sporting director should only sign the type of player the manager wants ultimately. So the lack of physical, technically proficient ball winning / playing, dominant defensive midfielder is on Smith and calling for Lange to go is just stupid IMO.

Lange has had a huge undertaking in putting an infrastructure in place to build a bank of knowledge, data and will only get bigger as the net widens and deepens, but crucially as time passes as he cannot be judged this early into the project. 

You think Smith decided to not sign a defensive midfielder and to spend big money on a second striker having played one up front for his entire time at the club? 

I’m sure many were saying that any manager that loses 5 in a row would be in serious trouble earlier in the season. Does anyone fancy us to get a result at Leicester? 

If they announce a large price rise this week that might be me out too. I’d hold it back a week or two if I was purslow. 

1 hour ago, maqroll said:

Has to bury that header. But he Tonevs it. Really poor. 

It was too high for him to get over wasn’t it? Only seen it live but looked it to me. Thought our other striker was far more wasteful today. 

9 hours ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Yeah we're not overperforming that because of our strikers. It's the likes of mostly Ramsey but also Mcginn, Coutinho and Cash being efficient with their chances. And the fact that there's only one player in our team who's significantly underperforming their xG(It's Watkins).

Also, I'd like to add that strikers also have a part to play into adding to that xG total. Getting to the end of chances is a skill in of itself and I would argue at least half the effort in scoring a goal. Certain strikers who are great at this aspect but poor at finishing tend to be underrated imo.

 

Significantly underperforming his xG by one goal. If he had one more goal would everything be alright. To have a striker who has played practically every game and has an xG of 9 is the issue here. We are playing dull football and not creating enough. 

38 minutes ago, TRO said:

perhaps because they didn't want him in the first place, and justifying their original call....it usually happens after defeats....so it fly's in the face of good football debate...it becomes personal.

Maybe, because he stuffed the arse out us, every time he come to Villa Park and some can't see past that....but now he is on our side, albeit not on the pitch, sadly.

Why would anybody care what he did as a player against us? Why is the default response to anybody questioning whether we’re improving under Gerrard to say “you never wanted him in the first place”?

Questioning a manager after three poor defeats in a row (with more than likely another couple on the way) is pretty natural. The fact that the football is pretty dull to watch doesn’t help. There’s valid reasons to doubt whether we should be handing Gerrard £100m plus in the summer. 

19 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Thats a good point. I just wonder why luiz doesnt want to stay though? Its abit odd i appreciate we are not playing in europe yet but you can see the ambition of the club. Maybe his head been swayed by the bids in january. If this is the case then i could understand it.

But i think when you have shambolic performances like that of mcginn yesterday it doesnt really take you seriously if your playing him again next week. He was pathetic yesterday and deserves to be dropped after that performance 

Luiz is going to have his pick of teams in European competition when he leaves. It’s similar to Coutinho. Why would a player take the risk that the next £100m we spend is going to be the one that works when we look a million miles away at the moment? 

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

Yeah i wonder why? Probably because he gets dropped instead of shit mcginn and jj who was absolutely terrible yesterday 

I wonder if it’s more the other way around to be honest. We’re safe and there’s a good chance Luiz isn’t here after the summer. Probably factors into Gerrard’s thoughts for the rest of the season.

Replacing him with a player that simply can’t play defensive midfield was pretty ridiculous though and set that entire midfield up to fail yesterday. 

25 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

we have a long way to go, but this should tell us all we need for now:

Under Gerrard - 2021/22 - game week 12 to 30:

 

Under Smith: (2021/22 - game week 1 to 11):

 

Under Smith - 2020/21 - Game week 18 to 38:

21 games, 26 points in that bottom table. With spurs at home and Leicester away next up I think that top table is likely to read 21 games, 26 points in a couple of weeks time.

I just don’t see any real improvement. We were a patchy mid table team under smith and are a patchy mid table team under Gerrard.

The only thing that has changed for me is that we looked like we had a plan for the majority of Smith’s time at the club. Now we look devoid of any ideas and set to overhaul the squad again in the summer.

I just don’t see the improvement from the start of the season to now. Out of interest of the 11 teams that we played under Smith we’ve now played all of them except for Spurs in the reverse games. Smith took 10 points from those eleven teams. Gerrard has managed 8 with Spurs still to play.

We got rid of a manager at a time when we could have got a proven manager in and instead we’re letting someone learn on the job (and spend millions in the process) to hope he can get it right.

Gerrard’s answer to how to get it right is to spend millions on new players. How about getting us playing something that resembles a premier league football team before the end of the season or you don’t get the right to chuck a load of money at it?

2 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Wolves are full of shit players, still they grab points a lot more often than us.The biggest difference is coaching. A good coach lifts his players and the Prem has many good midtable coaches: Lage, Hasenhuttl, Moyes, Vieira, Howe and more.

But the whole ”it’s the players” narrative is at least comfortable for Gerrard, who can sit back and wait until somehow miraculously the squad is finally filled with elite players. Then maybe he can start taking some points.

The teams we’ve beaten under Gerrard are all teams you’d expect us to beat on paper. Pretty much every manager gets a win against one of the top teams over the course of a season but we are literally losing every game against them.

Where’s our Brentford against Chelsea performance? Palace have took 4 points off Man City. Even Leeds have beaten West Ham and Wolves.

For me it’s not a great look for a manager if we’re happy to accept that we’ll lose every game to teams above us in the table.

The only way we ever look like scoring is from Watkins running in behind and one of our defenders punting the ball behind their defence. Even when he gets chances he’s generally run about 30 yards to get onto a long ball.

Showed for England that he can be a bit of a poacher but if it wasn’t for his runs we wouldn’t get the ball within the final third of the pitch. No surprise that he scored double the number of the goals with Grealish’s creativity alongside him.

1 minute ago, VillaChris said:

Maybe but the one v one in second half is something you'd expect a top level striker to score. He had the right idea of curling it but as so often happens with him it went the wrong side of the post.

He's just not that great a finisher and his hold up play is miles off this time last year which is meaning many moves break down.

I’d expect an average top level striker to score that chance. But even the best strikers in the world miss chances.

Danny Ings was a player that I always considered a top finisher and he’s missed his fair share of chances this season too.