Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Sheff Utd

[Tom13]

[QldVilla]

I was expecting an easy win last night, the referee was awful in the first half (well the whole game actually, his performance was pedestrian at best) and at least three of their players could have had yellow cards before half time. The second half comes and suddenly he starts giving out cards, no consistency through the game.

His casualness on some big calls was just lazy and if he had made those calls, VAR wouldn’t have overturned them. But don’t get me started on VAR…

Saying all that, just thought the team selection was wrong, I don’t like McGinn playing in that role, there’s no reason Dendoncker couldn’t have played that role, which would have allowed McGinn to play more forward. Tempo was way too slow, no urgency and would have rather seen Zaniolo playing instead of Ramsey.

Maybe some of the players had their mind on Manure, not sure, was just a lazy performance.

[Robtaylor200]

We were sat in the upper trinity last night, only a few seats away from the Holte suites

We were able to look closely at the Utd back 5, they gave a very disciplined performance of You Will Not Pass, no what how we tried to pull them out of position, they would not break. They didn't even go for 50/50 balls if it meant breaking the line. The only time we had a proper chance to get past them, was when they attacked.

Fair play to them. They came with a game plan and almost executed it. 

IMO we passed about far too much and had forgotten how to try and take the ball around them. Jack would have been in his element, he would have taken either got past or rack up umpteen fouls, to create goal scoring opportunities.  We needed to be a little further away and run directly at them (IMO as a top coach :))

We will come up against these tactics again 

Edited December 23, 2023 by Robtaylor200

[Kiwivillan]

48 minutes ago, QldVilla said:

Saying all that, just thought the team selection was wrong, I don’t like McGinn playing in that role, there’s no reason Dendoncker couldn’t have played that role, which would have allowed McGinn to play more forward. Tempo was way too slow, no urgency and would have rather seen Zaniolo playing instead of Ramsey.

I think if Kamara plays we win comfortably so that stupid red has cost us. Ramsey hasn't looked on it since he's come back. Diaby, Bailey, and Cash got in each others way too often. I think we should have brought on one of the 2 former later in the game to run at tired legs

[NeilS]

I am disappointed our run has finally come to an end, but my gut feeling was it would be last night. We have beaten the better teams, so it’s Sod’s law the teams you expect to beat are the ones you slip up on. We were missing a few key players, and Wilder is a Wiley old fox as a manager, so I always thought it would be a tough match.

I am pleased we managed to recover the point, as previously I am sure we would go on and lose that after being sucker punched so late in the game. So I am taking that as a positive going forward.

i am not disappointed about missing out on going top of the PL last night You don’t win anything for being top at Christmas, the time to go top is after we beat Liverpool at home. 

 

[QldVilla]

9 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

I think if Kamara plays we win comfortably so that stupid red has cost us. Ramsey hasn't looked on it since he's come back. Diaby, Bailey, and Cash got in each others way too often. I think we should have brought on one of the 2 former later in the game to run at tired legs

Agree, just didn’t appear balanced all game, but that REFEREE !!??!?!

[villa4europe]

8 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Good point at the death - I'm glad the players have more belief than the fans do. Can understand people being frustrated, but some of the reactions are embarrassing.

Imagine telling yourselves 10 months ago that we'd have a home record of 15 wins, 1 draw, 0 losses, and our fans would be calling us bottlers and the "same old Villa" because we were behind.

Disappointing night and a poor performance but it's a **** brilliant season. Lick your wounds, give your heads a wobble, and lets batter the red mancs.

Saw a post in the match thread that "we definitely won't get CL now" 

I dont get how people can be so overly negative all the time 

[cheltenham_villa]

Controversial maybe but with hindsight I think we should have played dendonker. We compromised Mcginn best position, we compromised Luiz to an extent to the holding role and we ended up with both Diaby and Bailey with neither available from the bench. 

[alreadyexists]

Will we get an apology for this blatant missed hand ball? Probably not

 

 

[alreadyexists]

38 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Saw a post in the match thread that "we definitely won't get CL now" 

I dont get how people can be so overly negative all the time 

I think it’s some peoples coping strategy; always assume the worst, never get your hopes up and be the first to say so… I don’t agree with it, but I think it helps people for some reason

[tinker]

2 hours ago, Robtaylor200 said:

 We needed to be a little further away and run directly at them (IMO as a top coach :))

We will come up against these tactics again 

This, we need to run through the line with the ball. Ramsey did it once and they backed right off. We lack urgency,  when Sheffield attacked us and it broke down we wasn't quick enough to take advantage of them pushing up, we need to forget the keeping the ball at the back when this happens amd release the ball quicker.

For their goal we was standing flat footed waiting for a VAR decision,  it came , they took it quickly and scored, we need to cut this out of our game and concentrate 

 

Take nothing away from Sheffield, they defended very well and brought attacking options on at the perfect time of the game for them. Unfortunately I still think they will go down, they won't win enough games at home.

[mattyvilla]

Definitely seems a new breed of supporter around me in the lower holte , mass over reaction to the performance , streaming out when Sheffield scored and moaning non stop. We are still unbeaten at home for 10 months. It's almost like they have only just starting supporting us , it's the best it's been now for 15 years or more , get behind the team.

