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Ratings and reactions: Arsenal 3-2 Villa


limpid

Who was your man of the match?  

82 members have voted

  1. 1. Who was your man of the match?

    • Given
      3
    • Hutton
      8
    • Warnock
      1
    • Dunne
      6
    • Clark
      2
    • Cuéllar
      1
    • Ireland
      36
    • Petrov
      10
    • Bent
      2
    • Agbonlahor
      2
    • Keane
      6
    • Gardner (for Agbonlahor 71)
      1
    • Bannan (for Petrov 82)
      4


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Some massive overreactions here. Sometimes in football you have just hold your hands up - for those 15 minutes they blitzed us. Yes we have clown defenders but we all knew that anyway. At least going forward we look a lot better now. Why are people having a go at Bannan? Two defence splitting passes for the few minutes he was on. Gardner looked well off the pace. Ireland was class for most of the match.

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I actually feel like crying now in all honesty. I'm at that stage when it feels like nothing can go right for us.

Arsenal were the better team for 90 minutes, yet the game was ours for the taking. This was due to our extremely good counter-attacking display in the first half, which led to two very well taken goals. The second half was a different story though. Two errors and one huge slice of luck that went their way lost us the match.

Dunne had no reason to make the challenge, yet should it have been a penalty? The ball was in the Given's hands and the player wasn't going to win it back. Bent had no need to make the tackle either, yet did he get the ball? I think he got the ball to be honest. The third was just their luck kicking into overdrive to be fair. Whether or not they should have been pens and even if they were lucky, the fact remains that we have lost and are now out of the FA Cup.

I'm devastated as we had them on the ropes and threw it away in the space of 15 minutes. I feel a little sick right now.

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Some massive overreactions here. Sometimes in football you have just hold your hands up and for those 15 minutes they blitzed us. Yes we have clown defenders but we all knew that anyway. At least going forward we look a lot better now. Why are people having a go at Bannan? Two defence splitting passes for the few minutes he was on. Gardner looked well off the pace. Ireland was class for most of the match.

The usual crowd with that huge axe to grind have to get their overreactions in early. We were set up to play defensively and hit Arsenal on the counter - few will beat them trying to match their tempo and passing. We did for 45 minutes - we were let down by a couple of rushes of blood to the head by experienced players who should know better.

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I actually feel like crying now in all honesty. I'm at that stage when it feels like nothing can go right for us.

Arsenal were the better team for 90 minutes, yet the game was ours for the taking. This was due to our extremely good counter-attacking display in the first half, which led to two very well taken goals. The second half was a different story though. Two errors and one huge slice of luck that went their way lost us the match.

Dunne had no reason to make the challenge, yet should it have been a penalty? The ball was in the Given's hands and the player wasn't going to win it back. Bent had no need to make the tackle either, yet did he get the ball? I think he got the ball to be honest. The third was just their luck kicking into overdrive to be fair. Whether or not they should have been pens and even if they were lucky, the fact remains that we have lost and are now out of the FA Cup.

I'm devastated as we had them on the ropes and threw it away in the space of 15 minutes. I feel a little sick right now.

i know how you feel mate its bloody shite!

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Didn't come out of the trap second half, did our usual inviting the opposition on to us and paid the price, again.

Given - 6

Warnock - 4 Not good enough. Should be shipped out.

Dunne - 6 That game was Richard Dunne in a nutshell. He'll score a fantastic goal and make some world-class tackles, then give away a penalty or score an own goal.

Cuellar - 7 Steady. Best defender we have at the club. Wont be surprised to see him sold.

Hutton - I'm not giving him a rating. He doesn't deserve one. He can't pass, tackle, dribble, has no awareness, and is a liability.

Clark - 5 At least looks like he cares

Petrov - 5 As above

Ireland - 7 On a different level to the rest of the team. Needs to play with Bannan and / or N'Zogbia.

Keane - 6 Game mostly passed him by. Didn't look very interested once things got tough.

Gabby - 6 Clearly not fit.

Bent - 6 Good goal, but why the **** was he making challenges like that in his own penalty area? Why is our lone striker anywhere near his own penalty area anyway? It's asking for trouble.

Do you know what, it's difficult to knock most of the lads. Most of them didn't do much wrong. Players like Ireland, Keane and Bent are just not suited to the way we play. There are 3 major problems with that team that I can see.

