Ratings & Reactions: Newcastle v Villa

[John]

Tough place to go, particularly on the first game of the season. Awful mistake from Ezri and our defence that had looked so solid last season, didn't today, that said, I will be interested to see how those VAR lines look for a couple of their goals. We had a couple of decent chances to make the score look a bit more respectable, but they had the better of the game by some distance (as we did at Villa Park last season), in this case, after we lost the rock of our defence. Things can only get better than this and they will, but what a week this has been for us. First we lose Emi and now Tyrone, to what looks like another very bad injury. We don't deserve this sort of bad luck and these injuries will be so devastating for these two players. We can put this result behind us, with a couple of good performances, but these injuries are different. Get well soon Tyrone, you will be much missed. Hopefully both players will make a good recovery and be back for our final push, this season.    

[rjw63]

Been out all day, still out but…

What the **** happened???

[Jas10]

Do we think  preseason and the amount of heat and potential exhaustion affected the players?

Just didn’t see this coming and there have been no signs of anything like it since Unai stepped in…

Difficult to make sense of…

 

Losing Emi to such a serious injury was a blow but the Mings one seems even worse and must have shook the players emotionally/mentally… especially as it was in game, and the first game of the season…

Unai seemed visibly affected by it too…

 

Still, there are no excuses for such a bad performance and embarrassing result… it should never have got to 5-1…

Thought the referee was really poor, almost biased, and the offside calls questionable… but we didn’t show up, played poorly and deserved to be beaten for sure…

Bailey was so poor and it’s hard to keep supporting or believing in him…

McGinn was pretty much absent and ineffective…. When Ty and John are “on it” we perform so well… not so much when they’re not…

I do think our CB department is strong though and I have faith in both Pau and Diego…. Konsa has been so good and consistent, can be afforded a rare poor performance or gaffe… doesn’t deserve any stick…

Just wondering what exactly caused this…

My faith in Unai has not been affected at all, unwavering - this is the man we should support and get behind more than any predecessor, he’s better than all of them…

One game or poor performance shouldn’t affect that significantly…

Many/most teams have embarrassing results or performances occasionally… as long as it’s the rare exception rather than a “pattern” or doesn’t happen with any form of regularity…. 

So weird…

Edited August 12, 2023 by Jas10

[Jas10]

7 minutes ago, John said:

Tough place to go, particularly on the first game of the season. Awful mistake from Ezri and our defence that had looked so solid last season, didn't today, that said, I will be interested to see how those VAR lines look for a couple of their goals. We had a couple of decent chances to make the score look a bit more respectable, but they had the better of the game by some distance (as we did at Villa Park last season), in this case, after we lost the rock of our defence. Things can only get better than this and they will, but what a week this has been for us. First we lose Emi and now Tyrone, to what looks like another very bad injury. We don't deserve this sort of bad luck and these injuries will be so devastating for these two players. We can put this result behind us, with a couple of good performances, but these injuries are different. Get well soon Tyrone, you will be much missed. Hopefully both players will make a good recovery and be back for our final push, this season.    

Yep, the only way is up from here

 

Unai will sort it out and have us firing…

These players are in for a wake up call, will be drilled, will be long hours of direction and analysis…

They won’t wanna put in such a dreadful performance again! Will regret this

[StewieGriffin]

I thought the 2nd goal shouldn't have stood, but actually not for offside - looked to me like Cash plays Schaar (I think?) on, but he's pushed over and it was a foul.

Torres looked worryingly off it - kept getting his line wrong, and lost almost every challenge he went for. Kamara was absolutely dreadful - at 4-1 he gave the ball away in their half, it got played out towards their right and he barely broke into a walk to close their player down.

Cash stuck out as looking particularly uncomfortable on the ball and doing anything at all going forwards - we need a better right back I think.

McGinn was plugged into the role Buendia was earmarked for and couldn't do it.

Watkins - looked disinterested from start to finish.

Positives; Diaby. Erm... there's 37 games left to make up for today, and we won't play teams as good as Newcastle every week?

[Leeroy]

Still can't believe we've lost 5-1 to Newcastle, what an absolute bunch of losers we are.

[Pinebro]

2 hours ago, HKP90 said:

Absolute f***ing shit show. 

I'm proper angry at that.

Folk will say Newcastle are a great side and that's true enough, but if we want to get to where we want to be they are direct competitors. I don't expect us to beat them, but we need to go toe to toe with them, and that was an utter thrashing.

Players looked half arsed, well they can all f*** off.

Get f***ed Villa.

 

We won't compete with Newcastle.

Only Man City will be able to

[Nigel]

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

If you think that konsa mistake was forced then i dont know what to twll you. That was absymal defending from konsa and the same with cash.

Also who forced cash to miss a sitter? All poor errors from ourselves

You are right, far more likely the whole team had a mare for no reason.

[Jas10]

1 hour ago, Pinebro said:

Someone please remind me never getting hyped up after a pre season ever again

Remind me too

I’ve been well and truly brought back down to Earth

[Demitri_C]

1 minute ago, Nigel said:

You are right, far more likely the whole team had a mare for no reason.

Yea i cant quite understand it. We have looked in pre season. We matched them in the game there too. But then we literally fall apart and just gave up well too easily. That is not a emery team performance. 

