Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Southampton

[TRO]

37 minutes ago, screwdriver said:

Booed off at half time and full time and rightly so. Embarrassing.

Villa need all their influential players on the pitch to get anything. That means HEaton Mings McGinn and Grealish.

lose 1 and you struggle. We are two down. Mings makes mistakes but his influence gives us a fighting chance. Heads dropped today.

El Gazi should have been hauled off in the first half. Pathetic performance. A player who looked like Christiano Ronaldo last season running with the ball, but unable to understand basic tactics (ie where to be when he hasn't got the ball)

The two brazilians were as usual total waste of shirts. Wesley fights but is crap. Luiz doesn't want to be here.

Why didn't Engles pull Ings down and take the card to keep us in the game?

Why not start Lansbury who it is surely last chance saloon?

Why not start Kodjia who banged in a hatrick midweek. Why wait so long to bring him on?

These group  meetings in the 2nd half on the touch line before any decision is made. pathetic.

Grealish 5 men on him and no one sprinting to give him a short range option.

 

Southampton Have serious fire power in Ings and Long. both small in stature but excellent in touch and attitude.

sainst winning 3-0 and ings chasing down guilbert right up his arse for a lost cause. fantastic.

Long a pest all game.  REdmond looked like a world beater today.

We are up excrement creek without propulsion unless we have a new manager bounce or spend 50million on some proven prem class in Jan

 

 

I don't think we can spend our way out of this....even if the money was available and FFP let us spend it.

We have just played 2 teams Sheff Utd and Southampton and I would guess most of our fans would baulk at the prospect of having any of their players, such is the delusional view of our own players.

This is a group problem that the manager must find a solution to......we play like individuals, when we don't have the skill set to do so....our positional play is woeful.....there are many aspects of our play that is substandard at present.

best of luck ,Dean

[TRO]

2 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

We should be embarrassed. Newcastle 9th, with a worse team and apparently rubbish manager.

Oh Dear.

No, we should be embarrassed by what we have just witnessed......and Dean should be embarrassed even more.

[Villan_of_oz]

3 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Let the overreactions commence. 

Like your overreaction's to Wesley

[gurru991]

1 hour ago, pacbuddies said:

Finally some fans are beginning to wake up to what I said weeks ago about Smith not being good enough for this league. His naivety in the transfer market not signing a proven striker has been instrumental in our failure to get results. Our owners were just as naive giving him a contract extension, a gesture which he has repaid them with by taking us into the relegation zone for xmas. Get rid now and get Poch in and give him a January war chest to keep us up!

I'm not sure that Poch is a relegation battler, probably better to give Fat Sam a contract till the end of the season.He wouldn't be cheap but he knows what to do.

[danceoftheshamen]

Can't believe what a load of tripe i just witnessed.... & yet it was so obvious i would witness it when McGinn went off after what? 5 Mins?

If that's the best this bunch of losers can muster without two of our best players then we are down.  A shocking run of inept performances and defeats and as has been said by previous posters it made one feel embarrassed to be stood there having paid to watch it.

We would struggle in the Championship with performances like that.

I am sadly losing the faith Dean as much as i would love it to work.

[TRO]

2 hours ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

wE WiLl wiN wEn wE pLAy d EaZy TeeMz 

I was think about that all through the game......its the only thing that kept me smiling amongst the debris.

[TRO]

2 minutes ago, danceoftheshamen said:

Can't believe what a load of tripe i just witnessed.... & yet it was so obvious i would witness it when McGinn went off after what? 5 Mins?

If that's the best this bunch of losers can muster without two of our best players then we are down.  A shocking run of inept performances and defeats and as has been said by previous posters it made one feel embarrassed to be stood there having paid to watch it.

We would struggle in the Championship with performances like that.

I am sadly losing the faith Dean as much as i would love it to work.

I feel much the same.

I want it to work for him.....but the signs have been there, not just today.

[Graham t]

2 hours ago, smg said:

Thats the problem no one is deemed good enough for the mighty Villa. Just look around the premier league and European leagues at the moment to see how many ex players are playing in teams that are achieving far more than us. But were  all deemed to be shit by the Villa pundits on here.