[AstonMartyn88]

Disappointing performance imo, however this will be the new thing for us now when teams come to VP we will see more and more of the low block particularly against teams that pre-Unai we would be in and around in the table. It’s up to him and the Team to figure it out.

I would have liked to have seen us have more shots as others have said, when there’s that many behind the ball you’ve got an increased chance of a deflection and something happening from that.

VAR and refereeing abysmal (I usually try and balance it as I used to referee myself) but absolutely disgraceful officiating and I would love to hear the audio for the disallowed goal. Having said that though we should have been 2 or 3 up at that point anyway with the positions we were getting into and when we did shoot we were forcing saves eg Diaby in the first half which would have made VAR irrelevant. 

Ultimately though, it’s 1 point not 0 and may be a point that is valuable come May.

We move forward. 

Edited December 23, 2023 by AstonMartyn88
Spelling

[MrBlack]

Slept on it before commenting here, but that joint refereeing performance from the on pitch ref and VAR was truly atrocious. 

I think there were two bad subjective calls (the Watkins penalty and the Bailey goal) and then one truly horrific call,  with the handball.

For the first two,  you can't claim Ramsey is fouling the keeper,  and that Watkins wasn't fouled. So either we should have a penalty, or neither is a foul and we should have a goal.  There's an argument we should have both, but I accept Ramsey was fouling the keeper, even if he was being fouled himself, and the phase of play thing is all a bit of subjective nonsense. 

Then you have the truly poor decision of the movement of an arm towards the ball which connects with it in the penalty area.  How in the world is that not a penalty?

I dont buy that we didn't create enough against bottom of the league.  They didn't play like bottom of the league. They didn't play like they have done all season. We created 2 clear chances, one of which we scored from,  and then had two penalty calls and a disallowed goal. We weren't relying on one moment of magic. And by the time Sheffield scored we'd been robbed by the ref a number of times. 

Games like this make me hate football. 

Perspective on the situation though,  we're second on goal difference and good chance we still make make top spot later in January.  And we'd have lost that game as the villa of old. 

Edited December 23, 2023 by MrBlack

[RichW]

Didn’t get a chance to read much of the pre-match stuff but from what I saw on social media people were expecting either a 4-0 hammering or a 1-0 loss and no in between. 
 

I thought it was going to be a difficult game, I thought Sheff Utd would frustrate us and we’d manage to get a couple of late goals but the way VAR went it seemed luck wasn’t going to be on our side.

At the time I didn’t think it was a pen on Watkins but looking back his not only pushed him but also pulled his shirt so that should have been awarded. It was a foul by Ramsey on the keeper however it was a different phrase of play so the goal should have stood. The ball has even left the penalty area. Duran was very fortunate to avoid a red card, he needs to learn to calm down, wouldn’t be surprised if his sent out on loan at some point because I think he needs to be a main striker for a team somewhere to get some experience. 
 

Fair play to Sheff Utd, came with a plan and we couldn’t break them down. Going to get this a lot as the season goes on. At some point this season we will have a dip in form, every team has one regardless of how well they are doing but if we can’t win then do not lose. No Kamara was a loss today, I thought Lenglet did OK today but we miss Pau Torres passing against these kinda teams. 
 

Onto Old Trafford we go. 

[romavillan]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

Saw a post in the match thread that "we definitely won't get CL now" 

I dont get how people can be so overly negative all the time 

Yeah it's mental, there was stuff calling them a bunch of losers, bottlers. Wtf. 15 home wins on the bounce, chance to go top. I get it's disappointing not to be first but **** me a few years ago we were lucky to still be in business as a club and looking shite in the Championship. Coming back to secure a point was very important, could be a vital point for us come end of the season.

[Lerner's Driver]

9 hours ago, Tom13 said:

So bloody deflating tonight. What an anti climax.

You still got to cum, it was just 'ruined' by a cruel mistress. Look it up, you might enjoy it.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Lerner's Driver

[allani]

Disappointed with last night obviously.  But a couple of crumbs of "hope" that I think should provide some balance to some of the hyperbole posted last night.  (1) We still haven't dropped a point having taken the lead in a match.  (2) Yet again yesterday we managed to "gain" a point from a losing position very late in the game.  (3) Our points gained in "injury time" is very positive this season - not something that we are used to.  (4) We still remain unbeaten at home in 16 straight PL matches.  This is still a mighty impressive set of stats that show how the mentality of the team has changed significantly under Emery.  I still think that if we'd scored one goal at Forest then we'd have gone on to score another and possibly taken all 3 points.  But it was one of those games.  OK we won't be top on Christmas Day but (depending on tonight's result we will be within one result of the top of the table.  I think we'd all have taken that at the start of the season and especially after the Newcastle and Liverpool matches.

[CVByrne]

Still very annoyed this morning. But this is football. Hopefully we can get something from Old Trafford as it's a bit of a 6 pointer when it comes to the CL places.

[Kiwivillan]

Thinking about all the get rid of VAR posts I've seen during match. I get it and I think they made huge mistake overruling the goal because separate phase of play but Emery has hacked VAR with our high line offside strategy. VAR is insurance policy for that system