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Ratings and Reactions: Villa 0-0 Sunderland


limpid

Man of the Match  

80 members have voted

  1. 1. Who was your Man of the match?

    • Guzan
      4
    • Bacuna
      0
    • Luna
      0
    • Westwood
      8
    • Vlaar
      18
    • Clark
      10
    • El Ahmadi
      0
    • Delph
      3
    • Benteke
      2
    • Agbonlahor
      31
    • Weimann
      0
    • Tonev (for Al Ahmadi 71)
      0
    • Albrighton (for Weimann 71)
      2
    • Kozák (for Benteke 85)
      2


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I agree with Rugeley. Today has been the straw that broke the camels back for me as well.

I challenge anyone who went today to say that was entertaining. It's not the first awful game this season, and on current form it won't be the last. I sit in the lower North and we haven't even had a villa league goal up our end yet this season.

Wish lambert would forget 4-3-3, it nearly got us relegated. We're so predictable and don't have any spark in Midfield.

Final word on Benteke, I'd like to say........nothing. A bit like his performance today.

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Have Villa had a genuinely decent attacking midfielder since Paul Merson (even he was coming to the end of his days back then)? Why is it that we didn't go after Sessegnon, Ravel Morrison, whoever, when we knew N'Zogbia was out for so long (Lambert: "if he'd have broken his leg it wouldn't have been as bad as his achilles")? Instead we spent £7m (seven million!) on essentially a poor man's Benteke who also happens to be our best player (well...usually anyway).

 

Our problem, as has been the case with previous managers, is movement and link-up play.

 

So many times today, we just pass it out wide or backwards because there is nobody linking the front three to the midfield. Apparently, this must work in Scotland, because Lambert, O'Neill and McLeish are obsessed with building attacks via the wingers, but my Nan could've won the Scottish League with Rangers or Celtic. Weimann, Gabby (to his credit he tried, but Riquelme he is not) and especially Benteke are so rigid as a front three. Until 70 mins, none of them really dropped back into a deeper central position, and neither one of KEA, Delph or Westwood were really very interested in pushing up. You will get nowhere if every time you get the ball on the halfway line, there is nobody moving in the space between their defence and midfield.

 

I'm not sure if Benteke was instructed to just stand there and wait for a delivery, but even when one did (rarely) come in, he seemed to have no interest in attacking it with any real intent.

 

Also, corners:

 

a) why on earth do we bring every player back into the box?!?!

 

Not only does it devoid the possibility of a counter-attack, but it also invites their whole team and their uncles to camp outside our box! Giaccherini's chance came purely as a result of this. It got cleared to Ki-Sung Yueng (number 4 who had a v. good game, who would presumably have gone with Gabby if he was on the half-way line), who then put a ball across which then set-up the awful miss. All was avoidable without these non-nonsensical over-cautious tactics. Why isn't Gabby on the half-way line, bringing at least two of their defenders with him? It's simple. It's not like he's marking anybody anyway.

 

b ) What is with these floated corners of Westwood's? It's quite impressive technique, but I suspect the main reason we have scored from so few corners over the past few years is because we are no longer whipping balls in, in-swinging, with pace. Remember how many goals we got from Barry doing this on the right and Young on the left? Taking the pace off the ball does not help. It just means there's a massive cluster of players which have an additional three seconds grappling all over each other which results in no end product.

Edited by gilbertoAVFC
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It wasn't pretty - and there is clearly a problem with Benteke with needs sorting (either get him fit, motivated or drop him)

 

That said it clear lambert has the early foundations of a good team in place at villa park. The final stage of that plan is obviously add creativity and goal scoring - thats generally the last thing to come and those players cost - maybe the funds from the benteke sale will finance those players - but one thing is for certain the solid foundations we have craved for a number of years are now in place. 

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Rugeley your post is a joke an embarrassment. Compare what you have now to what you've had in recent years. This team is young. It needs time to improve. Yes, it needs better players as well but as a group they cost much less than what was there before and I'd argue they are better than what was there before.

10th in the league - TENTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And after the start we have had. What do you want - 3rd, 4th. Or is it just that it hasn't been thrill a minute? When you spend over £5m on players and £60k a week then I'll listen to complaints about lack of excitement.

Piss poor tactics? So you didn't want 4-3-3.....look at other teams, how they play, where they are in the league! There has been plenty of exciting games so if the last two haven't been great then deal with it. We had several players all returning from injury - starting their first game. It was disappointing not to win the game but it is still a point and stops a team below closing the gap!

listen here mate I've got a right to give my opinion and I'm telling you the shit we have to endure week after week is enough to send you mad, I'm a realist and I know at the end of the day we aint gonna challenge for anything but I want to be entertained and 9 times out of ten when you go the villa you don't, we have been absolutely dreadful at home for years so can you blame me for the way I feel, I aint the joke mate that team is, we all pay our money to watch that near enough week in and week out, if you can't see how bad we are then you need help, tacticly we are absolutely useless, we aint got a plan A half the time let alone a plan B, yes we have some promising players but let's be realistic most of that team aint good enough and if they ever do become good enough they will be gone, apart from the 2nd half against city and the last 20mins against cardiff we have been awful at home, I don't normally blow my lid but today has done it, we've been worse but for crying out loud that was painful

Christ, did all the punctuation keys on your keyboard fall off?

