GeordieVillan
-
Posts
914 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Gallery
Downloads
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Articles
Media Demo
Store
Events
Everything posted by GeordieVillan
-
Love Ollie and he’s having an amazing season. He has though benefitted this year in part from us playing a slightly more expansive and risky style, which has created more opportunities for him, which he has duly taken advantage of and hopefully he can break the 20 goal barrier. He’s a £100m+ player now for sure, he might finish top scorer in the league, and that’s not even talking about him potentially being top for assists as well! Sadly this style we play also leaves us vulnerable sometimes. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the teams in 4th, 5th and 6th all play quite a gung-ho brand of football which leads to exciting games with lots of goals, and the three teams generally come out of top. Just didn’t happen for us today unfortunately.
-
Feels like he’s played the full 90+ mins in every game this season, while everyone else around him and behind him has been out at various times. He must be knackered. Frustrating that he got the card and misses 2 games, but if the wheels come off now, it certainly won’t be his fault. Similar to McGinn against Spurs - these guys have had great seasons, playing a lot of football, but they are human beings and will make mistakes or lose control.
-
I think we would have had an impact, but I think he too would have been exposed more by our playing style this year, and the other injuries. We are playing high risk football, like many of the best teams do, and we are 4th in the league. Last season we were more solid but more cautious. There may be a middle ground. I do think the front 6 we played today would have left Mings exposed as well, especially if he was playing in the Carlos position and Konsa played how he did today. I suppose the question is whether Mings would have been in Konsa’s ear and making sure he wasn’t getting caught out…
-
Great goal today and a bit more work off the ball than before, certainly in the first half. At the moment he’s looking like a good player with some great moments. If Unai can get him to have an influence on the game throughout (the way Ramsey does), and not just in those moments, he’s going to be unstoppable / unplayable, and potentially a great player. Still early days, but he’s been a good addition to the squad even at this stage.
-
Konsa was the weak link defensively today. Carlos had a couple of sloppy moments, but Pau had more. It feels like Carlos is the scapegoat when Cash isn’t there. If Cash had defended like Konsa today, the focus would have very much been on the right back position and not the centre back.
-
Said elsewhere - Zaniolo turned sideways in the wall, Duran turned his back - both bad errors, but only Zaniolo is being highlighted because it went through him. He’s still a decent option until the end of the season.
-
To be fair - he already had the subs ready to come on at 2-1. Sadly they scored as we were waiting for a stoppage in play, then it’s a very different game when they come on.
-
After the Spurs game, we would have taken this league table right now, no doubt about that. It’s not in our hands, but we have one of our games where we expected to lose out of the way. We can be confident that Spurs will drop points, so at some stage it should be back in our hands (and vice versa I expect). My only concern would be if we go into the Arsenal and Liverpool games with a similar approach. It looks like we are surrendering the initiative an hour before kick off. I don’t think Spurs would do that, but then they don’t have the European games to think about. It may be a similar approach against Arsenal and Liverpool will get us the results we need in the other games. This is where the managers earns his money and has to make these big calls!
-
A bit of a training exercise in the end, after we looked well in the game for much of the first half. A few random observations - Duran and Rogers had their moments, but both will have to learn to hold the ball better, we couldn’t relieve the pressure. Think we will see a big improvement in both of them next season, but they are both doing fine. Tim didn’t look out of place against some of the best midfielders in the league. I wouldn’t be afraid to see him starting games between now and the end of the season. Again, think he will play a big part next season. We saw the drop off from Pau to Lenglet today, at times he looked weak, but we have to consider the opposition. Zaniolo had some good moments but will be remembered for his error in wall. Duran turns his back in the wall as well, but because the ball doesn’t go there, I suspect noone will say anything. The two defenders in the wall - Konsa and Carlos - are the two that stand firm. Olsen didn’t really do anything wrong, and didn’t do anything wrong with his feet, he looked confident in fact. The only difference being that Martinez receives the ball a bit further forward from the defenders so they are able to push higher up at times and control the game. Because Olsen stays closer to the goal, it means the defence has to play slightly deeper. We’ve rested players tonight and it will be worth it if we can get 3 points on Saturday. If after the Spurs result and McGinn’s sending off, we were offered this league table 3 games later, I think we would have taken it in a heartbeat. Hopefully Man Utd don’t win tomorrow and it’s another game less they have to catch us for 4th / 5th.
- 245 replies
-
- 2
-
-
- man city
- premier league
- (and 3 more)
-
Sloppy at the back and just too slow in build up. Pretty clear messages to correct things. Give it another 10-15 mins and then we make the subs that everyone on here seems to be asking for! Not confident we are getting anything from this, a point would be amazing right now.
-
The last time I felt we had a team this attacking was in Sherwood’s last game (I think) against Swansea at VP….lets hope it doesn’t go the same way!
-
I’m thinking he’s picked that team based on height to an extent. Adding Duran and Rogers, and also having Lenglet, gives us an extra 3 players that can defend set pieces….
- 240 replies
-
- 3
-
-
- premier league
- preview
- (and 2 more)
-
No one saw that coming! The opposite of what we did last week!