They were 'shit' at Villa but other clubs have been able to get more out of them. Its called 'coaching', something that does not exist at Villa Park....

[TRO]

3 hours ago, Awol said:

No issues with Heaton.

 
Players good enough for this level but not delivering consistently: 

Grealish - McGinn - Mings - Engels - Targett

Players who may be good enough but not delivering consistently:

Luiz - Guilbert - Hourihane

The rest are simply not PL level players, including our entire front three. 

On Smith I just don’t know. Desperately want him to succeed, but if he wasn’t Villa in his heart I’d probably want him gone at this stage. No tactical flexibility, not decisive when change is clearly needed, and the team is terrible, terrible at doing the basics right, from poor defending to zero attacking threat and everything in between. 

So much money spent on dross last summer I reckon our chief scout needs hoofing too. 

It’s a mess and I don’t see how they turn it around at the moment. 

 

That is a real worry to me......all too familiar noises.

[smg]

1 hour ago, Talldarkandransome said:

I think Leicester will tear us a new one over two legs

You don’t say.

[TRO]

3 hours ago, Davkaus said:

How many of their players would you want to sign?

How many would you want to sign from Sheff Utd? or Burnley etc, etc,etc.....all not good enough for us, because we are not looking at the right things.

We are blind to the essential ingredients to stay in this league.....These managers above are not.....and our own Ron Saunders was well,well aware of what was required.....He would have despaired at that **** show.

We all want to play attractive football, but teams like today, won't let you and you have to fight for the right.

We have no fight in us or any organisational strategy to stop the opposition.....its just open season for them to play.

We are far too open as an entity......I have to be honest, I am amazed how Dean can preside over this and not see it or do something about it.

right now we are the worst team in the league.....yes it hurts don't it.....That's where we have landed for blindly following this format.

Edited December 21, 2019 by TRO

[VillaFaninLondon]

Smith looks like he has lost the dressing room, continues to stick to the same failed system, and is running out of time. We can still stay up, but not with Smith because he is too stubborn and stuck in his ways to change anything, plus isn't clever enough to tactically outmanoeuvre other teams. I've never been totally convinced he could make the step up to PL manager and that looks like being true. OK, he got us up last season thanks to having some very good individual players and allowing them to play, but his lack of tactical nous was proven when we won 2 in 13 games in a much poorer standard of league. He simply relies far too much on individual players rather than implementing a cohesive system that gets consistent results. 

 

Ambitious teams sack managers when things aren't working regardless of what they have done in the past. Southampton sacked Adkins in 2012/13 and weren't even in the bottom 3; Fulham did the same with Jokanovic last season. 

 

Realistic managers we could get are Benitez and Fat Sam, both would improve our porous defence and could grind out some 1-0 wins. We'd have a much better chance of staying up with them than sticking with Smith who continues to let us down with the same mistakes. I'd love Poch but considering we signed no marquee names in the summer I doubt we'd attract a marquee manager like that.

[TRO]

3 hours ago, It's Your Round said:

One thing that really annoys me (and there are many that I can’t be bothered to type out) is how much space we give to teams. We stand off and stand off, giving up territory on the pitch way too easily. When Southampton received the ball today, they had all the time in the world to control the ball and pick a pass. On a few occasions they miss-controlled it and there were no Villa players anywhere near them to nick it back. Where’s the intensity? Where’s the effort to make a difference? 
 

and still, some fans think we work hard.

I despair.

Its the main thing for me too.....but worse is to come, its been like for months.

our positional play too is woeful.

[TRO]

3 hours ago, AntrimBlack said:

That no longer seems like the problem I thought it would be.

The sale price will be.

[TRO]

3 hours ago, MotoMkali said:

We press but we play so deep that once the players has chased they are so far out of position it becomes child's play to unlock the defence. 

but we don't move as a block, we move as individuals and create massive open spaces.

[villalad21]

Getting outfought every week.

