Ratings & Reactions: Forest v Villa

[Ender In The Sky]

3 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

6 points off 20th

I’m a glass half full kinda guy. Unbeaten in 4, upward trajectory. Not a great performance granted but still points on the board. More positives than negatives surely 

[OutByEaster?]

7 minutes ago, Rightdm00 said:

Played 18 since I was off today. Besides the highlights from Young's wonder strike do I need to watch the full 90?

I'd sooner rod my dog.

 

[Stevo985]

0.72 xG tonight

Lowest xG foresthave conceded all season and the 7th time in 9 games that we’ve got less than 1 xG in a game 

Indefensible

[Stevo985]

15 minutes ago, jim said:

Yep, unbeaten in 4 with an injury ravaged team.2 points outside the top ten.

Forest parked the bus and caused us no issues. Our front players were garbage. He needs to find a way to turn the chances into goals! 

Onwards and upwards!

What chances?! 
 

vvvvvvv

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

0.72 xG tonight

Lowest xG foresthave conceded all season and the 7th time in 9 games that we’ve got less than 1 xG in a game 

Indefensible

 

[IrishVilla10]

15 minutes ago, jim said:

Yep, unbeaten in 4 with an injury ravaged team.2 points outside the top ten.

Forest parked the bus and caused us no issues. Our front players were garbage. He needs to find a way to turn the chances into goals! 

Onwards and upwards!

Kin elllllll. Drawing with Forrest and ten men Leeds, unbeaten in 4 what an achievement 

[messi11]

Don't worry its going to be okay  

[Adam2003]

16 minutes ago, mrchnry said:

I think throwing all the strikers on is a good indication that Gerrard knows he's in real trouble. 

Very ‘Lambert at Bradford’ vibes today.

[Philosopher]

No imagination, low risk, no cohesion, poor decision making, a captain the needs to be stripped of the captaincy and dropped.

How can we play two playmaking number 10's and not get our midfielders to run beyond them. They're too narrow, so all we can do is get the fullbacks come round the outside. We are too easy to shut down.

[penguin]

20 minutes ago, Ender In The Sky said:

I’m a glass half full kinda guy. Unbeaten in 4, upward trajectory. Not a great performance granted but still points on the board. More positives than negatives surely 

Absolutely not.

This isn’t the season we first came up, there are more expectations than to just scrape any points by any means necessary.

Being unbeaten in 4 is a meaningless stat, completely lacking any context of performances or the opposition. The last 3 games, taking into account Leeds were down to 10 for 45 minutes, were 3 of the most winnable we have all season there is no upward trajectory other than by the most basic of analysis.

[Zatman]

Only Wolves have scored fewer goals than us and Everton and Wolves have had fewer goal involvements per game than us this season

[bobzy]

21 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Bardell says fans of other teams are telling him that we are the worst team to watch

I watched this game in a pub down the road from the City Ground. Forest fans were wondering why the hell we weren’t just going for it as they were sat so deep.

One of those games where it was absolutely for the taking… we did nothing. It was awful.

[Tom13]

I'm going to sleep now. Praying I see the words club announcement come from AVFCOfficial tomorrow.

[VillaChris]

30 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Only Wolves have scored fewer goals than us and Everton and Wolves have had fewer goal involvements per game than us this season

Wolves are awful but they've just had really poor recruitment, bad luck aswell with the new striker doing his ACL on his debut. They'll be down there with us for most of this season.

I find Everton games reasonably entertaining as unlike us they have actual pace on the counter attack.

Pound for pound Gerrard is comfortably the worst manager in the league. Rodgers doing terribly aswell but he has finished 5th twice with this Leicester squad.

[Keyblade]

2 years ago we were going to newly promoted grounds and just smacking the opposition. That season our record against the newly promoted teams was: P6 W4 D1 L1 GF 11 GA 6. 

The 1 loss was from that Bamford masterclass and if you're wondering what that draw was, it was against West Brom near the tail end of the season when Grealish and a bunch of other people were injured. Keinan Davis of all people got the equalizing goal, and Wesley was also on the pitch.

