KentVillan

There were a couple of moments where I thought he showed great calmness and discipline, and I thought the yellow was completely undeserved

Thought he completely changed the game tbh, what a player he has become 

This ref is an idiot, bad manner with the players, desperate to get cards out, aggressive, overreacts to everything.

He’s going to lose control of this game 100%

21 hours ago, DJBOB said:

I think it’s no surprise that Unai has turned to Morgan (and Zaniolo) despite his youth and out of possession learning. 
 
In January, teams started figuring out they could press us early into mistakes because we had no out ball. Diaby and Bailey were not consistent enough back to goal. Tielemans is better facing forward and not under the isolated pressure out left or out top. Watkins was often isolated and McGinn was not a constant duel winner up the pitch. 
 
So by turning to Morgan and Zaniolo, we now had much more physicality and ball carrying to drag us up the pitch against the press. 

Very smart post. Could call them “hold up wingers” - Grealish offered a bit of that too.

I like Rogers a lot, he just seems to have settled straight in with no dramas.

22 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

like a lot of players , some opposition team  seem to suit their style of play better than others 

(Carlos is probably still trying to figure out how to explain to his wife why he came home with another man in his pocket last night , but Carlos has struggled against other types of forward )

 

Doug is the same , he seems to play with such a  laid back style that when it doesn't work he can look like a liability , but when it does work he is the engine room that keeps a lot of what we do ticking  .. we will need him on Thursday more than Yuri i think 

Spot on, and on top of that Luiz has been playing a lot of minutes week in week out so maybe not that surprising that slightly fresher legs coming into his position has helped.

9 minutes ago, Pinebro said:

How well he manages the squad is just night and day different from how we capitulated under MON

He's just world class

Yeah this is the thing that has impressed me so much this season. Last season it was the tactics and coaching, but this it’s been remarkable the way he’s handled injuries and suspensions. We have a proper injury crisis, competing on two fronts, and the dent in our form has been relatively small.

24 minutes ago, jayEm said:

I don't want to take anything away from him because he's absolutely brilliant, but his goal today takes a deflection of Smith-Rowe, right? He goes for a chip of sorts but it's the touch off the top of ESR's boot that loops it up over the keeper yeah? Might have gone in anyway but it's not quite the sublime chip I initially thought it was

Again, not trying to detract from him, he forces the goal either way and he's been sensational this season. Beautiful player.

I was struggling to work out what the original trajectory was. On one angle it looked like it would have gone in anyway. The deflection did make it look particularly clinical though 

23 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Feel like we're going to get battered today. Something like 5-1. 

Same  

Newcastle have a ridiculously easy run-in except for a game against Man Utd. Could see them picking up near enough max points and causing us and Spurs problems.

56 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

Overrated 

We need a face palm reaction 

14 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

He absolutely was trying to get the ball back.  He thought he could win it and if he didn't then the game was going to end in a draw.

That foul was not a booking anyway. The ref ignored Ajer for 97 minutes despite committing more fouls and more cynical ones than that one from Luiz.

And he needed a rest anyway. He's been off the boil for a few games so I don't think he'll be especially missed compared with when he was on top form, and it may give him chance to get back to that form.  He'll still be playing 90 minutes a week anyway because of the Europa conference games, so this isn't the disaster it could have been, and he'll probably learn from this that picking up some of the more stupid bookings he did earlier in the season will come back to bite him. 

Think it probably was a booking technically, but agree with the rest of your post... refs are inconsistent, and Dougie definitely needs a break.

18 minutes ago, david-avfc said:

No one is questioning his ability or how good he has been for us... but that yellow card, 10 seconds of the allocated stoppage time left to play and he leaves his foot in like that... it's beyond moronic. Perhaps Emery should have subbed him (especially as he got away with one a few minutes earlier) but the player shouldn't be that stupid, especially that late in the game what was he hoping to achieve such a careless foul that late on

I don't think he was deliberately leaving his foot in. I think he was genuinely trying to win the ball back and get 3 pts. It's on Emery really to make the call there - that feels like a managerial mistake to me. But the sides above us would have a ready-made replacement on the bench, and we don't really.

While we're beating up on him, something I just spotted...

