KentVillan

He’s been a very good signing. I like his attitude. Obviously would rather have Pau or Mings in there, as I think he lacks any of the standout characteristics that they bring. But he’s a v consistent professional who does a tidy job every game.

1 minute ago, TRO said:

might be time, to look at that, because its not going away....and teams will only increase the opportunity to stop us...The whinging about teams who stop us, is not helpful...its just denial, of what we are short of.

At times we force feed confidence in to the opposition, by the way we play....its so, so slow and laboured, with off the ball players reluctant to run.

Its no good us moaning about shithouse tactics, if its within the laws of the game.....its like Steve Davis, getting pelters for his safety play, its rubbish.

We are like a child, that only wants to eat sweets, don't want our dinner.....we get yellows, because we foul, in leiu of skilled tackling....The wolf is being kept from the door, by the league position, but some of the games are sub standard.

We have done so well, in terms of results, but we are being found out, for our shortfalls.

 

I actually don’t think the shithouse tactics got to us *too* much. We stood up for ourselves reasonably well. Ultimately the ref should be doing his job, but I don’t think it’s why we lost.

The bigger issue is we can’t find a way through this type of stacked defence. We look so so so much better against teams that want to play football further up the pitch.

6 minutes ago, Made In Aston said:

I voted unai average, but was tempted to give the manager a poor rating today, as he hasnt managed to work out how to play against the'low block'. It's getting to be a bit of a unwelcome trend and opposition are seeing it as a reliable way of getting points from us. 

I think we just don’t have the personnel to unpick the low block atm. Virtually all of our attacking players with possible exception of Tielemans are much more comfortable playing on the counter

I’m not one of those who votes “poor” for the ref every single week, but he was **** useless, crap ref, can’t control a game, let Everton get in his head.

We might regret getting nothing from that game. Think it was there to be won.

10 minutes ago, AndyM3000 said:

I want CL football. Newcastle and Spurs losing will get us it.

Think a draw is the best result for us in this game, but whatever the result it means a team around us dropping points, so there’s pros and cons whatever.

Great game as well. Think we might see a red card in the second half!

What / where is Saint Dominic's Preview? Is it a real thing? All I can find on Google is stuff about the Van Morrison song and album.

5 hours ago, The_Steve said:

Sven Goran Eriksson has terminal cancer - described only having a year to live. How terribly sad. 

Shame, has always seemed like a nice guy, popular with his players

This idea that we’d only want the “old Grealish” in our squad is cope.

The new Grealish is still one of the best players in the world.

Would he be a good value signing? Exactly what we need? Maybe not. Is he a tit? Yes.

But take money and drama out of the equation, clearly he would dramatically improve our squad and Emery would love to have a player of Grealish’s calibre at his disposal.

Wonder what his psychiatric assessment would say. He seems to be a very sick man with little to offer the world anymore.

Can’t remember the last time I saw him do anything wrong. Also comes across so much better these days in interviews - seems to have really turned into a student of the game. Great to see.

I thought he played fairly well in the circumstances, tested the keeper a couple of times.

He needs to sort out this thing he does when play breaks down and he just starts walking instead of thinking about what to do next to help the team.

But all in all, if there hadn’t been so much attention on him before kick off I don’t think we would have been overly critical. It’s hard playing against a parked bus.

12 minutes ago, holteend1982 said:

Nice to win but shows how much we struggle v a low block. Need to do better as we will be seeing it a lot more often 

Agree, this continues to be a problem, and we lack the personnel to do anything about it atm. Watkins, Duran, Bailey, Diaby are all attackers who want a bit of space to work with. Maybe Zaniolo or Luiz can do something interesting, but we really lack that elite technical quality that sides like Man City and Arsenal can call upon.

Having said that, I thought we earned this result without getting out of 4th gear, and came close several times before the goal went in.

Was a solid performance, just lacked a bit of sparkle.

