Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Bolton

[maqroll]

bolton wanderers still the most pointless football club, what a bore

[VillanousOne]

51 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Sometimes it's about the performance, sometimes it's all about the three points and sometimes even that isn't enough.

Bolton are a big team of tall, powerful athletes, they look massive and well drilled and sternly coached, even if they do look like football isn't their first discipline - like an American football team on holiday or the England Rugby Union side having a very serious lark-about after training - football with additional grabbing and binding on, the rolling maul and the scrum. That can make them very awkward to try to play against. Thankfully, we have referees that ensure that football doesn't just become wrestling.

Enter Jeremy 'Macho man' Simpson, wrestling aficionado and inspiration to the partially sighted, a man on a single minded mission to change the game in this country. His innovative approach featured the decision to legalise shirt pulling, grabbing and holding strikers around the throat - an adjustment that Bolton seemed to find quite natural. Thankfully for us, he'd neglected to inform his linesmen about this key rule change and they flagged for both our penalty and for the booking Beevers picked up in the second half. Between that, it was pretty much anything goes and we could all smell what Jeremy was cooking.

For our part, we didn't play well, a little bit easy-oasy in a game we were expected and expecting to win - the penalty should have settled nerves and allowed us to play, but if anything, it made us look a little more like we felt expectancy would translate to easy points. This sort of attitude tends to lead to unhappy endings and the late pressure from Bolton that resulted in the Whelan goal line clearance had Villa Park more nervous than was necessary - when a last minute shot hit Samba on the head and bounced to safety, there was a relief that there would at least be no sting in the tail.

And then there was - the sending off of Taylor is a disaster - from my view I saw a foul, but not much more, I'm a distance from it and I only saw it once, but based on the performance of Mr Simpson I'm guessing it wasn't worthy of a red card - our referee charged in with the excitement of a labrador who hasn't seen his owner for a week and couldn't get his red card out quickly enough - leaving us with the very real prospect of facing Wolves and Helder Costa with Alan Hutton or Birkir Bjaranson at left back.

On balance, given the choice, I'd sooner they'd have scored that late chance and we'd have had no sending off - I genuinely think that would have cost us less points. Within the emotion of a match day, a win is a win and these needed beating if only for the good of football - but we only have one left back in the squad and he's now missing for a month. 

Three points and tough times ahead.

 

Johnstone (5) - a bit flappy at some of the stuff in the air today, distribution was okay any judgement on his shot stopping will have to wait for another time.

Taylor (7 or 4) - dependent on the challenge, he was either excellent throughout, dealing with Ameobi really well and making some great late bursts forward - or he's recklessly derailed our season and given us a bit more of a hill to climb.

Chester (7) - Stone Cold James Chester worked his socks off, particularly in the later rounds - he won't have many harder games than this one, or many that involved less football.

Terry (7) - John The Brain Terry needed all of his years of experience today, I thought he did really well - him and Chester will have some lumps tonight.

Elmohamady (6) - I'm warming to him - he links well with Snodgrass and he's had a couple of decent games on the trot. He's working his way toward an apology.

Whelan (6) - works hard, does loads of sensible and then makes a silly error - he really did work hard today mind you.

Hourihane (6) - another disciplined if unspectacular performance - he's playing an interesting role at the moment, deeper and with a lot of responsibility and he's doing pretty well there - on days like today though, we need his creativity further up the pitch.

Snodgrass (6) - busy, tricky and with some smarts - he's doing well.

Adomah (6) - struggled a little bit today with Little's pace - made an adjustment and found ways into the game - not quite the cavaliering performance of late, but well, it wasn't that sort of day.

Kodjia (6) - if not for the invention of lycra he'd have left the field today with a shirt forty feet long. Hard work this. He'll be happy with his first goal of the season even if it was from the spot.

Davis (5) - sometimes you get to be the bully and sometimes you end up spending most of the game looking like a ninja turtle with a giant white shell. It's difficult to establish your strength in a game when you're playing against two centre halves with an approach that would make Tony Pulis blush. It'll be good for him though in the long term, he'll have learned a lot.

subs

Hogan (6) - bright against tired hippos - was unlucky not to benefit a little more.

