Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Manchester City

[VillaFaninLondon]

28 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

Engels not in squad.

Drinkwater given a start when not fit.

Targett fit and not in the squad?

Taylor playing.

Elmo over guilbert.

Good thing we loaned Reina.

Team doesn't press or close down, just stands off ALL THE TIME, thats even more criminal than the above, probably our biggest weakness.

Said this before ko and got slagged off for it. The writing was on the wall really. 

 

Still think we'd have lost, but Targett, Engels, Guilbert, Trez and Nakamba should have played today. Selecting Drinkwater really shows how out of touch Smith is - the guy has not played a full game of football in 2 years. When you play a side of their quality you have to play your strongest team - it was obvious that players like Taylor and Hause were going to be shown up today as quite frankly they probably aren't even Championship quality. 

 

It pains me to see how Pearson has turned Watford around while we sink ever lower with Smith at the helm. I know we have had injuries etc and that can't be helped, but his tactical awareness is so bad it's painful. These players play like a deer in headlights most of the time. 

[S-Platt]

Sometimes you just have to doff your cap!

[WakefieldVillan]

Voted Grealish MOTM but only cos he had to endure 90 minutes of that turgid Villa performance and deserves so much more than what his team mates offered today. Trezeguet was lively when he came on and fair play to him. In hindsight his and Nakamba's energy could have made things a little more bearable to watch. The team selection and notable inclusion of Drinkwater backfired immensely and he contributed to 3 (I think) of their goals. I'm not going to write him off because as daft as it sounds in the first 10 minutes he looked ok but then his legs went - 50 minutes before I thought they would.

Was always going to be extremely difficult to get anything from the game as we all knew, but the players well n truly looked beaten before a ball was kicked and then it was just a case of keeping the score down.

Defensively were shocking and having no real focal point to our attack meant it was just wave after wave of attacks and it was a painful watch.

I rated Smith very poor but I think the players still let him and themselves down today and I wont be calling for his head off the back of this game. We need to regroup, get some signings in and do our upmost to stay in this league.

Fair play to the Villa crowd that were still there singing at the end, class that.

 

[briny_ear]

Like the commentary team just said, the last 3 PL games Drinkwater has played have all been against Man C and the aggregate score is now 2-11. He also played a Charity Shield  match against Man C which ended 0-2.

(He broke the chain by playing a league cup against Sunderland earlier this season and lost 1-3.)

[Keener window-cleaner]

El Ghazi looked like the only one who was interested today.

As I mentioned in the Dean Smith thread I can't believe we gave them so much space between our backline and midfield. Damn that mid three was slow and off the pace. Nakamba is the only one with some athleticism in our midfield.

Worst I've seen us play for a long time, sad to see how we have regressed since Man C away, in that game we at least gave them a match and created something.

[VillaFaninLondon]

Just now, S-Platt said:

Sometimes you just have to doff your cap!

They've spent billions on their squad bypassing FFP in the process while we continuously get media saying we're close to breaking FFP after one or two summers of big spending forgetting that we spent nothing under Lerner in 6 years. 

 

Game is completely facked to be honest.

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, S-Platt said:

Sometimes you just have to doff your cap!

To a degree, but majority of the goals were gifts. 

[Herman22]

If you want some perspective listen to Souness on Sky.

Thank f**k for him. He's the only one who talks sense on Sky. 

[CosmicVillan]

Made even worse by the fact I switched it off at 6-0

[peterms]

21 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Think I heard the announcement that the crowd today was around 41,800. As we  went 0-6 down they were singing “Aston Villa FC, we’re by far the greatest the world has ever seen”.

I want every single one of those fans to write to me and explain their thinking. 

It's a song about the latter part of the 19th century.  Leave out the apostrophe.

[bannedfromHandV]

Embarrassing 

[AntrimBlack]

55 minutes ago, Talldarkandransome said:

Hammered by Brighton

Yep. And we have to play them again on Saturday.

[dounavilla]

Motm = Villa supporters.

[smg]

1 hour ago, AVTuco said:

We're done. Our players are completely shot. No confidence, no pride, no fight.

 

You missed out fans (some of them) after players in your comment

[AntrimBlack]

We were truly shit, but looking for positives, I never expected anything from this but a defeat, so only our goal difference suffered.

But the manner of the defeat worries me. Plenty of the lower placed teams have beaten higher placed teams this season. We just  came out scared of them and anticipating defeat.

This window needs to be mega-awesome.

[rbcuk]

Where is the option for none for motm, shambles of a performance 

[smg]

1 hour ago, leemond2008 said:

I'm just lucky that I live close enough to the ground to leave at half time and only miss the first 5 minutes of the second half...actually I wish it would have took me an hour to get home so I wouldn't have had to endure the second half.

Villa fan admitting leaving at half time and then watching the second half at home ...but wishing he hadn’t done it. Why don’t you go and follow another team you don’t really want to be a Villa supporter

[briny_ear]

The manager couldn’t explain why we played so badly and neither could our captain.

Diesn’t bode too well.

[Zhan_Zhuang]

Crazy to start with Drunkwater, a man who has hardly played.

El Ghazi, Trezeguet and Grealish were the best players on the Park.

[nick76]

12 minutes ago, dounavilla said:

Motm = Villa supporters.

My thoughts exactly! Fans singing until the end and deserved the goal for our support as funny as that sounds being 6-0 down.

Team rubbish, we couldn’t compete with quality obviously but should be able to compete on other qualities but we didn’t.