JPJCB

I thought he was ok tonight and I can’t personally see any evidence that he’s worse than last season- he actually looks more confident this season in some ways. but his decision making is infuriating at times. He has this habit of being in a decent shooting position but not shooting at first, holding on to the ball for too long until another player is in a far better position, and then trying to shoot again even though he has no chance of scoring- the targett example in the first half was most glaring also, his diving is getting annoying and the one tonight where he was already on the ground but tried to dive again was just pathetic

The big difference is the discipline and everyone knowing their roles and what they need to do. We’ve become remarkably consistent under gerrard very quickly because there’s a very clear gameplan the players know each game

I think they’re just different styles of defenders which is what leads to these differences. Mings is much more assertive, aggressive and physical while konsa is more passive but excellent positionally. The 3v1 at the end of the game is a good example which happened because mings raced out to try and win the ball while konsa naturally decided to hold back. I guess my point is that mings will always make more mistakes because his style is more aggressive and higher risk. But you wouldn’t want it where both of them played the exact same way as we’d be too passive in defence. It’s the same with vidic and Ferdinand - vidic made far more errors than Ferdinand because he was the more aggressive defender

Amazing goal that Arsenal one- my favourite villa goal of recent years

Don’t forget his bizarre and unlawful kneeling on traore after we scored against them last year. One of the biggest pricks in the game

I’m still not convinced by him at all in an 8 role- he didn’t impress me that much the other day but I’ll concede I’m in a minority there. More broadly he had the best part of a full season as an 8 in his first year and was average with the game passing him by. He was converted to a 6 in restart and showed by far his best consistent form for us. He reminds me of petrov in that he doesn’t have enough pace/energy to play box to box. His strengths are reading the game and passing ability so he’s best operating deeper for me

Fair- Benteke was definitely a confidence player and he was oozing it when he played for us and has never really recovered it since. But prime fully confident Benteke gets into this team above Watkins for me. Some of the goals he scored were ridiculous- the West Brom feint and rocket shot, the Norwich overhead kick; the Liverpool solo run. That’s not just standing out in a bad team- I can’t imagine Ollie scoring any goals of that kind of quality right now. But maybe he’ll prove me wrong and develop rapidly in the next couple of years

This, this, this again and again. on the same theme, this does also shed light that, while jack probs helped us more than we helped him in the end, we were way way more patient with him than other clubs might have been. the reason other clubs didn’t want him when we got relegated is cause his attitude stank and was holding back his talent. Just look back at some of the earlier pages in this thread during the relegation season and first championship season- there wasn’t a tone as if we were holding him back. Plenty of players slip down the ranks in those circumstances (ravel Morrison the most extreme that comes to mind). The club and the fans were more patient than anyone else would have been. to be fair I think jack gets this and acknowledges it. But the media narrative implies he was an immediate superstar that we were holding back for years- he only really gave us around 2 years (once you consider injuries) of top half PL form

Biggest improvement of any player under gerrard. Tenacious, aggressive and effective. He’s massively benefitted from his job being simplified to patrolling a much narrower area of the pitch, winning the ball and having more bodies around him afterwards to release it to. he’s comfortably in my first 11 on this form

Tbh, I’ve not seen much from him so far at first team level to get that excited about it. Great chance last night but the game passed him by as did previous appearances. that’s not to say he won’t come good- he’s still young. But the billy big bollocks stuff pushing for a move is tiresome in that context and I wouldn’t be too gutted if he went in those circumstances as it just shows a bad attitude

Watching it back I hadn’t quite realised just how influential he was in creating the Carney chance beyond the immediate assist. He basically created the entire move on his own which came close to equalising the game. He’s had a slow start but the criticism of him for last night is just bizarre

Surprised people think he’s better than Benteke was for us. Benteke was winning games basically on his own for us in his first season and scoring more goals in a team significantly worse than our current one. Big fan of Ollie’s but his contribution is nowhere near as significant IMO

Despite being one of our better players this season I thought he was terrible today. Sterling constantly got the better of him. Seems to play badly against city in general- their relentless possession game seems to frustrate him/ lead to impatience and he dives in unnecessarily

Good post. I was speaking to a Liverpool fan at work who noted the positional sense of the CMs sounded exactly like how Klopp likes to play- e.g they take up full back positions when TAA and Robertson go forward. Seems like Klopp may have been the biggest influence tactically on gerrard compared to his other managers he played for

It was the same with that “wonder” save against Leicester as well. If you actually look at the position of the ball, it’s not in the far corner. But ramsdale’s leap makes it look like a phenomenal save. It’s a combination of bad positioning plus good athleticism which makes him look like a worldie. The best keepers in the league (emi, alisson, ederson) get the job done with far less fuss cause their initial positioning is much better

This. One of the best players I’ve ever seen for villa at that specific ability

It’s interesting looking at the table. Despite only winning 2 of the last 7 we’re as high as 11th and of the 6 teams we’re yet to play so far only 2 of them are top half (city and Liverpool) with the rest lower half (Leicester, Leeds, Burnley, Norwich). I.e our fixtures have been comparatively difficult so far. So assuming the table doesn’t lie, you might expect us to be more like 8th or 9th come halfway through the season. a related note- this also puts the 5 losses in a row in a bit of perspective. 4 of those 5 teams are now in the top 7. So it’s maybe not as bad in hindsight as it felt at the time. none of this is particularly scientific but made me slightly more optimistic

Going through the early days of this thread out of curiosity and found this classic...

Could be a midfield diamond with Nakamba at the base; buendia at the tip behind Ings/Watkins; and McGinn/Ramsey at LCM/RCM

I’ve sometimes wondered whether he might ultimately be better as a CM for this reason

The bloke leading him around the trading ground comes up with some classic lines you’d expect to hear in a sketch about working for Norwich: ”it’s quite nice you see cause it’s not *too* big…” ”oh and there’s a vegetable patch over there….”

I think he’ll benefit most if gerrard does the same thing as at rangers and plays two narrow number 10s behind the striker. Suits where buendia likes to play

Smith played him as a 10 at times and he was completely anonymous

Has Mancini shrunk in the wash?!

He’s had mammoth like performances under Smith. His problem is that he has no consistency and can veer from absolutely outstanding top 4 PL performances to championship performances within a week