Ratings & Reactions: FAC3: Villa v Stevenage

[MNVillan]

37 minutes ago, Harry said:

Well this seems to be the thread of chronic over reactions.

My take on having been at the game was we utterly disrespected Stevenage and paid the price. Lots of possession and tippy tappy football with virtually no end product. As a few have said on here we treated it like a training game. They were well organised and stuck to their task.

They kept it very simple. Ten men behind the ball for the majority of the game and took their chances when they came For all our possession we have few real scoring chances. With the possible exception of Sanson no Villa player comes out of it with any credit. With better final balls and sensible finishing we would have scored five or more.

The scary bit for me was how poor some of our players really were:

Cash - out smarted for the entire game by a League 2 winger.

Coutinhio - lots of movement but utterly wasteful in his shooting. He is a shadow of the player he once was.

Bailey - beats the players and his final ball is pub football.

Olsen - so far from being a PL goalkeeper it's frightening.

Chambers and Bednarek - both slow and ponderous with the turning circle of supertankers.

We really lacked a decent DM. I think Kamara should have started and definitely should have been brought on.

The manager called this one wrong but was severely let down by the players. My conclusion is we don't have the squad depth we maybe thought we had. OK we can't rectify that in January but we need to bring in another striker, a winger and probably a right back as Young cannot do it all on his own. The media will have a w**kfest as to how brilliant Stevenage were. The truth was they weren't, they just did the simple things much better than us. Their second goal was laughable. Our players took their eye off the ball, literally and metaphorically and paid the price. Ironically Stoke will probably batter them.

Oh and the atmosphere in the ground was bad, Our fans were silent for most of the game, we never got behind the team. It was not helped by many season ticket holders not coming and their seats going to families where the parents spend all their time taking their kids for food or to the toilet. That sounds harsh and young fans have to start somewhere, I accept that but what we ended up with was a very placid Villa Park. By contrast the Stevenage fans had a ball and got behind their team. 

This is what it comes to for me. They cared, we couldn’t be bothered. I don’t know if it’s true, but if Emi actually walked to the bench with tea and his kit over his arm, that tells you everything you need to know about Villa’s attitude for today’s match.

[WallisFrizz]

15 minutes ago, smg said:

But the fans are the 12th man surely ?

Not for ages.

[Harry]

20 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Sorry how do you expect the reaction after a utterly shit defeat to a side 3 divisions below us, at home? The atmosphere was not great because the side offered barely anything for the entire match other than passing the ball sideways.

During the game even when we were winning the atmosphere was dead. We are near the back of Holte and it was very quiet for most of the game. Do we not get behind the team to support them if they are playing badly or do we just wait for them to play better?

[Harry]

26 minutes ago, danceoftheshamen said:

Was definately a case of the team flattened the crowd for me.

Is that true of all teams though? BTW I don't know the answer to that!

[Harry]

36 minutes ago, WallisFrizz said:

All fair but the last paragraph. The atmosphere is crap when the season ticket holders are there too. It’s crap all the time bar the odd 10 mins here and there. And nobody is worse at needing to get up all the time than middle aged men coming in late from the bar, leaving before half time to get to the bar, coming in late from the bar again and leaving early to avoid the traffic.

The rest of your post is pretty accurate, especially the bit about Stevenage being not that good. They were organised but nothing special, we were just lacklustre and out of ideas. 

Maybe but it just seemed flatter today. I do think we sometimes delude ourselves over the whole '12th Man' thing.

[rodders0223]

People who expect football fans en masse to create a partisan atmosphere when watching absolute dross are **** idiots.

We had this against Wolves. "Fans were crap"

Well **** me right, I was out the house at 7am, not been home, its 8pm and the sight of watching 11 players walking around with no intent doesn't get me hard as a rock.

Pathetic.

[smg]

Piss poor selection.

piss poor performance by players that he doesn’t usually think are good enough to make his first team.

Put this group of players out (that have never played together as a unit before ) against a TEAM that haven't lost since November. It doesn’t matter what division they are in, they are a confident TEAM who just happen to be further motivated by the fact that they are playing against a premier league team at a fantastic stadium in front of a huge crowd, live on tv. So yeah pick a a second string. Sadly they couldn’t match the teamwork, motivation or excitement of the opposition.

The players should have been better, but the manager is responsible for the selection.

 

[Harry]

3 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

People who expect football fans en masse to create a partisan atmosphere when watching absolute dross are **** idiots.

We had this against Wolves. "Fans were crap"

Well **** me right, I was out the house at 7am, not been home, its 8pm and the sight of watching 11 players walking around with no intent doesn't get me hard as a rock.

Pathetic.

For the record I was not suggesting there should be a partisan atmosphere. I said the atmosphere was placid compared to other games and neither was I suggesting the 'fans were crap'

But just look at the banner on the Holte End. Seemingly the fans think or are expected to be the 12th Man.

Added to that should the fans not get behind a team more to encourage and support them when they are not playing well? (BTW that's not intended as a dig at you, its a general observation)

[andym]

When you play against a team packing everyone behind the ball in their own box you are not going to easily cut them open or get space within the box, simply too many players in a small area.

However, you will get lots of opportunities to get shots from the edge of the area.

For so called top level footballers to be unable to even work the keeper from 20 yards when given time and space is laughable.

17 shots and only 3 on target. 