Dougie has the most Villa Premier League appearances (171) of any player in the current squad, ahead of McGinn (163). And he's second on overall Villa appearances, as McGinn has a Championship season, and Mings surprisingly has fewer Villa apps despite the extra season.

And he's still only 25. Think we underrate his contribution sometimes. He has a very tough job to do in the middle there with Kamara out.

Got no problem with what he said, nor his performance, but wonder if it was the wisest thing to throw that out in public.

Firstly, even though he says he's referring to himself as part of the team, he's clearly having a dig at players other than him who let Brentford back in the game. Wonder how well that will be received in the dressing room.

Secondly, it's being spun way out of proportion with what he said, which was more a comment on the specific game. BBC reporting it as if he's said the club/team in general has no bottle.

Oh well. Quality player, and likeable too, has probably earnt the right to say stuff like this.

1 minute ago, timbaughan said:

Bottled it yet again, will finish 6th at best

All 3 teams fighting for 4th / 5th are bottle jobs, so let's not overreact. Will be a few more twists and turns to come.

Strange game. Definitely 2 points dropped. Not sure Emery actually got a lot wrong, just a lack of concentration from the players.

Brentford's game plan was obvious, but it worked pretty well for them.

Dougie Luiz definitely deserved the booking, and that's a big shame.

Saw a thread on Twitter of another club’s long range goals. A bit of a dying art these days with Guardiola ruining football.

What are the best you’ve seen from Villa players over the years? Share YouTube clips if you can find them

11 minutes ago, TRO said:

However, Lascelles said recently after a game, I could play another 90 minutes, such is my fitness......maybe because, he hasn't played much, I don't know.

Players aren’t always the best judges of what they’re capable of. To be an elite footballer you need supreme confidence in your own ability and fitness.

Player burnout is a real thing - it’s why injuries accumulate towards the back end of the season, get worse in the busy periods, and why sides competing for the Champions League need very deep squads (basically two first teams).

Of course there are some exceptions, players who can handle an extreme workload of 50+ games a season without injuries or drops in form, but they aren’t the norm, even at the top level.

I think Emery calculated rightly that the cost of facing Brentford with a weakened side was bigger than the cost of resting a few players away at City.

It makes sense to me, but we’ll only know for certain in the coming weeks.

I also don’t buy the argument someone else made about international break being time off for the players. Most of our first team players travelled and played I think?

It’s testament to what Emery has achieved in the last couple of seasons that people think we had a realistic chance of points at the Etihad with Martinez, Watkins, McGinn, Kamara, Mings, Buendia, and Ramsey all out.

He’s a victim of his own success sometimes on here. It’s insane how well we’re coping with this injury crisis.

I like him, will improve a lot over the next couple of seasons, I’m sure. Good athlete, brave, seems well liked already. The running out of gas thing will be fixed, we’ve seen the same with other players.

We didn’t lose this game because of squad rotation. The two key changes (our two most important players) were forced on us. The rest all made some sense, and we’ve just been battered by a very good side.

4 minutes ago, T-Dog said:

Whilst he didn't cover himself in glory, I think you gotta look at Olson - He looked surprised they'd even had a shot from there. 

Olsen did absolutely nothing wrong

Pussying out of that wall is a nail in the coffin here surely. A shame as he has started to look much more useful recently, but that was unforgivable.

1 minute ago, GlobalVillan said:

Lol. Yeah, if you judge players on one half of football. I don't though.

Any striker is capable of the odd goal.

Let's see how he goes over the next year or so. 

You seriously don’t see him “making it as a PL player”? When he’s doing stuff like this at the age of 20 away at Man City? It’s more than a half of football isn’t it, he looks dangerous, he passes the eye test.

On 02/04/2024 at 16:14, GlobalVillan said:

Benteke? Where are people seeing all this? Ive watched every minute he has played and I haven't seen anything at all that suggest he even has the potential to be like Benteke, never mind the ability.

I fear this guy is criminally overrated by our fan base. I know that will annoy some people but that is honestly how I see it.

Far more likely to be booked than to score. He is a better option than Davis, but that's not hard. I hope to have better options next season but for now I would start Diaby or Zaniolo. 

If I'm proven wrong about him then I will 100% hold my hands up but I do not see Duran making it as PL player based on what I have seen to date.

Benteke? Really?

25 mins in and this is looking like a shocking take