Ratings and reactions: Villa 0-2 Liverpool

[CI]

I'm not sure this is all McLeish's fault

We can blame him for signing 2 crocks, And 2 awful players

The senior players at the club going through the motions share much of the blame

As does the AWOL chairman

[Mantis]

No, McLeish is the main problem. Our squad is decidedly average but we're giving up before the ball has even been kicked on an almost weekly basis now. He has to go.

[parisvilla]

The national joke that is AVFC under McLeish continues.

Get him out now. Can't coach anything other than anti-football, which we don't have the players to 'succeed' with. The performances in the last three games I've been to; Spurs, Manure and today, are as bad as any I can remember and they will continue for as long as this excuse for a manager is in charge.

The guy in front of me in the holte was playing monopoly on his phone for the entire second half, very wise decision.

[The_Steve]

The attendance today was still above 37,000. If it drops to 30,000 maybe Randy will notice.

[villanfromluton]

Clark deserves a go, he battles for his club, unlike some of those tossers today who dont give a shit

[Richard]

Lerner is the reason why we lack quality

Mcleish is the reason why the players we have play with no desire and shite tactics

Lerner out, Mcleish out. The order of their departure doesn't metter to me but they both have to leave

[CI]

Agree the performances today from warnock Collins & zog were dire they didn't even try

Then there's the championship players who try but are not PL players - delph, fonz, bannan, Hutton

Only petrov and weimann can take any credit today

[Designer1]

Absolutely awful. I thought that McLeish's strengths were supposed to be a strong well organised defence and a difficult to break down team? We are so far from that it's untrue and we don't even have the counterbalance of a creative attacking bias. We can't defend AND we don't look like scoring.

Just woeful. Beginning to fear relegation I really am.

[CI]

Lerner can't leave, if he does we go bust

[andym]

It's about time we stopped blaming Mcleish - name one manager that would come in and do well with this team. Lerner has turned it into this, our squad is very average.

Laughable comment.

agreed, we have some poor players (that mcleish keeps picking while talented youngsters like clark sit on the bench) but we have some good players still. we should still be able to organise ourselves at the back and be able to string more than 3 passes together.

i look at teams like wigan, swansea, norwich. how many of their players would you take above ours? yet they all play far better football than us. the reason they will struggle is because they are small clubs, and they dont have the ability to get even just 1 or 2 real quality players in. give any of those teams bent, gabby and given and their managers would have them right up the table.

under mcleish we have one of the top 3 premier league strikers of the past 5 years putting up heskey like numbers, our talented youngsters are regressing. i see no plan, no tactics, the players just stroll around the pitch. the guy is a terrible manager

[pacbuddies]

What a crock of shit!!

Just got back from the game having witnessed yet another dire, gutless, clueless, talentless performance from this McLeish inspired team.

Get him the **** out of my club now.

[Demitri_C]

thank you randy lerner for delivering us the useless and utter tripe of a manger. another awful anti football performance. im disgusted by these spineless and pathetic performances.

we didnt even cause a scratch. not happy at all and wont be going villa park again until he leaves

MCLEISH OUT

[Demitri_C]

LOSER

[Ponky]

To be fair I thought we were pretty attacking in our approach today, a far cry from the Tottenham game where we were set up to try and salvage a draw.

Problem was that the common thread between this game and the Tottenham game was the utter ineptitude of the players. The cavalier and irresponsible defending and the absolutely diabolical inability to pass the ball were well and truly on display. Understandably McLeish deserves the stick he is getting but there are enough common threads between the McLeish and Houllier regimes to suggest that some of the players simply have been found out as considerably lacking in skill and tactical nous.

I thought Albrighton was decent today, and I thought Fonz and Delfouneso were developing a bit of an understanding in that first half. The defence was abysmal though, not just with defending, but distributing the ball. It was clear they were under instructions to play the ball along the ground today. Unfortunately that was just a recipe for disaster with the two-left-feet brigade.

[Rob182]

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I'm still not getting on McLeish's back.... yet.

My opinion of Today's game:

Given, Bent, Herd & Gabby have been our better players this season, they were all out. Jenas also played pretty well in the 3 short appearances he made for us, he too is out. That's 5 players unavailable that McLeish would probably prefer to be in his first team.

I don't think many people would have put out a team much different to the one we saw Today, with the options we had available.

Maybe some people would prefer to not see Heskey start? But with Bent & Gabby out, surely it's the sensible option to put at least one experienced forward on the pitch? Delfouneso finally got a chance to show his worth, Wiemann tried hard when he came on.