1) Alan Hutton and Steven Warnock. Hutton is the worst Villa player I can remember for some years. Steven Warnock, is like Hutton, though maybe not as bad. Both give the ball away too cheaply and too frequently and make too many rash tackles. This invites pressure onto us.

2) Tactics. Sitting back when you get your nose in front doesn't work. We are too defensive and too negative and too quick to try and shut up shop. Our lone striker should not be making last ditch tackles in the penalty area.

3) Defensive organisation. We are piss poor at defending set pieces and also get pulled out of position too easily during open play . Although we did not concede from a set piece today, we were bloody lucky. A team with more aerial presence would have buried one of those early corners Arsenal had. When you are playing as defensively as we are, not being very good at defending is a massive problem.

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Some massive overreactions here. Sometimes in football you have just hold your hands - for those 15 minutes they blitzed us. Yes we have clown defenders but we all knew that anyway. At least going forward we look a lot better now. Why are people having a go at Bannan? Two defence splitting passes for the few minutes he was on. Gardner looked well off the pace. Ireland was class for most of the match.

Agreed with all this, mcleish should of spotted this sooner and switched Ireland and gardener.

Regarding banann balls the keeper caught that ppl are mentioning, they travelled 60 yards, keeper should of been challenged

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I agree with Yankee

Bannan doesn't really offer much. For the "ooh", "aah" and "gaffuw" he seems to get, he hasn't scored many, his pass completion isn't great and he doesn't influence games much...

He isn't scaredto shoot, but his doesn't score. He isn't scared to pass, but they go astray...

I'm not saying he is shit, I know he is young, but he isn't the messiah like people seem to make out, neither is Gary Gardner, give the poor kid a break!

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It hit Walcott in the shoulder - it was flukey goal as ever. Any other player probably wouldn't get as much grief as Hutton gets. As poor as he was.

but he decided to smash it left footed back towards an area with Walcott and 3 villa players when he had the time and space to play it right footed away from anyone

it was a lack of common sense mixed with panic that you would expect to see from kids football

You've clearly never played football - it was a desperate attempt at a clearance but anywhere else and you'd say it was sensible defending.

yes I have and i'm pretty sure if I was defending on the line I wouldn't smash my clearance on the exact same direction the ball is coming from

look at the angle he played the ball at, straight into a **** crowd! Yes it was lucky it hit walcott on theshoulder and went in but it was always hitting someone

I'm not saying he should have used the outside of his right boot and completly changed the angle but if he opened his body up and played that right footed are trying to tell me a premier league player can't get that to go in straight line?

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15 minutes of madness and stupid mistakes. We just looked panicked, only looked comfortable again when we were 3-2 down.

I don't think I'm going to be reading anybody else's comments, because I guarantee people will be laying into McLeish saying it was his team talk. I'm not in the mood for cringing

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You have to think the team came out in the second half already KNOWING they'd end up losing.

If a Premier League club with aspirations to improve cannot hold a 2 goal lead for 45 minutes, they should just concede defeat before kickoff and spare everyone the trouble.

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The most annoying thing about today was making Walcott look excellent. He's really not that great.

No, he's fast, and not much else, other than another Wenger protege mastered at the art of petulance and arrogance.

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You have to think the team came out in the second half already KNOWING they'd end up losing.

If a Premier League club with aspirations to improve cannot hold a 2 goal lead for 45 minutes, they should just concede defeat before kickoff and spare everyone the trouble.

On what possible basis can you assume that? None of us have any idea about the respective team talks. We were 2-0 it made sense to carry on with the same game plan. It was silly mistakes against Arsenal. This wasn't again Wigan for **** sake.

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You have to think the team came out in the second half already KNOWING they'd end up losing.

If a Premier League club with aspirations to improve cannot hold a 2 goal lead for 45 minutes, they should just concede defeat before kickoff and spare everyone the trouble.

I knew I shouldn't have read this thread, first comment I read has annoyed me. Cringe-worthy. Logging off

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Aston Villa boss Alex McLeish: "We still had chances in the second half to get at least a draw. But it was a terrible eight minutes. I thought the second goal was very harsh - Theo Walcott put the ball in with his arm."

Shoulder or arm - Walcott is still a word removed.

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