Ratings and Reactions: West Brom - Villa

[pooligan]

As far as i am concerned our clueless manager and his approach to the game cost us this game.Yes the Richardson red card ,the awful performances of Benteke and Gabby and the mistake by Guzan for the goal contributed ,of course they did.

 

Lambert, just as he did against Spurs when we were down to ten men,decided to just defend and hope to hang on.Everyone watching the second half could see what was coming except our manager it seems.That Albion team is about as poor as you could find and we should have taken something even with ten men

[PaulC]

Richardson shouldn't have been on the pitch in the first place IMO.

 

That I agree with. Other managers trust their youngsters. Grealish should have been given the go ahead. 

[a m ole]

I wonder, has anyone criticising the team and manager for the result yesterday ever had to play a whole competitive football match with a man less? Because I have, and it is exhausting, having to cover two positions when you don't have the ball, having less options when you do. They actually did fantastically well to edge the possession stats, considering.

If you lose a man with 15 mins to go you can throw caution to the wind and risk conceding because you have the energy, it's totally different when you've been doing all the hard work for a whole hour.

[PaulC]

I think Albion are a team so low in confidence. They didn't have a clue in front of goal. They were there for the taking. A much worse team when we got a 2-2 draw with last season. Lambert got his team selection wrong. No way should Nzog and Richardson have started. 

[Xela]

Always going to be a struggle to hold on with a man less. We're not good enough to play with a man deficit.

 

We're a below average team with 10 men losing to another below average team with 11 men

 

11 v 11 then we may have nicked it. 

Edited December 14, 2014 by Xela

[SeanO]

 

We were bloody awful once again, I have given Okore MoM but tbh if I were marking out of 10 he would get a five.

 

Not one of our team were able to supply Benteke or Gabby any good service but they were both so poor it's doubtful they would have done anything anyway.

 

Really poor all round however Albion were even worse so we may yet survive another season.

Agree with everyone else on the thread apart from you and about two others that have just written drivel about lambert tactics and vlaar.

Early sending off changed everything and we created chances for benteke who fluffed his lines.

Nothing to see here.

 

 

And I don't agree with almost every one eyed post by you but usually I can't be bothered replying to them. We were awful before the sending off, yes it may have changed the result but we were useless throughout.

[VillaAndLoyal]

I'm annoyed by the lack of intelligence shown all round in this game. Richardson by getting himself sent off for a stupid tackle that he was never going to make. The other players for continuing to play the ball out from the back after we went down to ten men because that's obviously what they've been told to do in training, even though doing so meant that they were putting themselves under more and more pressure. Benteke for being a professional striker who seems unable to stay onside. And Lambert for once again failing to react to the changing match until it was too late.

 

Some poor individual performances out there. Benteke had an absolute stinker, especially when that chance for the equaliser fell to him at the end. His touch and control was rotten. But that's the risk with people saying "It'll be fine when Benteke gets back" - all we need is for him to have a bad day and we simply never look like scoring. Cleverly's crossing was atrocious; how hard is it to beat the first man? Gabby was his usual inconsistent self; we know he can show pace and strength, but he does it so rarely. And of course Richardson, of whom no more shall be written.

 

That said, I thought Hutton gave a good performance and Okore was excellent. Clark has improved massively too.

 

We should have won that, but the sending off changed everything. After that it was all about how well we withstood pressure and attacked on the break. Unfortunately we didn't do that very well. Ovrall a poor performance. 

 

Thank god for one intelligent post in this thread - we, not Richardson, were our own worst enemies. Playing with 10 men makes it harder, clearly. But this was a very poor and low-on-confidence Albion team and one we should have coped with better even with 10 men. You often see teams go down to 10 men and they cope perfectly well, so why when we've got someone great in the air up top do we decide to play the ball around in silly little triangles in front of our own goal? This is clearly something which Lambert has asked the players to do and that's fine if we're 11 v 11 but when you've just had a man sent-off and the home crowd are buoyed why invite extra pressure on top of that? We were just clueless in that department. Loads of fans were screaming from the stands to hit Benteke and take a bit of pressure away but we kept trying to play like Bayern Munich. Why did Lambert not get a message on to the pitch? That really falls with the manager.

 

I can't believe so many others have simply used Richardson as the scapegoat. It wasn't even a definite red card - we've seen them given and we've seen them not. Given that he made little contact with the player and made a genuine attempt to get the ball after over-running it, you'd have hoped Dean would have taken into account it was a full-blooded derby and not been swayed by the Albion moaners (who were screaming for decisions after every dive or coming together). But, alas, just like he did at Fulham away a couple of seasons ago, Mr Dean chose the spotlight once more. For those who said he made absolutely no wrong decisions: you must have missed the incidents in the first half when our player (maybe Hutton?) got away from the Albion player only to be hauled down with two arms over the top (no yellow card given), then a similar incident happens 5 minutes later at the Brummie Road End and the Villa player is booked. Where is the consistency in that? If that's an excellent refereeing performance then it just goes to show the level we've come to expect in this country.