Maybe some people would have played Cuellar at right back? But I don't think Hutton was too bad. He made one bad mistake, but other than that he was okay defensively and showed how much he wants to attack with quite a few forward runs.

Maybe some people would like to bring Clark in for Collins? But that's something we've wanted for ages and we don't get to see the players on the training field. Perhaps Collins and Dunne is our best defensive pairing, despite Collins' occasional gung-ho attitude.

The only change I would have preferred, would have been for Bannan to get more time on the pitch.

The 2 goals we let in were down to our inability to defend set pieces. We had a lot of the possession (maybe because Liverpool were happy to sit back after they got the goals), but still, the only other attacks that Liverpool had were when they caught us on the break.

We passed it around, we got players forward, N'Zogbia played pretty well (which is a positive!), we had a decent amount of shots, but we just didn't have a creative player in the middle to thread a ball through to a striker, (or a better striker upfront to make good runs into a good positions).

I don't think we played with 10 men behind the ball, like loads of people say.

I'm getting a bit tired of the constant negativity.

I agree with people that we're played poorly. I agree that some of our games have been way, way too defensive. But also, it appears to Me that a lot of people are unable to forget their preconceptions of how McLeish will play, and instead should just be looking at the players available and the players that are not putting in the performances.

A guy behind Me kept shouting 'F*ck off Hutton!' & 'F*ck off Warnock' every time they made one mistake. Hutton has been below-average this season, but Today he wasn't bad. He made one big mistake when he lost the ball and luckily Suarez hit the crossbar. Warnock has been, suprisingly, one of our more consistent performers this season. I've let go of all the rumours of last season and I've given him another chance. His tackling hasn't been as bad this year and he's not been picking up yellow cards like he did last year.

Yes we lost, but we had a lot of the ball and we were trying to attack, even if the players couldn't pull off the final pass or actually score one of our chances.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with how we're playing, at all. But I can't see Lerner sacking McLeish any time soon, so I'm not getting on the team's or manager's back. I believe McLeish will be here for a while.

The only thing I am really annoyed about (apart from our losses!) is the fact that I thought that McLeish would be tightening us up defensively. If we wanted a manager who couldn't defend, we could go for someone like Holloway or Brendan Rogers (I saw 'someone like', because Holloway will never come here, after what he said about Villa) who would let goals in but also have a bit of attacking flair going forward.

[R.I.C.O.]

I went to this game willing to give McLeish one last chance. He blew it spectacularly and he needs to go, right now.

Despite a fleeting first 3 minutes, the first half was one of the most limp, rudderless and uninspiring halves I've ever had the misfortune to witness. The two goals were just schoolboy stuff, poor marking for the first and then 7 players ballwatching for the second. Our defending was real comedy stuff throughout the whole game. We couldnt string two passes together and no-one really looked like they wanted to grab a hold of the game and get something out of it. And after half time we actually played worse.

Liverpool really should have won that game 5 or 6 nil. And they didnt even have to try either!

To add to the misery I had two plastic scousers sat near me and not once did the stewards look to eject them, despite the cooonts celebrating both goals. The stadium looked lifeless and drab, most people sat around me looked like they'd rather be elsewhere. I cant blame them to be honest.

I'm sorry but until he goes I'm not coming down Villa Park any more. Its not enjoyable and Id rather spend my money on things that dont make me quite as depressed as that!

McLeish out.

[smetrov]

It's about time we stopped blaming Mcleish - name one manager that would come in and do well with this team. Lerner has turned it into this, our squad is very average.

Not a Mcleish fan....but the average cost of a liverpool player on the pitch today must have been around £12m - approaching half the villa squad are home grown freebies - a couple of the others are over the hill and in the twighlight of there careers .....

I wan't Mcleish out - but with the resources available today - I couldn't really see who could do much better.

[cbr600rr]

i expected from the kick off .. the result/the performance/the dull atmosphere, i got all three things, we are now dancing with the dead men of the league, we simply dont have a player who can make a impact in any game.

[Nabby]

Another depressing throught ..watching 3 lives games and seeing 4 ex players playing and thier teams win..or currently winning ...

£73mil pounds of talent ..

[Ulver]

I'm no fan of the Ginger clearing in the woods. But surely i'm not the only one who saw this as him just laughing at how **** inept the players were during a split second of the 90 minutes ?

I laughed too

For all his ZILLION faults, even he can't take the blame for the majority of our players not even being able to pass the ball to a team mate

They're professional footballers and they were taking the piss. I'm not willing to blame McLeish for their woeful efforts on the pitch