Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Preston

[The Fun Factory]

What can you say? We  blew 2 chances to win it. First half was fine, PNE have  awful defence hence why there are 24th in the league. Second half was the usual brucey rubbish of sitting back. The pen was soft but we have big problems now with Chester being out, as what organisation we had at the back, fell apart once the captain went for the early bath.   

Once we were behind we decided to attack again and even with 10 men we should have won it as they had even a worse defence than us.  Nobody at the stadium had a clue why Whelan thought it was  a good idea to take the pen. Could not believe it- Bruce should have instructed practically anybody but Glenn to take it.  I'd rather have seen Bunn have a go. Overall it was  a game with 2 poor sides who neither deserved to win.

4 rights back across the defence? Giving up on Nyland after 10 games when you have supposedly scouted for a several years? Strange things are happening at Villa at the moment.

I can't see anything other than a heavy defeat on Saturday tbh.

[Hornso]

8 minutes ago, fifamad said:

We would of won had we not got a red card, not bruce’s fault chester hacked the last man down practically throwing 3 points away. 

Too simplistic to say that. After the sending off the team didn't galvanise, fight or make it tough for Preston to break down. We sat deep and gave the ball back to them.

In our last 15 games we've come up against two sides who have gone down to 10 men (Fulham & Ipswich) and neither of them capitulated like we did.

[Hornso]

4 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

What can you say? We  blew 2 chances to win it. First half was fine, PNE have  awful defence hence why there are 24th in the league. Second half was the usual brucey rubbish of sitting back. The pen was soft but we have big problems now with Chester being out, as what organisation we had at the back, fell apart once the captain went for the early bath.   

Once we were behind we decided to attack again and even with 10 men we should have won it as they had even a worse defence than us.  Nobody at the stadium had a clue why Whelan thought it was  a good idea to take the pen. Could not believe it- Bruce should have instructed practically anybody but Glenn to take it.  I'd rather have seen Bunn have a go. Overall it was  a game with 2 poor sides who neither deserved to win.

4 rights back across the defence? Giving up on Nyland after 10 games when you have supposedly scouted for a several years? Strange things are happening at Villa at the moment.

I can't see anything other than a heavy defeat on Saturday tbh.

Great point. Plus we've played 4 different keepers in 13 competitive games this season. Any wonder our defence is a complete shambles.

[TRO]

30 minutes ago, fifamad said:

We would of won had we not got a red card, not bruce’s fault chester hacked the last man down practically throwing 3 points away. 

We were on the slippery slope, before the red card......we came out second half not properly prepared.....it was a shocking offering that was in total contrast to the first half.

never competed.

those goals for PNE were coming it was totally predictable.

[One For The Road]

The amount of money we have spent on attacking players, only to have Glenn Whelan taking a last minute penalty, is mental.

We really needed to spend some of that money on our defence.

I predicted 2-2 before the game so I even didn't think we could let Preston score 3 times at Villa Park, and I think we have the worst defence in the league.

(Joint 2nd most goals conceded currently, Preston are 1st)

Edited October 3, 2018 by One For The Road

[One For The Road]

4 hours ago, Keener window-cleaner said:

Whelan taking the penalty?!?! Together with Bunn he would be the last one I'd chose to take a penalty, he can't even make clean strikes!

He can when it means stopping Villa getting into the Champions League. That was deep into stoppage time as well.

[Hornso]

Only team to allow Preston to pick up a point away from home thus far.

[Skills]

6 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I simply do not know.

I thought we got the selection right, then played it slightly wrongly with Kodjia and Grealish wide, but it was fluid enough (or Preston were bad enough) that we made it work with both drifting into a more natural 4-1-3-2 for our better moments. We scored a couple of reasonable goals and went in at half time looking comfortably the better team.

At half time, the players ate a large Sunday roast with plenty of mash and lashings of parsnips. Or something.

We came out for the second half as flat as the women's 1500 meters. I'm sure Preston had had a rocket, but for the eight minutes between the start of the half and the sending off, I don't think we made a pass. Preston looked lively and dangerous and threatened a bit and we were waiting for a reaction from Villa when Chester challenged a little clumsily and the whole world went batsh*t crazy.

I was too far away to see if it was a penalty or a sending off so I can't comment - however, what I will say is that there was a rule brought in last season that said if there was a foul in the box and a penalty was given, then even if the defender was last man it wouldn't be a sending off. Double Jeopardy they called it. The ref didn't remember it as well as I did, but I really hope it exists, because if Chester is suspended for three games, we're in the toilet.

Bruce made his biggest mistake on the night at that point and took off a tall, quick striker who could hold the ball up and bring people into the game - a player ideally suited to a lone role in a ten man team and left on Kodjia - who spent the whole of the second half looking like he was waiting for a conductor to check his ticket.

On came James Bree and we achieved Neville Nirvana - a whole back four of players who have played most of their games at right back. All the right backs made exactly the kind of back four you'd expect them to make and we proceeded to defend our goal like a nine year old girl with a feather duster. I got a great view of the incident that lead to their second and it was never a free kick in my opinion. They then looked like they'd score every time they put a cross in and all the unpleasantness started.

At 90 minutes, Preston started daydreaming about unicorns and tomorrow's tea and we magicked our way back into things before earning a penalty and missing it like knobs. 

A couple of individuals to say stuff about before the meat of it - I don't like Elmohamady but I thought he had a good game, Tuanzebe looked promising at times, Hourihane had a good first half, Jack was lucky not to get sent off for having a go at the ref, Abraham is a proper player. 

