Ratings & Reactions: Southampton v Villa

[brummybloke]

Had to watch while doing a zoom quiz. Under the cosh for large parts. 

Same midfielders losing form in traore barkley and mcginn.

We had enough about us and for once VAR doing someone else's legs to get the 3 points. Still miffed at the Burnley collapse which literally threw 3 points way but we are almost to safety now so can't be too dispondant.

[AJ]

7 hours ago, darrenm said:

As I saw it live I saw it as an intentional stamp. As his foot is already on Martinez's wrist, he then bears his weight down which is not a natural movement.

Icing on the cake...no attempt at an apology afterwards.

[DaveAV1]

4 hours ago, nepal_villan said:

Sorry mate, but I find this type of comment exhausting as well - as I always see posts like this by some when criticism is levelled at a player or coach. By definition a forum will have opinions - not all will be positive and glowing. Smith and substitutions is an issue that has long been discussed here, on social media and podcasts. It's obviously a topic of debate. Except for a tiny minority who think only the likes of Antonio Conte should be coaching Aston Villa, feel the great majority are very supportive of Smith. That does not mean he is perfect and cannot improve.

I agree that nobody is above criticism and said that in the post but you’ve just picked out a small part of what I said. I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, that’s the nature of a place like this. However some of the criticism last night was at the very least OTT and in my opinion borderline abusive. Words like shithouse, disgraceful, muppet etc. There are people who can’t wait for Dean to fail, posters who we rarely see this season who’s vitriol has been bubbling up waiting for a chance to surface. They couldn’t wait any longer and a hard fought away victory against a very good team wasn’t going to stop them last night. 

Dean Smith isn’t perfect and I’m sure he works everyday to improve himself and the team but I believe a small minority of posters in here have an agenda that for me is at the very least strange. 

[BleedClaretAndBlue]

Just woke up. Remembered last night. Smiled like the grinch haha.

Went on twitter and its funny how all Villa fans unanimously have been honest and gracious in that victory. All accepting its harsh on Soton and that we got lucky whereas whenever its against us, rival fans defend their clubs’ lucky/crap decisions with delusion and dont admit the referee got it wrong ever, even when its a blatant wrong call by VAR they cant admit it. You just get “cry more” and all that bollox. 

Anyway the game. Plenty of positives:

- Superb defensively again, Mings deserves a lot of credit for a top performance. Targett has become one of our most reliable performers in the team as has Konsa, Cash & Emi

- 10th clean sheet this season. Stunning 

- Grealish & Targett complete the gauntlet without getting that 5th booking

- 6th away win including Leicester, Wolves, Arsenal & Southampton

- Watkins may not get many plaudits for that game but I thought he was unreal, he never stopped chasing and constantly came back to defend and wins so many balls lumped up to him

- Team spirit and endeavour was so good to see after that setback at Burnley. They wanted it more than ever epitomised with that scramble near the death with McGinn and Cash and everybody throwing their bodies at the ball

- Bouncebackability has been good all season, reason we find ourselves where we are

- Finally, we get a win we didnt really deserve and VAR goes for us. That really did feel like the equaliser for the West Ham game.

Im Very happy; exciting times. UTV

[Tommo_b]

9 hours ago, Monsieur Hazdazler said:

I’d say when you can see the team getting overloaded and looking tired, it’s not making a sub for the sake of it to try to preempt the game going against us. At 75mins onwards we were struggling, we got exposed a few times and lacked fresh legs and adequate cover in front of the defence. McGinn and Douglas Luiz worked hard but you’ve got to help them out. We were simply lucky to not concede at the end there, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have both faith and belief that Deano is the right man for us but also have an open conversation about an area he seems to struggle with as a head coach. He will be doing that, it’s what he does...he wants to improve and I hope he looks retrospectively at his decision making today.

Barkley is playing basically as a second striker in this system with McGinn and Douglas Luiz as more of a double pivot. If those two are getting tired and we are protecting a lead like that then surely sacrifice Barkley, bring on Nakamba and switch the system slightly to protect the defence. Then utilise someone Trez with huge work rate to provide both defensive cover and a counter attack threat. As it was we left Barkley on playing basically up front and exposed the tiring double pivot. Not the players fault and I can understand Smith wanting to keep a threat on the counter as well but we have to be proactive and not reactive...last game against Burnley we only reacted with subs when things had already gone wrong...fortunate it didn’t happen again today. 
 

Again, Deano is the man for me, love him, but he needs to take a look at his approach today.

If we are looking retrospectively... we got a clean sheet and won the game, I think he will be happy how he managed the game against a good Southampton side.

[Demitri_C]

10 hours ago, Tommo_b said:

Nothing wrong with him, we won. 

And we easily could not have then what would you say? 

Say barkley picked up another injury then would you be saying that?

Madness not to make subs when we have a midweek game then another next week.  Need to protect the squad

[Junxs]

10 hours ago, SuperTed said:

Mike Dean on VAR, who when even isn’t on the pitch, needs to make it about him 

But both decisions were correct?

A penalty cannot be given if the ball is deflected off any part of the defenders body first, it's actually in the rules. It hit Cash' thigh before his hand.

The offside goal was offside, if he gave this as a goal then it would have been making it about him

[MNVillan]

Might be the American in me, but I appreciated the VAR reviews yesterday. Neither of them contained a “clear and obvious error” so the on-pitch decision was upheld.

