Steven Gerrard

[dudevillaisnice]

Our set pieces have massively dropped off too, we looked a threat from them at one point.

[MaVilla]

6 minutes ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

That reminded me of Man Utd this season. A bunch of individuals making horrific decisions

for me, it just clearly shows some of our players just arent as good as we think they are.

I have said this many times, but we have quite a few panic merchants and chicken heads.

[Designer1]

Worryingly below par so far.

[CVByrne]

It's worrying that we're getting worse under Gerrard rather than better.

I just can't believe how bad we've become

[HalfTimePost]

Isn't tactically aware enough to create a Plan B. Plan A is the same every week and not convinced he's going to be a good enough coach to make us good enough at Plan A

[Sam-AVFC]

10 minutes ago, Spoony said:

I think last week I said you can see we are improving but I think I’m just blinded by the signings we’ve made. I think he’s been little more than an influence on signing Coutinho and little else. We look so much worse. We don’t even look like a team unit. Has he literally already lost the dressing room. 

I don't agree with losing the dressing room, but I'm with you that I think I was blinded by the new signings. We've still played shit as a team most games even if Coutinho has brought bags of quality.

[avfc1982am]

Top half....We will be lucky. We'll be lucky not to finish in the bottom 5 playing like that. I'm starting to worry that Gerrard is just relying on moments of brilliance because we look pretty clueless more often than not. Players running into each other, lumping it up field to midgets after fannying around at the back. The midfield 3 are far too compact and narrow in possession. Not good at all this week. Maybe the good performance were left in the mini preseason because we've looked sluggish and lazy this week.

[Chindie]

Trying to play in a manner that worked, in one season, with players way above the rest of the opposition, when the only competing team fell apart, in a much stronger league, with players that aren't massively better than those around them, and when we don't have the players to make it work anyway, is not a good idea.

Unfortunately it seems to be the only idea.

[MaVilla]

the fact is, Cash, Luiz, McGinn & Watkins just arent good enough.

We have players who could realistically take McGinns and Watkins' place while they perform like donkey's.....but we keep playing them!.

shocking tbh.

[Mantis]

Thing is, we did look better in his first couple of months and I don't think all of that was down to a new manager bounce. I don't know what's happened since then because we were clearly improving.

[tom_avfc]

1 minute ago, HalfTimePost said:

Isn't tactically aware enough to create a Plan B. Plan A is the same every week and not convinced he's going to be a good enough coach to make us good enough at Plan A

I’m not sure I even know what Plan A is supposed to look like. Has it worked in any game so far because even when we’ve won games we’ve not looked entirely convincing to me.

[hippo]

 

Only positive was the form of Mings. Who stuck to his main duty of defending and not trying play like Franz Beckenbauer .  Hopefully that lesson gets learned across the team.

I d seriously consider putting young in for Digne.  Its always very well moaning about exposed CB's - but throwing an attacking FB in to the mix was hardley going to tighten things up.

[R.Bear]

Some of the reactions in here are predictably hyperbolic and over the top. Today was terrible but Gerrard’s done a very good job. Next season is the time to really see what he and we can do. Until everything is in place, we’re going to have games like this.

[sne]

Hindsight and all that but maybe changing it up a bit earlier by using wingers against a Newcastle side who had to sub both of their full backs for much worse players would have been the right call today.

We hardly even tested Krafth and Dummet.

[Danishlad]

im fed up with watching Tyrone Mings hoof the ball to the big opposition defenders. Last game against Leeds he was hoofing high balls to Coutinho, this game to Watkins v Burn. We need to cut that out.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Danishlad

[PaulC]

Cant be too critical of him because we were woeful under Smith at the end of his tenure and could have been in a relegation battle. Clearly theres a lot of work to do. Some players need to be moved on in the summer 

[hippo]

Just now, Mantis said:

Thing is, we did look better in his first couple of months and I don't think all of that was down to a new manager bounce. I don't know what's happened since then because we were clearly improving.

Agreed.

Back to basics - did work. Against Leicester we looked solid. 

I don't even know what the formation is these days

[Tomaszk]

4 minutes ago, Spoony said:

I’m very anti constantly sacking managers, but I’d be more supportive of him if I could see what the hell he’s trying to do.

Why is Watkins, the single worst striker in the football pyramid who quite literally does NOTHING except break up our attacks, miss, lose the ball and be offside and frankly doesn’t look like he wants to play for us, start every game?

Why is Douglas Luiz taking every set piece when he can never beat the first man?

What actually is the game plan? Is it long ball? Because all I see is play it around dangerously at the back, get Mings to hoof it to Watkins (see above re being the worst striker in the country) and bypass our entire midfield including 3 of the country’s best attacking midfielders.

Nothing makes any sense. There’s no shape, no game plan, nothing. Our players are good enough that we should be able to keep it on the deck and create.

We also seem to have a massive problem with players killing attacks by being greedy. McGinn, Watkins, Douglas Luiz and Ramsey all guilty of that today. Bailey was too before he was injured and Buendia until recently  

This is honestly as bad as anything I’ve seen at Villa in recent years. I can’t really get behind him unless we have some sort of clear plan.

A lot of chat around from the squad and manager they are given very clear instructions.

Lip service?

[CVByrne]

2 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

the fact is, Cash, Luiz, McGinn & Watkins just arent good enough.

We have players who could realistically take McGinns and Watkins' place while they perform like donkey's.....but we keep playing them!.

shocking tbh.

I agree, I think McGinn in particular is a player who offers so little on a consistent basis that I am baffled why he is rated so highly. 

Luiz just needs to leave the club. We don't need him and he needs to get a new start somewhere else. 

Watkins is just nowhere near good enough for a top 6 side

[regular_john]

Only the Villa would sack the best manager we've had for a decade and replace him with someone so inexperienced and out of his depth.

 

Gerrard was a great player, no doubt, but he hasn't shown anything as a manager to suggest he's going to be successful. SPL experience is basically irrelevant as an Premier League manager because it's such a weak, joke league.

 

There have been plenty of managers who have done much better in the SPL than Gerrard and still couldn't hack it in the Premier League. McLeish, O'Neill, Strachan, Rodgers - all managers who achieved much more in Scotland and did very little when they came south of the border.