Ratings and Reactions: Villa v Burton

[NurembergVillan]

I always love the reports from @OutByEaster?, but this is his best by quite a margin.

10/10 WB

[DevonIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Can't add much to all the above.

Villa reviewers - 10/10 

I don't know whether I like that we win ugly, or concerned that we cannot hand out a spanking that this group of players, on paper, is due to hand out. 

Bacuna was excellent today, I like his attitude and effort considering the breakdown in relations he had with the fans last year. 

Kodjia is obviously our go to for goals, but was really not at the races today. McCormack wasn't at it either.

Chester and Baker very impressive. 

Biggest positive of the day for me was seeing Villa Park filled up. I had almost forgotten what an brilliant ground Villa Park is when it is brimmed full, and in full voice.

[jackdaww]

39 minutes ago, DevonIsAPlaceOnEarth said:

Can't add much to all the above.

Villa reviewers - 10/10 

I don't know whether I like that we win ugly, or concerned that we cannot hand out a spanking that this group of players, on paper, is due to hand out. 

Bacuna was excellent today, I like his attitude and effort considering the breakdown in relations he had with the fans last year. 

Kodjia is obviously our go to for goals, but was really not at the races today. McCormack wasn't at it either.

Chester and Baker very impressive. 

Biggest positive of the day for me was seeing Villa Park filled up. I had almost forgotten what an brilliant ground Villa Park is when it is brimmed full, and in full voice.

good to see bacuna getting somewhere .

we should perhaps  remember he hasnt had much of a run as a midfielder at all , it takes time to settle into that role .

and we have a great partnership in chester and baker - as bruce was a CB himself i think , he should know .

[Straggler]

5 hours ago, AVTuco said:

Online I saw negative comments about Chester. Was he poor?

No, he was just fine. Steady and reliable

[flashingqwerty]

I didnt see todays game so this may be a silly question for someone who did.

 

I see a lot of praise for the cbs today and that jedinak, though poor overall, dominated aerially.  So how did we lose 60%of the aerial challenges in this match in our defensive 3rd?

[Kingman]

Happy with the 3 points, concerned our keeper gets MOTM against Burton. 

UTV

[DevonIsAPlaceOnEarth]

17 minutes ago, flashingqwerty said:

I didnt see todays game so this may be a silly question for someone who did.

 

I see a lot of praise for the cbs today and that jedinak, though poor overall, dominated aerially.  So how did we lose 60%of the aerial challenges in this match in our defensive 3rd?

Burton were pretty good coming forward in fairness to them. Jedinak had an off day, and came off with about 20 to go, it was after this Burton started peppering crosses in. 

There was a great save at the death from Bunn which highlighted our lack of dominance in the air. Unusual because we have been strong in this previously.

[philgetaway]

8 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

We're not a very good team. We've got some very good players. We've got a pretty decent manager.

At the moment, very good players will occasionally do enough to win a game, today that's what happened, quality individuals had moments of quality and we won. Some of these player are good enough that e can do that quite often. If we had a good team, we could do it pretty much all the time, and I don't think we're missing all that much.

Bunn - 7 - I don't like him, he's too small, he looks awkward when he kicks the ball. He's kept a clean sheet, he's made a great reaction save at the end to preserve the win and played well throughout. Bunn 1 OBE 0 and congratulations to him on his victory.

Hutton - 6 - He was Alan Hutton all day, committed, strong, occasionally absent, occasionally wayward with passing - he only came out of character a couple of times when he put in a couple of very good crosses - crafty.

Chester - 7 - If he was a coal miner, he'd just be a blummin' good coal miner, on time, job done, no troubles. If he was a milkman, you'd always have what you expected, on time, every day, no troubles. You don't get tricks with a canary, you don't get whistling. I like this.

Baker - 7 - Lie a great big dog, he occasionally looks like he might trip over himself running around corners, but he's enthusiastic, he's strong and he's surprisingly quick. He's also rapidly becoming a really important player to this team.

Amavi - 6 - He was solid defensively, he got forward well, he was a bundle of energy, his passing was poor.

Gardner - 4 - Positionally not quite right, passing was passable, energy was lacking a little - didn't get forward enough. Didn't get forward at all.

Jedinak - 3 - Dire. This man is currently in the side because he's big. 70% of his game is heading the ball forward from just in front of the centre halves, in fairness, he's good at that - however, the centre halves are also good at it. The rest of his game involves passing the ball and not only is he atrocious at it, he seems to actively dislike doing it - there were times today when he chose to head it rather than bring it down, even in a lot of space - the rest of the time, he kicked it in the air and waited. He's immobile, he can't pass and the thing he is good at is largely unnecessary. 

