icouldtelltheworld

Lambert can **** off. 76 minutes, not a single change? At least pretend you have an idea of how to change the game. I guess we'll see Bowery on at 88 minutes to see this off at 1-0.

I dont actually think hes been too bad this season, just been in rotten form since inexplicably dawdled and wasted that golden chance (Newcastle I think? Memory fails me). Hes definitely better at passing, crossing and he's very good at holding the ball up. Since that miss he seems to be trying to run with the ball whenever he gets it, attempting to do something amazing but running down blind allies. The longer its gone on the worse he's got. He'll be fine though - a lot of our better players have had below par seasons. I still think gabby would look good and be more effective in a team playing well. Hopefully we will do so next season. Its no coincidence (imo) that were rubbish when gabby is in poor form

I cant imagine us ever having a slim fit shirt. The West Midlands is probably one of the worst regions in Europe for obesity. Tamworth is supposedly the most obese town in the UK. I'd imagine that has some bearing on why Macron make different types of kits for us and Lazio.

A decent return from the next two games and Lambert could well be manager of the month for March. Funny old game, football.

What does Albrighton have to do to get on the pitch? I get that there's a case he's a good impact sub but if he'd started in place of Weimann today we'd have almost definitely scored in the first half. When we hadn't taken our chances in the first half it felt inevitable that we were going to crumble away in the second. I'm one of the ones in favour of giving Lambert time, but he has until Christmas now for me - if there's no improvement he needs to go.

Westwood, Baker and Bacuna all looked good today.

The most frustrating thing for me is how many times I've thought "that was promising" after a match or a decent second half performance; but as of yet we've been unable to deliver on that promise and build some momentum. I always thought we'd be safe and unspectacular this season though, which I still maintain and it's next season I'd be looking to see a really noticeable increase in quality. The home form is atrocious though and Lambert absolutely must sort it out if we are to pull away from the bottom and towards the Southamptons and Newcastles of the league next year.

You can see how low on confidence he is - the Benteke of last season would've tried to score once he had the ball in the box, not look for a pass

Really disheartened by how empty the ground looked with 10+ minutes to go, I really can't criticize the fans for leaving though - I'm less and less motivated to spend my money going to Villa Park. It's like we've all given up hope at home.

I don't think the defence did too badly today, though Baker still doesn't look like he'll ever be PL standard. The huge gap between our midfield and attack in the first half was baffling; we just look so disjointed. It couldn't be any more obvious that we need an AM to kick on from where we are.

We really need to stop collapsing when we lose a goal and shipping another straight afterwards, we are forever making things difficult for ourselves.

When Delph gave the ball away for their second; that's something I've been worried about him doing all season - he really needs to learn when to run with the ball and when to release it. He is good at going past his man but is becoming prone to CNZ dead end dribbling IMO.

Benteke still very much off the pace he set for himself last season and Albrighton really deserves to be starting games.

A frustrating afternoon, but we all know that these are the type of games we struggle with the most. I still think we'll be absolutely fine this season, and at least it is glaringly obvious where we are lacking so I'd imagine our shortcomings will be addressed in the summer.

I thought he did ok today as well, he's really stepped up this season - if he can keep on improving I think he could become a very good defender for us.

I'll be disappointed if he doesn't get a new contract, has been our best player every time I've seen him this season. Really needs to be starting games, looks our one bright spark.

losing 0-2 to fulham in the fa cup when collymoore had his breakdown it was so boring i fell asleep at the back of the holte end and had to be woke up by the ground cleaners about 20mins after the game finished and i had travelled up from london as well!!

That was the first time my dad took me to Villa Park, probably quite an apt introduction to attending Villa matches. I remember blaming myself for our collapse in the second half of the season after that   

Bolton under McLeish was pretty horrible as well, I was certain we were going down after that.