[IrishVilla10]

 More positives 

[ThunderPower_14]

We never got to the point under Smith where we were turgid and completely lacking imagination like we are here. 

The squad has plenty of talent and we've now blown a season on this manager. He must go. 

[Shomin Geki]

There doesn't really feel like there's any adequate response to football like this.  Circumstances like this.  We had Grealish and Smith not much longer than a year ago and the wind seemed in our sails.  The waters were choppy but there was something about us, whether it was the spirit of the crew or a fundamentally sound vessel.  We don't seem to have any of these things now.  The choice, it would seem to me, is to decide whether our present circumstance can be treated as an aberration or a culmination of everything that's lead here.  I dearly hope it's the former.  The former, however, necessitates the kind of boldness, intelligence and conviction that seem currently alien to the club.  Let's see if they've still got, eh?

And as vitriolic as I've been about Gerrard, and everyone has, all very much deserved, whilst taking a step back there's something quite sad about the whole situation.  I've always loved football, playing it and watching it, and whilst I was never the best player on the pitch I felt I had a decent understanding of its dynamics and requirements.  Eventually a chronic injury was discovered that, unbeknownst to me, has kept me from playing any kind of football at all.  But the time spent on the sidelines encouraged me to really watch the game carefully, read about it, colour in parts of my knowledge that were, in retrospect, quite spare.  There was a lot I, as a 'marauding left back with an engine', didn't even begin to appreciate about the game.  I find your knowledge of the game can be quite defined by the position you play in.  I was determined to come back stronger, armed with all this tactical and intellectual nous, and add it to my game.  I had a real hunger.  Now, I've never played at any real level at all, but like all of you I would imagine, there's a dignity, an art, to the game that's, for want of a less cliched phrase, good for the soul.  Every game is important.  I lasted one game back before it was obvious how terminal my injury was and I haven't played since and never properly will.  But that hunger, that desire to fuse my physical and intellectual understanding of the game, is something I still find quite striking.

It's how I imagine former players must feel when they find themselves in the dug-out.  There's unfinished business.  There's still a fire in the tummy.  You still kick, as they say, every ball.  Now, Steven Gerrard has had a playing career full of drama, if nothing else.  A dazzlingly exciting player, that, with the exception of one very odd night in Istanbul, didn't taste much bona fide success.  That's in spite of being the hero of his boyhood club, the cut and thrust of a 'golden generation' of a national side, and coming of age at a time when the English game was evolving massively in both proficiency and popularity.  Gerrard must have seen the imports that made that happen, that heralded the Premier League 'the greatest league in the world', out-achieve him.  Maybe it baffled him.  Nobody ran as much, nobody sprinted towards goal like him, nobody 'wanted' it more.  And yet there they were, better trained, better schooled, better coached, more sophisticated and measured, more intelligent and visionary, lifting trophies and getting their moves to giant clubs and lifting more trophies.  Now Stevie G isn't an idiot, and not for want of trying, he's still managed to retain a certain fondness among the general football-loving public.  There grew something more reflective about him, even maybe a little melancholic or sanguine, in his final years as a player.  As if he realised, somewhere, that his playing style, his gung-ho army of one approach wasn't 'The Answer'.  That there was more to this game.  That what he himself was doing wasn't... enough.  Business was unfinished.  He'd have to be shrewder, wiser, more cultured and reflective, like those clever foreign lads that seemed to be... better... than him.

