Race for Champions League - 2023/2024

[viivvaa66]

Win tomorrow we would have a 5 points gap down to 6th, and 7 points down to 7th.  And a win takes us at least into top 4.

I don’t think Arsenal or Newcastle are as good as they were last season. Some of the Arsenal players seem to have dropped a level or two compared to last season, especially Saka, Martinelli and Ødegaard. Newcastle are very good at home, but away so far they nowhere near as strong as last season.

Of course we need to keep up our high level across the entire season to stay in contention for top 4. The top is brutal you have to win, or else you drop places and loses contact with the teams above you.

[ender4]

23 minutes ago, viivvaa66 said:

 

Of course we need to keep up our high level across the entire season to stay in contention for top 4. The top is brutal you have to win, or else you drop places and loses contact with the teams above you.

Yep, as you say to stay in the top 4 you need to be super consistent and win most weeks.

[maqroll]

I wonder if there's a league table at BMH and if Emery talks to the players about shifting league positions among teams and to take opportunities as they are presented, like with Arsenal losing tonight. 

[Kiwivillan]

45 minutes ago, maqroll said:

I wonder if there's a league table at BMH and if Emery talks to the players about shifting league positions among teams and to take opportunities as they are presented, like with Arsenal losing tonight. 

I doubt it. Focus on own game. Other team's results irrelevant. Can't see elite manager like Emery bothered by this

[Rightdm00]

1 hour ago, Kiwivillan said:

I doubt it. Focus on own game. Other team's results irrelevant. Can't see elite manager like Emery bothered by this

Yep. There are enough sh*t in the bottom half for us to get almost every win we need for a top 6 finish. Win a couple more in the top half and top 4 is ours. Not worried about results elsewhere. We are good enough, baring futher key injuries, to dictate our own future.  

[Pinebro]

Need between 64-70 points historically I think to make the top 4. 

Sometimes it's more but that's rare.

[sidcow]

As I mentioned in the match thread. I said to my lad the Forest game would be a good test of where we are. 

We've been mainly good at home but away to a solid capable team like Forest is a real acid test. 

We failed, pretty badly. 

Yes on another day we created enough chances to win it and restricted them to few enough chances not to lose it. But ultimately we fell well short and even when on top you felt we were never going to score. 

When everyone is on form we're a quite awesome team. We can even carry a player or 2 out of form.  But when we've a number out of sorts we've just not got enough to shithouse these kind of games, which ultimately will see us fall short of any serious top 4 challange.

And we're badly missing the likes of Buendia and Ramsey.   Maybe with Ramsey back we just get back a slight edge over teams like this when we're playing badly. 

So Jury is still out somewhat but we've blown a big chance to make a statement today and instead sent out a message we've got weakness in the squad. 

Edited November 5, 2023 by sidcow

[Pongo Waring]

Beat Fulham and it's all forgotten.

[Zatman]

If results stay the same I suppose we can also rule Liverpool out of the Champions League spots  

[Farlz]

It's early in the season, it's not too big a miss but bloody hell a win would've been fantastic with Liverpool losing currently. 

[jayEm]

Wow today feels like a missed opportunity!

[VillaChris]

49 minutes ago, Pongo Waring said:

Beat Fulham and it's all forgotten.

Beat Fulham and we're on 25 points after 12.

Every single person on here would've taken that after the disaster of the opening day.

Would be on course for a comfortable 70 +point season.

[WHY]

Yes Liverpool only got a point but this is why it’s so hard to finish top 4, we don’t seem to be able to pick up points when we have an off day. Teams who finish top 4 generally do this. 

[Leeroy]

Feel like every time there is an opportunity to cement ourselves we waste it. Today was a great opportunity to catch and overtake some of the teams above us like Arsenal and Liverpool, we didn't, and to make matters worse Newcastle and Man United have gained three points on us after winning yesterday. 

 

I personally think Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Newcastle and probably Man United will be above us. We'll finish about 7th again. Which is fine because we need more quality in the side to make that jump to 4th. We're good when playing on the counter attack and having space to run into, but we still lack a James Maddison or Bruno Fernandes type player who can unlock defences when teams sit back and park the bus.

