Popular Post romavillan Posted July 30, 2017 VT Supporter Popular Post Share Posted July 30, 2017 It's funny that wanting us to actually play football is being half-mocked as wanting pie in the sky "free flowing football". What we have been doing under Bruce is so far from what a lot of lesser squads have come to Villa Park and done, retain possession under pressure, pass the ball well, create chances. It's almost like he's taken the cliche of the best sides winning ugly from time to time, which would have been credit to him and Pallister etc in that United side for the clean sheet part, and the odd headed winner, it's like he's taken that and made it his mission to make us play ugly but still win. The important part of the best teams win ugly from time to time, is the "from time to time" or when they have to. When what normally works, isn't working they can still get a result. What we lack under Bruce is what good sides fo the other 90% of the time, play football and score goals. If the idea is that we start from being hard to beat and keep clean sheets and build from there, I'm all for it, you have to win the right to play. My fear however is we will win the right to play and it seems that part has been neglected completely. 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lexicon Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Frankly Roma, how we'll play and what we'll achieve remains to be seen. I'd say that it's perfectly likely that if few grind out a few wins and the confidence goes up, we'll see some nice football from the players we have as they'll feel freer and emboldened to do what they're good at. In any case, a good start to the season is key. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 3 hours ago, carewjust4u said: I can appreciate the sentiment behind your comment, but surely you can recognise that we won a penalty, gabby had a 1on1, a goal disallowed and countless crosses into the box. Surely there must be some positive football in there somewhere? I think the worry for me is if playing at home and 0-0 after 80 minutes. Is Bruce brave enough to go for a victory or hold on for the draw I dont think he has that courage and will cost us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lexicon Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 4 minutes ago, Zatman said: I think the worry for me is if playing at home and 0-0 after 80 minutes. Is Bruce brave enough to go for a victory or hold on for the draw I dont think he has that courage and will cost us We need a manager who isn't too foolhardy either and it entirely depends on the context. Sometimes it makes sense to go for it, other times it doesn't and it's better to try and guarantee the point. I'd rather a measured approach than a Sherwood PASHUN approach where we stupidly go for it and end up losing the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveAV1 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 2 hours ago, carewjust4u said: I haven't seen the stats, i'd be interested to see them if you can dig them out. I just remember us crumbling under pressure and condeeding almost every game in the last 10 mins. Watching RDM's villa was like watching Freddie Flintoffs boxing bout, lots of punches thrown (none of which connect), and absolutely no defence. We conceded something like 11 goals in the 10 games RDM was here and ended up conceding 48 in total, so more or less a goal a game for both of them. You are right though we always seemed to concede right at the end under RDM. And of course you're absolutely correct when you say overall we were disjointed, to put it politely, mainly because he spent a fortune and forgot to bother buying any midfielders or centre backs, (decent ones anyway). Your Freddie Flintoff boxing match sums it up perfectly! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dn1982 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 1 hour ago, Zatman said: I think the worry for me is if playing at home and 0-0 after 80 minutes. Is Bruce brave enough to go for a victory or hold on for the draw I dont think he has that courage and will cost us When he first came he did go for it but he got more negative as we went on. Hopefully being able to play with 2 in CM we can become better at attacking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reivax_Villa Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 We are still lacking goals and creativity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommo_b Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 2 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said: It really isn't. 4 times would suggest otherwise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vive_La_Villa Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Just had a quick read and I see there are still concerns about creating chances. Lets not forget we were playing against a mid table premier league team. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wazzap24 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 38 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said: Just had a quick read and I see there are still concerns about creating chances. Lets not forget we were playing against a mid table premier league team. And we camped in their half for a lot of the game. And we played a solid, high defensive line. And we got players breaking from midfield. And we closed down quickly high up the pitch. A hairs breadth and a decent Gabby finish away from a very convincing performance against Premier opposition. There was nothing to not like about yesterday, apart from Grealish getting injured. