Rating and Reactions: Villa - Spurs

[DeepDish]

Ok, have seen 20 minutes now. Since I know the result, I see the match a little differently than usually, so I can probably be a better judge of the play now than when I watch in real time.

The problem in the first 20 minutes seems to be our central midfield. Delph and El Ahmadi gives the ball away too often and give Tottenham far too easy access to the ball, when they should really use their resources chasing the ball.

As I am writing this, Westwood also gives the ball away too easy, creating a chance where its almost an own goal.

Another problem is Holman. Loses the ball too much and does not seem to fit together with Benteke (he is never the to pick up Benteke's flicks).

This central problem is making it difficult for Villa to have the ball. We lose it and use a lot of struggle to win the ball back.

We need better midfielders than El Ahmadi, Bannan, Holman and Delph.

[parisvilla]

We actually matched them (almost) first half, then capitulated without Westwood .

I presume you're being sarcastic? I can't think of a word to describe how pathetic we were in the first half. A combination of Guzan and superb last-gasp blocks from Baker and Clark prevented it from being 5 or 6 by half-time. I think we had control of the ball in their half of the pitch about 3 times in the first 45 minutes. We were actually far better in the second half despite them scoring all of their goals during that time.

We'd have been infinitely better off just booting the ball at Benteke and getting runners beyond him for the flick ons because Ahmadi and Westwood had an absolute horror show in midfield. Delph linked up fairly well with Bennett but the rest of them looked genuinely petrified of the ball. Massive, massive job to do to turn things around now.

[R.Bear]

We actually matched them (almost) first half, then capitulated without Westwood .

:crylaugh: :crylaugh:

[bradarmstrong_]

The amount of hate I've seen towards Lambert online today has been ridiculous. Until two games ago we were unbeaten in six and guaranteed a place at Wembley according to many. It's been a nightmare couple of days, but to see people changing their opinion so quickly is insane. I have faith in him and actually think it's the players who were here before he arrived that are the problem not his signings.

[CrackpotForeigner]

The amount of hate I've seen towards Lambert online today has been ridiculous. Until two games ago we were unbeaten in six and guaranteed a place at Wembley according to many. It's been a nightmare couple of days, but to see people changing their opinion so quickly is insane. I have faith in him and actually think it's the players who were here before he arrived that are the problem not his signings.

X10

[TRO]

something has gone drastically wrong from beating Norwich and Liverpool away...its difficult to blame confidence coming off the back of those results and clean sheets.

It strikes me the players have been reading their own press and decided closing down and pressing ( the basics) is for other teams that don't have the footballing prowess of Villa.

Sorry, guy there is alot of hard work to be done before the football can start.

Against Chelsea and Spurs with the individiual talent they have .....closing down was an absolute must... standing off would be a disaster

I'm afraid the latter was the case and it was ..... a disaster.

Edited December 26, 2012 by TRO

[hogso]

What an odd game. Terrible, terrible first half, one of the most one sided for the visitors I've ever seen at VP. Change of formation looked positive for a very short period of time, followed by being utterly, utterly out played. And then, are 0-4 down, the Holte finds it voice and out sings the spurs following for the last mins. As I say, odd.

And man, Bale is some player.

[CI]

Why did Westwood go off ?

[DeepDish]

Have watched first 50 minutes now. Good start of the second half. But think I will quit when Tottenham scores.

[VillaCas]

To play 3-5-2 you need three good CB's. We had one good one, one okay one and one who is, at best, a midfielder.Then the good one got injured.

You need excellent full backs. Lowton is very good, but didn't have his best day and is never great at crossing. Bennett is not ready for the PL.

You need good midfielders who can win the ball, keep the ball and create attacking chances. KEA and Delph are/were useless in all three departments. Ireland was good for two out of three. Didn't notice Westwood, but others said he had an off day.

And you need a good strike partnership. Holman is very average, and we knew that already. What in ****'s name has happened to Benteke is anybody's guess. Even I know how the bloody offside rule works.

So 12 unanswered goals in two games. Nice.