Is this game on TV in England? Sorry if already asked / answered 

I don’t actually see very much evidence at all of any issues with Duran, apart from all the speculation.

He’s a big personality no doubt, picks up a few cards, but he’s never visibly gone full nutter afaics, and for someone his age playing second string to an established striker, he gets pretty much the expected minutes in the expected situations.

Maybe we have another Fred Guilbert type situation on our hands here, but Balotelli? I don’t see it.

6 minutes ago, sne said:

Bit of a kit clash with both Sunderland and Saudi playing in white and dark coloured striped kits. Silly they allowed that.

Yeah been a while since i’ve seen a kit clash like this, giving me a headache - as is the football!

I think Kamara, Pau and Cash returning will actually feel like getting six new players, because that will allow Konsa, McGinn and Dougie to all play their preferred roles.

So I’m not too bothered that we were poor today. We’ll turn this form around IMO. And maybe do a bit of useful business in the January window (probably a right back?)

This Carlos + Lenglet pairing isn’t working at all defensively. Both decent on the ball, but we look far too vulnerable.

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

Probably a month's wages for him...

I don't understand how these footballers don't have onsite security at this stage or some form of guard dogs/high tec security. It's clear they are a target when they are playing games. 

They do. Grealish definitely has dogs, cameras, etc.

Problem is if you have millions of pounds worth of jewellery or whatever, there’s a fair chance one of your security guards knows about it, and it’s worth a lot more than his salary.

I think Unai is caught between taking each game on its own merits, Mourinho style, and implementing a long term style of football that is second nature to the players, Guardiola/Klopp style.

At times it can look naive, but we know he isn’t naive. The bold managers who stick with a philosophy usually get the best results nowadays if they can get all the players firing. That’s what gets you on those big winning streaks that ultimately send you up the table.

I think Unai is a bit of a victim here of elevated expectations of this Villa squad and suppressed expectations of Man Utd at Old Trafford (traditionally an impossible fixture for the past 20 years!) which have made that loss seem much more surprising and painful than it would ordinarily.

Cool heads will say getting 10 points from a sequence of City, Arsenal, Brentford, Shef Utd, Man Utd is solid Champions League form.

I think we’ll find out now though how much faith this squad have in Unai. Management is a confidence trick to some extent, you need to convince the players that you are the all-seeing, all-knowing genius who can take them to a higher level.

He’ll need players like Martinez and McGinn to back him up in the dressing room this week, and a few underperformers (Ramsey, Cash, Diaby) to step up for him asap so that we can start putting points on the board again.

Now there’s a lot more focus on us and our push for Champions League football, there will be a lot more people claiming that the wheels have fallen off, that Unai doesn’t know what he’s doing, etc. You really have to force your way into that Big 6 cartel, it’s only going to get harder through the second half of the season.

My feeling is Unai will hold his nerve because he has the fans on side, and most of our players are having the best season of their careers. It’s a very different scenario from Arsenal or PSG.

Arsenal fans wanking over this result because supposedly this is a classic Unai bottle job … rather than a tricky away fixture with a depleted squad.

Need to make sure we don’t buy into the narrative and just get on with picking up points. Unai continues to work miracles here.

I thought we were lucky to be 2-0 up in the first place tbh, and it wasn’t so much a question of tactics or game management as a lack of options. Utd might be a shambles but they have a wealth of good attacking talent to throw at any game, always capable of results like this.

Was a game where Mings would have helped a lot tbh. But Pau also a big loss.

Trust Unai to fix things pretty quickly as players come back from injury.

So my doubts about Donk and our chances tonight in the pre match were … a bit wide of the mark

1 minute ago, Kiwivillan said:

He was great in Emery first 3-1 win against them

He was, but that was a very different game plan to what I think we’ll try to do tonight. Might be wrong. If it’s another rearguard action, down in the trenches jobby, then maybe Donk will impress.

If we have any plans to control possession for any length of time, then I’m not so sure.