Paul Lambert

[Kwan]

We are at our best full tilt and attacking. It's not that great defensively and we get our fair share of pastings but that's what you take until you get better defenders.

A back line of Okore, Vlaar, Bertrand and maybe Lowton isn't terrible. A solid defensive mid would help us. That's two or three signings away from a back line that looks good on paper but until then we should attack

We will not move forward playing shitty McLeish football

Edited February 3, 2014 by Kwan

[CannockVillan]

Friend of Mine who is an Everton fan and was at the game on the weekend said he was impressed by our defending. Felt we were fairly organised and well disciplined.

Always the samE though - you'll never really get anywhere with less than 30% possession (atleast you won't most of the time).

[MessiWillSignForVilla]

We are at our best full tilt and attacking. It's not that great defensively and we get our fair share of pastings but that's what you take until you get better defenders.

A back line of Okore, Vlaar, Bertrand and maybe Lowton isn't terrible. A solid defensive mid would help us. That's two or three signings away from a back line that looks good on paper but until then we should attack

We will not move forward playing shitty McLeish football

 

I don't think you're right that all out attack is the best way to go about things. It's what we did last season and we only just survived, because we were atrocious defensively.

 

Imo, Lambert has seen this and tried to rectify it this season. A solid defense is something you can build a very good team upon, all you really need to do is plug in a couple of gaps up front (or in our case midfield), it's harder to build from a solid attack, as building up a new defense can require a lot of players and doesn't necessary stop at the back, you need good midfielders as well, something that we've shown isn't completely necessary to have a good attack.

 

Last season, at this stage, we'd conceded 46 goals and only scored 20, we looked certain to go down, because our defense was too open when we tried to take the game to teams. We'd also only won 4 games. This season, we've only conceded 34 and scored 27, still not great but an improvement. We've also won 7 games, again not great but an improvement. We also have 7 clean sheets, 1 more than the whole of last season.

 

It may not be pretty to watch, but I think it's necessary that we improve ourselves defensively so that we have a good foundation to build a team upon, and if that means playing a bit defensively sometimes, so be it. We couldn't continue to play like we did last season, because we wouldn't improve, we got more than our fair share of pastings, and it almost relegated us. We've gotten better defenders this year, one of which is out with a long term injury. 

 

And the comparison to McLeish is rubbish imo, at least we've shown this season we can play football and take it to teams, something we never did under McLeish.

[BG_Villa_Fan]

 

And the comparison to McLeish is rubbish imo, at least we've shown this season we can play football and take it to teams, something we never did under McLeish.

 

 

Really not true. No one likes McLeish and his football but that's simply not true. 

[MessiWillSignForVilla]

Maybe I'm misremembering it then, but I can't remember a single game under McLeish where afterwards I was thinking "This team could really do something", something I've thought plenty of times this season and last.

[Kwan]

I understand your POV but it is McLeish style to stick 8 defenders in the box and lump it up to two target men. I'm not obsessed with possession but if you don't disagree with how we set up against Everton then there's just a fundamental difference in believing the best method to moving up the table.

And it is not playing shitty McLeish style

The team CAN attack and be creative but instead it was set up to camp and hoof and that is atrocious

Edited February 3, 2014 by Kwan

[Stevo985]

Maybe I'm misremembering it then, but I can't remember a single game under McLeish where afterwards I was thinking "This team could really do something", something I've thought plenty of times this season and last.

From memory, we had 2 good game sunder McLeish. vs Norwich and vs Chelsea.

 

 

But I totaly agree with your bolded point. My main problem with McLeish was that there was no bright light at the end of the tunnel. There didn't seem to be a game plan of any kind, long term. Even under Houllier you could at least see what he was TRYING to do to the team, even though it didn't work.

 

Now some might say they can't see where we're going under Lambert, and that's fair enough. But I certainly think there's been a lot more reasons for hope under Lambert than under McLeish.

[Big_John_10]

And the comparison to McLeish is rubbish imo, at least we've shown this season we can play football and take it to teams, something we never did under McLeish.

Really not true. No one likes McLeish and his football but that's simply not true.

We keep the ball less than we did under McLeish, our pass completion stat is lower than under McLeish and I'm pretty sure at the same point in the McLeish season we'd scored more goals.

[KHV]

Still our lack of a functioning midfield that is the real problem, always is.

This is the big problem with Aston Villa, apart from Delph we have no other midfielder capable of being a premier league player. It is by far the worst midfield I have ever seen assembled

[TRO]

I can understand what people are saying, but i don't agree. If the past 1.5 season has teached us anything it is that we are not a defensive side. We have one good defender and thats Vlaar. Thats it. Everytime we try to park the bus we lose, simple as that.

 

i agree with you about defending

 

when we get applauded for our clean sheets it usually defending in numbers, which has an adverse effect on the rest of our game.

 

we do not have players that are individually good defenders, with the exception of Vlaar.....reading of the game is a big part of it and most of our players can't do that.

Edited February 3, 2014 by TRO

[villalad21]

 

We are at our best full tilt and attacking. It's not that great defensively and we get our fair share of pastings but that's what you take until you get better defenders.

A back line of Okore, Vlaar, Bertrand and maybe Lowton isn't terrible. A solid defensive mid would help us. That's two or three signings away from a back line that looks good on paper but until then we should attack

We will not move forward playing shitty McLeish football

 

I don't think you're right that all out attack is the best way to go about things. It's what we did last season and we only just survived, because we were atrocious defensively.