Onomah (6) - must have wondered what he was walking into, did well in trying to help us keep the ball.

Samba (6) - fight fire with fire and also by putting your head in the way of what fire wants.

It wasn't great to watch, it was three handy points and there is a sting in the tail. I can only hope that once the ket wears off that the referee does at least go over the game and have a little chat with himself.

 

 

Johnstone more like 7, Snodgrass closer to 8

[The Fun Factory]

Had a good time in the pre match thingy in the cornerflag. Nice slap up meal and chance to met Des Bremner and Ken McNaught, which was a nice start to the day. Anyway the match was a sub standard championship match with Bolton trying to get a point from the first minute. We seem to play better with less possession. Ref was shocking, though he did give us the pen. I thought Snodgrass was the best player on the pitch. It didn't always work but he was trying to make something happen. 

Not sure on the sending off, need to look at that again though at the time it looked harsh. It is going to cause problems as Taylor is our only first team left back. De Laet to cover or Mitch Clark to be chucked in? Need to play better to get anything at Wolves, but hey 4 wins in a row is always good. Are we finally heading in the right direction? We need a few more wins to show that but we have improved a lot in the last few weeks with Kodja back and Snodgrass  and Adomah coming back into the side. 

[terrytini]

I'm with those who say it's the points not the performance on this occasion. 

Bolton were up for a scrap and they had help off the ref so we did well.

The bigger picture though ? I don't think we play well enough to beat decent sides. Hopefully we will flow better the more we play..

[VillanousOne]

Last season these were the classic games that we drew or somehow contrived to lose 1:0, so have to see this win as a positive despite the iffy performance.

[cb_82]

My biggest moan was today with 10 minutes to go instead of getting behind the team half the Holte end were distracted with the blues score!!!

 

On the game then sometimes you just have to scrap it out and I dont think we have had such a physical test all season but we just about stood up to it 

[DevonIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Just got home. What a terrible game, on the walk to the train station I heard a bloke say "an awful game made even worse by awful refereeing". He wasn't wrong.

Thought Bolton were decent in fairness to them, we were relatively poor. Bruce's tactics were good today, and he used his subs well. Samba was needed because they were bombarding us.

Job done is as good as I can sum up.

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, VillanousOne said:

Last season these were the classic games that we drew or somehow contrived to lose 1:0, so have to see this win as a positive despite the iffy performance.

I really don't agree. In the closest corresponding fixture last season, we beat Rotherham 3-0 at home and looked extremely comfortable. In general, we had a very good record against the bottom 4 or 5. 

[Daweii]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I really don't agree. In the closest corresponding fixture last season, we beat Rotherham 3-0 at home and looked extremely comfortable. In general, we had a very good record against the bottom 4 or 5. 

I don't think it matters either way.

Better teams than us have struggled or lost to worse teams than we faced today. Football is a random beast and yes we didn't play great, but no team plays amazing football every match. My understanding of quality is winning even when the team aren't playing great.

Yes we want more games like the 4-0 at Burton and they will hopefully be more common, but we are still going to have games like today where the opposition regardless of league position was tougher than they should have been.

Every match in football is different. We struggled at times today, but every team gunning for a title has off days you just gotta hope you win on those days.

[The Fun Factory]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I really don't agree. In the closest corresponding fixture last season, we beat Rotherham 3-0 at home and looked extremely comfortable. In general, we had a very good record against the bottom 4 or 5. 

I would also say that last season we never, ever, looked like winning 2 away games on the bounce scoring 7 and conceding 0.

[HanoiVillan]

Perhaps I didn't make my point very well. I'm not saying that today wasn't a good result, or much of anything negative really. Just that I don't agree with the specific claim that 'Last season these were the classic games that we drew or somehow contrived to lose 1:0' - there were too many of those games, but they weren't against the worst sides in the division. 

Edited September 30, 2017 by HanoiVillan

[pete101]

Hate to be negative after a win but aside from a Bolton screw up for pen , can't see us scoring today 

.