 

It was a really strange game in general yesterday. I, and many others, went into it with a lot of confidence. The pressure was all on Albion after their poor run of results and yet their players used the derby to gee themselves up & they seemed more 'up for it' and so did the crowd. It seemed like we were the nervous ones - on the pitch and in the stands (even before the red card). Our away end was very quiet first half, excellent for the first 20 minutes of the second half (thanks, in main, to that new chant which we got going in the concourse at half-time) and then quiet again once they had scored which I guess is to be expected when you've got thousands of yam yams 'boing-boinging' in their cup final. It's not the first time we've been quiet at the Hawthorns in recent seasons though so that was disappointing.

 

One last point from yesterday: the new "YouTube celebrity" we have at the Villa (the one from the Benteke song) really did make me cringe. I saw him before the game in the away end having 'pictures' with other fans. Half expected a book signing to be taking place when I went down at half-time. He seemed to be absolutely loving his new found 'fame' - each to their own I guess...

[sheepyvillian]

If Joey fecking Essex can be considered a celebrity , then why not a fellow Villa fan ? Your fifteen minutes is your fifteen minutes no matter what shape or form , simple as .

[Harry]

As far as i am concerned our clueless manager and his approach to the game cost us this game.Yes the Richardson red card ,the awful performances of Benteke and Gabby and the mistake by Guzan for the goal contributed ,of course they did.

 

Lambert, just as he did against Spurs when we were down to ten men,decided to just defend and hope to hang on.Everyone watching the second half could see what was coming except our manager it seems.That Albion team is about as poor as you could find and we should have taken something even with ten men

Good post. Let's not delude ourselves because we manage to string together a few decent results that Lambert is suddenly SAF. His is still a p*ss poor manager so out of his depth it is embarrassing. He has no Plan B let alone a Plan A. I sometimes wonder whether any decent result is in spite of Lambert rather than because of him.

 

Has Tom Fox ever watched a game? To suggest our ambition is to be regularly playing European football within three years is so laughable with Lambert in charge and apparently he is integral to that plan? Deluded does not even begin to explain it.

 

Richardson is total fool for getting himself sent off and then for Gardiner that lifelong Villa / Blues / Sunderland / Albion fan (delete as appropriate) to get the winner makes matters worse and then to get on twitter to start bragging about it.

 

LAMBERT OUT!!

Edited December 14, 2014 by Harry

[Villanun]

Thank god for one intelligent post in this thread - we, not Richardson, were our own worst enemies. Playing with 10 men makes it harder, clearly. But this was a very poor and low-on-confidence Albion team and one we should have coped with better even with 10 men. You often see teams go down to 10 men and they cope perfectly well, so why when we've got someone great in the air up top do we decide to play the ball around in silly little triangles in front of our own goal? This is clearly something which Lambert has asked the players to do and that's fine if we're 11 v 11 but when you've just had a man sent-off and the home crowd are buoyed why invite extra pressure on top of that? We were just clueless in that department. Loads of fans were screaming from the stands to hit Benteke and take a bit of pressure away but we kept trying to play like Bayern Munich. Why did Lambert not get a message on to the pitch? That really falls with the manager.

Thanks! There's been a bit of talk recently from Lambert about trying "something different" that he'd picked up his recent trip abroad, and I think it's safe to assume he's talking about having the players pass it out from the back. That's fine under the right circumstances, but not all the time. I kind've get the feeling that at half time he pointed out that the defenders were inviting pressure onto themselves, so in the second half they went back to hoofing and we lost possession far more often. And I know that footballers are not often noted for their brainpower, but surely someone could have worked out that it's okay to hoof sometimes but at other times you should keep possession, and vice versa. It seemed to be one or the other rather than both.

[westholmevillan]

Poor team selection for me. Local derbies need a cool composed head in the midfield. Grealish would have been my choice as he his composed. Terrible hot headed decision by Richardson, CNZ offered absolutely nothing (again).
Man of the match for me was Okore. This lad shows good promise. Sanchez also played well IMO. Not too disheartened given that we only had 10 men for the vast majority of the game. Really pissed that Grealish doesnt get a start. Delph for Cleverley and Grealish for CNZ next week.

I am sorry but what has Grealish done so far? Very little. He is a kid with promise but chucking him in a derby game wouldn't have helped matters. Today was a disappointing result on a back of a decent run. Let's take a chill pill and see where we are in a few weeks time. Swansea, Palace, Sunderland and of course United (!) are games we should pick up some points in.

Grealish has done nothing....yes, true, but he wont ever do anything if he is not selected. He has a very cool head on his shoulder...I suggest you check his disciplinary record. The kid is composed (I've watched him about 20 times).