BUT I don't think the situation is beyond rescue by any means. Baker/Clark/Vlaar will be a very good unit. Lowton is a good player and will have better days. Lichaj is okay for now while we wait to see if Bennett can improve (hopefully in the reserves). Weimann and Gabby (on his good days) will improve the attack when they're back, and Benteke has proved that he has it in him somewhere.

We've known all season that midfield is a problem, and Lambert will address this in January. He'll probably get a CB in as well.

People blaming Lambert for it all need to realise how limited his options have been, and remember that his success rate with signings has been an impressive 75% or so. We don't know who he's lined up in January, and for all we know he was giving those on their way out one last chance. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does in January.

In Lambert I trust. For now at least.

Great Post

[VillanousOne]

We actually matched them (almost) first half, then capitulated without Westwood .

you mean the way we had 1 shot to their 10 and their non-stop corners and freekicks? Yeah we matched them alright first half

[NurembergVillan]

Absolute horseshit for 90 minutes. We are an awful football team, the worst I can remember in my 25+ years as a fan. The gulf between us and the genuinely good sides in this division is immense. Even with investment we're years behind.

It's frightening/

[terrytini]

We were very poor first half and agree with those who said that for 2 games now we seem to have stood off players too much - been listening to the hype after Liverpool ? Same for Benteke who also seems to have wandereed off mentally.

Not suprising from a young squad but I have every faith Pl can sort it.

Also think this shows we need options like Gabby and Weimann around Benteke.

Baker is a cracking defender.

I thought PL was right to go after Spurs Second Half and it could have come of- we were the better side when Spurs scored, and could have gone 1-1 rather than 0-2.

Midfield allowed themselves to be overran first half, but in the second we only lost it once chasing the game.

I think people always react and feel worse when bad resukts come together, but I still think things will be fine.

[claretman]

It really upsets me that 3-4 yrs ago we were well ahead of where spurs are, they were fisting around the bottom of the table with Ramos in charge whilst we were flying high. What the **** has happened?

[Archie]

I was a great fan of Lambo since he was in Norwich's books and I remain convinced that he is the right man for the job but I must admit that, like against Pool, I haven't understood his tactics yesterday. Apart from the awful approach to the game and the total lack of consistency of the team, how can you deliver the keys of the midfield in the hands of two championship-level players like Delph and KEA? And how can you play together two lightweighs like Ireland & Holman when it has just been proved (the last time time at Anfield) that they can't play together? P.S. Why Weimann didn't play nor was in the bench?

[soylee22]

Woeful first half, could have easily have been another 8-0 capitulation if they would have scored early. Beginning of second half looked promising, then a few defensive errors and the game is over by the hour interval.

There have been comments here about investment being needed. The worrying thing about this is that according to a survey by Deloitte, since the transfer window period began in 2003, we've had the 7th highest spend on players with £201 million, after: Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool, Man Utd, Tottenham and Arsenal. Of course this is not net spend, and I fear that this figure would be worse!

We do hark back to the O'Neil era, and we convinced ourselves that we had to cleanse the "fat lump" brigade he had brought in on far too high wages. Not sure how much I agree with this, although it severely damaged our wage structure.

My point is this. What a difference a week makes. From beating Liverpool away 3-1 (a feat that looks less impressive having seen Stoke do the same thing tonight, albeit at Brittania) and getting the best possible semi-final draw for the cup, to a deep and thorough self-excavation. It is indeed the nature of these results that is what worries fans. We have completely capitulated like a team of under 9's after we realised that we aren't taking any points home. If the unthinkable happened and we actually won the Capital One Cup, then I do fear for our Premier League survival - the League Cup hangover is a real phenomenon and has taken hold of many other teams. If we did win that, then do you think the players would still keep playing for the league itself? Seems more likely to me, given our recent inability to overturn a losing situation in it seeming "pointless", and the league cup hangover effect, that we would plummet down the table.

[soylee22]

Another quick comment on topic:

Tonight really showed the difference between ourselves and Stoke. At the Britannia, Stoke give away a penalty and go 1-0 down a minute into the game. What happens? Stoke battle really hard, take the game to Liverpool, and end 2-1 up 15 minutes into the game.

