MrBlack

If we can pick ourselves up from the disappointment of Thursday then I can see us having just enough to beat a Liverpool team with nothing to play for.

The injuries are really hurting us, but Diaby and Watkins being on it, McGinn played further forward, Pau finding his early season passing lanes, and Luiz hitting some semblance of form would be enough for us to win. 

There's a lot that needs to come together for it, but if they do then we can win. Or backup option is Liverpool really don't turn up at all and then even with half of those players having off days we might still scrape a win. 

If Bailey is fit enough to come off the bench then that could be the turning point in an otherwise tight game.

I dont want to have a care about the city spurs result, but as a fall back option to rely on if we lose, its about as good as they come. 

Then we can relax and enjoy the final away day.   

23 minutes ago, Reivax_Villa said:

Yeah, this is the one.. looks very clean.

The sky blue, the touch of claret makes a big difference..

I can see one of our kits being this colour.

Let the rebranding begin!

It does look clean. I don't mind the double border. I like the shield shape and reverting back to a shield is more infitting with our history than the round badge.

But why did we go down the yellow on light blue path again . Why did Heck think that was the colour scheme to go with.

Gnonto fouled, looked a lot like a penalty as foul carried on in the box, not even given as a free kick.

Poor Leeds 

That was the softest penalty ever. Completely unnatural running pattern from the Celtic forward who then kicks the standing leg of the defender. He then falls over in a dive after doing that completely unnaturally as well.

As a former forward I've got no love for defenders, but that was a shocking call. Glad it got saved.

Not a good game for him, but then the team didn't really play to his strengths.

His immaturity showed again but I think we've got a potential star if Emery can get him on board.  Wouldn't be selling him at this stage. 

Hopefully he's not aggravated anything that they caused to his knee by playing on last night. Clearly wasn't right. And despite that still put in a decent shift and reasonable performance. Unlucky not to get a goal.

Hopefully spurs drop a clanger against Burnley and it gives us chance to rest him for the remainder of the season, but failing that I do hope he's fit for our last two games as we really struggle to create when Bailey isn't around at the moment. 

9 hours ago, ben1505 said:

Including Spurs beating Burnley, City and Sheffield and us losing our last two... 

Yep, possibly.  The bookies give it about a 6% chance of happening.

There are far more scenarios, that are also more likely, that see us finish 4th. But the point is none of them are foregone conclusions. People need to stop acting like they are.

The disappointing thing about their goal was it didn't require any if the things that Pau is supposedly weaker at anyway. All he had to do was not run towards the goal.  I'm sure he's feeling as frustrated about the outcome as anyone, and hopefully he learns from that to do less ball watching.

What he brings to us going forwards when we're on form though is irreplaceable.

Need to find a way to get him and Mings on the same team.

14 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

It is all ifs and buts isn't it. If Kamara doesn't get injured then this thread is on page 10. If we hadn't have loaned Dendonker out then we may not have been able to bring in Rogers and we'd have lost the huge impact he has made in the absence of Ramsey.

We are where we are. 

True true. We'll never really know whether we could have kept him and got Rogers, or whether keeping him would have helped us in Kamara's absence. Even with hindsight of Kamara's injury, not having Rogers would have been a potentially bigger. I think I'd had a few too many last night thinking Donk might have saved us .

16 minutes ago, adamo said:

Can someone explain me how your coach decide to play with  3 CB against us when he needs 2 goals to tie the game? i was surprised to see that from him. Bad coaching in  entire  game........

Our bench explains why. We don't have enough fit players thanks to injury. We have 8 first team players that our out injured at the moment. Didn't really have a choice sadly.

Our bench had two Goalkeepers, and 3 youth players that have barely played for us on it.

Anyone predicting the results at the bottom of the championship on the last day? Nope.  Anyone expecting us to beat Arsenal 2-0? Nope.

Football isn't played on paper and it doesn't always go to form. Not even close to always.

Anything could happen over the next set of games and it probably will. 

On 08/05/2024 at 13:52, Pinebro said:

Luckily they didn't invite Grealish 

 

Kevin De Bruyne at the end "Put Jack on there, he doesn't even know where Villa is".

Well, neither did Cash.

On 08/05/2024 at 19:05, TheStagMan said:

Fecking hell. At 4m 11s Matty Cash got the location of Villa wrong

That's shocking. How can he possibly not know that wolves are more west than us.

1 minute ago, TRO said:

I think the best team won, over the 2 legs.

6-2 agrees with you. But I don't. Just my view though, and seems I'm very much in the minority. 

2 minutes ago, WooJung said:

What a waste for all parties involved. Napoli wasted money on him, he wasted his time as he would've played a lot more here, we saved peanuts but really could have done with another midfielder, especially a defensive minded one, both for rotation and for allowing the others to play in their natural positions

That bit in bold is everything.