Both the central midfielders do a strange (and bad) thing and it was particularly clear in our first goal - when we have the ball, our back four push out, to about five or ten yards outside our box. Our midfield do nothing, which means they're far too often stood on the toes of the central defenders rather than getting involved in play - this means we struggle to keep the ball, because it means Adomah and Bacuna have four men to play against, with just McCormack for occasional help. You'd think that would mean that we'd be very difficult to break down though at least, I mean it's pretty much a six man back line. The problem is, when we give away the ball (which we do. A lot) the back four drop to the edge of the box, or where necessary deeper still - our midfield do nothing. Which means when crosse come in, like the one for today's equaliser, they're not involved. They do a great job of protecting our back four when we have the ball and a great job of supporting our midfield when we don't have the ball. That's dumber than a christmas pudding.

Adomah - 6 - Busy, industrious, keen. Not from the very top drawer, but will never let you down. I like this about him. I don't like his corners. His corners are the worst I've seen in the last four or five years of following the Villa. Think on that.

Bacuna - 7 - This fella got booed all last season. Some of the worst booing of a player I've ever seen. What's to his credit is that he's come back and just got on with it, he's got his head down, tried to forget about it and won back a good chunk of the support through a stoic effort. It can't have been easy and by heck he enjoyed his goal; he started the move himself and finished it with a perfectly timed header on the run. I thought he was generally quite good - he's forced inside a lot because he's a right sided player at left midfield, but there's plenty of room there as our central midfield players are elsewhere, eating grass or something. He's working hard and doing okay. Today was a good day in the Bacuna household.

McCormack - 6 - and two of those are for the goal. It's not that he's poor, he's not, he's got a good touch, he knows what's happening around him and he sneaks into good positions. He's just not a good fit for this team at the moment. He's not enough of a midfielder to play the really deep role well and he's not the right sort of partner for Kodjia up top. He always look a little more comfortable when Grealish is on with him and it'll be interesting to see if he benefits if/when we strengthen the midfield.

Kodjia - 5 - He's one selfish shellfish. It's hard to criticise him too much for that, he does have a habit of whacking the ball into the big net thing. Today it didn't quite come off. I think he frustrate McCormack in that he's not someone who wants a clever partner and he's unlikely to return the ball to his partner if he thinks he can get a shot away. He's big, but he's not a "big man up top" I actually think he'd do better with Gestede - he plays more like the small man in a partnership than the big man. He's a big small man, that's what he is. A talented one too.

Subs:

Grealish - 7 - Revolutionised the play when he came on by first passing the ball to other people in the same coloured shirt as him and second managing to touch it more than once without letting one of the chaps in yellow touch it. He should be starting.

Ayew - 7 - changed the game with his energy, determination and the little bit of quality that set up the goal. He worked very hard in defence too, with one exceptional challenge late on. He also gave away the free kick at the end that Bunn tipped over - just to remind you that he's still him.

Gabby - 6 - "Go out there and chase things for 5 minutes" - job done.

We have better players than Burton, they're better balanced than we are, and they're more of a team than we are, but we have better players, we were able to bring on Ayew and Grealish, they're better players than Burton will ever have. They looked solid and well drilled and they'll have a good go at staying up, but sometimes a quality individual or two wins you games.

Sometimes it doesn't - and when we play teams with good players, even players that aren't quite as good as ours - that ability to be a team will give them a very decent chance of beating us. The window opens in a week and I expect Mr Bruce to fix that, two central midfielders would put us into the play offs. In the meantime, the three points from today will do very nicely thank you very much.

 

 

 

How can you rate Jedinak below the gutless ghost Gardner? Yeah sure Jedinaks only in the side because he's big, but yeah, that's one of the attributes  why we got him in.

If Jedinak had anyone capable around him, he wouldn't need to be trying to execute creative passes.

Gardner has robbed us blind with the new contract.  The fact that he got injured for not commiting himself to a tackle at the end of the first half says it all.

 

Apart from that, a good summary. 

[The_Rev]

Can't really add much to the OBE review but it seems that Steve Bruce gambled and won again.  He figured they'd have to work hard to keep tabs on the three or four players we have in the side who can win a game out of nothing and that's basically what played out. 

We essentially conceded the midfield battle in the hopes that Burton would push out and we'd be able to get in behind.  I'll say Kodja had a better game than OBE has declared though, an awful lot was asked of him as we kept pinging balls over the top or down the channels for him to chase and he chased them all day long, he was involved in a number of individual battles with their back line and he kept them on their toes.   Goliath beat David today but the squad still needs work.  I thought when we went down we'd need three or four transfer windows to get to the place we needed to be and I still think that's the case.  I think we wasted money on McCormack but I strongly suspect we bought him before Kodja was available. Props to Xia for ponying up for both but expensive misfits were a hallmark of the first half of Randy's tenure and we all know how that ended. For now I'll take the points and keep my fingers crossed we can close the gap on the play offs but promotion this year remains a hope rather than an expectation.

