Roberto Di Matteo

[srsmithusa]

I have refrained from making many comments on performances because I COULDN'T SEE THE PERFORMANCES !!!  ( a novel idea, I know).

But I watched Ipswich and have decided that RDM has a MAJOR problem to fix, and it's a very difficult problem to fix.  Intelligence....Too many poor decisions by players.  Slowing and holding posesession when a rapid attack would have been wiser.  Passing back to keeper when a clearance upfield would have been much safer.  Letting an Ipswich player have a place in the middle of a wall.  Over-committing to an aggressive defensive play and getting burned.  

Over the match we were the better team, but a few players made some great choices late in the match - Kodjia and Cissokho as I recall - that covered for a bad decision to give too much space.  Fewest bad decisions were made by Kodjia, Cissokho, Jedinak, Chester.   Grealish and Ayew made more poor decisions than good ones.  One related example.  When the ref is giving attacking free kicks for what are generally considered fair body contact if the player falls over.... Stop doing that kind of challenge in the defensive third and fall over more quickly when you're in the attack.  It's just intelligent decisions.  The concern for me is how did these player ever get to this level of professional play without being taught how to think intelligently in the match?!?!?!   Ultimately it's the coaches job to fix this, but it takes time.

[Demitri_C]

On 19 September 2016 at 15:51, striker said:

Using Everton as a yardstick, last season they were missing a bit of pace and energy in midfield. Everton under Koeman have addressed those issues and look a very solid team now.

The point i'm making here is that for many seasons Villa have been poor in midfield yet time and time again they have failed to address that. After selling Gana to Everton he was replaced by a young player with a poor injury record. Jedinak was then signed but is he really much of an improvement on Westwood and Gardner? Gil was sold and a fortune spent on McCormack. Has McCormack been much of an upgrade on Gil when you consider the outlay?

Villa have improved their defence and forward line but neither are really kicking into gear yet because the midfield don't have the creativity to supply the forwards while there is not enough energy or physicality to protect the defence.  

I do agree with your point regarding midfield, it's the one area I feel we didn't significantly improve in. I would have got rid of Gardner or Westwood and got one more cm in.

but the McCormack point I completely disagree. He looks like the one player that can make something happen from nothing. He creates and scores when was last time we had that? His goal against forest was such clever movement, we haven't had that since bent

[brommy]

I'm fortunate to not to have seen any of the Ipswich match but a lack of intelligence was definitely present during the second half of the Brentford match. So many poor decisions by too many players - defenders booting the ball long when not under pressure; midfielders tapping the ball back to the defence when they had time to pick a forward pass; forwards slowing down a possible break, shooting instead of passing and passing instead of shooting. Not good.

[Zatman]

7 hours ago, Mantis said:

Based on what exactly? The fact that he failed at Villa when the club was at its lowest ebb in decades hardly makes him some sort of terrible manager.

because he didnt do anything to make us look any better than we were under Sherwood or Black. Be the 1st thing a half decent manager would do is organise the team

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, bobzy said:

I really don't understand the crisis here, by the way, and feel embarrassed by association that a whole load of fans are calling for our managers' head.

He may not turn out to be the right appointment, but wanting a guy sacked after 8 games with an almost entirely new team is the stuff of self-righteous fan groups - it shouldn't be us.  I hate what Xia's money seems to have done to the fanbase, to be honest, and we're fast becoming a parody of modern-day football.  Forget the poor seasons in the Premier League, that is the most embarrassing thing in recent times.

Our last couple of games have been disheartening (in particular against Ipswich... was Gestede injured?  I didn't really understand playing width but with no striker to sit centrally) but we've still only lost twice this season and still played well on the whole.  People were loving the signings of McCormack and Kodjia in particular - but our major downfall so far has been strikers not putting the ball in the net.  Shall we give them some time to actually understand each other and what the manager wants from them?!

I've never felt as disengaged with other fans as I do right now.  We seem to have shifted attitude with the drop into the Championship and assumed we're able to walk it, solely because we've spent £55m.  It's nonsense.

I agree wholeheartedly, and would also add:

1 Win / 5 Draws / 2 Losses

It just isn't that bad. We've scored at least a point in 75% of our matches. We're unbeaten at home. We're unbeaten in three. We're in the top 6 or 8 of most stats except points. If we were being smashed from pillar to post I'd be calling for his head too, but we just aren't. 

[Vive_La_Villa]

Has he been sacked yet?

[Tommo_b]

9 hours ago, TRO said:

I wasn't comparing with Pepe as a manager, that has been interpreted by others.

I was merely saying that Pepe has come in to a new league for him and made an instant difference.....It could be said about Ranieri too.

just saying ,the instant impact can be made.

some folk could say its harder with someone else's players, as they have done.

Yes, we have had a whole team change in mitigation, but we will see.

So he's taken a team that already won games and kept them winning games, what's the instant impact? 

He's only five games in?! 

[TRO]

16 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

So he's taken a team that already won games and kept them winning games, what's the instant impact? 

He's only five games in?! 

Do you ever watch the game and take in what is being done?

Its not just about results as crucial as they are.

Their play is far superior under Pepe, even without Aguero. Individuals have improved no end.

The improvement is stark.

SO FAR......of course.

Ps we was winning games under O'Neill, but it didn't work for us did it, when we changed manager

Edited September 19, 2016 by TRO

[Ikantcpell]

[mikeyp102]

Without the league cup, we have a week of training without a mid week match. Think it the first time since the transfer window so hopefully we will now see a collective improvement. 

For me it's far far too early to consider sacking RDM. We need time to settle as a team, to learn how each other play.

I see people righting off any chance of promotion, but we still have the equivalent of an entire premier league season to go. Yes we'd all like to be doing better, but there is still a long way to go and we can easily go on run of results. 

