tom_avfc

He’s had a ridiculously good career for England despite being moved around the order all over the place, being dropped numerous times and having the gloves taken off him and given back repeatedly. That innings today has saved a test match that was only going one way without his contribution. He’s a player that I’ve never really understood the dislike for and is massively underrated for me.

Signing Targett for £15m plus whatever they paid to have him for half of this season isn’t going to help Newcastle finish above us. The rave reviews he is getting are largely because he’s being compared to the likes of Jamal Lewis and Matt Ritchie playing left back that they had before. He isn’t suddenly the new Andy Robertson. He’s never getting a look in at Villa and to be honest he is a bottom half left back at best. The deal is a good one for a player whose value is only going to decline if he were to stay at Villa next season.

It’s a pre planned celebration that he knows he’s going to get a yellow card for. Could have had a shirt with a message on the bench to hold up or something which wouldn’t lead to a booking. Given that he’s a player always liable to pick up a yellow card I thought it wasn’t that well thought through. I guess no harm done as he didn’t get a second yellow and played very well. Obviously goes without saying that I fully support the message but maybe it could have been done in a way that wasn’t a certain yellow card.

To be fair it seems like we are the only team that Watford can Hodgson to death with the squad they have. What that says about us is pretty worrying.

We couldn’t half do with some points out of the next 3 games. If we take 2 or fewer point from those then I think we’re right in it as it’s hard to see us getting much from the next 5 after that. Would I fancy us to go into relegation 6 pointers with Burnley and Norwich in the last few weeks of the season and get results? It’s hard to see it with how easy to play against we have been the last few weeks.

I think its an interesting point as regards to at what point Gerrard gets sacked. We've just taken 5 points from the last 7 games he has been in charge for. Dean Smith's last 7 games were worth 6 points with victories over United and Everton followed by the 5 game run of defeats against top half opposition. Interestingly after Brighton we face the same 5 teams that beat Smith's Villa in Southampton, West Ham, Arsenal, Wolves and Tottenham (the rearranged Leeds game is tucked in there). Given that we lost all 5 of the reverse fixtures and in many cases the form of those teams has only improved as the season has gone on how many points do we really expect to pick points up in that run of fixtures. Southampton at home looks the key one to me Looking at it from that perspective and with a run of fixtures which includes 9 of the 11 teams above us in the next 10 games I think its easy to see us getting dragged right back into the mix come the end of April. This would leave us with fixtures against Norwich, Burnley and Palace which could suddenly become very key 6 pointers in the final weeks of the season.

Any home ground is a difficult place to play when you’re putting in terrible performance after terrible performance. It’s no coincidence that the fans are questioned every time we go on a poor run. We wouldn’t be football fans if poor performances didn’t piss us off. It would be the same at any ground in the country with a performance like that Watford one yesterday.

He’s played up front in a game where we’ve had 60% possession and created one clear cut chance. He’s failed to hit the target with that chance and given that we’re a team that don’t create many chances it’s the moment of that match that stands out from Ings’ performance. Was he better than Watkins has been lately? Difficult to say. Better on the ball but he won’t run the channels as much as Watkins so maybe we lose a little of the space that Watkins creates for the likes of Ramsey, Buendia and Coutinho. As I say I think it’s a difficult decision which one to start next week - probably Ings based on the fact he’s yet to have a proper run of games. The upgrade from Watkins to Ings wasn’t as stark as many people will have you believe.

I guess one off results are ok. We’ve taken 1 point from our last 3 games against teams now sat in 15th, 17th and 18th. We can add a Brentford side who since they beat us have lost 6 and drawn 1 having also lost the 2 league games before playing us. Watford hadn’t won a game since 20th November. How many one off losses to teams we’d expect to beat constitutes more than one of those days?

He was literally running from one side of the pitch to the other past about 3 or 4 of our other attacking players to get on the ball. He was then expected to hold the ball up for the couple of minutes it took for anybody else to bother to move and try to offer him any support. Thought he looked a bit sharper today than he has done but came on into a pretty much non existent system after the subs had been made. Feel like it’s never going to work for him in that system but given that Ings’ main contribution was to miss an absolute sitter I’m not sure who I’d be starting going forwards.

A new manager with no wins in three games coming into the game. That has to be up there with the easiest games we’ll play all season

I didn’t see the issue being in getting the ball to the likes of Buendia and Coutinho to be honest. We were OK at that but had absolutely no clue what to do once we got it forwards. The one clear cut chance we had came from Luiz playing it into Buendia who then put Ings through. He was the one player who held any kind of position and as easy as it was to play defensive midfield we missed having anybody there once he came off and Watford became able to play through the midfield whenever they wanted. He was far from the issue today. I’d rather he was played further forwards as I think he’s technically much better than both mcginn and Ramsey but as we have no other options in defensive midfield I guess he’s stuck where he is.

He was fine today. Feel like he’s being restricted by playing out of position and let down by the system around him. No idea why he was taken off.

