Ratings & Reactions: Villa v West Brom

[OutByEaster?]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56790344

I think the stats show that we dominated and controlled the game, I think the amount of mistakes we managed to make in a performance where we kept 70% of possession and had 24 efforts on goal skews that because each one is incredibly frustrating. I can only imagine those stats if we hadn't been quite so sloppy, particularly in the first half. 

It's a game we did enough to win and should have won, we were the better side. I think to suggest we could easily have lost it 4-1 is a little disingenuous, although it was certainly frustrating. 

We were the better side by a mile, easily good enough to overcome Albion, but not quite good enough to overcome our own sloppiness.

 

[villalad21]

2 hours ago, vreitti said:

I genuinely thought we played really well. Battered them 2nd half. With a bit more luck, we could have scored 5.

Also the constant calls for Smith to be sacked, really are beyond pathetic. We don't deserve him. 

Oh shush it you. 

People are entitled to their opinions. If you are happy with Smith great but you should respect fans that are not his biggest fan and are starting to get doubts because of poor performances for a long time now. 

This isn't Dean Smith FC it's Aston Villa FC. Whether you are Smith out or Smith in don't make you a lesser fan. 

[OutByEaster?]

Just now, villalad21 said:

Oh shush it you. 

People are entitled to their opinions

Which is it?

[flashingqwerty]

2 hours ago, allani said:

The goal only puts more question marks on Smith.  Why not make those changes 10, 15 or 20 minutes earlier?  Suddenly put pressure on the WBA defence and things start to happen.  Why does he always leave it so late?  Why does he continue with the same formation / tactics that haven't really worked since mid-December?

This is the reason why I wholeheartedly believe that our best transfer this summer would be a new manager.  Smith hasn't got the ability to push us any further.

[WooJung]

A late equaliser, a first premier league goal for Davis and Wesley's return really make everything feel a lot better than it really is... Turgid performance, our midfield is woeful and a blind referee would have done a better job just by guessing what was going on...

I picked Targett as my man of the match even if he wasn't the most impactful, the level of performances he consistently puts in is staggering. Proud of him wearing the shirt, good lad! 

Edited April 25, 2021 by WooJung

[flashingqwerty]

2 hours ago, vreitti said:

I genuinely thought we played really well. Battered them 2nd half. With a bit more luck, we could have scored 5.

Also the constant calls for Smith to be sacked, really are beyond pathetic. We don't deserve him. 

Baggies could just as easily have scored 5 but for a string of top saves from Emi.

2nd half we had a lot of possession, not really chances until the subs were made.

1st half, 15 minutes aside, baggies bossed the game.

[flashingqwerty]

2 hours ago, AVTuco said:

Davis MotM by a mile. So happy for him.

Also glad big Wes got some minutes and one good header too.

 

Without Emi, we lose by a big margin.

As much as I'm a fan of Davis, and chuffed he scored, he was some way behind Emi for the MoM as he kept us in it for a large portion.

[sheepyvillian]

2 hours ago, villanmac said:

He didnt hide and kept pushing us forward. Luiz is a holding player when we were going for the win so dont get the controvesy about taking him off. 

Luiz needs to be quicker in his thought process. We are far too pedestrian at times and Luiz is one of the main culprits. We need a midfielder with the ability to drive forward  quickly with the ball and someone who can anticipate his teammates movement off the ball. 

[flashingqwerty]

2 hours ago, Robtaylor200 said:

Always seem to be. But always too bloody late to win it 

He comes on and we instantly look a better team, yet, he never gets a start, and we never try the tactic that involves a big strong CF despite it clearly suiting the players we have.

I'd love us to play attractive, free flowing, attacking football all the time, but our players just do not have the technical ability to do it consistently.

We needs to be making the most of the talent we have rather than forcing square pegs into round holes so that the manager can satisfy his ego by playing only one way

[PaulC]

9 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56790344

I think the stats show that we dominated and controlled the game, I think the amount of mistakes we managed to make in a performance where we kept 70% of possession and had 24 efforts on goal skews that because each one is incredibly frustrating. I can only imagine those stats if we hadn't been quite so sloppy, particularly in the first half. 