I guess we didn't know Kamara was getting a season ending injury when we let him go, but knowing that he might do and that we have zero faith in Tim should have seen him kept. We've sacrificed so much by not having a fit DM. It's worked some weeks, but it's shown us desperately short in others. 

As bad as Donk is, we clearly had more faith in him than Tim, so he'd have been better kept around. Hindsight maybe I guess. 

Looked surprisingly good for a player I'd never heard of before tonight. Didn't clock him on the bench for previous games.

I'd be giving him some minutes in the league after that though. A very solid debut in hostile and generally shit circumstances.

Shame he couldn't live up to his own expectations tonight. Looks dead on his legs, and it's not really a surprise. As an exceptional footballer, he can perform a role that he's not ideally designed for for a period of time. But eventually its going to fall apart. And it seems that the combination of minutes played and that playing outside of his comfort zone have finally taken their toll.

Poor tonight. Poor for a few weeks now.

But I would be sad to see him sold as I know what he is capable of playing in his preferred role and not being forced to play every minute of every game due to injuries elsewhere in the squad.

Rest up Dougie. And, please Villa, buy a replacement for Kamara for when he's inevitably injured. 

I dont think the best team won over two legs. 

The first leg saw two horrendous decisions that contributed to the scoreline in their favour,  and a penalty miss from Luiz. It could easily have ended with us losing by one, drawing or even winning by one. But somehow we lost by two. 

The game tonight was a direct result of those decisions and misfortunes, with an Olympiakos that had no need to leave their half. 

You then look at tonight's game and we just lacked the cutting edge but lost two goals due to the attacking way we were playing as a result of the aggregate scoreline. We then had no subs available with which to change the impending outcome. 

Whatever. We should be proud of the team, they did everything they could but ultimately injury and bad luck played their part.

And what I love about this team is that they will never accept bad luck.  They'll feel they could have done better. And they will work to do better next time.

The belief and desire Emery has instilled in this club will help us for decades. Let's reward him with some silverware next year boys. And let's get that 4th spot.

That team sheet has injury crisis all over it.  Let's hope we don't need the bench to change the game. 

2 hours ago, sne said:

Just having the lion on the badge be the same shade of yellow/gold as the shade on the AV150 logo would make it infinitely better. 

It is **** so infuriating that we haven't done this.

Even if it was in a claret background, it should still be gold and not yellow. 

Club legend... Gabby. What a shame he decided to abuse that position and shit talk us on radio/podcasts.

Sooner Watkins takes over his PL goal scoring record the better. 

As for Heck, he finally gave some unambiguous answers that we've long been waiting for. The kind of thing I think he's known for months but for whatever reason decided to keep it quiet or disguised. Maybe a tactic he's learned over the years. Release the bad news quietly and then let it simmer before releasing slightly better news that sounds even better being delivered after a period of simmering. 

He did seem more relaxed than in his previous conversations. Maybe a result of him getting more comfortable with his position and finding it easier to deliver "good" news. But hopefully means we hear more from him than we have recently

Seems like he's cottoned on to leaving the Holte alone having solely focused efforts there previously. Words are great, let's see what action we get over the summer. 

5 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

That's a consistent message,  the same one he's been giving since he 'paused' the North Stand. Most of this is already underway too which is good news - I'm not sure what the LED's bit is, but the project to add seats in hospitality is already underway, the superstore is planned for the summer with the existing store also taking the space next to it that's currently a ticket office and some more floorspace in that old office building, the concert venue(s) will be the big summer events on the pitch but also perhaps smaller events in the Warehouse which is potentially a good medium sized venue in a city that doesn't have many of those and you can see some efforts to get people there early already - helpfully the Warehouse encourages some to hang around, as will the conversion to more hospitality (whether we like it or not).

I think we've put together a board that is more than capable of looking at more than that and has a lot of specialists, but I think the big plan might be one for five or ten years from now.

All a bit uninspiring really. But at least we stay at Villa Park.

Don't see the point of bringing those people on to the board for something they might do in 5 years.

Sounds like we'll be getting the most out of what we have, and if they make the warehouse a decent venue before/ after games then it will go a long way to helping us handle extra capacity in the long term

Just now, mikeyp102 said:

Why did Fiorentina play tonight? Thought all conference games were Thursday?

Avoiding a Clash with a festival that happens in Italy tomorrow.

1 minute ago, fightoffyour said:

Was he off? Did the keeper stop or would that've gone in?

I think the defenders make more of an effort to block the shot. We'll never know

What's the lino thinking flagging there. Let play run on for something that tight.