Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Everton

[onmeedson]

Great to see Buendia come on and steal the show, but we all know he could not do that for 90 minutes and using the one half for one and the other for Buendia to shine worked well. The defence is still a worry and to me three at the back would solve this by taking up the room and stopping the two from leaving their positions to leave gaps from where they came. We have to enjoy a win no matter how hard it was or you just start to look like a bluenose.

[Vive_La_Villa]

7 hours ago, Zatman said:

I am sorry we won but that was crap. Coutinho is a passenger and we played better when he came off

Indeed.

[Stevo985]

I thought we were ok. We were comfortable for large parts of the game. The period after half time and the 10 mins at the very end of the game were the worrying parts. 
 

Buendia has to start. It’s beyond a joke now. 
 

Still not particularly convincing but it’s a step in the right direction 

[mattyvilla]

Dont think its been mentioned but i thought we should have had a penalty right at the death then the ref blew up for full time?

[robby b]

The last Villa match I attended was a horrible 3-1 home defeat to Everton. But since that, Villa Park really has become a bad place for them... with their results away to us in the PL since we came back up now played 4, lost 4.   Wow. 

   (four)  

 

 

[The_Steve]

3 hours ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Sorry, but I disagree.

There were some very good performances from Kamara, Mings, Cash, Ings and Watkins was lively too (two assists).

Perhaps we should have killed them off, I was hoping for a three nil victory personally and at times it looked like we might score more.

However opposition teams are always going to have some threat, Onana looks like he could be a real good player and he therefore made a big difference to them when he came on.

Felt we created enough chances to score 4 or five. Especially with Carlos's early miss, the chances Ollie made. Buendia gave us a different dimension. We managed to adapt to the game very well. A controlled performance until we switched off with 10 minutes to go.

You can only beat what's in front of you and we did that comfortably.

[sne]

Possibly write it down in part to the injury on Carlos but the changes we made right at the end meant that we gave up the midfield and invited pressure towards our goal.

We won thou so all good in the end.

[RicRic]

6 hours ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

I only watched the MOTD highlights but it didn't look like the win was in any way convincing. A better side than Everton would have probably won yesterday or at least got a draw given some of the chances we allowed them.

 

Gerrard buys himself more time but that's it. Fail to win more than one of the next five games and he'll be in trouble. We have to start beating the better teams and after yesterday's performance I am not convinced we will.

 

Mings needs to stay in the team, Buendia needs to play over Coutinho who looked again to have a poor game (he's worse since he signed permanently than we had him on loan despite Gerrard telling us he'd be better). Watkins-Ings I'm still not fond of but we do seem to win more when they both play. Carlos looks like he could be out for a while which is typically bad news for us.

 

Need to follow this up by beating Palace, I want to see some consistently good results if Gerrard wants to prove he's capable of taking this team forward.

Mate this was exactly what it was and i WAS at the match , my feeling is it was the home crowd and the tenacity got us through, we are lucky everton didnt have that extra kick about them 

[TomC]

Watkins: I had two problems with him in 2021-22: he missed chances by overthinking when he should have trusted his instincts, and he tried to force things when he should have passed the ball. He had two assists yesterday. He's solved one of the problems. That's progress. If he can get his shot back, he'll be back to being the Ollie of 2020-21. One thing I'd like to see him add to his repertoire is a chip. He gets in good positions to use it but ends up trying to lash the ball.

Coutinho: I spent much of the first half following what he was doing. Every time he got the ball he did something intelligent with it. Is Buendia playing better right now? Yes. The difference is that Bueni is playing with an edge and is making things happen, while Coutinho is playing it safer. But to say that Coutinho is a passenger is harsh. Bueni was in the same spot early last season when most of VT was against him, doing the right things but not the decisive ones. It doesn't help that Coutinho seems to spend lots of time out wide, whether that's his own doing or SG's instructions.