It's a game we did enough to win and should have won, we were the better side. I think to suggest we could easily have lost it 4-1 is a little disingenuous, although it was certainly frustrating. 

We were the better side by a mile, easily good enough to overcome Albion, but not quite good enough to overcome our own sloppiness.

 

Yes I agree I thought we did control the middle of the park today. We were let down by sloppy defending with some bad luck in there and poor finishing. In my opinion we should have won that game 4-1 or 4-2

[flashingqwerty]

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

We won the first 4 games of the season, we have got worse and worse as the season has gone on. This type of bad form carries over to next season. 

Too many players I thought were good enough just don't look anyway near it. 200 million spent on players since we were promoted and lower mid table finish. Is that even par for the course? 

We started the season playing fast, attacking football, with a high press.

The players we have, being brutally honest, do not have enough technical ability to maintain playing like that.

They also severely lack composure on the ball, so once opposition managers started counter pressing, we went off the boil.

Smith either doesn't see that he has been found out, or refuses to change on principle.  Not quite sure which is worse...

[OutByEaster?]

16 minutes ago, flashingqwerty said:

Baggies could just as easily have scored 5 but for a string of top saves from Emi.

They did only have four shots on target, but yes, they made some good chances.

We could have scored five or six ourselves. 

I think we were a bigger problem for us than Albion were.

 

[flashingqwerty]

3 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

People talking about replacing smith? 

I’m avoiding the Dean Smith thread like the plague. Fickle.

If you're happy with the manager making the same errors in judgement nearly every game for three seasons, more power to you.

I want more for my club.  Smiths decision making is poor most of the time, and clearly he hasn't learnt anything.

He's a mediocre manager, we deserve better.

[sheepyvillian]

39 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

The fact that Martinez got voted motm against West Brom is a problem 

I think Johnson was arguably their best player. You can't knock the defence they have been great for most of the season. However, I do think Mings is always a moment away from dropping a clanger. 

[flashingqwerty]

3 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

So little fluency, so little consistency, so little confidence, so many mistakes and still the better side.

You can see who we could be in the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes and in between you can see everything that's wrong with us.

There's a big job on to build a side that can consistently finish in the top half, we're half a dozen players away from being a good squad, but the occasional glimpses we get of what we could be are both promising and frustrating.

On the positive column, Martinez was brilliant again, he's as good as it gets, Targett seems to get better each week and I thought El Ghazi did well.

Luiz was decent and got forward better than of late and Barkley showed flashes of what he could be, McGinn had the worst first half I've ever seen him have and looks a distance from his best, he needs a rocket. Mings was decent enough and Konsa emphasised how good he's been this season by shocking us in having a bad game. Elmo was solid but could have gone home with a goal that we'd have been watching forever.

Watkins looks like he can't quite find the click that he had earlier in the year, I'm delighted for Davis with his goal, he gives you all he's got, a pity that Wesley's header didn't sneak in for the fairytale finish.

Traore for me is the worry - I'm sure you can make a great two minute YouTube video of his highlights, but that's all there is, I don't think he's good enough and I think if we can find a proper right winger with Jack back on the left everything is going to look so much easier. I think McGinn was really poor but can be shaken into better, but I think this is all Traore is.

We've had 24 efforts on goal and in another game we could have scored four or five, we were the better side, but we played badly for seventy minutes - individual errors in bunches - that needs changing.

I think the shape was fine, the plan got people into decent positions (and Targett into lots of very good positions) I think the players rather than the manager were the cause of our troubles - but it's on the manager to fix it, some of these need the hairdryer in the week, this isn't a moment for slapping backs, it's a moment for slapping faces and there are a few here who need reminding that playing for twenty minutes isn't good enough.

Referee was a laughable abomination.

 

 

Problem I have OBE is you could have said this about the team at any point during Smith tenure.

