KentVillan

Mount who won the penalty? I don’t think we were playing for set pieces anyway, it’s literally just a normal feature of football that you try to win fouls etc. People have lost the plot.

We lost because a bit of luck didn’t go our way and we didn’t execute in key moments. I think France’s first goal should have been saved. And it was an obvious foul on Saka in the build up. Clear pen on Kane not given (assuming it was in the box?) Agree bringing Sterling on was odd, especially as Saka was causing them huge problems. I think we were too passive and cautious, but ultimately just one of those days. Could easily have gone our way and everyone is lauding Southgate as a genius for neutralising Mbappe. Whatever. Hope France get beat by Morocco and we get some good footage of Mbappe crying

Strongly disagree with this analysis. For once it’s hard to really see much wrong with Southgate’s decision making, besides probably telling the players to be too passive with their pressing and passing in the first half. It’s delusional to think Maddison or Grealish would have made the difference here.

I’ve never been a Southgate fan, but that was his best tournament as manager. We were unlucky tonight and although there were clear areas of criticism for Southgate (lack of pressing in first half, unadventurous passing) he also largely neutralised Mbappe, who pregame was seen as the main threat. He’s developed a slightly braver streak now with the formation, if not with the passing style… but maybe that will come. Hard to see who would actually do a better job than him because the FA and the tabloid press and weirdo England “fans” are such an unholy alliance, who will try to ruin any manager in record time. Southgate’s ability to avoid that is his main strength. Tactically he’s mediocre yea; but maybe international football *is* tactically mediocre.

The thing with Emi is I’m not convinced he’s actually *that* good a keeper for a league campaign… certainly not up there with Ederson, Alisson, Courtois, etc. Arguably even Ramsdale has been better than him this season. But put him in a tournament scenario and he just has something special about him. Brilliant in a penalty shoot out, and brilliant in high pressure situations. Doesn’t shy away, and his teammates know they can trust him.

And FWIW, after signing multiple players from Belgium in recent years, I think the lesson we learnt was that you need to be absolutely dominating that league to have a chance of stepping up to the Premier League. Benteke was a 1 in 2 striker in Belgium, and his scoring rate was accelerating just before he joined Villa. And he was dominant in the air. Wesley’s return of about 1 in 3 goals, combined with his lack of aerial ability, in hindsight made him a pretty bizarre signing. A big man who isn’t good in the air simply isn’t a sensible signing, unless he’s very quick and absolutely banging in the goals. Maybe we were seduced by his young age, and the fact there was chatter around Europe about him as a hot prospect, and someone got suckered by a clever agent or something. The interesting thing is how many journos compared him with players like Benteke as an aerially dominant player, based purely on assumption. People look at him and assume he will be an absolute beast in the air, but just watch him for 10 mins and you’ll see very quickly that he isn’t. A real lack of homework on that deal, and it nearly cost Dean Smith his job, as we were looking for a replacement for Tammy Abraham as lone striker in a 4-3-3. (Tammy is a much better player, with good all round attributes to lead the line, as you can see from his subsequent career). I’m still mystified by it and would love to find out the back story. I really wanted him to succeed and feel he could have been an *okay* player hovering around lower PL / upper Championship level, but he wasn’t at all the right fit for our team, and we had our pants pulled down on the price.

Christ, just found this. Horrible flashbacks to a few things I thought I’d managed to forget. His weird running style, his constantly angry body language, and his mistimed headers. I’m not sure how much of this you can blame on the injury tbh. I think there is a team somewhere with a style and a manager who suit him, who can get him playing a bit more in line with the Belgium days. He’s obviously good enough to play professional football. But it may be at quite a low level now. Such a weird player. You do see little flashes in the clip of what he can do receiving the ball under pressure and playing a neat pass, but he doesn’t even seem to be doing that more than 50% of the time. I’d still fancy him to tuck away a chance in the box, but yes very glad he doesn’t play for us anymore.

I disagree with those like @rodders0223who say he was pure shit the entire time he was here, but in fairness to them he probably never had much of a future at Villa once we stayed up. I’m more inclined towards @Zatman’s take that his physical size makes people expect a completely different type of player, and then when you realise what type of player he wants to be, he lacks the pace and technical quality to really play that role at the highest level. He had his success in Belgium playing in a 3-5-2 where he could drop off a more advanced striker and link up the play. If you play him as a lone striker or as the advanced striker, his natural instinct is to drop deep, and I’m not sure how easy it would be to coach this out of him. He likes the ball to feet and really only uses his physical strength in that context. He‘s *okay* in the air in duels, but he isn’t the type to attack crosses with his head and score bullet headers. We did see some decent performances from him, though. The ones that stand out are Everton at home, Man Utd away and Burnley away (sadly the game where he got injured). In these games he bullied defenders, covered a lot of ground, linked up intelligently, and slotted a couple of finishes away very calmly. I would have expected pre-injury Wesley to have caused a lot of problems in second-tier football, despite not being good enough for the Premier League, but sounds like he really is just playing for the pay cheque now after a crippling injury. Anyway, let us know if he improves at all…!