Second Villa top I ever owned (I'd had a goalkeeper top before) but my dad got me this for my 7th birthday with my name and '7' on it. That and the fact that this is the shirt we wore the season I really fell madly in love with the Villa mean it will always be my favourite. The season we were top at Christmas only to finish 7th   



This is a beautiful shirt, found one in a charity shop a few years back for a couple of quid.

I'm a huge fan of the lacey Mita Copiers number as well.





 

In my opinion Lambert has done a good enough job so far. I think we will be safe but unspectacular this year meaning the club's wild (unsustainable) spending will have been halted whilst our league position will have gradually improved. He has built an premier league squad for 40m and we are by no means at all one of the three worst teams in the league. Presuming he gets the same budget of 20m this summer the funds wont have to be spread so thin, I dont think were a million miles off challenging the top 8 at all, but also that next season is what we should judge Lambert on. I think a lot of fans underestimate just how deep the rot was at this club, it wont be fixed overnight but we are starting to get there.

Much to be pleased about with that first half

Our line-up actually looks quite good on paper

Betfair have a 3-1 Villa victory at 150/1... Same odds as Liverpool 8-0 

I still think Tonev could come good; he obviously has a bit of natural ability and with the right combination of hard work and luck he could become a very good player for us IMO. He's one of our only players that can beat his man and has a decent enough cross on him when played out wide. I think he has really struggled with communication on the pitch, it's one thing learning a language to speak but it would be another altogether trying to communicate with people barking orders at you in a high-stress environment like during a PL game. I remember in the Cardiff game someone went to take a throw in, and there was quite a bit of dialogue between the player taking the throw and Tonev, and Tonev didn't seem to really understand what was being said to him as he first ran away and then came back to receive the throw. Give the lad time and try not to scapegoat him. You can already hear the groans whenever he gets the ball at Villa Park which is not going to help him one bit. 

You could also say he's been unlucky to score because he's hit a few powerful shots on target that you can see the goal keeper taken back by. If one of them flies into the net I reckon he'd start playing with a bit of confidence and stop trying so hard.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that the Kyle Naughton link came from a journo reading through this forum, seeing that a good number of posters don't rate our full backs and then picking the name of an out of favour full back from a better performing club out of the hat. It's not a priority and I can't see it happening at all. Sells papers, mind.

Massive respect him, it looks as though he was out to his team mates at a number of clubs for some time which is very encouraging. I still think with the attitudes of a lot of fans were a while away from someone being publically out whilst still playing; I guess you could do without giving tens of thousands of people an extra thing to taunt you with.

I didn't see the game today, was it a good goal?

Typical Villa luck! Best wishes to Libor, I hope he can come back from such a bad injury as I certainly rate him.

I thought the lad who phoned in on this thread was called Josh, not Jody, but could be wrong.

 

Never the less it seems Jody was a top guy and great Villa fan...only 21,very,very sad.

 

great sympathy to his family and friends.

Jody is a nickname for Joseph.

Perhaps I'm wrong, the article I read said he'd recently been caller of the day on a phone-in discussing the Villa which reminded me of this thread.

Either way incredibly sad.

Just wondering is there anyone who would be happy if we sold benteke in the summer and spent the money in other areas and had kozak as our number 1 striker?

As others have stated, it's too early to say for sure.

It depends what other players are signed, if we signed a winger and a creative attacking midfielder who were going to improve the first team, rather than the squad, then I would probably be more than happy to go into the next season with Kozak as our number one striker. That would be dependent on a few other things though, most importantly Kozak continuing to show improvement over the course of this season. All being well Helenius will be a different attacking option for us as well next season, even if he's not an all out striker. Gabby and Andi provide us other options up front as well.

I know a few people who've met Weimann on nights out and had a drink with him. I hope lifestyle choices aren't behind his poor form, Andi has a lot of promise and I'd hate to see him waste it.

 

I think we're dreaming if we start imagining there are better managers for this job, who would stick to the very tight budget in place and keep us competitive in the PL. Who is currently out of managerial work that we would realistically want here? I also think it'd be a mistake to appoint a trendy foreign name; not that I can see any rushing to take up the job here. With this squad and the rules in place, Lambert is probably about the best we can hope for and he has my support even though things are frustrating at the moment.

