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Ratings and Reactions: Villa 1-1 Southampton


limpid

Match Polls  

120 members have voted

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

    • Guzan
      4
    • Hutton
      11
    • Okore
      48
    • Clark
      36
    • Cissokho
      1
    • Cleverley
      2
    • Westwood
      1
    • Sánchez
      0
    • N'Zogbia
      1
    • Agbonlahor
      13
    • Weimann
      0
    • Richardson (for N'Zogbia 64)
      0
    • Bent (for Sánchez 74)
      3
  2. 2. Manager's Tactics?

    • Very Good
      6
    • Good
      19
    • Average
      31
    • Poor
      47
    • Very Poor
      17
  3. 3. Refereeing Performance

    • Very Good
      8
    • Good
      59
    • Average
      43
    • Poor
      6
    • Very Poor
      4


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What's with guzans kicking? Looks like a tactical choice to me, diagonal balls to try and get a 1v1 near the touch line, incredibly easy to defend, goes out for a throw 50% of the time

Okore actually gave him an option short quite a few times last night and he took it.

 

I honestly think the problem is he gets no choice but to whack it long all the time. I've mentioned it before but nobody ever shows short for him. Don't know why that is.

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Can somebody justify the Bent sub for me? Couldn't see any reason for that at all.

I've spoken about this elsewhere.

 

Sanchez needed to come off. He was clearly tired and had started giving the ball away a lot. Plus we saw from the Spurs game that he's prone to a rash challenge.

Defensive midfield options were limited on the bench, so Lambert brought Gabby back into midfield to help out defensively and needed to replace him up front.

 

I don't think it was the best thing to do. I think leaving Gabby up top as an outlet and bringing on someone more comfortable in possession (Grealish, maybe, hard to say) in midfield may have worked better.

 

But I can't see why people are so baffled by the sub.

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Glad we got a point but it's really disappointing that Weimann failed to put us 2 up just before their goal. Only 1 more game until Benteke comes back! We defended well, so a slice of humble pie was eaten chez briny after all the vile things I've said about Clark. Pretty underwhelmed by the tactic of defending in depth having taken a lucky lead, but Southampton were surprisingly poor at overcoming that approach. As for the match overall, the Guardian sums it up for me:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/nov/24/aston-villa-southampton-premier-league-match-report

Only 25,311 turned up – Villa’s lowest crowd in the Premier League for 15 years – and those that stayed at home had no cause to regret their decision. It was a desperately poor match. Even watching on television must have been an ordeal.

It certainly was! Edited by briny_ear
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Glad we got a point but it's really disappointing that Weimann failed to put us 2 up just before their goal. Only 1 more game until Benteke comes back! We defended well, so a slice of humble pie was eaten chez briny after all the vile things I've said about Clark. Pretty underwhelmed by the tactic of defending in depth having taken a lucky lead, but Southampton were surprisingly poor at overcoming that approach.

 

To be honest, I don't think that's a tactic as such.

 

It's definitely something we do to often, and I'm not defending it at all. But I think it's a result of playign with one striker, and the team generally being poor in posession and not being able to keep the ball.

 

I hate it and I'm sure we'd have held onto more points over the last few years if we didn't do it. But I don't think lambert sends them out to get a goal and then defend deep for the whole game. You could see Clark last night desperately trying to get everyone to push up during the game.

 

It's more a result of our general tactics rather than a specific tactic, if that makes sense. 

As I said, I'm not defending it or defending Lambert. It's poor.

 

Although it's also worth mentioning that I don't think we played that way for 20 minutes after half time. I think that was probably our best period of the game. It was as legs tired and players probably panicked and ran out of ideas that it crept back in and cost us in the last quarter of the game.

Edited by Stevo985
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Guzan was brilliant as usual. So lucky to have such a quality and commanding keeper between the sticks. World class save from Mane in the first half.

It was almost like a 2nd debut for Okore and he did very well, looked the part too.

Clark surprised me. He spoke well in his interview. Maybe being the 'senior' head in central defence suits him because whenever he plays with Vlaar its as if he's in direct competition with him and makes a tonne of mistakes. He was organised and composed when he knew he was the main man back there.

Hutton too, cant believe how good he's been since his re-birth. Committed and showed a lot of ability too.

Gabby, especially first half caused them all sorts of problems with his pace, they couldnt handle him. Great composure for the goal and nice cut back to put it on a plate for Weimann. Just need it more often not once every two months.

The rest were meh, N'Zogbia and Sanchez were awful imo. Shame as Sanchez had been showing signs there's a player in there somewhere. Both guilty of giving the ball away at will and Sanchez really got found out for not being able to cope. Looked out of breath and out of his depth on a number of occassions. But we have to address our ball retention, its like we're a conference side playing Real Madrid sometimes.

On reflection, its a good point and an unexpected one if truth be told. Have to somehow win at the weekend or we're really gonna be staring down the barrell

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36% Possession & 1 Shot on target says it all again.

 

I though it was bad, but that does not say it all in the least.

