NowDoINotLikeThat Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Decent enough performance. Around midway the second half the commentator said: "arsenal have only scored 1 goal from a corner this season" At that point I knew what was going to happen. Hah. Same here. Tho Arsenal had so many corners against us you sort of knew one would go in eventually. It was Gabby who lost Benayoun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacquesderrida Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 I only caught the last 20 minutes of the game, online, so I can't really make any comment on the overall performance. I'll leave that to others and – no doubt painfully – learn all about it. Maybe this isn't the right place to say this (the Match thread) but over the last few games I've seen online (living abroad, I try and manage one VP visit a year, but that's about it) I've noticed that Dunne and Collins seem to be: a) playing much further forward; stroking the ball around. Is this just me, from the distance of a dodgy stream? the thing is, they seem to be playing as if they've been told that they need to distribute much better, play smart passes on the floor; but neither of them is bloody Messi. Remembering the shambolic Liverpool match: in those last 20 minutes, while we 'retained possession', every passing move in that dumbduck period seemed to be coordinated by Collins or Dunne. And to absolutely no real effect. Hmm. Does that make sense? I just keep seeing seeing Dunne or Collins marauding into the opposition half and that seems quite disturbing. (Why Collins on the halfway line with ball and not Barry, for instance?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chappy Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 On train back from the ground now. We were brilliant tonight,by far our best performance of the season. Surprise surprise with no collins and heskey! Voted nzogbia motm, closely followed by ireland and dunne. Ireland deserves another start if he's fit and dunne looks so much better when he doesn't have to carry collins. Warnock was good again tonight. Hutton had his best game for us so far,canty comment on the red card as I couldn't see it from the holte. Marc albrighton looks to be back at last seasons level which is great. Thought it was an extremely soft pen. Gabby tonight proved that he is better in a two than on his own. Lots of promising things though and its the proudest we can be in defeat in a very long time. Up the villa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shillzz Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 One more point... Arsenal had a redonculous number of corners, conceding one from 10/15 corners is hardly surprising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NowDoINotLikeThat Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Thought it was an extremely soft pen. It was a pen tho. Clark was naive there - he shouldn't have put his arm out Walcott had already gone past him and wasn't going to score himself from where he was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Thought it was an extremely soft pen. Clear penalty, stupid from Clarke, and entirely avoidable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Anybody know why Hutton went of his rocker? I would imagine it is the same reason as he why he beat his dad up a couple of years ago. He is a deeply unpleasant individual with an attitude problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deeps Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 I know we all know this but we MUST beat stoke! Hopefully bent is back for it. Gutted about tonight. Living in islington doesn't help :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodders Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 would like to think collins and heskey will have a longer rest and albrighton and cuellar get an extended run in the side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BkkVilla Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 I know we all know this but we MUST beat stoke! Hopefully bent is back for it. Stoke will pummel us with high balls into the box, there is no way we can handle that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted December 21, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 21, 2011 I think we looked more natural without Bent. I think a team with ambitions that plays the right way is better with Bent in, but in our current circumstance the front three of a busy Albrighton, Agbonlahor and N'Zogbia with Bannan or Ireland behind is our best bet. It's not that Bent isn't good, but he's a luxury, he's icing and at the moment we just need cake. Today I thought Dunne was excellent again Warnock did well, Hutton was reasonable until he went silly at the end, Cuellar was good against a team without a physical threat and Guzan did okay. Midfield was controlled with Petrov and Clark and allowed the others to play. N'Zogbia is on the verge of coming good, let's hope he doesn't spend too long there, Gabby was excellent for seventy minutes but tired and they came in to it as a result and Albrighton worked his socks off and deserved his goal. As for Arsenal; well they remind me of Tottenham - which is peculiar as Tottenham now remind me of Arsenal. We've lost again, but we're happier - why? Because we gave it a go, because it was worth watching and because there was some entertainment - we'll get behind that, we'll make some noise - there's a lesson there Mr McLeish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnlyOne Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 