With regards to the change in playing style that we have seen this year, here is my little conspiracy:

Lambert obviously held himself in fairly high esteem after what he had achieved with Norwich in getting them to the PL and then securing a very respectable finish. I believe he came to Villa because he felt he could go on to achieve more here than at Norwich and I reckon that is still what he thinks. I also believe that Lambert expected last season to run a lot more smoothly than it did and the rough patches we went through were probably very sobering for him. Expectations at Villa are higher than at Norwich, which I'm sure everyone who knows anything about football would agree with.

 

From the experience of last season, I believe that Lambert realised that there is a ceiling to how well an all out, plucky attacking team can do in this league. If we kept playing how we did last season, whilst being very exciting to watch at times, we would probably never finish higher than Norwich managed in Lambert's PL season there.

 

We were crying out for the defense to be sorted out and from what I can see the manager has made serious attempts to do so. We have been very unfortunate to lose Okore; but even without him we have generally looked more solid this year than we did last. I believe we have also employed a new defensive coach ?

Lambert has never played defense-minded football; until this season Lambert's mantra was all-out attack. One of the things that I both love and hate about our manager is his apparent stubborn persona, however I do think that he is genuinely trying to mature tactically and we are experiencing some growing pains. We are building a more solid foundation at the back of the team which is vital work that I did not think Lambert would bother to address. Things will click for us and we will start scoring goals again, once the injury situation is a bit healthier and a few of our under-performers find form. Further to this, a few of the new signings should start to make more of an impact in the new year. This was always a long term project and whilst I think we will be safe this year we will most likely be unspectacular about it, next year we will have a full squad that have been together a while and we can look to add some quality. I think a lot of people on here got carried away with our excellent finish last year - players like Gabby were always bound to lose form eventually and Benteke wasn't going to keep up a better than 1 in 2 goalscoring record forever. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see us click and finish very strongly again this year. If you look at how many new players we are trying to integrate and the shortcomings of the team as a whole we really aren't in that different a situation to last year.

 

For me, it is vital that we allow Lambert the time to do what he is doing. It will be difficult and frustrating at times along the way but here is a manager who looks like he is willing to put in the effort to completely overhaul this football club and build a more sustainable basis for us to become competitive again. It's no secret our team is weak in places by PL standards and I believe almost any other manager would get us relegated. This is Lambert's team and he gets at least til the end of next season for me.

 

Good post and I agree with what you say. But given we are now one point better off than this time last season - How bad do things have to get before we loose faith in Lambert - Lets say we lost our next 2 home games (Palace + Swansea) one of them quite heavily...........could we stand by Lambert then ? - Particularly as he has been caught out, by the same injury, to the same player, at the same time ? - and for the second season running choose to go with only one senior CB ?

Yes, of course we need to stand by him. It would have made more sense to sack Lambert over our bad Christmas last year rather than this one IMO. We are playing badly at the moment but we don't look likely to start losing games 4-0 and 8-0. I don't see what sacking Lambert could achieve when any manager who comes in is going to have to deal with Lambert's squad (that Lambert himself isn't completely sure of yet)  and the budget in place. Only a top class manager could come in and realistically do a better job and if we sack Lambert there won't be any of them sniffing around the chance to replace him.

You could argue that he chose to go with only one senior CB this season, but I think its harsh when Okore was clearly signed to go straight into the first team. Whilst we haven't seen much of him I'm pretty sure we can all agree that at the least he is a step up from Baker and Herd. I rate Clark above Baker and it would seem that Lambert does too. Vlaar and Okore as our first choice pairing with Clark for competition/back up and Baker and Herd as our emergency cover actually on paper looks quite strong to me. If Vlaar had got injured recently and Clark had been coming in to fill in alongside Okore I think we'd be fine without him.