Harry

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

Can't blame Tony for appointing Bruce, blame Bruce for **** it up.

Spot on, good appointment on paper but Bruce has screwed it up.

Cataclysmic signing who will cost Bruce his job.

Per an interview with him post his move to Forest. The first sentence is good news as Bruce will be gone by then. The second sentence is interesting on the context of the disinformation from the club and the vitriol on VT. 

"I've still got three and a half years left on my contract, so I'll be going back to Aston Villa at the end of the season and we'll take it from there. All the criticism, the fat, the fitness and all that - it's ludicrous. I'm 4-5kgs lighter than when I got in the team last year at Fulham.

Bruce's lies?

What worries me is we buy decent players and they morph into the shit we have in our squad already.

The more I see of what Bruce is doing the more I think he just does not have a clue. He literally has no idea how to set out a side, what formation to play, what players start and what substitutions to make. I genuinely thought Bruce was the man for us but all the empirical evidence says he has no idea what he is doing or what to do. Sadly he has to go.

To think back to all that hope in 2006 when Lerner bought the club and we had MON as manager. Eleven years later we are potentially teetering on the brink of League 1.

Can't wait for the bollox excuses on the OS.

After this latest fiasco Bruce must be a dead man walking.

As ever we make ourselves the laughing stock. We need a complete and utter bastard as a manager who will get these players playing.

I think this must be the end game for Bruce. When it is not your players you always have the argument that if I had signed whoever it would be different. Dr X has backed him to the hilt in January and we are actually worse, which must sit at the managers door. Cataclysmic mistake in signing Johnstone who I seriously doubt is actually a professional footballer and then letting both Ayew and McCormack go. But don't worry we have Grealish.....

Just glad I gave this match a miss. Same old same old Villa. I think Bruce is probably untenable as manager whatever I think.

I could easily say now that I won't renew but I know I probably will despite everything. I think this season is my 13 or 14 year with season tickets and its become a bit of a habit. My fear is, bizarrely, that if I give up we will suddenly be become brilliant and I will be missing out! Ridiculous I know as I could just buy a ticket.

The one thing that has changed is I don't care if I miss a game. For example I am down in Bournemouth at the moment and will miss the game tonight and I missed Saturday's too. More often than not I don't pass my tickets on to friends. To be honest and this tells you everything most of my mates don't want them.

I suppose the biggest reason is I go with my son. He's 20 now and away at Uni so he misses many games but its a father / son thing since he was about 6 and I would miss it. I know I could always just buy tickets for certain matches but in reality we would just stop going.

There are so many things wrong at Villa; the football has been awful for years, we have had so many false dawns, generally the atmosphere at games is rubbish and we are in the upper tier of the Holte, we are a laughing stock in the media, I would love it we had a manager who I could believe in, I would love to see a committed competitive side who are difficult to beat.......I could go on but I will almost certainly renew next season.

I really don't want to part company with another manager but Bruce gives me so little cause for optimism. On paper he is the right man for the job but all the empirical evidence so far suggests a man bereft of ideas and tactics.

He exhibits the classic attributes of a failing manager. Retreating into negative tactics to avoid losing. We have been there before too many times.

17 minutes ago, terrytini said:

Thanks Stesgy saved me reviewing it agree with your assessments.

Keepers kicking, Lansbury playing on the edge of our own box, Taylor's woeful debut, and awful team selection were the lowlights for me.

I disagree with those who say Ipswich flukes it we always thought they looked more purposeful and played the more threatening football.

One good moment, Lansbury doing that brilliant dummy second half.

'They looked more purposeful'.....that pretty much sums up everyone who plays us these days. 

In a few words; we are laughing stock and pretty much the easiest three points around.  Every manager of the sides we play has a massive stiffy knowing he can beat the 'mighty Villa'.

Keep it tight and well organised and Villa will self destruct.

1 hour ago, TRO said:

I thought this quite a defining game today.....certainly one we should not have lost.

It just seems that every decision we make, turns against us....Players leave and do well

• McCormack scoring
• Robinson scoring
• Clark making his mark.