 

[Ikantcpell]

It would be crazy to sack him after 8 games, we have been playing very well most games and lost points cause of silly mistakes from individuals.

You can't just buy a bunch of expensive players and expect them to play as a team from day one, it dosent work that way.

 

[Mantis]

2 hours ago, Zatman said:

because he didnt do anything to make us look any better than we were under Sherwood or Black. Be the 1st thing a half decent manager would do is organise the team

Initially we did look better actually. Not good enough to stay up of course but you could see what he was trying to do. Unfortunately, the players were clearly having none of it. words removed.

[TrentVilla]

1 hour ago, Ikantcpell said:

It would be crazy to sack him after 8 games, we have been playing very well most games and lost points cause of silly mistakes from individuals.

We were absolutely atrocious at home to Brentford.

What concerns me is that we are getting worse not better, I've seen no improvement whatsoever over the course of the games.

You are completely right in your second point about not being able to throw a load of players together and expect them to play well together, sadly that pretty much sums up what Di Matteo has tried so far.

[omariqy]

38 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

We were absolutely atrocious at home to Brentford.

What concerns me is that we are getting worse not better, I've seen no improvement whatsoever over the course of the games.

You are completely right in your second point about not being able to throw a load of players together and expect them to play well together, sadly that pretty much sums up what Di Matteo has tried so far.

Most Villa fans could see that our midfield was not strong enough. Most fans can see that none of our midfielders bar injury prone Tshibola can play in a central 2.  

[dont_do_it_doug.]

37 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

You are completely right in your second point about not being able to throw a load of players together and expect them to play well together, sadly that pretty much sums up what Di Matteo has tried so far.

He hasn't had much choice to be fair. 

I'm as disappointed as anyone at the moment and I feel he needs to show a propensity to grind out a few results, fast. At the same time, I'm not in panic mode just yet. I feel he has shown a little something and with a little more lady luck on his side and a bit more trust in his intuition perhaps, we'd be in the top 10 and none too concerned. For example I thought he was right to push for a third against Forest. Since then he's bottled it a touch. I hope he's learned from that. 

Yes, there's the familiar stink of failure around the place, but it's only a whiff for now. Let's give him a few games to show whether he can turn it around before reaching for the gun. The likes of Steve Bruce will still be in touching distance if not and I trust the ability in the squad. 

[Tommo_b]

12 hours ago, TRO said:

Do you ever watch the game and take in what is being done?

Its not just about results as crucial as they are.

Their play is far superior under Pepe, even without Aguero. Individuals have improved no end.

The improvement is stark.

SO FAR......of course.

Ps we was winning games under O'Neill, but it didn't work for us did it, when we changed manager

Lol! 

[Villan_of_oz]

On Monday, September 19, 2016 at 10:00, Zatman said:

Remi Garde is about as qualified as a football manager as me or you. shocking manager and worse than clowns like Mcleish or Houllier that managed us

Exactly how many players and staff did Remi bring in? How large was his transfer budget? In what way did any department of the club show any public display of supporting him either directly or indirectly? He was metaphorically shackled, gagged and hung from the ceiling. 

 

Im not saying he was a good manager or not, I'm just baffled as how you can make an educated decision on that.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Villan_of_oz

[sharkyvilla]

3 minutes ago, Villan_of_oz said:

Exactly how many players and staff did Remi bring in? How large was his transfer budget? In what way did any department of the club show any public display of supporting him either directly or indirectly? He was metaphorically shackled, gagged and hung from the ceiling. 

 

Im not saying he was a good manager or not, I'm just baffled as how you can make an educated decision on that.

I'm not sure Zat was educated.  Anyway the Newcastle game comes at just the right time, if we win and put a performance at home against the other 'big boys' it would do the whole club the world of good in terms of confidence.  However, if we don't, it could be curtains for Di Matteo.

[bobzy]

9 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

We were absolutely atrocious at home to Brentford.

What concerns me is that we are getting worse not better, I've seen no improvement whatsoever over the course of the games.

You are completely right in your second point about not being able to throw a load of players together and expect them to play well together, sadly that pretty much sums up what Di Matteo has tried so far.

I disagree - we were poor in the second half in particular against Brentford, but certainly not "absolutely atrocious".  It didn't seem like Brentford would score, even with us sitting deeper.  Again, we started the game brightly and should've scored at least 2.

I also disagree with your assessment of no improvement over the games.  Our best game this season has been against Forest IMO - that was a whopping 3 games ago; not the first game of the season.  I actually thought the game against Ipswich was our worst at that is the most recent.

The last bit is nonsense too.  Fans, on the whole, have been happy with the business we've done and Di Matteo has played pretty much all of his signings.  The one criticism I have with his "throw a load of players together" approach is that we can't fit all the attackers on the pitch at once, so why try?  But, then again, when he played Kodjia essentially as a right winger... he scored.

[praisedmambo]

I liked the look of our summer transfers when all the rumours pointed to us signing Ravel Morrison too. Admittedly, you'd be hoping he's turned over some magic new leaf and has his head straight to fulfil his potential, which obviously may never happen. The point is, I thought we were going to buy an attacking midfielder. Ross McCormack seems the closest we have to that and we missed him massively against Ipswich and the second half against Brentford—I don't think it's a coincidence that we were shit for the game and a half where he was injured. 

I think we **** up massively not buying an out-and-out attacking midfielder. Hopefully Adomah can make a difference—and hopefully Tish comes back and somehow stays fit so we have at least a little dynamism in the midfield. For the record, I though Jedinak was good against Ipswich. I don't think he's the problem. 

It seems like such a crucial issue and I can't believe that we spent all that money and didn't sort it out.