[rjw63]

Why are the MotM votes secret again?

[wilko154]

1 hour ago, rjw63 said:

Why are the MotM votes secret again?

I also want to know who voted for Jedinak as MOTM... 

[rjw63]

57 minutes ago, wilko154 said:

I also want to know who voted for Jedinak as MOTM... 

Ah, that'll be one of the three who always vote for Westwood

edit - the votes are public again

Edited December 27, 2016 by rjw63

[Raver50032]

On ‎26‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 18:11, PompeyVillan said:

We were poor, Burton outplayed us in midfield, but didn't have the ammunition to finish us off. They had had a few chances but dominated territory rather than chances. Credit where it is due, they challenged us more than I thought they would. Great finish for their goal. 

We created two goals when we got support up with Adomah, otherwise we expected he and Kodjia to do it all on their own. McCormack? He scored, but otherwise, I'm not sure what he did. Jedinak is Carlos Sanchez, gives the ball away almost as much as he wins it. 

Grealish, Ayew and Adomah have guile, but seeing in them in the same midfield, alongside Bacuna frightened me half to death. 

Some things are working well, Adomah impresses me every game, sitter aside, Chester and Baker look as good a anything in this division. Bunn made some impressive saves. We are grinding out results. 

But my overriding feeling is we haven't clicked, we haven't really played that well and we could do with improving our midfield. Play like that against Leeds and we probably lose. 

This for me... If we have turned down 23m for Amavi then I have to question our sanity. Against Norwich and again versus Burton, his passing is very suspect... persistently fails to beat his man and if trying to cross/pass seems to hit the opposition player with the ball. He's a player that I want to like, but I find him very frustrating to watch. If he wants to leave, I'd have no problem with it personally.

Jedinak had his most dicey game for us I think. Great save at the end from Bunn. And Ward - what a finish for their goal. It became clear that hoofing the ball to Kodjia was a fools errand - the guy cannot head the ball. He was nowhere near 99% of the balls he was expected to fish out of the air. He managed to get one in the second half, but that came off the front of his neck. Playing hoofball to a forward who is clearly not a target man is a fools errand.

We really need to step up on Thursday if we are to avoid suffering our first home defeat of the season.

Edited December 28, 2016 by Raver50032

[gilbertoAVFC]

Just rewatched it. We weren't as bad as I thought, and we created far higher quality chances than they did. On that basis, Burton didn't deserve anything in truth. Also Kodjia was about level with his disallowed goal.

I'm glad Bruce changed the game at half-time (whether he would of anyway remains to be seen). Grealish has to start every game. But why he took Jedinak off, then scoring, then bringing Gabby on of all people when we were winning was really risky and he would've been slated for it had Bunn not made that save.

Bunn himself was decent shot-stopping wise but his distribution is shocking. Just use your common sense and play it short when you can.

Gardner was a ghost. Jedinak very poor by his standards - still think he needs to lose a stone. I liked that Adomah was always in space to receive the ball when we broke (though rarely got it) - he's a clever player.

McCormack showed glimpses but he is another who needs to shed some weight and put more work in.

Baker is solid but he is still pretty poor on the ball - will get exposed at a higher level.

Edited December 28, 2016 by gilbertoAVFC

[jackdaww]

watching the highlights again , i think hutton was at fault for the goal and at other times .

i like hutton but he is the weaker defender.

aywe actually ran forward into space for the second goal and put in a good cross , mccormack took an age to control and shoot.

i hope bacuna gets a run in midfield , he is looking much better now.

but SB has to find a way to capitalise on kodjia.

[The Fun Factory]

Badly need a central midfielder who can pass, run, tackle and score the odd goal. It can't be that difficult to find one.

[jackdaww]

5 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Badly need a central midfielder who can pass, run, tackle and score the odd goal. It can't be that difficult to find one.

agreed -- could you give us a list please?

[gilbertoAVFC]

18 hours ago, jackdaww said:

agreed -- could you give us a list please?

I actually really liked the look of Matthew Palmer for Burton. Controlled it. Only 21.

You could do a lot worse than Ryan Woods at Brentford. Alongside Jedinak he would help us really control things in the middle. Neither are goalscorers but in all honesty I just want a ball-player in the middle. We have enough with our quartet ahead of two DMIDs. Hourihane for Barnsley is outstanding too.