Ratings and Reactions: Villa 0-0 sha

[NulliSecundus]

Same story, different week

[bred]

I really don't understand why people act like it's the end of the world. We're missing key players, had a light enough squad going into the season. As long as we finish above sha, it'll be a good season.

[dudley_villa]

Negative and clueless tactics... Gonna be a long season!..

[swollef]

Any idea why Zigic wasn't red carded for flattening Collins?

Exactly my thoughts aswell, If the Ref gave a foul(which he did) Then he must have known the foul was given for illegal use of the elbow,which i thought was a red card offence

[ryanvilla_1994]

Clutching at straws, Clark headed the ball and should have put it away!

My feelings too, keeper may have put him off but he should of scored. anyway, I think today highlighted how important Petrov is, he is calm and composed on the ball unlike Sidwell

[rjw63]

We were pretty poor, but managed a draw against small heath who were playing at their capacity.

And Zigic - worst striker ever?

[Demitri_C]

Did anyone else think when Hleb was substituted: "Was Hleb really on the pitch?" Completely anonymous.

im sorry to say but i completely disagree. i though hleb was very good today and i was thinking how much we could do with him today

lets face facts the reason we are not doing well is because our finishing confidence is at rock bottom. if randy has been watching the last two-three games he should see we badly need to invest in strikers come janaury or we will be mid-table at best

performance wise i felt downing wasnt used enough, sidwell was crap and he blew his big opportinty. heskey didnt impress me wahtsoever today and dunne almost cost us the game with his sloppyness, if jerome wasnt so crap zigic would ahve won it for them

as for nrc he was being a bit stupid at times, but his passion cannot be denied. he was everywhere. what im annoyed about is johnson was down for about 5 mins then nrc was getting in trouble and he only added 5 mins and to add to taht only played 94 and half (one minute of that was blosers wasting time witha free kick) what wa sthat about

this was there best chance to beat us, if we have gabby back and can get confidence up i think we can do them at the sty

[theunderstudy]

We need Gabby back. When is he back? I've ased this hundreds of times but have so far not heard an aswer.

[dudevillaisnice]

1 or 2 weeks

he'll probably join training this week.

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Probably because no one likes to be ased questions and people rarely give aswers.

It's been said he should be back in a week or so.

[claret75]

We were too defensive to expect much more than a draw. I can understand 5 across the middle, but ffs, Sidwell and NRC wren't supporting Heskey anywhere near enough in the 1st half. They helped out a bit more going forward in the 2nd but we were still too defensive. Leaving it to the last 10 minutes before putting Carew up front shows the GH mentality, I'd have liked us to have gone for it a bit more. We badly lacked in CM, we need 2 new CM's ASAP.

MOTM - Collins

[theunderstudy]

Cheers.

Blues fans complaining about not getting a penalty! Did they not see their keeper poleaxe Clark when he tried to get a shot in?

[QuintonK6]

I can't take any positives out this game I'm afraid other than the fact it wasn't televised for everyone else to see how poor we were.

4-5-1 at home against a very average team IMO is very very negative and Houlier needs to look at himself. Our whole bench consisted of attacking players yet it took until the 83rd minute to go 2 up front. Clarke,NRC and Sidwel are all defensive minded and not 1 of them at any time supported Heskey. Dunne again looked shakey and the way Jerome out paced him and knocked him off the ball was embarrassing to him - It's just a good job he can't cross otherwise that would have been the opener.

I know we've got injures but 4-5-1 at home FFS !!! I'm gutted and I feels like a defeat to me. Also what has happened to our support ? We can't even fill the stadium against the shit - And Randy wants to expand the stadium ??

[villa_shere]

1st half: Good opening 5-10 mins, Blues on top for last 20-25 mins of half

2nd half: Better side...better quality of football in the final third..no end product

Scoring goals tends to help in football and that is something we are not doing at the moment, I'm confident we will sort it out though.

Sums it up to a tee

[hogso]

I can take a positive from the game thankfully - Clark. Very impressed with him, was composed on the ball, and although he was somewhat negative with his passing at times, I can't remember him giving the ball away. If only he had finished the game with that header. I'm sure it'll come for him though, there were a few times in the match when he let the reigns go a bit and got forward well, and put in a shift in front of the back 4 for the whole match. Couple of seasons and he'll be what Barry was for us a few years ago.

[hogso]

The only good moment of that match was Bannan trying to win a header against Zigic...and not even coming up to his shoulder.

Haha yeh this was great. They shook hands at the end of the match and had a little giggle on the way to the tunnel too

[saturdaygig]

We looked much better when Carew come on, not particularly because of what he did but it made everyone more confident to play up when there was someone there. With only Heskey up (and not far up at that) there were virtually no attacking options and no-one seemed to be able to find a way to play forward. Lets hope GH looked and learned. Its not like he doesn't have options even with the injury list. For me we should be starting Fonzie and see what he can do. If he doesn't get a chance now what's the point of having him on the bench at all?

[Davies4England]

First time I was disappointed with Houllier from a tactical view, the decision to play Clark was a good one, he added the composing influence which Petrov usually gives us. The problem was the midfielders in front of him. Sidwell got stuck in but other then that was very anonymous as usual and I see him as a Championship level midfielder. Reo-Coker was great, bundles of energy and was safe in his passing but that's his limit meaning we had no creativity in the centre. As for the wingers they seemed more concerned about doubling up with the fullbacks, this seemed like a tactical plan which didn't make sense as Downing in particular was a huge threat when he did get forward.

It showed when Bannan came on, he was moving about finding the space and we generally looked a better side, although he did have the tendency to run around like a headless chicken at times. I was very impressed the ball at his feet though, and seemed like a player who cared.

Heskey I thought did very well, but what can he do with no support. He constantly brought the ball down with his chest and there were no midfielder in sight, this forced us to go all the way back to the start again. He also flicked a few chances into promising areas, maybe if we had an extra striker like at the end we could have caused them more problems.

Can't complain about the defence though, as solid as ever, although Dunne did have his one mistake. Friedel didn't have much to do but I found it frustrating when he launched it to Heskey when he was the only player in their half.

It's not gonna be a nice season, but we're a big club and the transition can be easily made in time, we certainly have the players. Fans just need to be patient, Houllier has a tough task of building squad with our obvious lack of depth. This isn't helped with the amount of players who have their contracts running down. It is also important to keep the spine of the team the same in order to gain consistency. We've lost two important players to our style of play (Gabby and Petrov) and its certainly showing.

[Oddsox]

Quote -The only good moment of that match was Bannan trying to win a header against Zigic...and not even coming up to his shoulder.

That was excellent - the 'other' good moment was that fan in woolly hat who dived over cameraman to head ball back - good. Then appeared to get thrown out - bad.

Can't recall any other moments of interest.

[rjw63]

One other thought.

Roger Johnson really is an overacting **** pansy, you'd have thought his foot had been severed he was squealing so much, but he came back on 5 minutes later.

Prick.