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To finish mid table is good for us, that's where were at as a club, year after year we are falling even further behind the top 6 or 7 clubs, swansea who are only in their 2nd season in prem are streets ahead of us in terms of quality and same with southampton, aston villa football club is in a coma and if it aint careful we WILL eventually go down, is it any wonder we can't fill our ground for neither love or money, and that's even with cheap as hell ticket prices and multi game packages, we wernt playing a good team today we were playing the worst team in league who didn't even play that well themselves,

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You guys are so negative! We are in the top half of the table for crying out loud! If we finish from 10th to 13th I will be so happy. We also haven't conceded 700 goals like we had last season at this point. I'm well happy with how things are at the moment, I just wish we had a decent creative midfielder.... That for me is the only thing we are missing. Good point today, though it was a good chance of getting all 3. Sunderland are fighting for their survival and they beat city recently. Stop whinging, keep spending your money, and get on with supporting the team.

Edited by Tayls
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I haven't been to the game today and have been out so haven't streamed it but...in my opinion we massively miss Lowton. Óne of our most creative players. I'd play him instead of Weimann. Weimann ok away with counter/space but we need Lowton to break teams down. Lowton very creative and we miss his link up play/crosses as does Benteke IMO..

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It wasn't pretty - and there is clearly a problem with Benteke with needs sorting (either get him fit, motivated or drop him)

That said it clear lambert has the early foundations of a good team in place at villa park. The final stage of that plan is obviously add creativity and goal scoring - thats generally the last thing to come and those players cost - maybe the funds from the benteke sale will finance those players - but one thing is for certain the solid foundations we have craved for a number of years are now in place.

Great post, fully agree.

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Rugeley your post is a joke an embarrassment. Compare what you have now to what you've had in recent years. This team is young. It needs time to improve. Yes, it needs better players as well but as a group they cost much less than what was there before and I'd argue they are better than what was there before.

10th in the league - TENTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And after the start we have had. What do you want - 3rd, 4th. Or is it just that it hasn't been thrill a minute? When you spend over £5m on players and £60k a week then I'll listen to complaints about lack of excitement.

Piss poor tactics? So you didn't want 4-3-3.....look at other teams, how they play, where they are in the league! There has been plenty of exciting games so if the last two haven't been great then deal with it. We had several players all returning from injury - starting their first game. It was disappointing not to win the game but it is still a point and stops a team below closing the gap!

listen here mate I've got a right to give my opinion and I'm telling you the shit we have to endure week after week is enough to send you mad, I'm a realist and I know at the end of the day we aint gonna challenge for anything but I want to be entertained and 9 times out of ten when you go the villa you don't, we have been absolutely dreadful at home for years so can you blame me for the way I feel, I aint the joke mate that team is, we all pay our money to watch that near enough week in and week out, if you can't see how bad we are then you need help, tacticly we are absolutely useless, we aint got a plan A half the time let alone a plan B, yes we have some promising players but let's be realistic most of that team aint good enough and if they ever do become good enough they will be gone, apart from the 2nd half against city and the last 20mins against cardiff we have been awful at home, I don't normally blow my lid but today has done it, we've been worse but for crying out loud that was painful
Christ, did all the punctuation keys on your keyboard fall off?
bollocks to punctuality!
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It wasn't pretty - and there is clearly a problem with Benteke with needs sorting (either get him fit, motivated or drop him)

That said it clear lambert has the early foundations of a good team in place at villa park. The final stage of that plan is obviously add creativity and goal scoring - thats generally the last thing to come and those players cost - maybe the funds from the benteke sale will finance those players - but one thing is for certain the solid foundations we have craved for a number of years are now in place.

Great post, fully agree.

 

 

 

I withdraw my post then  :D  :D

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It wasn't pretty - and there is clearly a problem with Benteke with needs sorting (either get him fit, motivated or drop him)

That said it clear lambert has the early foundations of a good team in place at villa park. The final stage of that plan is obviously add creativity and goal scoring - thats generally the last thing to come and those players cost - maybe the funds from the benteke sale will finance those players - but one thing is for certain the solid foundations we have craved for a number of years are now in place.

Great post, fully agree.

I withdraw my post then :D:D

Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends :D Edited by StefanAVFC
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It wasn't pretty - and there is clearly a problem with Benteke with needs sorting (either get him fit, motivated or drop him)

 

That said it clear lambert has the early foundations of a good team in place at villa park. The final stage of that plan is obviously add creativity and goal scoring - thats generally the last thing to come and those players cost - maybe the funds from the benteke sale will finance those players - but one thing is for certain the solid foundations we have craved for a number of years are now in place. 

We put six past Sunderland and scored freely in the run last season which just kept us up yet our defence was poor. Our defence this season has been much better yet we couldn't score against Sunderland today and indeed we haven't scored any goals in the 1st half of our home games this season so i'm not so sure your above statement follows.

 

I also don't agree that we have the correct foundation in place to push us on but that is down to opinion on players which would very quickly get boring and be subjective to too many variables.

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To finish mid table is good for us, that's where were at as a club, year after year we are falling even further behind the top 6 or 7 clubs, swansea who are only in their 2nd season in prem are streets ahead of us in terms of quality and same with southampton, aston villa football club is in a coma and if it aint careful we WILL eventually go down, is it any wonder we can't fill our ground for neither love or money, and that's even with cheap as hell ticket prices and multi game packages, we wernt playing a good team today we were playing the worst team in league who didn't even play that well themselves,

Villa have never, ever filled out our ground. Even under O'Neill when we came 6th 3 years on the spin we averaged between 40 to 38,000. The reasons  said that we are crap at home, the football is crap, and we are never going to challenge for the title. I think this came as a nasty shock for Randy and co, as they (naively) thought that as soon as we had a decent side and with what being the biggest club in the 2nd biggest city in the UK, that we might be able to sell 40,000 seats every home game and possibly more with a expanded Villa Park. Which will never happen. Because we are as not as big as some of us hope that we are.

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