[nepal_villan]

1 hour ago, DaveAV1 said:

I agree that nobody is above criticism and said that in the post but you’ve just picked out a small part of what I said. I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, that’s the nature of a place like this. However some of the criticism last night was at the very least OTT and in my opinion borderline abusive. Words like shithouse, disgraceful, muppet etc. There are people who can’t wait for Dean to fail, posters who we rarely see this season who’s vitriol has been bubbling up waiting for a chance to surface. They couldn’t wait any longer and a hard fought away victory against a very good team wasn’t going to stop them last night. 

Dean Smith isn’t perfect and I’m sure he works everyday to improve himself and the team but I believe a small minority of posters in here have an agenda that for me is at the very least strange. 

Agree that is over the top. Presume most of those comments were in the match and reaction threads where emotions tend to be very raw.

[villalad21]

Didn't see any Villa fans or players complain about VAR yesterday. The hypocrisy is just silly. When a decision goes against your team VAR is a disgrace. There is an agenda against Villa and it needs to be removed.

When it goes in your favor. Dead silence from the players, fans and staff.

I thought both Watkins disallowed goal against West Ham and Ings goal yesterday was a disgrace.

Also thought it should have been a pen. Cash makes himself bigger for me and it's a clear pen.

Edited January 31, 2021 by villalad21

[Monsieur Hazdazler]

1 hour ago, Tommo_b said:

If we are looking retrospectively... we got a clean sheet and won the game, I think he will be happy how he managed the game against a good Southampton side.

I disagree, we achieved that partially through heroic defending and some good fortune. We shouldn’t be aiming to rely on a few millimetres in an offside call, because that could easily have gone against us.

[DJ_Villain]

5 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Didn't see any Villa fans or players complain about VAR yesterday. The hypocrisy is just silly. When a decision goes against your team VAR is a disgrace. There is an agenda against Villa and it needs to be removed.

When it goes in your favor. Dead silence from the players, fans and staff.

I thought both Watkins disallowed goal against West Ham and Ings goal yesterday was a disgrace.

Also thought it should have been a pen. Cash makes himself bigger for me and it's a clear pen.

I’m not complaining about the outcome of the VAR because it benefitted the Villa.

 

However, I feel for Southampton fans (the city where I grew up and is essentially my home and second team) because even with VAR, i feel both calls were wrong and if it had happened to Saints against any other side, I’d have been marginally more pissed off

[Follyfoot]

For me the best results of the season, I’ve been waiting for us to win ugly. Ticks another box as we continue to learn about what this team can and cannot do

[ferguson1]

 

[Brumstopdogs]

Just looking across the combined 2 games with Southampton this season:

Goals: Aston Villa 4 Southampton 4

Shots: Aston Villa 27 Southampton 29

Shots on target: Aston Villa 14 Southampton 9

Corners: Aston Villa 12 Southampton 8

On balance across the 2 games we're fairly evenly matched and 3 points each is a fair representation, in my view, of our overall performance (although we should have won at home and probably lost away based on chances).

Their league defeats (this season) before we played them yesterday were Spurs, Palace (back in September), Man U, Man City, Leicester and Arsenal. They are clearly a decent team and one that is a different proposition, in my view, with Romeu in their midfield. What a player he is.

We've just got one hell of a 3 points against a usual bogey team. Enjoy it!

[The_Steve]

24 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Didn't see any Villa fans or players complain about VAR yesterday. The hypocrisy is just silly. When a decision goes against your team VAR is a disgrace. There is an agenda against Villa and it needs to be removed.

When it goes in your favor. Dead silence from the players, fans and staff.

I thought both Watkins disallowed goal against West Ham and Ings goal yesterday was a disgrace.

Also thought it should have been a pen. Cash makes himself bigger for me and it's a clear pen.

Or, neither decision needed VAR to impact the game. 
 

The ‘goal’ was already flagged for offside. And the on-field referee did not see the non-existent hand ball. 
 

So, VAR was immaterial in the score line yesterday. 
 

A big criticism of VAR yesterday was how it missed the violent conduct of Che Adams - who intentionally tried to break or injure Emi’s hand with a stamp, leaving his boot in. But that’s absent from your post. 

[SuperTed]

36 minutes ago, Junxs said:

But both decisions were correct?

A penalty cannot be given if the ball is deflected off any part of the defenders body first, it's actually in the rules. It hit Cash' thigh before his hand.

The offside goal was offside, if he gave this as a goal then it would have been making it about him

We’ve been on the receiving end of a few of those though and we’ve always slated the ref and/or VAR official after. I imagine if you went on the Southampton forum now they’re talking about Mike Dean

[sheepyvillian]

The fact is if we had been a bit more cute with that final pass we could have scored more. 

It wasn't totally one way traffic. Grealish could have certainly added to his assist tally. 

[villalad21]

This wasn't an ugly win. It was a shit housery win.

Still have no idea how we got away with that.

Playing like that we'll lose more than we'll win.

We should be happy with the 3 points but we need to be miles better against West Ham.

[newhavenhibby]

Great result and Villa battled hard against a fast pressing side...........,made up for the Burnley result and I expect Southampton fans are greetin'  as to how they didn't win.......but that's football.

Don't you just love VAR