Ratings & Reactions: Leeds v Villa

[fruitvilla]

1 hour ago, thunderball said:

I can’t argue with your view, however, that just wasn’t my take away from the game, we are terribly disjointed. We just don’t look like putting together any credible attacks. We should be so much further forward with the project by now, especially given the quality of players that we have, that can only be down to the set up a management?

I don't think we are too far apart in our opinions. If we had put away our chances or even a couple???? I thought most of the players as individuals did well, but not together. Hence the disjointed appearance. 

I sort of agree with the quality of players we have I would like to see a better performance. We don't have a team that can pass through a set defence. Though there was one really nice set piece where we did that.

And there is a really deep philosophical discussion around the word should, which you probably don't want to get into.  

[NurembergVillan]

13 minutes ago, Adman said:

Credit where it's due, Leeds have left the floodlights on for us

They'll be pissed off when they come back tomorrow morning and find out John McGinn's broken most of them.

[parisvilla]

Are we the dullest team in the league?

[Shirtman]

Bored with the club after being a supporter for over 50 years. Don't trust our show biz owners or chief exec. Think Gerrard is one of the worst I've seen at Villa, but today was down to Bailey and Watkins. Bailey fannies around and gives the ball away. he needs a good kickin, his father needs to wake up. Watkins is flawed, knows it, might come good, but his 7 million pound replacement at Brentford is so much  better.  Think our owners, though ignorant about football might act soon.

[srsmithusa]

it's been time to name a new manager for several weeks at least.  It's just even more obvious now.  No ideas how to adapt and change to get the result.  IMO delays now are all about appearances for the club and for SG.  personally, I think  NSWE should only be concerned by one appearance, and thats the number of W's -  they are slowly slipping away.

[Villarcana]

We are Burnley, I figured it out

 

play Buendia 

 

that's all

[ciggiesnbeer]

Stevie Nicol "Some people say its hard to play against ten men, I think thats a bunch of nonsense."

Yup.

[vreitti]

4 hours ago, allani said:

Plenty of us said that we needed a new striker in the summer.  Ollie's not what we need up front.

What we really need, is an actual football manager. 

[chappy]

Buendia is being so horrendously mismanaged. Another reason to get rid. If we Sack the manager now, the new manager would have a few days with the squad ahead of Forest then another week ahead of a tough but winnable home game.Make it happen.
 

Luiz MOTM. Ref was decent. 

[Indigo]

It's probably been mentioned but for what it's worth I fully agree with Marsch criticising Villa for killing time in the first half. How on earth have we sunk to a level where we're wasting time against Leeds at every available opportunity in the first half of a game to maintain a 0-0 scoreline. Genuinely embarrassing. 

[danceoftheshamen]

Having watched that today it was clear that the reason we are so awful at scoring is 3-fold. Bailey - Attrocious aside from one cross, Coutinho - Consistently Poor finishing although unlucky with the one which hit the post but a special mention (& it sickens me to say it as I do like him) has to go to Watkins. The guys finishing is absolutely woeful, Non league standard currently even. You just cannot have that many chances at this level and consistently miss them.  I Love Ollie's play otherwise but you just cannot keep on missing chance after chance week in week out. It's killing us. Such a shame that he can't seem to improve.

[turvontour]

I'm worried Gerrard is going to be rescued by the world cup break. Like it's a new start when the PL restarts around Christmas.

[PaulC]

It was like a game from the 70s. Lot of tough tackling but not muvh footbaĺl played. We created enough though to win the game. Watkins was good apart from the bit which was needed, his finishing. Should have thrown Archer on. 

[danceoftheshamen]

2 minutes ago, PaulC said:

It was like a game from the 70s. Lot of tough tackling but not muvh footbaĺl played. We created enough though to win the game. Watkins was good apart from the bit which was needed, his finishing. Should have thrown Archer on. 

I Get that Archer has only had one full training session post injury but how on Earth he did not get minutes today is frankly bizarre!

[Davkaus]

For the first time in probably a decade, I turned a Villa game off, and went and did something else. Couldn't even make it through to half time, and I severely doubt I'll watch another game until this manager is gone.

I didn't find Bruce, Lambert, or even McLeish as depressing as this, because at least we had lower expectations, and it was a gradual fall from grace. We were sold European football in the summer, hiked the prices, sacked a well loved manager to try and achieve it, and here we are, playing this shit.

I'm not even angry any more, I've just completely fallen out of love. 

[allani]

38 minutes ago, vreitti said:

What we really need, is an actual football manager. 

A new manager and a new striker are not mutually exclusive.

[Podster]

I can not understand how people are defending SG and blaming the players. Its Gerrards job to do the work off the pitch with the players, so when they are on the pitch they dont play like they did today. He simply is not doing his job, it is his fault we play the way we do. Yes players can have an off day, but the whole team is playing crap almost every week, and every one says this is the best squad we have had in a long time. It's about time the powers in charge hear the voice of the fans. If we had acted sooner (before Chelsea) then we could have possibly lured Potter, but that ship has sailed so we need to act now or we will be swapping SG for another left over manager that nobody else wanted.

Edited October 3, 2022 by Podster

[TheStagMan]

1 hour ago, vreitti said:

What we really need, is an actual football manager. 

Novel, and bold. You know that might just work.