The performance was decent but extremely overrated by some on here. Sure, we had the ball alot, but we didn't exactly test the goalkeeper. But I can understand why some think it's the best thing ever when we've suddenly improved from the diabolical football we had to endure under AM for the psat few months. I think the reason we improved alot was because Collins wasn't in the team. But we're still making the same shitty mistakes. Giving away soft goals. The Clark one was terrible but that's what happens when he has his first PL game in a long time and he is against someone as fast as Walcott. The second goal was from another corner and it's becoming a sick joke now. Every team will take the oppertunity to win loads of corners against us and they'll eventually score with ease. Why hasn't AM fixed this yet? We have deep problems.... We're not scoring enough and gifting goals like it's christmas already. We're now heading towards a relegation battle and we have AM to take us out of it. Now we've got Wigan picking up points against the big teams where as we still remain useless. We have 4 defeats at home ALREADY that's the same amount as last season. Not good enough. Villa Park is too easy for the top 6 teams now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Nearly did not go tonight but decided at the last minute that I might as well as otherwise it was a waste of the ST. The simple truth was Villa played really well tonight and based on possession and chances should have won the game. I was utterly different to Sunday. Cuellar looked very comfortable at the back with Dunne and for should start over Collins. For me Clark's natural role is as a DM and he looked very assured. N'Zogbia had his best game in a Villa shirt and he and Albrighton tormented their full backs all night. Ireland looked very good too until he went off but Bannan played equally well. Personally I don't get the criticism of Gabby as I thought he worked very hard all game and created space for the other attacking players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 There is always a danger that when you have been playing that bad an improved performance becomes overrated, due to the desperation for the improvement itself. I always believe the gap between a good performance and a bad performace of the top sides is marginal, where as poorer sides the gap is somewhat bigger. I also believe that some performances that go so low and i believe we have had some will never correct the overall. Good sides or sides with a little bit of ambition don't venture as low a performance as ours has been of late. I have seen some of our performances, where i have said to myself decent sides just don't play that bad at any time..... .....we are like a dead man walking, things will have to change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted December 21, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 21, 2011 Thought it was an extremely soft pen. Clear penalty, stupid from Clarke, and entirely avoidable. The foul throw that lead to it was annoying, but yep, I agree it was a penalty - I always think it looks bad when the player could still keep the ball and decides to appeal instead - it looked that way from where I was. He definitely pulled him though and nowadays any striker will make sure the ref notices that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smetrov Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 A much improved performance. On another we could have had all 3 points - let alone feeling agreived at loosing. A few concerns though Nzgobia - although his skill his starting to show through. To often he ran up blind alleys - and for all his clever footwork - the end product was often missing. Gabby - from where I was he looked to clutching his knee - just after we scored - from this point he looked like he was labouring. If he was injured he should have been subbed with 15 to go. The goal we scored was from a peice of opportunism - for all our possesion we didnt test the keeper much Still work to do...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pacbuddies Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Good result for the Villa today. Only beaten by a penalty and a scrappy goal. We dominated possession and had the better chances. Played better than in any game so far this season. If we keep it up we will win more than we lose so we cannot afford to revert back to the dross that has been served to date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nath182 Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Great game, shame about the result. Crowd were good tonight too for once. N'Zogbia MOTM for me, looked really sharp, maybe a little bit selfish at times but a massive improvement and seemed to put in alot of effort! Bring on Stoke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sureshot Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Just got back from VP; can't believe we didn't get at least a point from that. Arsenal weren't really anywhere for the majority of the game. Dunne and N'Zogbia were great, and our overall performance was a lot better in general. Thought Hutton was actually pretty decent as well before he got sent off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reykjavik Posted December 21, 2011 Share Posted December 21, 2011 Decent or good performance! This game was poor, slightly better but still poor. We might be best of the rest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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