 

Fulham h, Spurs a, Bournemouth a, City H, Arsenal h in the next five. Not easy and after today not confident we'll take more than about 7 points at best. But maybe they'll prove me wrong. 

[AVTuco]

We probably have overachieved somewhat, and are now due at least a small pullback. Let's hope we beat AZ comfortably and get our spirits back.

[Villatillidie95]

Ogbene for Luton said it in the post match interview, "if you can't win it, don't lose it, and thats what we did". That is they key to finishing in the upper echelons of the table, you have to get something out of games even when you are subpar. We will get there but at the moment its clear away from home there is a marked difference in performance levels and confidence for whatever reason. Its still in our hands and we have a large portion of the season left but its essential to get draws sometimes. At villa we are a binary team, its often a loss or a win, nothing in between

[markavfc40]

You can see today as a missed opportunity or that we lost a tough away game (Forest have lost just 2 of their last 20 at home) and in doing so lost no ground to Arsenal and only find ourselves 1 further point behind Liverpool who had in most peoples eyes a nailed on win against Luton to come. 

If you'd have told me after 11 games (including games against Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea, Brighton, West Ham) we'd be sitting 5th 2 points off third, 5 points off top spot, I'd say 99.9% of Villa fans would have bitten your hand off. 

Almost a third of the season gone and we have put a cracking foundation down to build on for the rest of the season. 

Edited November 5, 2023 by markavfc40

[Tayls]

27 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

You can see today as a missed opportunity or that we lost a tough away game (Forest have lost just 2 of their last 20 at home) and in doing so lost no ground to Arsenal and only find ourselves 1 further point behind Liverpool who had in most peoples eyes a nailed on win against Luton to come. 

If you'd have told me after 11 games (including games against Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea, Brighton, West Ham) we'd be sitting 5th 2 points off third, 5 points off top spot, I'd say 99.9% of Villa fans would have bitten your hand off. 

Almost a third of the season gone and we have put a cracking foundation down to build on for the rest of the season. 

I agree with everything you have said. It is very much a missed opportunity though, in my view it is was very ‘Aston Villa’ of us to lose today, instead of taking advantage and going third, can you imagine how crazy it would be for us to be in that position after 11 games? I think that is the cause of much frustration this evening - we just couldn’t go that extra step and win again to put is in a commanding position. 

Losing today was akin to losing to Man Utd or Arsenal in my opinion, almost like we were expecting to lose because winning would be too wild for us. 

[Sulberto21]

21 minutes ago, Tayls said:

I agree with everything you have said. It is very much a missed opportunity though, in my view it is was very ‘Aston Villa’ of us to lose today, instead of taking advantage and going third, can you imagine how crazy it would be for us to be in that position after 11 games? I think that is the cause of much frustration this evening - we just couldn’t go that extra step and win again to put is in a commanding position. 

Losing today was akin to losing to Man Utd or Arsenal in my opinion, almost like we were expecting to lose because winning would be too wild for us. 

It’s a different kind of mentality that the players need to take those opportunities. I think that’s why we won’t finish top 5. However finishing 7th and winning either the FA Cup or conference league is a great season. 

[GeordieVillan]

Ironically, in defeat today I saw a few things which I have never associated with us, and in a strange way it’s cemented in my mind that we are in the top 4 hunt.

1) we dominated the ball throughout and controlled the game, even though we were at times taking the usual risks with the high line

2) we played “our way” and stuck to it until the very last kick, even though we were losing and the temptation would be to go more direct

3) in the final half an hour when Forest were sitting deep, we were carving them open. We must have had about 10 decent half or almost chances to get back into the the game. Frustrating that we didn’t take one, but we had chances.  How many times in the past have we seen Villa fall behind and then forget how to play and struggle to create anything at all.

Maybe not an opinion shared by all, but if today’s performance is what we now consider to be a disaster, we are very much a contender as far as I’m concerned!