If we’re going to play this system then against teams like Newcastle and Watford you might as well play a winger at full back. Cash spent most of both games playing as a winger and surprisingly enough created nothing. I’d suggest actually playing some wingers on the wing but failing that having Bailey as our most attacking player rather than cash doesn’t seem like a disastrous idea.

I’m not sure we would all be applauding the decision. I’d accept that the decision was right in the way that the system currently works. At the same time I’d still be of the belief that if you have to draw lines on a screen to determine whether something is on or offside that you should just go with the linesman’s decision. To me the whole offside issue with toenails and heels is one of the clearest examples of where the rules need to adapt to work with VAR. Decisions might be right by the letter of the law but the law wasn’t decided with this technology in place. Interestingly VAR looks to be being rolled out for the WSL and the EFL with fewer cameras and focussing only on obviously wrong decisions. I think this may be more what I’d want from VAR than what we’re getting at the moment to be honest. Somewhere in between the two would probably be ideal.

Is that the general opinion? Or is it just that the people who want to slate players are louder than the more rational fans. Are you advocating a fan picked team? Where does this end? Do we arrange for a lineup poll a couple of hours before kick off and let the fans vote on who’s starting? I’d rather let the manager get on with picking the team he thinks can win a football match and he can live with the consequences of those decisions to be honest. I’d argue that Gerrard is far more qualified to pick a starting lineup than a few fans who want to have a player to blame when we lose games of football.

If you think we’re finishing 10th I’m not sure who you think we’re catching above us. I suspect we’ll finish in the 13th-16th bracket given that we have a horrendous run of fixtures after the next 3. Pretty much where I’d have put us had Smith remained in charge. Yes it’s nice having Coutinho but I preferred us when we had a system and tried to play football to be honest.

My biggest issue is that they’re even drawing lines in the first place. Pre VAR we’d have got one replay of that goal, a comment saying “looked level” and we’d have moved on. Today we got to look at Geordie morons crossing their fingers and praying as some bloke in a van drew some arbitrary lines and then jumping around in celebration as yet another goal that would previously stood got chalked out. This terribly exciting process also seemed to take a good 3 or 4 minutes. Is this supposed to be adding to football as these line drawing decisions in particular are making me struggle to watch the game. If you’d told me 5 years ago that I’d be watching people celebrating lines being drawn on a screen I’d have questioned what it was that I was watching as it certainly wouldn’t have sounded like football to me.

It’s probably worth pointing out that every single team that we lost to on that 5 game losing run is currently in the top half of the table. We had players coming back from injury and settling into a new team. At no point under Smith did I feel completely confused by what we were even trying to do like I do now. If people think one central midfielder sorts out the issues we have at the moment then they’re kidding themselves.

I’m not sure I even know what Plan A is supposed to look like. Has it worked in any game so far because even when we’ve won games we’ve not looked entirely convincing to me.

It was a failure under Smith but absolutely fine for Gerrard with an extra £30m plus spent too. I also think we may be lucky to finish 14th at this rate.

I'm not sure that whether your girlfriend has heard of it before is a great gauge of whether a word should be being used or not to be honest. I kind of get the initial appropriation of the word by Spurs fans in response to regular anti-semitic abuse that they were getting. However I think there is definitely an argument that they shouldn't continue to refer to themselves using the Y word now that the club is no longer targeted for anti-semitic abuse on a regular basis. If Jewish people are offended by the word being chanted repeatedly then I think its right that the issue is raised and not just written off as a "storm in a teacup". As an aside I'd like them to stop doing it anyway as its pretty annoying every time they score a goal to get that standard reaction. Reminds me of the "Siu" reaction to Ronaldo, the Poznan and Albion's "Boing Boing". Standard goal responses like this are almost as annoying as goal music itself.

I'd assume that the clearly offside Man City goal from last season will be one of these. These stats don't mean anything though to be honest. Who is the judge of what constitutes an error and which "errors" directly lead to goals? If it was any other of our players then everyone would be pretty dismissive of it. Just looking at the stats he's made 1 error leading to goal this season and 1 last season. This is the same as Emi Martinez who wasn't at the club prior to last season. Its a really strange stat in that hardly any player registers more than 2 in a season. I don't actually understand what you're supposed to take from that stat as players like Kante aren't far behind Mings over those 3 seasons.

He came on in attacking midfield and is more of a technical attacking player than one to bully the opposition. If you were expecting an 18 year old attacking midfielder to come on and bully people you're always going to be disappointed. He's been able to have key involvements in goals and chances created in previous games. Didn't think it was his best cameo but once we had the red card it was really a case of protecting the point and therefore a lot of what he was brought on for became pretty redundant.

Did we have other players doing this though? At the time that he was doing this we didn't really seem to have anybody coming to take the ball of the defence. The fact that his runs led to some of our more dangerous attacking moments suggests to me that Gerrard won't be massively concerned by it.