danceoftheshamen Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I do take a lot of reassurance from the fact we are still outside the relegation places (just) despite a glut of ridiculous fixtures. Aside from Palace (a) Wolves (a) and the Leicester game we have given a decent account of ourselves for the most part. Where i see our issue is that as soon as we don't have that 1st eleven out there namely Heaton Targett Mings Engels Guilbert Grealish McGinn ElGhazi Luiz / Nakamba / Hourihane Trez Wesley we struggle. This seems to impact on us even late on in games. As soon as we make 2 or 3 substitutions we are weakened and lose games late on. It happened at Spurs, Arsenal, & Liverpool (home). Most of our losses have been when that first choice eleven is disrupted too actually (Wolves (a) for example) It happened again on Saturday, Guilbert & Engels were missing (DS what were you thinking?) Mings goes down injured (Score was 0-0) Then almost as a direct result of that they score and we go on to concede 4 without him. No surprise to me as we were missing 3 of our normal back 4!! Now we enter a run of crucial fixtures without Mings most likely. .... Now that is a problem! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 18 hours ago, villalad21 said: Worried. Not just because we lost but the way we lost. Leicester could have scored 10 arent you always worried or scared or terrified about our position? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoMkali Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I just want to make it clear that over the last 7 games we have played the current top 6. That is not a fair run for anyone. Hell if Liverpool had to play the current top 7 in a row I only see them coming away with 10 points. We had the worst run of fixtures of any team in the league. Our next 4 games though are probably the most important of the season. By the end of it we could be on 27 points (I reckon 23) but we need to beat Norwich and Southampton and at least get a draw against Watford to prevent any of them getting past us between now and January. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkLillis Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 4 minutes ago, MotoMkali said: I just want to make it clear that over the last 7 games we have played the current top 6. That is not a fair run for anyone. Hell if Liverpool had to play the current top 7 in a row I only see them coming away with 10 points. We had the worst run of fixtures of any team in the league. Our next 4 games though are probably the most important of the season. By the end of it we could be on 27 points (I reckon 23) but we need to beat Norwich and Southampton and at least get a draw against Watford to prevent any of them getting past us between now and January. Agreed. What is annoying about this is the media are not taking it into consideration. Also annoying was the almost overwhelming absence of understanding on the Holte End yesterday that we were playing a Leicester team that were very good , they MADE us look bad. We can be well beaten...….as a newly promoted side I was expecting it to happen more often. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdulaziz1 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I really hope Mings and Targett are back as soon as possible. I would like Hause on the bench instead of Taylor. We’ll have hard fixtures coming up. Its the easiest on paper, but all of them are 6 pointers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 That Leicester match reminded me of some of the home games under Lambert and McLeish against the big teams and really underscored to me how good this Leicester team is. They absolutely outclassed us. Barely had to get out of first gear and still had more than enough to put us to the sword. We've played the current top 6 + Spurs and Arsenal, all of them away from home and have come away somewhat predictably from those 8 fixtures with 1 point. That's half of our season so far. The other half of the season we've played 8 teams, only one of whom are in the bottom 3 currently. We've picked up 14 points from those 8 games (should have been 16 in all honesty). That's almost 2 ppg and we still have 2 such games left until we've played every team in the league. We haven't been a million miles of getting results against the first set of 8 teams and 6 out of 8 of them have to still come to VP. There is room for improvement on our points tally there. But we're doing very well against our rivals and that's significantly more important, not least because it keeps the points out of their hands and keeps them at arms length. We're not doing too bad. To come out of this run of fixtures still out of the bottom 3 is very encouraging. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Very fascinating listening to Rafa speak at Sky right now. He's defensive analysis is a great watch. Smith should take notes. As defensive organization goes, Rafa is one of the best in the business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Arsenal are in a relegation battle. #Changemymind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Arsenal been one of the worst teams in the league in the last three months. Shambolic the way we lost there. Their next three home games are Man. City, Chelsea and Man. United btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoMkali Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 3 minutes ago, villalad21 said: Arsenal are in a relegation battle. #Changemymind Yeah but we faced them before they hit the slide. That is it. We have played all the top teams at the wrong time. Leicester 8 wins in a row, United had been getting it going Chelsea got Tammy back, Spurs first game of the season etc. We haven't been lucky with injuries or the timing of fixtures but we can definitely improve as well so hopefully we get some extra luck and pick up some more points in the last 22 games. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BleedClaretAndBlue Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Arsenal look awful. Cant get anything going, slow, toothless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laughable Chimp Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 West Ham are so aggresive and have such bite in their play. Its definitely something that's missing from our game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Just now, Laughable Chimp said: West Ham are so aggresive and have such bite in their play. Its definitely something that's missing from our game. Today. Most other games I've seen them they've looked utterly toothless. That's the bottom half of the PL for you, wildly inconsistent. Which is why I don't get too hung up when we're not doing too great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 1-1 aww Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
It's Your Round Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I want West Ham to lose, much as I’d love to Arsenal relegated, it’s not gonna happen. But keeping WH down there is better for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 West Ham is taking a "Villa" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomaszk Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Good result for us if Arsenal win. Both of these have looked garbage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 We gave West Ham far too much respect at VP. They were there for the taking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BleedClaretAndBlue Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 At least we aint the only ones to bottle it against a poor Arsenal 1-3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Arsenal have massively mugged West Ham here. Still in the long run this is obviously a better result for us. Southampton-West Ham at weekend. We need to dig in and grind out a draw at Bramall Lane. If we can do that we won't drop into bottom 3 regardless of what happens in Southampton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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