And this is how it ends.  Before it really gets started.  Dogshit football barely motivated by the slightest of motivational cliches.  That better, greater football that Gerrard was too busy running through to ever properly notice, that you thought maybe he'd reflected upon as his legs stopped doing what they do, that seems to remain a mystery.  Maybe even an enemy?  He didn't learn.  He's either still running about in his head, thinking every player on the pitch can run like him, 'want it' like him.  Or maybe he's stopped running and he's tired and worn and resentful.  The chase never found itself anywhere substantial.  And Steven Gerrard finds himself lonely on the Aston Villa sidelines not noticing patterns, not working things out, not attuned to player's dynamics, but still oddly occupied, but occupied with creating this imaginary finishing line, with the cheers and the champagne and the hugs, that all his running deserved.  And all he can do is repeat mantras he might have imagined if he'd been managing himself back in the day.  Managing himself to this moment.  Where he seems not to accept the truth in front of him.  Nor want to see it.  I'm very disappointed, perhaps even angry at where Aston Villa are right now, but there's also something really sad about the whole thing.  Is this all there is?

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

MARTINEZ 6 (6.55) You wonder what he might be thinking, spectator that he is of late?  Enough of a professional you would hope that he can see these relatively easy matches are the calm before the storm of the harder ones and won't let himself drift away with the mundanity of it all.

MINGS 7 (7.14) Decent again, totally consistent, reassuring so, but... had a slightly nasty undercurrent to his game today.  Feel there might be a naughty challenge, borne maybe of frustration, or apathy, in the not too distant future.  That Mings is not your friend.

KONSA 6 (5.55) Kept the rampaging, dagger-toothed wolves of Nottingham at bay.  Still looking woolly and eminently bullyable.

CASH 6 (6.14) Back, and after a pleasing initial jolt when reminded of his energy and enthusiasm, settled into a familiar sweaty ineffectiveness.

YOUNG 7 (7) That old cliche about a team of James Milners?  What does it say about Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa that we'd probably be better off with a team of 37 year old Ashley Youngs?  Top lad though.

LUIZ 6 (6.43) You can't be a sophisticated gentleman on a sweaty, deafening club dancefloor and likewise a composed Brazilian CM ain't gonna get any classy ladies numbers in Steven Gerrard's oil-spattered engine room. 

MCGINN 3 (4.11) I remember every time I used to watch Gaetan Bong I was amazed, from my limited vantage, how he could be playing at elite level.  I wonder if for fans of Forest, Leeds, Bournemouth... McGinn is our Bong.  He's getting worse, you know...

COUTINHO 4 (5.22) After a promising, but unproductive, couple of weeks, he's back to... oh is that Phillipe Coutinho?  He used to be somebody.

BUENDIA 4 (5.37) The decline continues.  Buzzes around ineffectually, no doubt somewhat aware of places that links should be.  Quite possibly the player most in need of Gerrard's departure.

RAMSEY 6 (5.44) How I long for football's most potently dropped shoulder to be followed by a feint, a shimmy, a charge, into somewhere other than a cluttered no man's land.

WATKINS 4 (5.13) I seem to remember some speculation that Watkins first experience of fatherhood might be negatively effecting him.  Now, has it ever been confirmed just how many kids Watkins had, and if any of them were accidentally born Blose?  Might explain things, cos otherwise .

INGS 5 (5.8) Looks old.  Like really old.  Seems to age about 18 months between each match.

DENDONCKER 5 (5) Doesn't look very good huh?

ARCHER 6 (6) Showed something.  I doubt he'll thrive given the present circumstances.

[TheMightyVillans]

Forest were terrible. Somehow this game ended up being more frustrating that the leeds game.

Just hurry up and get rid of gerrard please and mcphee as well. Not sure who is a bigger fraud out of the two.

I end up with an actual headache every villa game I watch.

Edited October 11, 2022 by TheMightyVillans

[BOF]

Archer looked very sharp. He needs a proper chance. The defence was decent except for the goal. Midfield was worryingly stagnant except for Ramsey and the attack was absolutely impotent. Coutinho needs a trip to a Swiss clinic. Watkins has no confidence anymore. Seriously. Start Archer. And nothing changed my opinion on Gerrard. He is out of his depth. Our previous manager and our previous head coach are now both joint top of the Championship while Gerrard stares at the drop zone. Chelsea next. He'll be gone before the world cup. We're in trouble.

[Louis]

2nd half was better, I think we have spoke. Gerrard you need to go.