Once again. Saints wanted it more than us, fought harder and won fair and square.

[bojong]

Yes we're playing crap overall, but I honestly think we're missing Mings badly. 

[TRO]

3 hours ago, Flynnchin84 said:

On the way back from the game, I don’t post often however thought I’d share my thoughts.

First half was arguably our worst half of football we have had in years. No identity and absolutely no game plan. The players were flat, didn’t look arsed. 

Completely forgot Hourihane was on the pitch, didn’t offer anything and didn’t look like he wanted the ball. Our right side was abysmal, AEG and Fred looked like they hadn’t ever played with each other. The atmosphere before the game was flat. 
 

Kodjia needs to start over Wesley on Thursday, I think Jack needs to go back into the middle, and Douglas is a CDM, not a CM.

The worst thing is, Southampton weren’t even that good today, and we were absolutely slaughtered. On another day that could’ve been 5 or 6-0. 
 

Douglas is not a CDM...Period.

sadly, I think the saints did a very good job on us today......if that's not good for them.....I think we have a real problem.....In terms of hard work and application alone, I thought they was excellent.

Southampton played with a similar approach to Sheff Utd........not in style or formation, with intensity and a willingness not to let us settle on the ball....they get at you and stop you playing and quieten the crowd by taking the sting out of our play......

The word must have circulated, deny Villa Space and you will nullify any threat they have and its working.....shut the noisy crowd up as they are their 12th man

Its so bloody simple....it just requires hard graft and a will to win.

The problem is in the counter press, we do not have sufficient personnel to reverse the trend and deny them space or win the ball high up.

To make matters much worse, I don't think there is an appetite to recruit such players with the manager or many fans.

This is it, this is the trade off of playing attractive football, when it is working its great, when it is not working like now its dogs Breath.

We need a few Dogs of war to come in to the squad and give the rest of our players some confidence to compete.

Edited December 21, 2019 by TRO

[The Fun Factory]

Well lets not beat around the bush- that was dog turd and we are in a real relegation scrap now.  Started badly with McGinn and got worse. Not one played well and we gave the game away to a poor southampton side. Defending was abysmal all afternoon. Lack confidence and miss Mings leadership even if he was playing a bit dodgy before the injury.

I am baffled why Smith did not do a sub or change the formation at half time to try and get us back in the game. Then left in the 3rd and bring Kodjia on? A bad day at the office but not very confident about Norich now.  Luiz frusrates me, I have no idea what Marvelous was thinking off for the third and Wesley ran around a bit. 

The best bit of the afternoon was when Saints fans thought they scored a fourth but hit the side netting we all took the pish. Jack scpred a good consolation. That is about it.

Edited December 21, 2019 by The Fun Factory

[TRO]

52 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Smith looks like he has lost the dressing room, continues to stick to the same failed system, and is running out of time. We can still stay up, but not with Smith because he is too stubborn and stuck in his ways to change anything, plus isn't clever enough to tactically outmanoeuvre other teams. I've never been totally convinced he could make the step up to PL manager and that looks like being true. OK, he got us up last season thanks to having some very good individual players and allowing them to play, but his lack of tactical nous was proven when we won 2 in 13 games in a much poorer standard of league. He simply relies far too much on individual players rather than implementing a cohesive system that gets consistent results. 

 

Ambitious teams sack managers when things aren't working regardless of what they have done in the past. Southampton sacked Adkins in 2012/13 and weren't even in the bottom 3; Fulham did the same with Jokanovic last season. 

 

Realistic managers we could get are Benitez and Fat Sam, both would improve our porous defence and could grind out some 1-0 wins. We'd have a much better chance of staying up with them than sticking with Smith who continues to let us down with the same mistakes. I'd love Poch but considering we signed no marquee names in the summer I doubt we'd attract a marquee manager like that.

I over heard a fan walking out of the ground saying the same thing.

Ambitious teams sack managers when there are better ones out there.....we nearly always have very few good ones to choose from.

However,He needs a chance to reverse this trend.....hope he can

Edited December 21, 2019 by TRO