It seems we just can't seem to get anything right.

funny McCormacks attitude is held back for us but liberated for them

In terms of players doing well post Villa you can add Lowton and Albrighton to that list and I suspect Westwood in the future. We certainly have previous in not getting the best out of our players under a variety of managers and the vitriol on this forum over certain players has been ridiculous.

i just wish we could somehow reboot the whole training and coaching. We have great squad of players but somehow we get turned over again and again by bang average championship sides week in week out. The truth is we remain an easy three points for too many sides.

In a bad run of form?

Just wait for the game versus Aston Villa, you will turn a corner!

Missed the game as I was enroute to Bournemouth for the week so dodged a bullet I think.  Did not even bother to inflict my STs on anyone else. That is how fed up I am of all things Villa.

Coincidentally I arrived just in time to have the pleasure of watching the second half of the rugby where England gave a master class in team work, commitment, skill, coming from behind and never giving up. Sadly Villa virtually never evidence most of those attributes.

Last weekend I was posting on here saying we should stick with Bruce. My son is adamant we should cut our losses. Today I'm less sure. What worries me I am starting to think that Bruce has little or no idea how to set out the team or to vary things to get a result.

He's not coming back, move on!

Vastly overrated as a player. If he wasn't 'one of our own' this board would have melted down long ago in Westwood like vitriol about how poor he actually is. The probably is a good player in there somewhere but I am not sure we have luxury of waiting for that player to reveal himself.

Disastrous signing IMO. The one thing you want a keeper to have is confidence and command his area. He does neither. There may be a good keeper in there somewhere but we can't be the laboratory to find that out. Bunn has to play as the lesser of to evils.

In the cold light of day we have to stick with Bruce. We are already pretty much of a joke club in areas of the media and sacking yet another manager hardly helps in building the image of the club and attracting both the right players and commercial sponsorship. Added to that the pool of managers wanting to take on the Aston Villa poisoned chalice will diminish still further.

We now have a decent squad of players so it's Bruce's job to get the best out of them which all the empirical evidence says he can. Am I worried? Yes of course I am but we now have accept the playoffs are gone, we won't go down even after shockers like yesterday but the reality is we are miles off being a PL side, as are probably the likes of Newcastle and Brighton, and TBH another season in this league is good to build a decent squad with the tools to go up next season.

If we are still putting in performances like yesterday next season then is the time to chance manager.

We should have flogged Grealish in the window. So overrated it's untrue and now proving to be a complete liability in games.

Really worried about us even staying in this division. Poor tactics, poor subs, players with no direction and an utter utter joke of a keeper. Time to get Rowlett's number?

Lock the thread. Utterly pointless as there is no 'push' for anything  

10 minutes ago, striker said:

For me it isn't the players. It also isn't some phychological curse or the amount of change either responsible for recent performances. It is the manager's tactics.

Why buy three midfielders with the ability to pass, move and score goals then bypass those midfielders by trying to hit the opposition on the break with high balls to a forward who isn't a target man?

If the Brentford manager had just spent umpteen millions on Villa's midfield and had Kodjia as his main attacking outlet he would have played exactly the same way he played tonight. Pass and move football to suit the players under him.

Bruce has however consistently used counter attack tactics away from home which didn't suit the previous midfield quartet or the new players tonight. By constantly sitting back he has continually handed the initiative to opposition who in the main would have been wary of playing Villa.

In each game I have watched Villa under Bruce the opposition's confidence has been allowed to grow to the point where they start to dominate games. Even in the cup game against a second string Spurs team Villa rarely threatened which I thought was a disgrace.

In the Championship where the standard of teams have been poor imo Villa should be trying to dominate games from the off (like Newcastle) rather than sitting back and allowing teams to get a foothold.

In his post match interview Bruce stated that there was still much work to do on the training pitch with the players. It would be much more beneficial to AVFC if Bruce and Calderwood sat alone in Bruce's office wiping the tactical board clear of archaic tactics and actually choosing a system to allow the players to express themselves in the way they did for their previous clubs.

 

 

Can't argue with any of that.

Also it is his squad now, he has been backed by the owner so he has to deliver.

1 minute ago, tismyk said:

Doesn't look like he has signed atm

Are you surprised after tonight's shower of shite?