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jareth Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 57 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said: Just had a quick read and I see there are still concerns about creating chances. Lets not forget we were playing against a mid table premier league team. Why shouldn't we forget? If we forget then it fits our negative world view. The cheek! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post andym Posted July 30, 2017 Popular Post Share Posted July 30, 2017 The way to get out of this league is to score goals and give teams beatings, not try and scrape 1-0's every week, because as we saw last season it doesn't work. The amount of goals scored by teams getting automatic promotion in the last few years: 2016/17 - 89 and 74 2015/16 - 72 and 63 2014/15 - 98 and 91 2013/14 - 83 and 72 2012/13 - 72 and 61 2011/12 - 69 and 85 2010/11 - 71 and 83 So out of 14 teams 3 got in the 60's, everyone else was above 70. We scored just 47 goals last season. Bruce can have no excuse this year, he's got probably the best squad in the league, now full of players he's signed. We've got a number of players in Terry, Chester, Taylor, Whelan and Elmohamady who have taken a step down from the Premier League to join us. He's had the pick of the better midfielders in the league, he's got 3 strikers on the books who have all scored more than 20 goals in this league. He can have no excuse about the players not listening and not doing what he wants, because however much i dislike the person, John Terry as a player will 100% make sure the managers instructions are carried out on the pitch. Bruce many times last season said that players couldn't deal with the expectation of playing for this club. For me its time for Bruce to prove that he can cope with the expectations of managing this club. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a m ole Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 So, score goals to win games. I think even Bruce is tactically savvy enough to understand that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 1 hour ago, wazzap24 said: And we camped in their half for a lot of the game. And we played a solid, high defensive line. And we got players breaking from midfield. And we closed down quickly high up the pitch. A hairs breadth and a decent Gabby finish away from a very convincing performance against Premier opposition. There was nothing to not like about yesterday, apart from Grealish getting injured. relying on Gabby... Jesus wept! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wazzap24 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 4 minutes ago, villakram said: relying on Gabby... Jesus wept! I hope not, he just happened to start yesterday and had the best chance. Same old Gabby, he had more than a second to think about it and cocked it up. Would've been interesting to see Hogan in that first half as we turned them around a few times, but Gabby doesn't have the brains to make the most of it. He worked hard and caused them problems though, can't knock him for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romavillan Posted July 30, 2017 VT Supporter Share Posted July 30, 2017 5 hours ago, lexicon said: Frankly Roma, how we'll play and what we'll achieve remains to be seen. I'd say that it's perfectly likely that if few grind out a few wins and the confidence goes up, we'll see some nice football from the players we have as they'll feel freer and emboldened to do what they're good at. In any case, a good start to the season is key. I'm just talking about what we've seen, no crystal ball involved. Last season we had 2 halves where we looked good, not in the same game. The preseason, whilst being far from defining the season, has been appalling in terms of attacking football. My comments are based on that. Personally if Bruce gets us winning games and not looking like a bunch of complete strangers going forward I'll be delighted. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jareth Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 8 minutes ago, romavillan said: I'm just talking about what we've seen, no crystal ball involved. Last season we had 2 halves where we looked good, not in the same game. The preseason, whilst being far from defining the season, has been appalling in terms of attacking football. My comments are based on that. Personally if Bruce gets us winning games and not looking like a bunch of complete strangers going forward I'll be delighted. But we've had 7 pre-season games, won 4, drawn 2 and lost 1. Scoring 13 times, conceding 2 times. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeyp102 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 I've not said much in this thread over the summer as well it's been a thread to avoid. My thoughts on Bruce though. He is the right man for the job, but he has no excuses now. The squad for me is by far the best in the league, no other team can boast of the squad we have. For me we have the 3 best defenders in the league (Taylor, Terry, Chester), 3 of the best 10 midfielders in the league and 2 strikers who could easily get 15 goals each. No one should be touching us. We should stay below 30 goals conceded and we should score plenty of goals. If after 10 games we aren't on 20 points, then questions really have to asked over Bruce and whether he is the right man. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reivax_Villa Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Why do many of us feel that we have the best squad in the league? We have one of the strongest. Middlesbrough's squad is a lot stronger than ours imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Pretty sure it's at least the biggest squad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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