DaveAV1

Amavi is so defensively frail, he needs too much time on the ball. He's better further up the pitch, at least his mistakes are in less dangerous positions. Next time we're offered £25m we all know what we should do!

Perhaps an early goal against will see us attack more?

14 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think you have to accept GH that many folk ( including the club) believe given the necessary time, he will deliver.

you certainly don't, so I think you have a very miserable time ahead of waiting for him to fail and subsequently we sign a new one.......or he delivers what most of us including the club, think he will .......and you change your opinion of him.

i guess we have to wait and see.

I think that's a bit harsh on GH, I don't think for a moment he's waiting for him to fail, he just thinks he will. I seem to remember a post of his not that long ago when he was showing signs of putting a tentative foot on the platform of The Steve Bruce Express. To be fair I've bought a ticket but I'm concerned that we may not have enough coal to get up the hill. 

1 hour ago, Grasshopper said:

The real paradox about it all is.

The more rope (end of season, pre-season more signings) you give him the even more rope you must give him, negated by the possibility of it going tits up sooner or later, The sooner meaning we have enough time to save the season. the later meaning - rinse & repeat (the new manager needs a pre-season/own players ......ad infinitum)

This season the board established 10/11 games as a "D-Day". OK different circumstances, so when is D-Day due next season? 15 games? 20 or 23 games.

When do you make a call?

I think this is a very strong reason why the board will be reluctant to sack him. They are desperate for stability and are aware also that Steve Bruce is a popular guy. I'm not suggesting it's a popularity contest, but he has lots of friends in the game and support at the moment from a lot of Villa fans, whilst a lot are undecided, me included. Remember the shit we got when Timmy was sacked? And let's face it he was, in my very humble opinion, a disasterous, clueless fraud. The club want to try to break the appoint, struggle, sack, repeat cycle, which is a very sensible aim but not at all costs. That's the tricky bit, where do you draw the line? I'm glad it's not my decision and hope that we don't have to make it and SB gets us up as Champions by this time next year. 

32 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Re RDM, I'm sure there was a tweet where XIA said something along the lines was "Most importantly was to have somebody with guts" in response to why RDM went and we chose Bruce etc.

Suggests RDM started to bottle it etc.

I don't think he had any bottle or interest in the first place. He certainly couldn't be bothered to buy a midfield. 

15 minutes ago, Mjvilla said:

I think, THINK, you have just repeated the exact same point I made. That they could've been a flop. But your argument was, with repeated 'mck says hi', that there would've been no-one else

And on the flip side, there is no way of saying that we may have bought someone else in who had scored 5 more goals and taken us into the playoffs. It's all conjecture.

And as for the second bit, I believe promotion would've been the aim for this or next season, bearing in mind the shit state and position of this football club when Bruce took over. And I believe that would've come from above Bruce. So, to say argument won is pure speculation. You may have won, you may not, we can't say. But I'm sure you'll take great pleasure, as you just tried to, in proving yourself right if Bruce doesn't take us up next year.

Surely the point is that Kodjia has clicked this season. Another player may or may not have clicked, we will never know. Similarly you can't guarantee that a striker will be just as good next season. There are very, very few strikers that score 20 goals per season and at this moment in time, they are out of our league. So this being the case good teams score goals from a spread of players, which limits the damage done when the star man has a drop in form, gets injured etc. Relying on one player for goals is a very dangerous game. 

10 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I'm conflicted with him. His results and our form recently show he deserves the chance next season, but the way we play makes me think he won't get us promoted and we're wasting our time with him. 

 

This is a concern I have too. For me the rest of the season is an opportunity to set out our stall for next season. If we continue to win games with the same style of play, then I think that could be a problem next season. If however we try to have more attacking intent, I don't mean Bruce turning into Pepe, just trying to score more than one goal per game, then I'd feel more confident of promotion. If we continue with the same style and fail to win many games, especially a week on Sunday, then I feel the board may feel they need to review the situation. 

