Harry

OK, not a long time just 14 minutes or so but as with most times when he comes on he makes no difference at all. Clearly UE put him on for reason so what was that? Sorry but I just don't rate him, if you do please enlighten us as to why.

I think NZ will come good. My guess is he needs more minutes on the pitch.

He's not a premiership player as his performance tonight proved. I know it was all about FFP but we should have kept Archer. He will just fade away over the next twelve months and be loaned out.

We were very poor after the second goal and we seemed to get worse as the game progressed. We let a bang-average Man U side on a dreadful run of form win. My observations are: We missed Kamara. His stupid red card cost us. We missed Torres with his long passes out. Luiz was woeful for most of the game. Playing tippy tappy football on the edge of their penalty area does not get you goals. Lenglet worries me. I am not sure he is PL player and there is no partnership with Carlos. We basically gave them the ball and let them run at us for the second half UE substitutions were way too late. Duran is a championship striker at best. We should have kept Archer. We don't have great options on the bench particularly with the injuries we have. This result is way more annoying than SU. They came for a point and got it. We just lacked the killer edge in that game. Tonight it feels we gave up and let a poor side run rings round us. I actually think the hype has got to us. All the top at Christmas, maybe win the PL stuff. Worse still we will be treated to 48 hours of Man U media w*ankfest. The Burnley game is a big one now. Anything less than three points is unacceptable.

I honestly think I have seen pub teams defend better. We basically just gifted them the game. Yes we looked good going forward but too much of that attacking threat was wasted. If I was the manager I would be furious with the players doing the basics so very badly

For the record I was not suggesting there should be a partisan atmosphere. I said the atmosphere was placid compared to other games and neither was I suggesting the 'fans were crap' But just look at the banner on the Holte End. Seemingly the fans think or are expected to be the 12th Man. Added to that should the fans not get behind a team more to encourage and support them when they are not playing well? (BTW that's not intended as a dig at you, its a general observation)

Maybe but it just seemed flatter today. I do think we sometimes delude ourselves over the whole '12th Man' thing.

Is that true of all teams though? BTW I don't know the answer to that!

During the game even when we were winning the atmosphere was dead. We are near the back of Holte and it was very quiet for most of the game. Do we not get behind the team to support them if they are playing badly or do we just wait for them to play better?

Well this seems to be the thread of chronic over reactions. My take on having been at the game was we utterly disrespected Stevenage and paid the price. Lots of possession and tippy tappy football with virtually no end product. As a few have said on here we treated it like a training game. They were well organised and stuck to their task. They kept it very simple. Ten men behind the ball for the majority of the game and took their chances when they came For all our possession we have few real scoring chances. With the possible exception of Sanson no Villa player comes out of it with any credit. With better final balls and sensible finishing we would have scored five or more. The scary bit for me was how poor some of our players really were: Cash - out smarted for the entire game by a League 2 winger. Coutinhio - lots of movement but utterly wasteful in his shooting. He is a shadow of the player he once was. Bailey - beats the players and his final ball is pub football. Olsen - so far from being a PL goalkeeper it's frightening. Chambers and Bednarek - both slow and ponderous with the turning circle of supertankers. We really lacked a decent DM. I think Kamara should have started and definitely should have been brought on. The manager called this one wrong but was severely let down by the players. My conclusion is we don't have the squad depth we maybe thought we had. OK we can't rectify that in January but we need to bring in another striker, a winger and probably a right back as Young cannot do it all on his own. The media will have a w**kfest as to how brilliant Stevenage were. The truth was they weren't, they just did the simple things much better than us. Their second goal was laughable. Our players took their eye off the ball, literally and metaphorically and paid the price. Ironically Stoke will probably batter them. Oh and the atmosphere in the ground was bad, Our fans were silent for most of the game, we never got behind the team. It was not helped by many season ticket holders not coming and their seats going to families where the parents spend all their time taking their kids for food or to the toilet. That sounds harsh and young fans have to start somewhere, I accept that but what we ended up with was a very placid Villa Park. By contrast the Stevenage fans had a ball and got behind their team.

I am buying in to everything you have suggested.

The positive I take from this is our owners will not be bullied by so called 'big clubs'. I would hazard a guess that Arsenal were way too arrogant about how they approached this and left it way too late. I think maybe keeping Luiz for the rest of the season and him potentially going on a free was a price worth paying. If he's professional, and I think he is, he will knuckle down and work hard which is of huge value to us. Of course he may also know / suspect that his main detractor in the shape of Gerrard is leaving imminently.

Maybe JulieB has him under armed guard withe Defoe?????

Thanks for the clarification. I am now officially underwhelmed!

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