-
I don’t think it was a red, I think it was a bad yellow. But expected VAR to ask the ref to have a look and overturn it. My opinion though, I could be wrong. Amazing how split the opinion is on this one, even amongst Villa fans. Can’t be easy being a referee at times.
-
Cash is in there to prevent the overload on the Spurs left when Maddison drifts out there. Bailey will still be mainly on the right as well I think. I wonder if Cash will follow Maddison as he moves around the pitch.
-
With all this smoke, there is probably a little bit of fire, even if it’s a small campfire and not a blazing inferno. For a long time I thought we would sell at least one of our “key players” this summer, at the end of the day - every club has to sell to buy - and over the years the old Big Six have all sold players to reinvest, it’s inevitable. I think the difference is now we can have a bit more confidence that at least some of the funds will be reinvest wisely. Even if you think when Grealish was sold, Bailey / Buendia / Ings doesn’t look like a terrible reinvestment now? I don’t think we will see McGinn or Martinez, purely because of age, and Mings won’t be sold because of his currrnt injury. I do think we will sell one of Luiz - Konsa - Ramsey - Bailey - Watkins, in addition to Digne, and we will use a decent portion of what we receive to buy 2-3 other players that have the potential to develop in the next couple of years, as we already have done in January with the full back positions. And whatever we don’t spend will balance the books. I actually think it might have been Kamara that would have been sold to a big European team, but his injury has probably prevented that. As long as we can keep the bulk of the current team together, and we only lose 1 of those listed above, we should be fine, we have shown we can cope with injuries this season, other than Torres! But if we had a fit Mings then we would have been fine with Torres even. In summary - no need to panic - if we have to sell someone then we will, and we will be fine.
-
Amazing how well we managed to do without him in the first half of the season. He brings an energy and running power with the ball that no one else in our team does quite the same way. Maybe Bailey does similar, but Ramsey get us up the pitch and runs ahead of the ball in a way which is quite unique in our squad.
-
Assuming Mings comes back strong and is able to play at the same level again - or our new level (champions league?) - and there is no reason to think he won’t be able to as he has recovered from this injury before, I think he will play and still be pretty much first choice. In the US tour we saw Mings at LCB and Torres at LB. I think more than anything that was a recognition from Emery that Konsa and Mings as a partnership had been so good, that he could not split them up, and he wanted to find a way to get Torres into the team. Fast forward 6 months and we have seen quite a lot of changes to the back 4 on an almost weekly basis. Torres has to play LCB when fit as he brings so much to the team from there, and Emery has shown he sees some benefit in playing Konsa at RB in some games, especially the ones where we need to be more solid. I think we will see Konsa at RB, Mings at RCB, Torres at LCB and Moreno at LB. That leaves Cash, Carlos and Digne as established back ups. If we assume Digne moves on, and so does Lenglet and Chambers, I could see us signing a young centre half to just give extra cover, but otherwise I don’t think we will need to do too much. We have already signed a couple of young defenders in January who will most likely get some minutes next season, in the same way that Morgan Rogers is being introduced now. I’m sure Mings will be able to adapt to play RCB, he’s able to use his right foot more than Lenglet!
-
He’s done very well in the last 2 games, other than the very early stages at Fulham where he got caught a couple of times. Have to remember he’s covering for Kamara and hasn’t played the position in a couple of years. Interesting that Luiz still got forward and scored a couple of goals today, is McGinn playing the Kamara role and playing deeper? I had assumed Luis would play the Kamara role and McGinn would play the Luiz role. Either way, let’s hope they keep it up!
-
He’s gone from being scapegoated a few weeks ago to now being a very solid part of the team (again), and actually he’s starting to form a partnership with Bailey that previously didn’t look possible because Bailey apparently was “occupying the space Cash likes to move in to”. I think Cash is having a very good season. He’s going to be part of this squad over the next few years, I think Unai likes him and he’s able to offer more going forward than Konsa, which is useful in some games and situations.
-
His role is now limited to short cameos when we are winning and we need to see the game out. I think he needs to improve his ball retention if he’s going contribute effectively in doing that! Don’t think he will stay beyond his loan, but by no means has he been a disaster, he is still getting minutes.
-
What a guy, love him. Even McGinn said a couple of weeks ago that the manager doesn’t use injuries as an excuse, or words to that effect. Was amazing today in the first half - I think we were 2-0 up, and he was going mad telling Digne something on the bench. You could see Digne was looking at him and saying “what?!” but the look on his face said that Unai is a mad man!
-
We were the better team, but at 3-2 they have a great chance and then who knows. Same last week at Fulham, we were clearly the better team but they have a good chance chance to equalise at the end etc. But there was jeopardy in both games, and we managed to get the job done. It wasn’t a criticism of the team - I’m quite happy if we continue to be the better team in games and get 3 points, even if it is closer than we would like.
-
I think we did just enough today, and last week was the same - we are winning by fine margins, but winning nonetheless. Defending set pieces is becoming a real issue though, and it will cost us when we play the top 3 as they are all very good at attacking set pieces.
-
Big win today, it was always going to be, regardless of the Man Utd score, but given that they lost, it feels huge. If we can win at Luton next week, and assuming Man Utd lose to City, I don’t see them making up 11 points and goal difference on us. It will then be us and Spurs….
