dAVe80 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Stoke are horrid. We didn't use the ball when we were on top, and didn't test their keeper in the second half. Point was about fair. Voted Stan MOTM, kept things ticking over, even if nothing ever came of his ball retention. Worked very hard today though to be fair to him. Bent just missed out, despite a fine goal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 same problem we have had for the last few seasons. because we have little attacking wise from centre mid, teams can sit back and force us wide. so we are left with 90 mins of banging in crosses. not a great tactic against a team like stoke. we need to learn to be smarter in the final third against teams like this. too many poor final balls from us today. though stan was very good, and bent gets another goal. he had 2 decent balls played to him today. one needed a great tackle from shawcross to stop him, and he put the other one away.. nrc didnt do much, heskey was pretty poor. collins needs to stop trying the fancy passes, he doesnt have the ability to pull them off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brummybloke Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 shit tactics from us, we know the 12 fingered ones play hoof ball, it is no suprise. so what do we do? play emile ' i used to be good but in the last 3 months have put 2 stone on around my tummy and am generally a bit shit now' heskey we could all see jones was winning EVERYTHING against collins, that gives the manager AND the 2 centres backs 2 choices, either let dunne take jones or get petrov or NRC to drop back further to impeded jones by standing in front of him. we didnt do it the entire game and collins really won 0 against jones who was a constant danger. no doubt collins when he did get the ball, fealt he needed to do something special with it. i counted 17 hoofed passes to the other team, shamefully most of them were under 0 pressure at all., that is piss poor. friedel - 6 - and that is for the 3 saves in as many minutes in the first half, otherwise you would have got a 2 im getting **** sick and tired of him hiding on his line, ANYTHING in the 6 yard box should be his, it isnt so we play on our own goal line. this is why we have conceded so many goals this season. walker- 8 - kept making the runs, kept using the ball well and provided a cross which looked behind benty.. for the assist. dunne- 8 - the fat man did good, add in some 'flattley' feat 2 or 3 times when going forwards, he should have just twatted it on all 3 occassions rather than try and thread it through. collins - 4 - you get one or the other, very good or utter dog dirt, today he was not very good. young - 8 - left on the side lines last season for most of the season was a crime, this lad has secured our shit leaky defence. it is no suprise our 2 players with the most yellow cards are... clark and warnock, both had to play left back and neither looked good there. petrov - 7- he should have sorted the jones winning all headers situation but apart from that kept the team in shape most of the game until ashley young decided to act like a roaming forward without doing anything. NRC - 6 - if only the lad could pass, he gave it away time after time again today, he does all the hard work and then **** gives the ball away. come on NRC i have seen you with your shit together and know you can pass properly downing -7 - i thought he did what he does every game, hides from any physical confrontation and activly avoids going for a ball unless there is 99.9% chance of him winning it BUT mixed in with some good passing and crossing. today he made alot of misplaced passes but downing is always likely to do something no matter how shit he has been most game. unlucky to be taken off, he looked totally pissed off as well. young - 6- you are not the captain, you are not supeerman, we are not a 1 man team and if we were you wouldnt be that man. he is great when he sticks to a plan, he tries to think for hiomself and ... nothing but over hit passes, falling over and tantrums. today he hit several dead balls poorly ( suprise) and took it upon himself to play on the right when alby who can only use his right foot had to play on the left. retarded. heskey -0- i cant give him a poing becasue the tubby shit meister didnt bloody turn up. today as per last week, a waste of a shirt. offered nothing, produced nothing, won nothing, contributed nothing so gets nothing. very very shit emile, almost llike you know this is your last season playing footy. benty ... benty benty benty benty bentmeister bent of bently bent 1 shot 1 goal.....booooooooom he gets motm he got 1 chance and that was a half chance and kapow back of the net. gabby - 6 not enough time and clearly would have been a handful had he got the full second half which was wasted with heskey being on. alby -on the right 6- on the left -2- why the **** do we keep **** playing players in the WRONG position and then wonder why they dont perform to the standards we know they can? leave him on the bench if you are going to shit on him by putting him on the left. manager tactics 0, **** obvious what we needed to do all **** game, we didnt and thats why we dont have 3 points. ref -5- i could see after 2 challenges, one on pennant and then one on one of our boys that he was going to let alot go today, but **** hell a foul is a **** foul and time wasting from the 25th minute onwards? come on. i have seen pens given for the type of grappling which took place every time we had a corner, dunne and collins were thrown to the ground at least 4 or 5 times today, 2 were clear pens from thr replays and i didnt get to see the others replayed but they all looked shady. come back GH you would have shown mercy to heskey and taken hiim off at half time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackbauer24 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Whilst Stoke were appallingly defensive and didn't come looking for anything more than a point it is completely within their right to do so. Good teams can break this sort of team down, and then once they are finally chasing the game you take them to pieces. What really disappointed me today was the lack of any real drive at Villa. And it's not the first time we've seen that lack of effort this season. No-one really racing to loose balls or closing players down. However, we continue to stumble/ crawl towards safety and we didn't lose any points to our relegation candidate opponents. So we go forward to yet another uncomfortable game against West Brom. Friedel - 8 - Some very very important saves early in the match and kept us in it. Walker - 6 - Solid going forward, dodgy going back... Collins - 5 - Thump, slice, thump slice.... Dunne - 5 - As above. L. Young - 6 - Similar to Walker, really think he should stay Downing - 8 - Arguably our only player with desire in first half. Didn't deserve to be substituted and his response to being so cleared showed he thought so too. Reo-Coker - 5 - Beginning to really feel as though he's a division to high now. Keep giving him time but his passing and reading of the game is just too slow. Petrov - 7 - Solid. Does what needs to be done and keeps us ticking over. Won't play a killer pass, won't score a goal but won't make stupid mistakes either. A. Young - 6 - Reasonable. He still looks a threat every time he gets the ball, which can hide rubbish performances! Heskey - 1 - We might as well have played with 10 men. I hate seeing him in a Villa shirt, he does nothing. The only time he ever does anything of note is falling over and a trailing leg will accidentally pass it to another player! Bent - 8 - Does what we need - finishes. Has single-handedly kept us in this division Albrighton - 5 - loads of running, no end product. He's a long way from finished article and think he's slightly over-hyped by a lot of Villa fans. Agbonlahor - 5 - Nowhere near long enough to judge, should be livid that Heskey gets chosen ahead of him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shoody Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Shit game but not much we could do about it, shouldve taken NRC or Petrov off for Delph/Makoun/Pires to get the game moving with the amount of space we had. Heskey should've come off earlier. (but i disagree with the 1 given to heskey by bauer) Happy with a point just not a great game. Expected worse after we went 1-0 down. Unbeaten in 4 aint bad though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briggaman Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Just on the train now and am feeling quite depressed in all honesty. We only managed two shots on target throughout the whole game (or close to that)! Stoke put everyone behind the ball and came for the draw. Surely our players should have been prepared for that. We lack any creativity dowm the middle and it shows. We really do miss Milner! The wide play was good at times, yet the end delivery wad awful. Plus there were no midfielders making runs for the crosses, for the ones that did get delivered well. That comes down tothe movement though, which was quite shocking all over today. Another opportunity for three points missed today. Bent took his goal very well though and is looking to be worth every single penny. I have no idea why Heskey is starting though. Some nice touches but apart from that he was quite poor. Stoke are a bunch of cheats too. We could possibly have had at least one pen. Plus their time wasting was pissing me off beyond belief. Fair play to them though, as they beat us simplyby stackimg players behind the ball... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacketspuds Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Happy with a point. Everyone is talking about how teams on 40 points are safe and having run the BBC predictor a few times 41 points is just enough should pretty much every result go against us and we lose our remaining 4 games. However, as we are Aston Villa I am taking nothing for granted. Get Makoun or Delph in a 3 man midfield for the next game away to WBA and lets see if we can pick up at least another point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnlyOne Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 A draw is good. We were never gonna win under the talentless Gary Mac Bottom teams not managing to win is making our relegation safety more likely when we've added an extra point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmarsha_926 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Was it me our for the 1st goal did the ref makes Downing move 20 yards back from the touchline allowing Delap a free throw with no chance of blocking it. As it looked like Downing was not allowed to block the throw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juanpabloangel18 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Shit game but not much we could do about it Yeh true, its not like we had the same amount of players on the pitch as them. Really cant understand this view. Gabby should be livid that Heskey gets chosen ahead of him Indeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodders Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 figured it might have been a point and so it proved. 7/9 or 8/12 in this mini unbeaten run. west brom up next will be tough but I fancy us to have a better chance of 3 points in that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biskitt Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 I thought walker had a good game today, had etherington in his pocket. Glad we managed to come back again from going behind and bents finish was exceptional. Stoke came for the draw, we couldn't break them down and it's a reasonable point in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danwichmann Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Was it me our for the 1st goal did the ref makes Downing move 20 yards back from the touchline allowing Delap a free throw with no chance of blocking it. As it looked like Downing was not allowed to block the throw. It was you. A Young was standing right in front of Delap, didn't do any good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaAlex Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 I can't fault the effort today, we just didn't have the quality to unlock them. Stoke got the point they wanted. Time wasting must have got up to about 10 minutes, every throw in and set piece took about 30 seconds or more. The goal kicks were the worst, absolute joke that the referee took so long to book one of their players for time wasting. We were quite strong at the back as a whole, I was worried about Jones, but we lost him twice, and the one time he scored unfortunately. I was pleased to see the centre backs come out of defence as it was needed. There was a lot of people moaning about the direct approach, and for a while it wasn't working, but the problem was that when we played it on the ground our players ended up having three or so Stoke players pressing them. You could see in the second half how tired Stoke were. In the second half we lacked that creative spark as usual and relied to much on Young in particular to whip a ball in, but him and Downing were getting double marked. We just needed more drive in the middle, our defence seemed more capable then our midfield of getting through their back four. The pleasing this was the players looked motivated in the second half, and on another day I could have seen us scoring. Stoke in the end defended well and deserved their point albeit with poor sportsmanship, but at times it's something we should be doing to slow down games. Downing looked pissed off when he came off, which is pleasing as you want that in a player but it got to the stage where you thought it really got to him. I'm his biggest fan, but today he was isolated and it was the perfect time for Marc to come on. I predicted a draw before the game, and we got it. I feel we would have lost this game a few months ago so it's progress but little progress. Hopefully we can sort this team out in the summer and get things back to normal next season Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelGabriel Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 I think its because of how Stoke play - plus I've heard he got a knock - I'll take the point we were the better team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billy_loes Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 You may as well watch rugby league as watch stoke. They're a dirty team too. How long does it take to take a corner or a throw in? Foy (referee) was inept beyond belief and he let them stall the game to nothing. pulis wanted a point and no injuries and got them Lots and lots of Police on the Witton Lane after the game ....anyone know why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Stoke are a disgrace, I would hate to watch them week in week out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Hopefully GH saw this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maradona10 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Just a question how did Stoke get away with wearing White shorts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Just a question how did Stoke get away with wearing White shorts? Not sure but both they and Man City will wear white shorts in the F.A. Cup final... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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