Ratings & Reactions: Villa v QPR

[VillanousOne]

5 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

Bruce and the players are absolutely to blame. They showed on Saturday what they are capable of, and they should have hammered QPR tonight.

I do agree, but it's football and it happens, we played far worse against sheffield weds and won, things even out.

not saying no one is to blame, just no one person, it was collective shite ness.

[Lichfield Dean]

Disappointing but not at all surprised. Even with all the euphoria of the wolves game I've never really quite managed to convince myself we're good enough to go up, even though at times we look like we should be.

Today was poor by Bruce. His subs made no sense to me - changing the formation so dramatically second half just left us with a bunch of players who seemed to have no idea how they were supposed to be playing. Should have utilised Thor and Lansbury from the start IMO, or at least switched those two in for Jedi and Hourihane for the second half. We still probably would have lost but it would have made more sense to me.

Special mention must go to Johnstone and his spectacularly awful distribution tonight. I don't know how many times he failed to see a free man running into space and instead booted the ball into the middle of nowhere. Very frustrating.

[Stratvillan]

Poor by all, can't think of one player who played well. Not going to post on individual players because they were all poor, without exception. Bruce poor as well, qpr played as we felt they would, we couldn't cope. 

[Demitri_C]

As expected. 

Another bottle job just like when we went 2nd and lost the next game.  It's over for 2nd for me. We need cardiff to lose 3 games and us to win 3 more. Can't see it.

I tjink.even fulham will finish above us now. They will have confidence now after this implosion.  Everyone saying defeats happen.

Don't seem to be happening to cardiff and fulham

[sidcow]

Radio WM called it before the game (Gary Thompson?) said that a couple of changes should have been made as they put so much in Saturday and a lot of the players were 29 or over.  Just something to freshen it up. 

Personally I would have started Bjarnason ahead of Jedanick and I also would have made that change on 35 minutes (he wasted 10 minutes to half time watching the same dross served over and over again) and 100% at half time. 

I said to the bloke next to me that he would make no changes at half time to which is replied there is absolutely no way he will not change this at half time.  And he didn't. 

Then he made all the wrong substitutions and we ended up with a totally unnecessary confusion mess where no one knew what they were doing and we actually deteriorated, unbelievably because we were so utterly diabolical to start with, it's inconceivable that you could actually make it worse. 

All he had to do was Bjarnason for Jedinak, landsbury for Hourihane and see how that went before deciding what to do up front of the new midfield continued to misfire. 

Utterly woeful from the manager and every player on the pitch. 

Gave MOTM to Davis purely because he injected some enthusiasm at least but really nobody stood out from the mire of unspeakable horror. 

[foreveryoung]

Just can' afford games like that, have the team learnt nothing!!!

1 point in front of Fulham. Saturday the proverbial must win, then a rest for 2 weeks. 

Though if we lose Saturday, it's all over chaps.

Edited March 13, 2018 by foreveryoung

[HanoiVillan]

First fifty odd minutes we weren't actually dreadful, it was just a weird night where it was very very clear that nothing was going to go our way. We created a bunch of half-decent chances, but they scored  theirs and then we started panicking, which meant everything was hurried and off and just quickly got painful to watch. I didn't mind that he tried to change it either, but the changes didn't work and we got even more panicky and even more sloppy and then I left after seventy minutes because I was cold, but I assume it remained bad until the end. 

Automatic promotion is pretty much gone, but there's still advantage in finishing  third so we need to keep battling anyway. 

[Stevo985]

Football is so **** weird.

 

How can the exact same 11 players, in the exact same formation go from so good one day, to so shit 3 days later.

We were dreadful tonight.

Absolutely nothing went right. Every player was crap. Even players like Terry and Grealish were making stupid mistakes. 

Utterly baffling night.

[OutByEaster?]

Urhhhh.

The problem was we started slow. We know the team we put out tonight can beat QPR and the team we put out knew it too - they'd just forgotten how hard to do that can be - we turned up to win, not to play.