 

Really? I think you will find we won't win many games if we keep turning out those kind of stats every week pal

 

I did not say we would, buddy, but two stats do not tell the whole story. Ever. People's reliance on those two stats in particular to "prove" a point is ridiculous.

The above stats reflect on the below stats

Worse run for 47 years & lowest league attendance for 15 years.

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The football we are trying to play looks shite, and isn't effective.

 

With out the ball we looked really organised and dealt with most threats comfortably. The defence pressed well and quickly.

 

The obsession with trying to break forward as quickly as possible ends with us losing the ball and having to quickly recover into defensive positions. 

 

We don't try and retain the ball for long enough to build attacks. The ball gets rushed to some one in space, invariably a full back or a centre back. It's either a long ball or a cross from deep.

 

Hearing Roy Keane pundit for ITV, the bloke blatantly knows his football. He and Lambert aren't telling the players to go out and play shite football.

 

Lambert t likes his 4-3-3 with the width coming from the fullbacks and the wide front men. Our full backs at the moment aren't good enough to beat a man deliver a decent cross, and the wide front men can't beat a man a deliver a decent cross.

 

We are suffering from square peg in round hole syndrome. Westwood, Sanchez and Cleverley don't work as a midfield trio. 

 

Overall a very decent point, but we need investment in January or for Benteke to save us.

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cant quite add up what I saw (on Foxtel) with all the comments, we were pretty average but regardless of how crap everyone seems to think southampton are they were on a roll and a good if not world class squad, I was expecting a drubbing, would have been nice to wrap it up but at least we did not sit on the goal as much as usual there was still some effort there to try and continue at least in the first half.

 

On the positive side we finally have options in defence, we had a solid defence tonight even without concrete and Senderos and (cant believe I am saying this) Baker, so we finally stand a chance when Vlaar is injured which is quite often, it used to be no concrete no hope.

 

So building from the back is a good start, with Delph and Benteke back we may start to push forward assuming Lambert does not decide to play N'Zogbia and Bent all the time, I want to love both of them but Charles simply cant hold onto the ball (and sadly constantly tries to) and Bent.. dunno, he looks as lost as Charles most of the time.

 

CANT STAND nor understand the constant derision of Weimann, he works his tits off each and every game, is one of our only 2 goalscorers and frustrates the hell out of the opposition whatever their quality, but all he ever gets is crap here, I would understand if Lambert had a Suarez or Bale on the bench and Lambert had options but he currently hasn't [and to be fair even if he had he would play Bent instead~]

 

I don't understand why our midfield is so innefectual though, Sanchez/Westie/Ceverley/Delph are all good players they just don't seem to gel whatever the line-up, I think if they could get it on then Gabby/Benteke and Andi could wipe up quite nicely.

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Positives:

 

- A point against a tough team. I'd have easily taken that before the game.

- Okore looked sharp, considering how long he's been out and what a tricky game it was. Clark played well, as did the defence in general.

- We scored an actual goal in a game of football.

- Another game ticked off of Benteke's ban.

- Gabby looked very dangerous.

 

Negatives:

 

- Good point, but it's a shame to have conceded, especially after the very good chance we had to win the game that Weimann managed to miss.

- Depressing to be playing football like that at home. We need to take better care of the ball in possession and not put ourselves under constant pressure.

 

 

Overall, I'm pretty content with that point. Like I said, it's a shame that we had to settle for it after being ahead for so long. We show glimpses of being a decent team when we go for it and attack, but we just don't do it enough. I think if we can try and at least break the 20 point mark by Christmas then things are looking a bit better.

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Glad we got a point but it's really disappointing that Weimann failed to put us 2 up just before their goal. Only 1 more game until Benteke comes back! We defended well, so a slice of humble pie was eaten chez briny after all the vile things I've said about Clark. Pretty underwhelmed by the tactic of defending in depth having taken a lucky lead, but Southampton were surprisingly poor at overcoming that approach.

 

To be honest, I don't think that's a tactic as such.

 

It's definitely something we do to often, and I'm not defending it at all. But I think it's a result of playign with one striker, and the team generally being poor in posession and not being able to keep the ball.

 

I hate it and I'm sure we'd have held onto more points over the last few years if we didn't do it. But I don't think lambert sends them out to get a goal and then defend deep for the whole game. You could see Clark last night desperately trying to get everyone to push up during the game.

 

It's more a result of our general tactics rather than a specific tactic, if that makes sense. 

As I said, I'm not defending it or defending Lambert. It's poor.

 

Although it's also worth mentioning that I don't think we played that way for 20 minutes after half time. I think that was probably our best period of the game. It was as legs tired and players probably panicked and ran out of ideas that it crept back in and cost us in the last quarter of the game.

 

I think that does make a lot of sense. In particular, I don't think players have a proper gameplan for how to deal with different situations - that chimes with your point about running out of ideas. We never seem to know how defend a lead, just fall back and allow ourselves to come under increasing pressure, usually with the obvious result, although at least the defending on Monday was strong enough to limit that to 1 goal. I suppose the one game where we took more control was Hull, although even there we let them come back and put us under pressure in the second half.

 

This is something really fundamental for the management team to work on.

Edited by briny_ear
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