I have nothing against Glenn Whelan stepping up to take the penalty, he's a senior professional, he knows what he's about and he had the balls to say "I got this". If he does it again, someone should hit him, but I've got no problem with him stepping up tonight. Even if the effort was insipid.

But this Tuesday night is not football night, this Tuesday night is the Steve Bruce show, featuring Steve Bruce.

On the night, I didn't think he got all that much wrong - I didn't give him too much credit last week when we started the second half fired up against Bristol and I won't knock him too much for the way we limped out for the second half of this one - players should take some responsibility for that. Formation's were odd, and everyone was out of position, but that's sort of standard and not about tonight. In fact, the biggest thing he got wrong tonight was leaving Kodjia on over Abraham.

It's not a one night job though and tonight's game was entirely and absolutely the result of our manager. We have one central defender. One. Not four like everyone else, one. When he's sent off, we fart about putting people into places they've never been. I've met James Bree, he's about five foot nine and he's got a kind face. He's not a centre back. When you've got four right backs at the back, you're going to struggle - we have a midfield that can all pass the ball, but a system that says get it forward and get it wide quickly - when you do that, you don't control the ball - when you don't control the ball and you've got ten men and no centrebacks, you're in trouble. It doesn't look like we practise plan B so we carried on trying to get it forward and wide - it kept coming back and they kept scoring. A really good manager changes that. One that's not entirely negligent in building a squad over two and a half years never lets it happen in the first place.

When you've spent two and a half years building a shambles of a squad, with exciting, talented goalscoring players in parts and huge great gaping massive defender shaped holes in others, what you get is games that are shambolic, with exciting goalscoring but also with huge great gaping gaps at the back which mean you can't defend. We have built a squad to have games like tonight, seven goal nonsenses (and they say he's boring). You could make the claim that Steve Bruce did a reasonable job in parts tonight, but that he's trying to manage an unbalanced squad put together by a really bad manager in the summer. Him. I was disappointed Whelan missed the penalty at the end. I wasn't surprised that we'd need to score four to win a game. 

We don't have a full squad, we don't have a plan, we don't have a method and the manager has fallen out with the support. It looks like he may have lost some of the players too. There is no coming back from this, we are counting the days, in truth we have been since the summer when we failed to get a defence. 

Thank you for stopping the slide, thank you for Wembley - but it's got away from you Steve; take a break, have a cup of tea, put your feet up, grab some sun. You're done here.

Also, have I missed some sort of cabbage based incident?

 

 

 

perfectly said, i usually find a statement or phrase that i dont agree with in your game analysis, but this was spot on! 

cant blame Whelan for stepping up, we have a lack of leaders in the squad and that was a pinch of it, too bad about the outcome.

this result along with others comes purely down Bruce's poor planning over the summer and the fact we have an unbalanced squad

 

[Skills]

is Moreira injured?  why did Bunn get the nod ahead of him?   again a wasted loan space for someone who's not even back up keeper!

[Raver50032]

Trololololololololololol...

'Mind the gap...'

Wow Villa... just, wow.

[Unused Sub]

As Jimmy Greaves used to say ‘it’s a funny old game’.

Fairly comfortable first half, deserved the 2-0 lead.

PNE were always going to come out second half and give it a go.

It was the case of weathering the storm. We couldn’t.

If Chester got a yellow instead, we’d see the game out 2-1, 3-1, 3-2 etc.

Very poor with 10 men. Can only assume Abrahams wasn’t 100% fit, should be nailed on to sub Kodjia instead. Another query as to what the players do in training, certainly not anything to cope with being a man down.

I can understand putting Bolaise on up front: big, strong & quick. We needed some presence up field (It was very strange to hear some of the crowd shouting for Hogan to come on instead).

Don’t understand just lumping the ball forward and waiting for their next wave of attack to begin again. We just couldn’t get the ball on the floor and to go through the normal motions that we normally do: pass it along the back line, to the midfield and back again

[BOF]

Kodjia draws level with Weimann on 24 after last night's goal.  Next up is Darren Bent & Alan McInally on 25.

It's not often you drop points from a winning position and pick up points from a losing position within the same game, but we managed it last night.  It didn't happen at all last season and only happened once the season before (2-2 v Forest).  That's certainly not a positive though when you find yourself 2 up at half time.

That Glenn Whelan even got near the ball to take a crucial penalty in injury time is absolutely peak Aston Villa at the moment.  11 out of 10 for the comedy value, and if that's the straw that finally breaks Bruce's back then all hail Glenn Whelan the genius.

We all feared losing James Chester at some point this season. Well we're about to find out just how mis-managed this squad is.  Manchester United's Axel Tuanzebe is now our senior centre back Now I actually seem to rate him a lot higher than most in that position so I've no qualms about him being there.  He has shown on the few occasions he has played centreback that he does well in his natural position.  The problem will be the partnership.

All in all a terrible result against a vulnerable Preston.  There's no doubt they're in a false position at the moment, but we should still be taking advantage of teams when we can. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

Really is no way back from this. He has to be replaced. Most of us knew this 3 weeks ago, but hopefully the owners follow suit now. 

[mjmooney]

On 02/10/2018 at 23:35, OutByEaster? said:

From what I'm reading Calderwood turned round to the Lower Trinity, told them to "**** off" and made some unpleasant hand signals following our equaliser. 

If that's the case, he should be out of work in the morning.

Well, there you go.