When you start slow, it's hard to pick it up - QPR started fast - and then when we went a goal down we struggled to increase our tempo or find a rhythm. Two down and we started trying to force things and made it worse. Even so, if we'd scored from the header just before half time I'd have had us as favourites. 

From the start we looked like a pianist that had sat down for the first song of a performance and found the piano completely out of tune. We never really got over it - the surprise that things weren't working - tempo was wrong from the off. In fairness, we kept trying to do all of the things this team does well, but a combination of QPR and our poor start meant that they just didn't come off although there is I guess a small amount of credit to the team in that they kept banging out that off key tune right up until the final whistle had gone.

To QPR's credit, they were sharp and up for it; they had a plan, both offensively and defensively and they executed it very well - forcing Snoddy down the line and not letting him come inside, defending the near post from crosses where Grabban has been so effective and closing down Grealish early and deep - with Grealish they also did a great job of fouling him gently; just knocking him out of his stride, upsetting his timing, not picking up bookings. Ultimately that left him out of kilter, making mistakes and getting frustrated. Between playing well and catching us on a bad day, QPR very much deserved the win.

I'm not sure I blame the manager, this team have played two games in a week more than once this season and won, I thought his substitutions were the right ones and at the right times, but you can't substitute the energy or desire - you can't reset a team that starts slow. He can maybe take some blame for not getting them up for it to start with, but we've enough experience in this side for the players to have to wear most of that responsibility.

The referee was of the standard we've come to expect, refusing to allow any throw in or free kick until everybody had been given a good chance to look at him in action. I don't know if he ever refereed a Sunday league game, but if he did, I'd imagine his car had more scratches than Grandmaster Flash.

The positive to take from this one I guess is this - we're a team that can get ourselves up for a big game, that can put in big performances when they really matter - that's going to be important I think, because our shortfalls in taking care of the bread and butter of tonight, means that where we're going, there's every chance we've got a couple of big games to come.

 

[Stockport_Villain]

What a bloody let down.

[HanoiVillan]

Excellent analysis @OutByEaster?, I agree with every word of it. 

[tonyh29]

All season we’ve struggled against teams that are well drilled and have a bit of pace  , QPR bossed that game from start to end  , I doubt they’ve had an easier game all season

we have to regroup and prepare ourselves for beating Boro over 2 legs ... something im not convinced we can do , despite our double over them this season 

performance wise , all of them were shit tonight , I can’t really think of any positives 

[MikeAVFC]

Did not see that coming at all, wow. Really up against it now but not giving up yet. Still some twists and turns to come I hope

[Wolf man]

Spoiler

https://www.tenor.co/uVeF.gif

Mind the gap  

[terrytini]

If you are less than 100% against a team that are 100%, you struggle.

You often only discover that you are off the pace after kick off, not before.

Indeed just as Wolves found out on Saturday.

Were it not so the best team would always Win every game, the second best team would win them all except 2, the third best team would win all except 4,  and so on.

My only criticism would be changes should’ve been made at half time.

Edited March 14, 2018 by terrytini

[TRO]

28 minutes ago, MikeAVFC said:

Did not see that coming at all, wow. Really up against it now but not giving up yet. Still some twists and turns to come I hope

Neither me.

[TreeVillan]

The keeper was awful tonight, every shot on target confused him and inevitably went in. Definitely not prem level. 

[TRO]

Well fancy watching the best match and the worst match in the space of 3 days.

explain that one.

They did to us exactly what we did to Wolves.

When teams get in our face and disrupt us our game goes to pieces....as we displayed tonight.

 

[TRO]

There are no conclusions gleaned from tonights game...

but i do think you are only as good as your worst performance, not your best.

I was quite surprised that they could stoop that low tonight....i didn't think they had that performance in them.

Edited March 14, 2018 by TRO

[fifamad]

Pathetic performance, rubbish crowd, killed our momentum aswell that result has, I don’t think we will get up through play offs. All in all a terrible evening