Coutinho and Bailey must have had the majority of those, and they were more dangerous to the crowd than the goal. 

 

[maqroll]

We've lived through some very depressing times with Villa. We are obviously now in a great position relative to our last 30 years. Perfect owners. Perfect manager. A few really good players. But it's just not happening yet. I think because we are so anticipatory about the next steps up that we stumble upon the immediate step. It's incredibly frustrating. I try not to let Villa anger me, but I'm **** angry tonight. I was really looking forward to an FA Cup run with Emery. But these players are just a collective calamity every few games. Same old Villa. I'm so fed up with the mediocrity. 

Edited January 8, 2023 by maqroll

[AstonMartyn88]

Thought Emery’s post match interview to the the in house channel was excellent. Looking straight at the camera I felt like he was deliberately addressing us and finishing it with ‘we need to change things’ gives me hope that we can kick on when he has the players he wants

Edited January 8, 2023 by AstonMartyn88
Clarity

[WallisFrizz]

5 minutes ago, maqroll said:

We've lived through some very depressing times with Villa. We are obviously now in a great position relative to our last 30 years. Perfect owners. Perfect manager. A few really good players. But it's just not happening yet. I think because we are so anticipatory about the next steps up that we stumble upon the immediate step. It's incredibly frustrating. I try not to let Villa anger me, but I'm **** angry tonight. I was really looking forward to an FA Cup run with Emery. But these players are just a collective calamity every few games. Same old Villa. I'm so fed up with the mediocrity. 

Same here. It’s pissed me right off, more than normal.

[The Fun Factory]

Villa Park has to one of the least used major sporting venues in the country due to our awful cup record. About 20 games a year max. 

[turvontour]

16 minutes ago, andym said:

When you play against a team packing everyone behind the ball in their own box you are not going to easily cut them open or get space within the box, simply too many players in a small area.

However, you will get lots of opportunities to get shots from the edge of the area.

For so called top level footballers to be unable to even work the keeper from 20 yards when given time and space is laughable.

17 shots and only 3 on target. 

Coutinho and Bailey must have had the majority of those, and they were more dangerous to the crowd than the goal. 

 

You're completely right about the shooting. I just dont get how Villa today and those two in particular are so bad at it. Meanwhile a Stevenage players curled one onto the bar from 25 yards in the first half.

[GarethRDR]

[Zhan_Zhuang]

Sanson MOTM, obviously....nobody else deserves a vote.

Emery got it wrong, but I'm glad he did as it shows many of them are poor. We should have fielded a stronger team.

As a Brummie living in Aberdeen what made this worse is the player who scored the winner is a loanee from Aberdeen who is nowhere near an SPL team. Yeah it's that bad.

[VillaChris]

2 hours ago, sheepyvillian said:

That's the comment from Emery that is telling. "Maybe they don't have the ambition." No Sir, they don't and it's not a trait you can coach. We need players who have a mindset of win at all costs. Until then, I'm afraid, today's debacle won't be the last. 

I can't get over the inept attempt by Watkins to stop the shot that resulted in their second goal. How pathetic, I would drop him for that alone. Same with Buendia, lost possession like a weakling, and it's becoming an habit.

Cash is not the level of player we need to reach the level we aspire to. Bailey has lost all confidence, but that can be repaired, but he probably could do with some time on the bench to reflect on where it's gone awry. 

We need Carlos back pronto, hopefully Moreno arrives, because Digne is not the answer we thought he was. Like I said, let's get players who have the ambition to succeed and are fully on board with where this club wants to be.

Great Emery is already seeing this, it hints at the mentality issue a few of us on here are pointing out that seems to engulf us season in season out. Getting a big win and dining out on it for weeks with coasting/poor performances in next fixtures. It's simply not a trait the top teams in any league have.

Last season we went to Old Trafford and won for first time in decades. Great....however we then proceeded to lose our next five which lead to one of our most popular managers in recent times getting sacked.

Very worrying we've gone from winning at Spurs which was an excellent 90 minutes work to being terrible for 70 minutes v a bottom 3 team. And now we change half the team and this one loses at home to a league 2 team.

You will always get poor performances in a season but these extreme performances in such a short space of time simply shouldn't be happening and really can't be tolerated anymore if we seriously want to win stuff/get into 6th/7th in near future.

[VillaChris]

2 hours ago, richp999 said:

They all completely switched off for the corner. I was sat a couple of rows behind the goal, olsen was shouting at the defence to get into position but no one moved, then they took it early.

Where was Digne? Nobody there on the left at all. 

Digne was in six yard box. Dendocker out of the picture meant we didn't have much height aside from CBs.

On reflection Mings probably should've been put on for last 10 minutes but of course you'd expect us to see out a 1-0 at home to league two team without him. He certainly should've been on after the red but I assume we'd used up our subs by then.

[Davkaus]

54 minutes ago, WallisFrizz said:

Same here. It’s pissed me right off, more than normal.

Same. It's still sinking in really. We've had some humiliations over the years, but that's right up there, it's one we'll be reminded of for years.

[Davkaus]

14 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

L

Last season we went to Old Trafford and won for first time in decades. Great....however we then proceeded to lose our next five which lead to one of our most popular managers in recent times getting sacked.

 

And it all started with that humiliating collapse against Wolves. We've come full circle. I've had it with these players.