Gerrard: To me, the biggest tactical difference this game was how he deployed Kamara. He essentially dropped the Kamara-retreating-to-the-backline thing after it flopped last game. The only times Kamara did it were when Diego or Mings had the ball near the centre line and he moved back to cover in case they went forward. Otherwise, he was forward enough to support the attack, often offering an option for a horizontal pass that wasn't there last week. It's easy to think that SG is tactically inflexible given that he always uses a 4-3-3, but he adjusts a lot of things within the 4-3-3. And when they don't work, he drops them, just like he dropped the wide-midfielders-cover-for-the-fullbacks things last year after we all saw that flop. My ever-evolving opinion of SG as a manager is that he's still figuring things out, and maybe he wasn't quite ready for the PL, but he's not stupid. I think that he will figure things out, but it's going to take some time.

Digne: Had a howler of a game, didn't he?

McGinn: I'm usually critical of his passing, but I agree with ozvillafan here...his passes set things in motion for both goals, one after his own good tackle. (The other after a Bailey tackle!) Credit where credit is due.

The fact that both goals came on counter-attacks immediately after a tackle says to me that we're still, at heart, a counter-attacking team, as we have been since the Deano era. We need to improve in breaking down sides after they've dug in on defence. Bueni is the key to this.

 

[mikeyp102]

Outside of the Buendia/Coutinho decision, personally felt Gerrard got the team correct. Going two up top countered the Everton back 3. We controlled the game apart from the last 5 minutes when it was standard Villa backs to the wall. 

[pacbuddies]

We have just played two of the poorest teams in the division and we have 3 points and a -1 goal difference. With Diego Carlos injured we are only one starting player different (Kamara) to the team that finished a pathetic 14th last season. Don't get ahead of yourselves guys!

[Mantis]

1 hour ago, mikeyp102 said:

Outside of the Buendia/Coutinho decision, personally felt Gerrard got the team correct. Going two up top countered the Everton back 3. We controlled the game apart from the last 5 minutes when it was standard Villa backs to the wall. 

Ironically if we hadn't have scored the second we probably would've been fairly comfortable until the end. Really don't know why this team suddenly decide to self-destruct half the time when we go 2 goals up.

[Keyblade]

7 minutes ago, Mantis said:

Ironically if we hadn't have scored the second we probably would've been fairly comfortable until the end. Really don't know why this team suddenly decide to self-destruct half the time when we go 2 goals up.

We weren't really in control of the game. We had a lot of the ball, but most of it was aimless before Buendia came on. Then Everton found a second gear where they had bursts of attacks where they could have scored 2 or 3. Again, likely because we didn't really control that.

[Vive_La_Villa]

I was only able to watch on tv but that seemed like a very entertaining last 15 minutes or so even though very nerve-racking ! 
 

That’s what it’s all about though right ?

[Vive_La_Villa]

9 hours ago, Keyblade said:

We weren't really in control of the game. We had a lot of the ball, but most of it was aimless before Buendia came on. Then Everton found a second gear where they had bursts of attacks where they could have scored 2 or 3. Again, likely because we didn't really control that.

The nerves really kicked in when we conceded such a soft goal. It wasn’t great at all how we nearly threw the game away but on the positive side the team saw it out.

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

The nerves really kicked in when we conceded such a soft goal. It wasn’t great at all how we nearly threw the game away but on the positive side the team saw it out.

I think if Carlos/Cash didn't go down with an injury they scored. Was about 3/4 minutes killled when they had a lot of momentum

I thought at the time Carlos was actually time wasting

[Vive_La_Villa]

2 minutes ago, Zatman said:

I think if Carlos/Cash didn't go down with an injury they scored. Was about 3/4 minutes killled when they had a lot of momentum

I thought at the time Carlos was actually time wasting

I think it got added on though didn’t it? Ref played up to 99th minute. 
 

I thought he was time wasting too or at the worst it was cramp. 

[Zatman]

Just now, Vive_La_Villa said:

I think it got added on though didn’t it? Ref played up to 99th minute. 
 

I thought he was time wasting too or at the worst it was cramp. 

It got added on but the stoppage killed Everton momentum

[TRO]

16 hours ago, Keyblade said:

We weren't really in control of the game. We had a lot of the ball, but most of it was aimless before Buendia came on. Then Everton found a second gear where they had bursts of attacks where they could have scored 2 or 3. Again, likely because we didn't really control that.

Onana, seemed to change it for them, as Buendia changed it for us.

[TRO]

Typical bullying at the back post on us, for their goal.....one day we will address it.

Despite the crucial 3 points.