The players nerd to look at themselves and maks it right as that was pure garbage today. I dont mind losing but in this manner is totally unacceptable 

[duke313]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

Indeed. You often learn more from failure than success (there's a joke in here about Gerrard being the most learned man in modern football), and while I'm not happy about the game today, I'm bloody sure that he's going to be watching that game over and over again, listing out each and every failure.

Almost every team gets an occasional thumping. It happens, but we'll react well to it hopefully.

100%. Like you say it’s disappointing, but it not the end of our season like some are suggesting

[Spoony]

I wouldn’t even say he got it wrong. That was all the players today. 

[OutByEaster?]

Fun fact:

We had more efforts on goal, and more efforts on target in this game than we did in our last game, against Brighton at home at the end of the season.

If ever a statistic told a lie...

 

[Mantis]

I suppose a small positive to take from today's game is that it exposed a lots of flaws that Unai can get to work on fixing.

[bielesibub]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Leeroy]

2 hours ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Thing is Villa are playing catch-up now...

Two very important players down, likely out for the majority of the season.

My expectations for this season have suddenly dropped considerably; Emery looked crestfallen too. It was noticed.

I suppose Chelsea should lower their expectations too then, seeing as Nkunku and Fofana will miss most of their season.

[HKP90]

32 minutes ago, Pinebro said:

We won't compete with Newcastle.

Only Man City will be able to

And Arsenal, and Liverpool and Man U. 

Not saying Newcastle will finish below those teams, but they will be competing. If we're not there yet, and it seems not, then we are scrapping for 6th/7th again, which is not pushing on from last season.

I'm actually fine with that, tbh, but it's not the continuous improvement we've been aiming for, and not the project Diaby and Pau will have signed up for. 

Look, I don't think it's the end of the world, let's hope it was a nightmare day at the office, but today, we've lost one of our most influential players, and unless we go big in the market again in a way we arguably can't afford, we will struggle to maintain our position.

Let's just have a whisky, forget this and pray for a better showing against Everton, and a rabbit from the hat in the transfer market. Both of those objectives are attainable with difficulty.

[Made In Aston]

I thought we looked off the pace today... Second to every ball. I wonder if this had anything to do with our preseason prep. None of the players played much more than 45 minutes in most games so they were not prepared for a 100+ minute match. 

[Philosopher]

18 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

Do we think  preseason and the amount of heat and potential exhaustion affected the players?

Just didn’t see this coming and there have been no signs of anything like it since Unai stepped in…

Difficult to make sense of…

 

Losing Emi to such a serious injury was a blow but the Mings one seems even worse and must have shook the players emotionally/mentally… especially as it was in game, and the first game of the season…

Unai seemed visibly affected by it too…

 

Still, there are no excuses for such a bad performance and embarrassing result… it should never have got to 5-1…

Thought the referee was really poor, almost biased, and the offside calls questionable… but we didn’t show up, played poorly and deserved to be beaten for sure…

Bailey was so poor and it’s hard to keep supporting or believing in him…

McGinn was pretty much absent and ineffective…. When Ty and John are “on it” we perform so well… not so much when they’re not…

I do think our CB department is strong though and I have faith in both Pau and Diego…. Konsa has been so good and consistent, can be afforded a rare poor performance or gaffe… doesn’t deserve any stick…

Just wondering what exactly caused this…

My faith in Unai has not been affected at all, unwavering - this is the man we should support and get behind more than any predecessor, he’s better than all of them…

One game or poor performance shouldn’t affect that significantly…

Many/most teams have embarrassing results or performances occasionally… as long as it’s the rare exception rather than a “pattern” or doesn’t happen with any form of regularity…. 

So weird…

No the preseason heat didn't affect anything.

In hindsight there were signs. The defence that started tonight didn't start one preseason friendly. Cash has shown In preseason that he isn't tactically aware enough when running the offside trap. 

Buendia would've relished this game, and Ty is the real leader of this team and the man that runs this defense. Huge loss is Ty, Buendia not so much but he would've been perfect for this game.

At 3-1 the ref stopped giving us anything. But let's be clear we lost because we defended criminally.

Bailey was decent, you're just wrong here. He got some rough stuff, and didn't get protection, when he tried to do the same to Gordan as Gordan was doing to him the ref blew. Bailey wasn't at fault for the goals. We got penned in by the high press  for much of the first half. The defense and midfield did a poor job of playing through them. Bailey had bugger all to work with. 

Konsa's mistake cost us the game, at 2-1 we are in it. That mistake was horrific, but Konsa gets a pass and Bailey who did little wrong gets hammered?! Also Konsa does deserve stick, after that mistake his game fell to pieces. Not good enough.

McGinn performs well when the team does, bit he rarely drags the team with him. He isn't anywhere near our best player or leader. Good player, but left midfielder he is not (Unai made a mistake there). Talisman he is not. Mings on the other hand is the real leader. The one barking instructions, organising the defence. Our lynchpin.

Pau is the man to take over, but no English means he need Spanish speakers around him. 

Our defense fell apart after Mings departed, we should be concerned. He is almost irreplaceable currently, as Pau doesn't speak English and isn't properly integrated. 

[romavillan]

Wouldn't be VT without the bed wetting over reactions. We'll be fine, we never win at St James' Park, we showed some really good football at times going forward. We've had some shit luck with injuries and VAR decisions (for 2-1 especially, then missed two sitters so could have been in front) against us.

No need to get hysterical, we'll get it right soon enough.