It worked particularly well against Argentina because their defence is quite small. Just Googling their heights - Lisandro Martinez 5'9, Otamendi 6'0, Romero 6'1. Not sure who exactly was on the pitch when van Gaal rolled the dice, but Tagliafico 5'8, Montiel 5'9, Holding midfielder Enzo Fernandez 5'10. It was the smart move in this game. In the Premier League I don't think you get that match up so often, but I agree it's a good option to have.

I think White was taken for his ability to play RB, RCB and CB, and it makes sense to have a utility defender in the squad. I don't think he was competing with Mings for a place. The weird thing is how Southgate has taken so much cover at RB. I would have taken one of the specialist RBs out (as you still have White and Saka to cover injuries to the first two), put Mings in ahead of Coady, then you've got an extra slot for a striker or left back. In fairness to Southgate, it's possible his thinking was Walker might get injured and Trippier is LB cover, and Coady is just there as the hype man. Still doesn't really explain why he's left us so light in attack. If we're honest with ourselves, the reason not many Villa players are featuring in the WC is Steven Gerrard. I think Mings, Watkins, Dougie, Buendia, Digne and possibly a couple of others would have had a decent shot at a WC place if Emery had been here a bit longer. They were all getting caps relatively recently. Never mind, we'll have a well rested squad for the second half of the league.

Cut them some slack tbf, probably been fed pure nonsense about what they were actually doing... "we're a wildlife sanctuary that looks after sick animals that can't go back out into the wild". Travellers get caught in this all time. Elephant sanctuaries, turtle sanctuaries, bla bla, which are just a cash cow. Be good if they come out and apologise for it at some point, though.

Yep I like to think Emery is enough of a football obsessive to have a good eye for where that next Champions League level talent is. And we can definitely attract that second tier of transfer targets now.

I think in football it is easier (with VAR etc) to do it properly. It’s not quite the same as a murder trial with a death penalty where you are relying on eye witness testimony, although I take your point, if the ref isn’t sure he should err on the side of not cautioning.

In that case I would hope he has a mare tbh. Love him, and don't care much for international football, but I want England to win.

Game management is such a standard part of a top coach's repertoire that it's hard to single anyone out. Time wasting isn't always cheating - it can mean safe passing patterns, sitting deep, launching the ball into touch, holding the ball up in the corner, etc. None of that is cheating. If the referee handles the game properly, "cheating" always has a cost anyway, so you could argue it's all within the confines of the rules. We get most annoyed with cheating when referees don't book a player for a cynical foul or don't clamp down on shithousing.

The Van Gaal hate is massively out of order. Think his comments about Messi have been taken completely out of context, and basically it all boils down to Riquelme and di Maria hating him when he was their coach.

I think we have the manager and the budget to make a realistic push for those spots starting from next season. Outside chance obviously, but at the very least the Europe League is attainable. We'll see. I don't mind if we lose him for a massive fee, but he might give us a couple more seasons before that happens.

Me too, but that's his game, and we all loved it when he did it to Bruno at Old Trafford.

I think we can give it to him in the next 2-3 seasons if he sticks around. He's only 30, which is young in keeper years, and he hasn't had loads of injuries. Probably got another 8-10 years ahead of him. And if we do lose him, it'll be for big money on our terms.

We're lucky to have a player with this personality. A complete word removed when he wants to be, but he's our word removed.

Yeah but I think people are just commenting here on the general quality of the football on TV between sides they don't care about. It's not as if everyone saying this is 12 years old. We've all seen a few World Cups...

I'm 38, so yes anything before 1990 I can't remember

The last World Cup was awful. Most of the teams looked completely spent towards the latter stages. The France/Belgium side of the draw was very good, but the England/Croatia side was pants.

2014 was decent, but had a pretty boring knockout stage (including the final)... there were a few 0-0s yeah, but not loads. The hot humid weather in the north of Brazil wore down a few teams. I think this winter format produces better football, as all the players look fresh. Plus the refs stopping the watch more often has meant you get a lot more drama towards the end.

That's bollocks tbh, it's been a classic, and in my lifetime only 98 and 06 have had a similar level of drama and quality