Its not a coincidence that we make the same basic mistakes all the time.

Best example I can give, and it sounds ridiculous, is throw ins.  We almost always give possession away from throws.  This is because everyone stands still or stands behind an opponent hiding from the ball.

This is easily fixable with coaching, so why has it been this way for years?

Our off the ball movement is abysmal, almost non-existent.  That's coachable.

Watch back our last few games, and count how many more slips our players have compared to opponents.  Its shocking!  Like our guys are playing on ice.

[villalad21]

5 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

I think Johnson was arguably their best player. You can't knock the defence they have been great for most of the season. However, I do think Mings is always a moment away from dropping a clanger. 

More of a criticism of the team. 

When your keeper gets voted motm against a team that is going down coupled with the fact we've been horrendous and regressing for months alarm bells should be ringing whether you're pro Smith or anti Smith. 

Something is seriously wrong. I know Grealish is missing but we shouldn't be this poor. 

Edited April 25, 2021 by villalad21

[Paddywhack]

25 minutes ago, flashingqwerty said:

If you're happy with the manager making the same errors in judgement nearly every game for three seasons, more power to you.

I want more for my club.  Smiths decision making is poor most of the time, and clearly he hasn't learnt anything.

He's a mediocre manager, we deserve better.

As I said, I’m not going anywhere near the Smith thread because I know it’ll be bulging with more of this absolute guff.

[briny_ear]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56790344

I think the stats show that we dominated and controlled the game, I think the amount of mistakes we managed to make in a performance where we kept 70% of possession and had 24 efforts on goal skews that because each one is incredibly frustrating. I can only imagine those stats if we hadn't been quite so sloppy, particularly in the first half. 

It's a game we did enough to win and should have won, we were the better side. I think to suggest we could easily have lost it 4-1 is a little disingenuous, although it was certainly frustrating. 

We were the better side by a mile, easily good enough to overcome Albion, but not quite good enough to overcome our own sloppiness.

 

I don’t think you can always draw accurate conclusions about quality and control from statistics like this. I give you the same stats file for the West Brom/Chelsea game. Chelsea dominated that one yet lost 5-2.

I think one of the puzzles about this Villa side is how often we can have lots of possession and mount lots of attacks and yet it doesn’t feel like we are in control. Certainly I thought we were giving West Brom far too much time and space in midfield to build their attacks and for many spells they looked the most likely to score.

Obviously it would be perverse to claim West Brom could have won 4-1, since we scored 2. But 4-2? I counted two near-miraculous saves by Martinez, one from Konsa’s own goal attempt, and one shortly after that from a Pereira shot, that an even slightly lesser goalkeeper would probably have failed to keep out, so there is your 4-2 argued for in a non-disingenuous way. We are of course blessed with Martinez and I think he has played a major part in achieving our mid-table status this season.

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by briny_ear

[tezzaleed]

strange one this.  can see a lot of fans in this thread not really knowing who to blame for that.  even the obvious barkley haters seem absent although I have jumped a few pages.  defence as a unit wasn't up to its high standards for me.  konsa wasn't bad but wasn't at his faultless best and that combined with having elmo in there who just isn't quite good enough any more and we looked a bit rocky.  but difficult to blame anyone of them outright. midfield individually not bad.  mcginns delivery was sloppy but he covered a lot of ground and won/held the ball well.   luiz played well also and think barkley was ok trying to play some decent one twos around the box.  el ghazi had one of his stronger games.  traore did little of note but also didn't lose the ball all the time which he can do when he's off.  Watkins however was poor.  he's dipped badly in the last few games and needs some help up there.  maybe he's knackered maybe just fed up of running his balls off.  but when barkley tried little give and goes with him he wasn't up to it and his decisions in the box were poor on and off the ball.  but it wasn't his fault we didn't win.   even smith eventually made the right adjustments just 20 minutes too late.  so not great but not easy to put a finger on it this weak.

Edited April 26, 2021 by tezzaleed

[AJ]

Is getting booked for simulation a thing anymore?