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Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Reading


limpid

Who was your Man of the Match?  

114 members have voted

  1. 1. Who was your Man of the Match?

    • Brad Guzan
      15
    • Matthew Lowton
      8
    • Enda Stevens
      0
    • Ciaran Clark
      6
    • Nathan Baker
      4
    • Barry Bannan
      2
    • Ashley Westwood
      22
    • Brett Holman
      3
    • Andreas Weimann
      0
    • Gabby Agbonlahor (capt)
      0
    • Christian Benteke
      47
    • Eric Lichaj (on for Stevens - 24')
      0
    • Stephen Ireland (on for Holman - 67')
      6
    • Marc Albrighton (on for Weimann - 68')
      0


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Essential 3 points

poor performance

positive cleansheet

too many players passed without authority/responsibility

too many moments when the run fizzled out and the ball was dumped.

some of these things are typical of a young side

good effervescence despite the lack of quality.

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Banna had an off night tonight which was suprising coming off the last 3 performances by him. Hopefully it is a one off and he returns to being back on song against QPR on Sat.

As a whole it was a scrappy game and a relieved 3 point result. Definately not the same mindset about the team of that which played Man U, Man C & Arse but **** it. A win's a win but the performance should improve as it was below acceptable standards against a team like reading.

Was I the only one pleased when Jason Roberts was taken off. What a pain in the arse he was to us tonight.

As a whole, if your playing poor but still getting 3 points then that is a sign of a team that is on the up and improving.

Novembers 5 games has seen us pick up 7 pts from an available 15 and 3 of them 5 teams where the top 4! A very good month indeed considering our sqaud and our situation.

Definately going in the right direction and we will definately be safe from relegation.

UTV. :flag:

.

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Dire, dire performance and we would have been thrashed by any other team (and our sloppy midfield would have been assraped), but Reading are just very poor. Thank christ for Benteke though, we'd be **** without him.

But to be fair we just needed the 3 points, and I dont care how we got them. We won despite playing badly, which is always a good sign!

First goal from a corner in 2 years! Woopee!

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It was a win, that's all that matters. It was massive to win this - imagine if we's lost: stranded in the bottom 3 with Reading pulling away and Southampton with a game in hand. When you're in a relegation scrap, you're not going to get quality. You just need players who can hold their nerve and show persistence, commitment and focus at the right time, as Benteke did tonight. We can worry about the prettiness of the football when (if) we get established in mid table.

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Exactly right. It's funny how for some people Westwood is all of a sudden the new darling and his misplaced passes are completely overlooked yet Bannan apparently tries 'Hollywood passes' every single time and loses the ball.

In Bannan and Westwood I see two players who can control and pass a ball under pressure (most of the time) and will get better and better.

I think the exact same about people's comments about KEA. I think he's been a solid player for us this season, good passing, good hassling of opponents but people will jump on a bad pass or two and pile on the criticism.

That said, I agree with Stevo. Bannan was dreadful tonight. Wayward passes, sloppy challenges and that time that he lost the ball by our corner flag, almost resulting in a Reading goal?! What was he playing at?

I'd actually quite like to see KEA & Westwood with Ireland in front of them pulling the strings.

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It was a win, that's all that matters. It was massive to win this - imagine if we's lost: stranded in the bottom 3 with Reading pulling away and Southampton with a game in hand. When you're in a relegation scrap, you're not going to get quality. You just need players who can hold their nerve and show persistence, commitment and focus at the right time, as Benteke did tonight. We can worry about the prettiness of the football when (if) we get established in mid table.

quality can never be dissmissed briny, its sometimes a lack of it that lands you in a relegation scrap in the first place....chicken and egg and all that.I will admit Relegation fights can make players nervy particularly young ones. Under the circumstances a win was the all important thing. My point is you can easily sleep walk in to wins being the only bastion of satisfaction and equally that can land you on your arse when they are not sustainable through lack of substance.....winning playing scrappy unconvincing football has been in evidence in the past and has got us nowhere.

That balance of performances plus winnable football will never go away....its like Lennon without McCartney

but tonight i agree .... the win was the most important.

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I reckon the performance was poor, but I think that P.L. is doing what he can with young, inexperienced (and probably also overrated) players.

I think the starting XI was correct. Weimann had done very well with Man Utd. why shouldn't he do the same with Reading?

Plus, Bent can't play in Lambert's system (4-2-3-1) because Lambert obviously choose Benteke as a central forward, and he hasn' the charateristics to run up and down the flanks like Weimann and Gabby do, working and sacrificing themselves for the team.

Banann and Westwood were the best of te midfield with Arsenal, so why should they be dropped for Steven "Luck of consistency" Ireland?

El Ahmadi was awful and was rightly dropped for Holman.

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Chuffed to bits with the resulting 3 points to our tally, the game however was dire.

Ireland needs to start the next game for sure, I never thought I'd hear myself saying that after slagging him off for so long on here, he's one of our best players, he changed the game the second he was on the pitch.

I hope we buy some proven quality in January, we will struggle if we don't.

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