VillaFaninLondon

True.

Agree. I had to vote for MOTM but not one of them even merited a 4/10. Only voted Digne as he least was an outlet, even if his final ball was woeful.

Another gameweek, another below par performance, and another rating below Average for the manager. There is no style of play at all and whilst this can take time to adopt, I cannot see anything that is taking place. Mostly it is just long balls from the back to nobody. When we do start trying to play it is too late and the opposition is 1-0 up and able to hold us off. The ref was a disgrace too ruling that goal out, but the fact that we barely laid a glove on a shitty Newcastle defence bar that Watkins disallowed goal is mind boggling. Most of our players are underperforming - if Ramsey and Coutinho are nullified like they were today, there is no one else. Our strikers cannot score goals, our defence cannot keep clean sheets, our midfield is powder puff and barely noticeable for the 90 minutes. Big investment last summer from the owners and again in January and they have to witness 90 minutes of that. No f***ing wonder this club hasn't won a trophy in nearly 30 years.

How much are we paying Gerrard a year again? What a waste.

4 points out of Brentford, Everton, Leeds and Newcastle in the last month is diabolical. Add to that the performances have all been woeful other than Everton in the 1st half. Gerrard's starting to create his own pressure with these performances and results. We won't get rid of him this season but why give him a load of money in the summer when we perform like this after he's been backed.

If Joelinton is on a yellow then how the hell is he not off. More corruption.

I feel exactly like you but I've persisted with the 2nd half. No idea why though as we haven't been much better.

Bailey and Ings on at last.

Changed it now - at least give me time to fix it!

Ings, Bailey and Sanson all on the bench and still no changes. What the hell is Gerrard waiting for.

Haha, how is that offside? What a completely corrupt game football is.

We've equalised and yet I still feel sickened by the performance.

Why the f*** does Luiz always take our free kicks and corners? What the f*** is all that about? It should be Digne or Coutinho.

Newcastle have the likes of Kraft and Dummett playing in defence and we haven't looked anywhere near like scoring. This is worse than Watford and Arsenal away.

Embarrassing. What is the point in even watching the 2nd half.

Would make at last two changes at HT. Then again so many have been so bad I don't know which ones to take off. They should all be docked 2 week's wages for this.

Yep. I really don't know what Gerrard's tactics are. They're non-existent.

Wow, we look a league 2 team. This is shockingly bad. Up there with our worst performance of the season. Is it that hard to teach these set of players to pass and control a football properly. Jesus Christ.

I'm starting to think my reservations about Gerrard when we appointed him were right. 4 wins in his first 6 and now very likely 1 win in his next 6 with four of them relegation battling teams. New manager bounce but in reality maybe he's just not a very good manager. Should be getting far more out of these players.

We are a shambles. No better than under Smith. One win in six certainly ain't good enough Gerrard particularly with all the money you've spent in January. Rubbish.

Shocking performance. We're just hoofing it.

It's still very early days so it is naïve to criticise or praise Gerrard too wildly at this stage. He hasn't yet had a preseason and only been in the job three months. I was very critical of Smith especially towards the end but that is because he failed to properly implement a consistent playing style and failed to get both results and performances without Jack Grealish despite spending 350m. I'll admit, from what I have seen of Gerrard so far I've not been bowled over and I wasn't bowled over by the appointment. But I think there have been positive and negative things so far. Positives 17 points from 11 games this season compared to 10 points from 11 games for Smith (both probably played similar level of difficulty opponent too) Bringing in high profile players like Coutinho and Digne which probably wouldn't have happened under Smith (certainly not Coutinho anyhow) No nonsense attitude to the media and refreshingly honest and to the point unlike Smith was (particularly in relation to injuries/absences to key players) Negatives We still have the same issues keeping the ball and retaining possession and a dominant style of play (similar to that at Brighton under Potter) is still lacking - of course this may change over the time and it's vital that it does because it's holding us back Defensively we have marginally improved but we are still giving away cheap goals on a regular basis The one thing you could say about Gerrard is that at Rangers he massively improved the defence in time and he also made them much harder to beat (they went a whole season unbeaten which is pretty damn impressive even if it is a poor standard of league) Therefore, we have to give him a season or 2 to see if he can get us to where we want. European football on a regular basis has to be the aim for this club and if he's well backed in the summer he'll be expected to be pushing for that as early as next season. Time will tell if he can deliver.

I'm one of the ones who likes Bert but I'm well p*ssed off with this. Barely played for us all season, gets his first start conveniently just before the AFCON at Brentford, plays every game but one for them and looks to be fully fit at last. Now turns out he has a God damn hamstring injury and will now miss more of the season, picking up his wages while continuing to not be available. Wouldn't sell him ordinarily but given his unreliability this season and being injured all the time, I'm starting to think he's just no use to us.

Haha, no worries! To be fair it's only really this season he's gone up a level, last season he just looked a player with a lot of potential and his numbers were fairly average. I think we had a chance of getting him and competition for him wasn't as fierce last summer, but we maybe chose not to pursue him because he was a risk. The players we bought over him last summer - Buendia, Bailey and Ings - were higher profile so I think we could have got him if we wanted, but that's just my view. Either way it looks like we missed a trick because he could have been our no1 striker for the next 10 years, or at least until City came and bought him for 100m!

Leeds always outrun and outfight us, they're not better quality-wise but fitter and more aggressive than us. Even so, we would have won that game had it not been for awful defending. IMO we should not be finishing below any of the following teams: Norwich, Watford, Burnley (probably the bottom 3), Newcastle, Leeds, Everton, Southampton, Palace, Brentford. That puts us 11th. I also think we should be finishing above Brighton which puts us 10th but 50-50 whether we will. I could begrudgingly accept finishing below Leicester, Wolves, Spurs, Arsenal, Manure, City, Plop and Chelsea as they're all strong teams with a lot of quality all over the park. Although given Leicester's issues defensively (much like us) we could quite easily finish above them too. But I'm with you, I like entertaining, attacking football but if we can't defend we're never going to show any consistency to get up the table.