I'm 80/90% sure Steve Bruce will still be manager come August. However we have plenty of football people at the club now and although they seem to be putting a lot of value on stability, which is a strong argument, particularly after the turmoil of the last few seasons, I doubt this will be a blind mantra and alternative solutions will be investigated. 

58 minutes ago, Mjvilla said:

The derby that scraped victory against qpr, relied upon a last minute goal against Birmingham, drew against struggling forest and beat Fulham (great result) but were outdone in possession stats. Imagine how you'd Moan if villa had won games like that under Bruce. The way derby have played under Rowett is pretty much how we've been winning games under bruceBruce

BruceBruce? Are you implying that our manager is the managerial equivalent of Eric Djemba-Djemba? A player so good they named him twice.

1 hour ago, TRO said:

Thats fine, so long as you keep my Beer Belly out of the picture......its a dead give away

That might need a bit of photoshopping . He said reclining in his glass house!

50 minutes ago, TRO said:

You are so kind Dave......especially addressing me with that oh so seductive word "young"........ to a 66 year old fart.

At 54, 66 doesn't seem so far away and so I'm on a mission to make 66 the new 36. I'm looking for a poster boy to lead the campaign 

On 08/04/2017 at 09:34, TRO said:

Just to reiterate one on my earlier posts......I think he needs some one one dedicated work to get his game merchantable.

He is too young to write off.....I just hope we can get a pot off the potters wheel.

"Merchantable". What a thoroughly modern thinking, progressive footy fan you are young TRO. You're now a fully signed up member of the Soccerball Society (President Paddy Reilly). How is Paddy? Actually has anyone ever seen TRO and Paddy in the same room...........? 

7 minutes ago, striker said:

I like Bruce. I like his demeanor and honesty which frequently reflects the opinion of the fans that to dominate matches Villa need to hold on to the ball better. He signed midfielders to do exactly that but it hasn't happened yet. The players still look anxious and hesitant on the ball probably because of the expectations surrounding the club.

Now that will wash with me for the rest of this season due to the amount of change and time for the manager to get his ideas across but by the start of next season the players and manager should have settled and Villa should, with a few more additions, be looking at automatic promotion.

I still tend to think though that Villa sit too deep and need to be more offensive. You cannot continually rely on the odd goal to win matches because somewhere along the line you must be able to compensate for player mistakes and good play from the opposition even in the Championship.

I also feel that Xia moved the goalposts for Bruce when it became apparent that Villa were not going to make the playoffs this season. There's no doubt in my opinion that was the expectation when Bruce arrived at Villa but I do not see any further allowances being made for Bruce next season. He and his team will have to start well and all of us hope that he will do that but if Villa are languishing in mid table by Christmas then I do not see Wyness or Xia tolerating that.    

That's the perfect summary for me, exactly what I think. 

1 hour ago, vreitti said:

And let's not forget the Bacuna factor! 

If only we had a player called Max......

I think the vast majority of us would put results over performance. However never mind the aesthetics, my concern is that we don't look in control. Yes we are undoubtedly defending very well, but it seems to be very back to the wall. If we were defending 10 or 15 yards further up the pitch, then I would say that's comfortable. We would also not be leaving the striker(s) so isolated and giving the opposition more to think about than just continually attacking us. Defending so deep means that we are always so vulnerable to a mistake being punished with a goal and with us not scoring many, then that's a problem. 

If Norwich had been wearing the same  goal scoring boots as they did yesterday, then we may have been having this discussion a week ago. 

I think Steve Bruce will be our manager next season and his track record, even as recently as last season, should fill us all with confidence. However his time here does raise some questions for me. Primarily I would say that his style of play and the performances have been pretty consistent. However the results have been far from it. I don't want to return to the possession debate, I'm talking about the overall play and set up when I'm looking at the performances. So why have we had great runs of results and terrible runs of results despite playing pretty much the same every match?