Side note thought link up play between Elmo and snod  was brilliant 

[thunderball]

We won. Three points.

Positives: A win, 3 points; we weren’t great, but had enough fight and quality to prevail against a bunch of big spoilers, a team desperate not to lose. Could’ve and should’ve been 2-0 if Kodjia had squared for a simple tap in. Nice to see an unchanged 11. This squad should see us to at least play offs, hopefully beyond.

Negatives: Bruce employs no guile or tactics, he just sent out the same team, 4-4-2 hoping it was enough even though Bolton turned up for a fight, when it was struggling he had nothing to mix it up, just as well we were winning (just); Taylor is a major blow; 

[tom_avfc]

23 minutes ago, thunderball said:

We won. Three points.

Positives: A win, 3 points; we weren’t great, but had enough fight and quality to prevail against a bunch of big spoilers, a team desperate not to lose. Could’ve and should’ve been 2-0 if Kodjia had squared for a simple tap in. Nice to see an unchanged 11. This squad should see us to at least play offs, hopefully beyond.

Negatives: Bruce employs no guile or tactics, he just sent out the same team, 4-4-2 hoping it was enough even though Bolton turned up for a fight, when it was struggling he had nothing to mix it up, just as well we were winning (just); Taylor is a major blow; 

Not sure about your Bruce comments here. As you said it was nice to see an unchanged 11 which did reasonably well in the first half. When we came under a little more pressure he brought on Onomah and Hogan for the tiring Kodjia and Davis and moved to a 4-4-1-1 which then sparked our best spell of play where Snodgrass particularly impressed. His final sub was a good defensive sub to counter Bolton's tactic of hitting it up to their big men and played a large part in us winning the game. I don't think Bruce can be particularly criticised today.

For me the real negative was the lack of end product from a number of players. Snodgrass and Elmo had a lot of chances to put decent balls into the box but never really threatened. I think a lot of it was down to the numbers that Bolton had back in defence but we just didn't seem to flow particularly well and it looked like a bit of an off day offensively.

[TeeJay]

57 minutes ago, pete101 said:

Hate to be negative after a win but aside from a Bolton screw up for pen , can't see us scoring today 

 

How about when Kodjia failed to pass to Adomah just before that?  But yes generally chances were few and far between.  It seemed like Kodjia was perhaps playing too far back (almost seemed like a midfielder at times), Davis was bullied out of it by their centre backs and Hourihane struggled to get forward.

[pete101]

exactly we screwed it up , im not sure what point you are makeing

[AVFCDAN]

Team battling for their league safety in dull and tight game shocker.

We got the job done at the end of the day, Bolton were never going to roll over for us, sometimes its just about getting the job done. We'll see where we really are against Wolves.

[TRO]

14 hours ago, cb_82 said:

My biggest moan was today with 10 minutes to go instead of getting behind the team half the Holte end were distracted with the blues score!!!

 

On the game then sometimes you just have to scrap it out and I dont think we have had such a physical test all season but we just about stood up to it 

It was always the issue that Blues just hated us at every opportunity......we should just rise about it and smile as the jealousy is obvious.

sadly we are getting sucked in to make it all credible.

[Daweii]

10 hours ago, pete101 said:

Hate to be negative after a win but aside from a Bolton screw up for pen , can't see us scoring today 

.

Side note thought link up play between Elmo and snod  was brilliant 

Yeah I think Kodjia not passing to Adomah likely did more damage than initially thought. Granted we got a penalty like 30 seconds later, but I think goals from open play boost the scoring team more.

I mean penalties are great, but there is an air of inevitability that it's a penalty how can you not score? So when it goes in the scoring team don't get that boost and the opposition don't get demoralised.

I think had Kodjia passed and Adomah scored in open play the match may have ended drastically differently, but alas it didn't though that's football.  

[magnkarl]

Bolton played a lot like we did when we had all our tallest guys under MON. Carew, Laursen, Mellberg, Dunne, Heskey, Gabby, Cuellar, Warnock ++++. We were set up to grind people to oblivion and hit them on the break, the difference is that our players were better than Bolton's.