 

Imo, Lambert has seen this and tried to rectify it this season. A solid defense is something you can build a very good team upon, all you really need to do is plug in a couple of gaps up front (or in our case midfield), it's harder to build from a solid attack, as building up a new defense can require a lot of players and doesn't necessary stop at the back, you need good midfielders as well, something that we've shown isn't completely necessary to have a good attack.

 

Last season, at this stage, we'd conceded 46 goals and only scored 20, we looked certain to go down, because our defense was too open when we tried to take the game to teams. We'd also only won 4 games. This season, we've only conceded 34 and scored 27, still not great but an improvement. We've also won 7 games, again not great but an improvement. We also have 7 clean sheets, 1 more than the whole of last season.

 

It may not be pretty to watch, but I think it's necessary that we improve ourselves defensively so that we have a good foundation to build a team upon, and if that means playing a bit defensively sometimes, so be it. We couldn't continue to play like we did last season, because we wouldn't improve, we got more than our fair share of pastings, and it almost relegated us. We've gotten better defenders this year, one of which is out with a long term injury. 

 

And the comparison to McLeish is rubbish imo, at least we've shown this season we can play football and take it to teams, something we never did under McLeish.

 

Of course a defense is a great platform to build on, but the problem is that we have no good defenders exept Vlaar, and no good defensive midtfielders. And therefore there is no defensive platform to build on, you have to look at our overall team, what style of football should we play with our current squad? Imo its not the defensive style, our players look so uncomfortable playing it.

Edited February 3, 2014 by villalad21

[Zatman]

 

Maybe I'm misremembering it then, but I can't remember a single game under McLeish where afterwards I was thinking "This team could really do something", something I've thought plenty of times this season and last.

From memory, we had 2 good game sunder McLeish. vs Norwich and vs Chelsea.

 

 

 

 

while not wanting to go off-topic we also played well at Anfield and Emirates in the cup as well losing 3-2 if i recall and got good wins vs Blackburn and Wolves

[Houlston]

Its true the defence is better than this time last year but the conceded 46 to 34 paints a much prettier picture when you don't take into account 13 of those goals came in 2 games.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Houlston

[A.V.F.C]

We knew it'd be a long road but its been a frustrating couple of seasons, we shoot ourselves in the foot so much. We have a decent few weeks of fixtures coming up so I hope we can get on some kind of run for once, despite our scandalous transfer window,

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

We are clearly a work in progress. But my oh my, progress is slow and hard to see at times. The defence has improved but it is still capable of the truly shambolic. Our slightly better defence has cost us our attack, which is, when we aren't counter-attacking, ponderous and impotent at the best of times. I appreciate that it takes time to build a team when you have sod all money, however this league is unforgiving and we do need some substantial investment in order to compete, otherwise we'll be treading water for the foreseeable future save a flukey season now and then which gets us into Europe but costs us our best players.

[Stevo985]

Its true the defence is better than this time last year but the conceded 46 to 34 paints a much prettier picture when you don't take into account 13 of those goals came in 2 games.

But why wouldn't you take those 2 games into account?

[Houlston]

 

Its true the defence is better than this time last year but the conceded 46 to 34 paints a much prettier picture when you don't take into account 13 of those goals came in 2 games.

But why wouldn't you take those 2 games into account?

 

Perhaps I've not put that very well, I'm just saying that if you look at the improvement of 12 goals its a very dramatic change but when 13 of those goals came in 2 games the consistent improvement form game to game cant be much better? I guess a nerdy scientist may consider those games as an anomaly if it were a science experiment for example.

 

I'm not saying we haven't improved, but in a football sense I don't think that the difference on the pitch is as great as that 12 goal swing could suggest.

[vandaq]

Find myself agreeing with a lot of you, don`t really understand what happened at that everton game....not really sure how to sum it up but it was more painful than it should have been

[Stevo985]

 

 

Its true the defence is better than this time last year but the conceded 46 to 34 paints a much prettier picture when you don't take into account 13 of those goals came in 2 games.

But why wouldn't you take those 2 games into account?

 

Perhaps I've not put that very well, I'm just saying that if you look at the improvement of 12 goals its a very dramatic change but when 13 of those goals came in 2 games the consistent improvement form game to game cant be much better? I guess a nerdy scientist may consider those games as an anomaly if it were a science experiment for example.

 

I'm not saying we haven't improved, but in a football sense I don't think that the difference on the pitch is as great as that 12 goal swing could suggest.

 

But if you took out our two highest games this season in terms of goals conceded we'd be on 27 goals (I think... 34 minus 4 minus 3?) so the improvement would look fine again.

 

Anomalies or not, those games happened. The fact that we haven't had any results like that this season can't really be spun into a negative, it's testament to the defence improving that we've avoided those results.

[Mic09]

 

 

Its true the defence is better than this time last year but the conceded 46 to 34 paints a much prettier picture when you don't take into account 13 of those goals came in 2 games.

But why wouldn't you take those 2 games into account?

 

Perhaps I've not put that very well, I'm just saying that if you look at the improvement of 12 goals its a very dramatic change but when 13 of those goals came in 2 games the consistent improvement form game to game cant be much better? I guess a nerdy scientist may consider those games as an anomaly if it were a science experiment for example.

 

I'm not saying we haven't improved, but in a football sense I don't think that the difference on the pitch is as great as that 12 goal swing could suggest.

 

May be true in maths, but isn't the reason we conceded 13 goals in 2 games due to the fact that we were, in fact, bad defence?