The reason for worry is that if that was us, we would have capitulated before we'd had time to find our seats!

[VillanousOne]

now i've calmed down a bit - I can maybe admit myself and probably others are over reacting, the squad Lambert inherited was poor and his attempts to strengthen it were never going to come off in one transfer window.

His ethos of young and promising players and pulling talent from abroad and lower leagues is something we have lacked and needed for a long time now and until two games ago people were starting to see what he was trying to do.

I personally don't know if the way he has treated, Hutton, Warnock and Collins has really paid off, but you can see why he wanted to change things. In my opinion though if you are going to sack off three experienced (if out of form) players, you need to replace them with three experienced but better players. Vlaar is unproven and not without his merits and faults, Lowton is promising, Bennett is out of his depth.

I don't agree how he has handled Bent, Ireland and Nzogbia, the last two may not have/ever live up to expectations but they still have the most talent and experience we have in midfield, Bent in my opinion didn't deserve to be humiliated by being dropped in favour of Bowery in the bench/squad - even if he is a stroppy egotistical player who is hard to accomodate tactically when things aren't going well.

Why we have imploded I am not quite sure, injuries, over reliance on average players.... maybe, we genuinely seem to be having some shocking luck, every interception or 50/50 challenge today won ended up bouncing straight to a Spurs player, every time Chelsea shot on goal it went in.

Clark, Bannan, Herd, Delph and Lichaj have not shown me anything more than the Championship form they should under the last three managers. Ok so maybe Clark deserved a run in the team as did Baker but they still make rookie mistakes and cost us goals. You can't blame Lambert for using his judgment to give these players a chance though, but what he has to do is learn from what is happening now and use the Jan transfer window wisely.

Benteke suffers when the team suffers, just like Bent does - people forget how young he us. I thought him Weimann and Gabby as a front three looked really good. Holman and KEA need to be used as back up as both have looked pretty ropey.

Lerner isn't going to sack Lambert and throwing money at the team isn't a solution on it's own, but i've never seen a time when we need bodies more than ever, not even world class players - just players that can do a job in the premiership.

Lambert has to accept that if he wants young players to flourish at the foundation of his team then he needs some short term thinking, meaning we need proven prem players probably on high wages and shorter term contracts - to allow us to survive while Lambert and Lerner's cheap youthful utopia takes root.

[OutByEaster?]

A tragedy in four acts.

Firstly that first forty five minutes - I don't think we got out of our half more than twice during it and we barely got a touch on the ball - oddly, Spurs created half chance after half chance but didn't really convince you they were about to score. I'd imagine they left the field at half time as baffled as the rest of us as to why they weren't ahead, and ahead by a distance.

Secondly, the opening fifteen minutes of the second half, where we came to life, we harried, we stepped up, everything was quicker and it paid off - we created two excellent openings - Spurs scored from both of them.

Then the game we'd expected, a bright lively Tottenham looking the better side and outscoring a positive but inferior Villa team, for twenty minutes we kept at it and weren't good enough and they polished us off with the polish that they're capable of.

And finally for me the best part of the night, four minutes from the end the chant of 'Paul Lambert's Claret and Blue Army' went up and stayed up, getting louder towards the final whistle and lingering until after it was blown. Are we shit? Yes we are. Are we fickle? My arse. Can it have an effect? Who knows? As a gesture of support it was one of the best things I've seen at Villa Park for some time - you can take no pride from losing 8-0 then 4-0, but you can manufacture it and try to force it into a group of players. There are still some things about this club that make it special.

For me, Bennett did okay coming forward, Delph was lively and Ireland added something when he came on - the rest were poor. We were poor overall and there's lots of work to do before we're going to convince anyone we're not poor.

The next game is a six pointer.

[AvfcTheObsession]

Can't quite believe how bad things have got. First half we had McLeish like tactics, no idea how to attack just trying to keep it nil nil. We changed system second half and got ripped apart. We have a bunch of kids that just seem to be playing by default, its been obvious for years many of our current squad arent good enough. Unless we have a very good January we could pay the price this season.