[Shomin Geki]

There's an episode of South Park where Cartman gets a supposed picture of a missing child displayed on a milk cartoon.  It's actually a picture of his bum.  When two bum-faced parents turn up looking for their missing bum-child the situation is so absurd and hilarious that it breaks something in Cartman.  He is no longer able to find anything funny and swiftly descends into a spiral of existential despair.  When elite football's Steven Gerrard chose not to bulk up his midfield against ten man Leeds, giving us more options, you know, to dominate that area of the pitch that fashions a greater variety of opportunities to attack the goal, only to throw on Danny Ings with ten minutes to go, well, the whole pitch may as well have been filled with an army of bum-faced atrocities.  Because something broke in me.  At that point all hope was lost.  This was the moment when, in the insane asylum of Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa, I decided to stop thrashing against my straitjacket, stop banging my head against the wall, and instantly accept a nirvana of learning to love an eternity of unremitting, unyielding blankness.  The Lovecraftian Atrocity of the Ings substitution had destroyed my mind.

Well, this didn't quite happen that way.  There may have been more expletives.  A dog may have looked at me funny.  But perhaps if that DID happen I'd be a better person right now.

To borrow once more from a source of winning puerility, in the film Ted, with the sweary teddy bear, Ted and Mark Wahlberg are discussing new strains of weed on offer.  The final one is called 'This is Permanent'.  This is how it feels following Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa (for it is NOT the Aston Villa of you or I).  That we'll be long-balling and miscontrolling and misreading each other, and sweatily dashing and style clashing, and not being allowed to play or think or plot or plan, and basically doing a pathetic football version of the final 'out from the trenches' moment from Black Adder, but not in slow-motion (at least until the 70th minute), forever.  This is permanent.  Until Mr Purslow decides he doesn't particularly NEED to bop along to Phil Collins alongside Some of Liverpool's Finest Gentlemen (who are good to their mothers) at someone or other's Christmas do... this is permanent.  It's pathetic how swiftly and unceremoniously we've become a big bag of shite.

Of course... this is football and all is never permanent.  Things can change in an instant.  Fortunes have been revived, or decimated, in one telling half of football.  But watching Villa players dither against ten man Leeds in the 88th minute, not sure who's ball it is, not sure what they'll do when someone finally runs to get it, not sure what they could have done to stop John McGinn imagining it's still 2018 and the ball is looping out from the Sheffield Wednesday rear-guard...this feels... permanent.

TODAY'S RATING FOR STEVEN GERRARD'S ASTON VILLA (season average afterwards)

MARTINEZ 6 (6.625) You do have to wonder, just a bit, if we did get that rumoured big money offer if he might just think... life's too short?

MINGS 7 (7.17) A very Tyrone Mings-ish performance from the really quite marvellous Tyrone Mings.  I might like watching Tyrone Mings right now more than I like watching Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa.  Which is something.

KONSA 6 (5.5) Still has the air of a child on a long car journey who could do a big, ugly sick AT ANY MOMENT.  Nervy, unsettled, but he's just about manged to hold in the barf for now.  Seemed more assured in the air today?

YOUNG 7 (7) One of the few pleasant surprises of the season so far is Young stepping up as the grizzled, seen-it-all vet in the Men on a Mission movie.  The boy is up for it, scrapping and pushing, like a man half his age.  Let's hope that come his death scene, cigarette in mouth, he can look at the muddy battlefield with a little bit of hope.

AUGUSTINSSON 6 (6) Seems a good athlete, with a tank and a decent touch.  Apparently somebody up there doesn't like Aston Villa having nice new things.

LUIZ 7 (6.5) Offers a calmness and control in the centre of the park that's almost surreal at times considering the chaos surrounding him.  A Caravaggio in a sea of Pollock.  Apparently now HATES the idea of getting a hat-trick of corner goals as he doesn't want to become a meme.

RAMSAY 6 (5.38) For me the most telling regression of Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa.  A good Villa game should come thick with moments of high-energy hustle and the odd imperious intervention from JJ.  Now there's only the odd threat of such.  Still a bit of thrust but the blade seems thinner.

McGINN 4 (4.25) You're at a fine Italian restaurant, with your lovely lady.  Delicious, stylish cuisine from a rich and storied culture lines the menu.  You order chips.  But we don't do chips, sir.  You got potatoes make me chips.  Double chips in fact.  Chips never let you down.

COUTINHO 6 (5.38) The odd seductive twinkle of a toe, an occasional incisive swish of his foot... I'm no longer concerned Coutinho is a busted flush.  I DO wonder if he can be properly magic again under a manager who doesn't possess crayons for a brain.  It's nice to have nice thoughts.

BAILEY 4 (5.14) Honestly that's quite a generous four here.  Sad Trombone Noise's Leon Bailey has another misadventure in 'I swear this pitch was twice as long' mode.  Funny prank putting him in 100 year old football boots made of thick wild boar leather, but maybe let's give him the ones he had at Leverkusen, yeah?

WATKINS 4 (5.28) If you listen to the jazz produced by both Watkins and Bailey's Sad Trombone Noises for too long you may end up swallowing your own tongue.  If you haven't already done that.  Doesn't seem to like footballs much of late.

BUENDIA 6 (5.57) What is a composed master of link-up play, through balls and seemingly counter-intuitive passes (that are actually absolutely the correct option) meant to do with this fizzy mess all around him.  Genuinely sad to see.

BEDNAREK 6 (6) Looks pretty good I thought!  Strong, sturdy, with more than a little composure and class.  Yes, it was mostly against ten man Leeds.  But also, do note that he was playing in the food-fight-in-an-all-you-can-eat-buffet world of Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa.

INGS N/A He's bringing on Ings?  Ings?!  Ings.  Ings.  Ings....

[ozvillafan]

My enduring image of Stevie G tonight was seeing him continually frustrated on the sideline by missed chance after missed chance....

... as if he couldn't do anything about it. You know..... like turn around 180 degrees, look at your bench and find 1 of 2 strikers wondering what it would take to get a guernsey