The only real explanation I can come up with is the Kodjia factor.  Which is a concern, in that no striker maintains that form, or stays fit, for an entire season. He's got teams promoted four times in the past, so he must know how to do it, right? He is still the safest pair of hands and I can't realistically think of anyone else who could walk in and guarantee promotion. However we do need a plan B and probably plans C and D. 

I renewed on the phone yesterday (took me 58 minutes!). The lad who I spoke to said that the lower Holte was almost sold out and the upper not far behind. He thought the Holte would be virtually sold out next season and they were not just taking renewals but new season tickets too. I don't know if the new ones were ST virgins or returning to the fold. Still it's all good news   

With the type of run we've been on results wise, I would have hoped that confidence would have been sky high and the team as a whole would have felt more like taking the game to the opposition. Even very defensive minded teams like West Brom under Pulis occasionally cut loose and score a few. However at no point have we looked like doing that. Yes we have had the odd 10 minutes spell here and there but at no point have we put a team to the sword. I've seen us win plenty of games 1-0 in my time and despite there only being a 1 goal advantage we've looked comfortable. This isn't the case with this team. 

I think it's fair to say in the last few home games I've watched, if the opposition had had a striker on fire like Kodjia they would have won comfortably. Set up to defend for 90 minutes and hope Kodjia scores isn't really a game plan that has any long term chance of success. We bought some apparently good midfielders in January, we need to start using them. Good sides are strong in defence and dominant in midfield. I assume SB would agree and has a plan to get the other half of the equation right?

Reading getting a tonking isn't so bad, their confidence will be shot to pieces when we play them next week. We just need another today to calm the nerves. Well mine at least!

6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

He gets us up, he gets a shot at the division. 

That's more or less what everyone said about Timmy. We're a fair minded lot on the whole.

10 games left, we just have to win the last one at Wembley 

3 hours ago, Wezbid said:

Hopefully you've scored at least as much as Kodjia this weekend. 

A blast inside the box then an oportunistic tickle in the area..........?

The big advantage promoted teams have over the perennial strugglers, such as Sunderland for example, is momentum. They come up used to winning not losing. If we were to come up this season we would be on an amazing winning run which would hopefully give us a great start to next season. 

2 seasons ago Leicester were virtually relegated at this stage. They took the momentum of their late run into the following season and the rest is history. 

If a goalie makes 3 brilliant saves then lets one roll in between his legs he's rubbish. If a striker misses 3 sitters then scores the winner, he's brilliant. It's always been that way, that's why you have to be mad to be in goal!

32 minutes ago, TRO said:

We got 59,000 in a midweek game in the cup against Southampton, we were like sardines....I think Peter broadbent & Lionel Martin scored and we won 2-1......Tommy doc was manager.

Woow so even as we were tumbling we still got massive crowds. The time under Tommy Doc was just before I started going. Vic was the first manager I remember. I recall stuff in the papers about the big protests before Ellis came in and saved us.

I view Doug with mixed feelings but I've got a soft spot for the old rogue. I think it was Graham Taylor who said that his problem was he wouldn't just go the extra mile and we missed opportunities because of that. But there's been worse and we don't need long memories to recall one here or look far across the city to see totally disasterous chairmen. 

Lets hope that the current man at the top can help us fulfill a few dreams. Especially for the lads and lasses who are too young to remember those wonderful days of the 70s, early 80s and even the 90s. Up The Villa 

4 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

@DaveAV1 I have loved reading your last couple of posts mate. I don’t go as far back as those days but it just reaffirms that we do support an amazing club with amazing supporters and shows how enjoyable a successful season in the lower divisions can be.

Hopefully we will soon be able to look back on a successful season in the second tier and rave on about how we stormed to the title and fully restored the pride in this club and sold out many a game whilst doing it.

I think now like then if we can get promoted then off the back off that the whole place can lift off and we could again be successful in the top flight.

Thanks Mark. I'm just a sloppy old Villa fan. Hopefully the time is almost here to make some more happy memories!