I was going to start by saying it’s another tough game isn’t it?
But the sad fact is that whoever we face these days is a tough game.
It’s not like it was a few years back, where you could pretty much guarantee us beating certain lesser teams.
Everton were never one of those teams though and no matter how well we’ve been doing in the league, it seems from my memory at least, that they’ve always been able to take points off us; which is why I quite like this particular match.
You never know what you’re going to get and the outcome is quite often not what you thought it might be.
Roberto Martinez has Everton playing very steadily thank you, with 4 wins, 5 draws and 3 defeats from their games up to now.
They score a reasonable amount of goals and don’t concede too many, just as you’d expect from their ninth position in the table.
Whereas we don’t score enough and concede too many, meaning on paper, this ought to be a straightforward home win.
I really don’t want to discuss our form at all.
The difference this time though, being we have Garde on our side.
Obviously you can’t tell anything from one game, but against Man city, the vast majority of us thought the team had a better shape and looked like they had more of an idea about what they were supposed to do than of late.
Certainly Carles Gil alluded to that fact in a recent interview.
And while we were somewhat lucky in getting a point against the blue Mancs, what it boiled down too was that we got that point, much against the odds.
Maybe it was just new manager syndrome, where you often see an immediate boost to players who realise that they are under scrutiny, but I tend to think there was a bit more to it than that.
I’m not alone in thinking that our squad is better than where we lie in the table, but we just weren’t picking the right team and Garde having done just that seems to indicate that us fans were correct.
That in itself should improve us, but if the team are set up properly and know what they’re doing, you’d expect our results to improve.
Squad news then and Everton might have Baines, who’s a player I like immensely, back.
Likewise Tom Cleverley who hasn’t played in ages. What price he gets one against us if he comes on?
The big news for us is of course Amavi being out, but Gestede and perhaps more interestingly, Gabby are both doubtful.
I have to be honest and can’t say I’m overly worried about the forwards not being available.
Gabby needs to seriously up his game or go and we don’t play to suit Gestede.
Which begs the question of where are our goals going to come from?
Everton have a pretty solid defence and I’m not convinced we have the firepower to get past them.
Whereas Everton put 6 past Sunderland and Lukaku is bang on form.
I don’t see Garde going gung-ho for this one and after recent comments, it seems like Grealish might not start, as the manager assessed him has not being good enough in his last few games; an assessment I 100% agree with.
So perhaps a bit less flair then and a bit more guts in the midfield.
Which all makes me think I don’t see many goals, as long as we can keep our flanks tight.
That’s where it’ll be interesting to see who plays at left back.
I know I might be hypocritical, as I don’t rate the player, but Richardson would be my choice. He does at least offer some solidity.
I don’t see many goals in this game and given that this, the most played fixture in English football, sees both teams having won 80 games and having drawn 58, I’m going to go for a draw.
Seeing that I see us struggling to score, I’ll make it a 0-0, with a 1-1 secondary.
If we can bag another one of those elusive points tomorrow, I’ll be ecstatic.
I’ve added a poll because I’m interested to see how confident we are.
[polldaddy poll=9191728]
That whole left side is wide open.
I’m not even sure what Grealish is doing so far – I see him running but not really defending or attacking, just running. Ayew is completely cut off and not making an impact. If we can link up Hutton and Gil we may have a chance but Everton are doing a great job of keeping the ball on the other side of the pitch.
Absolutely atrocious.
Can’t defend, can’t keep the ball, toothless in attack. Westwood and Grealish are shocking so far.
This is like a training match for Everton. After such a well fought perfomance aganst City I just don’t understand this.
Put every penny you have on us being relegated, because this is our year to finally go down.
Another miserable Saturday.
3-0 🙁
If we don’t sort this out quickly, we’re going down.
Got to win next week badger lose or draw we are down no doubt about it. Even a jammy 1.0 will be ok
This is taking the piss
Garde Out 😉
Agree Oohah, we should go for Blackburn manager hes winning.
Lol yeah always said that Lamberk was good 🙂
Lol. This is comical. Why are Grealish and Westwood back in? And Richards & Clarke are bloody terrible.
F’in fuming at this.
How can a group of players on £20-£60k a week show ZERO passion like this? That 1st half is as poor as I have seen in the last 5 years, and thats saying a lot.
No determination, no fight, no passion, simply dont know why he has gone with the crab again, Grealish looks like a little boy playing Amman’s game, so pissed off with this shit now.
anybody know if gana touched the ball that half
Do we defend zonally?
It certainly looks like it, because we just don’t pick players up.
Lukaku’s goal was a joke, no one anywhere near challenging him and it was almost slow motion.
Whatever, it’s shockingly bad.
Horrific first half. Guzan is a complete liability, Richardson is just not good enough to play LB and why is Westwood back in the team, he offers absolutely nothing.
The glimmer of hope I had this week is fading away. That first half was as bad of a performance as I have seen from any Villa team.
I guess we can only get better from here….
We say that every week and still find a way to play worse!!
We’ve said this before in hope.
But all we seem to do is get worse and worse and worse.
like or loathe Westwood he’s the only one to complete a pass that was meant
Villa have always been a team of two halves in recent years and I would be surprised if we don’t see an improvement in the second half. I highly doubt we come back from this, but Villa are far from down this season. Everton are a good team and on their day just as lethal as Arsenal or Man City. I didn’t expect much from this game – hopefully we can get a goal or two back for moral but Everton are just blitzkrieging the hell out of us today.
Disagree Marvin, we have deserved to go down for the last 3 seasons, it is our time, its inevitable….. With us trying to drive our Ferrari on red derv (thanks Randy) we deserve to go down. !!
This problem goes far deeper than a new (cheap) manager !
looking a more balanced midfield now
4-0
This is getting boring now – maybe it might be just little more interesting in the Championship, when we have a chance of winning a game or two !
Four we’re f***ed
Aston Villa is a team of dead wood players, some are only as good as a school team of 9 year olds. Footballer they are shite.no fight just get my money type of footballers.
we are shite
we are going down
we are worst team ever in pl
thank you randy lerner
thank you for killing my love of my club my club
i hope randy you lose your shirt you prick
That’s our goal difference FUCKed Tuesday night footy looking good.
Giddy lets pick another sport as this football malarky is not doing us any good…. Ladies badminton is my chosen new sport.
Tiddly winks we’d still miss the pot.
It’s that easy. they can take the players who have ripped us apart, off.
Netball for me.
You dirty old man, Bill.
NEW POST UP
The worrying thing to me bar amavi who are we actually missing I think this is as good as it gets.
This is my point Giddy.
We have some decent players, but they just don’t work as a team.
Mind you, I think we got the tactics wrong, but it all goes back to players for me.
We needed a target man up front, but Gestede is shit and we don’t have an option.
The commentators have just been talking about how Lerner opened his wallet in the summer.
Shows what they know about that.
But if he doesn’t spend big time in this window, we’re fucked.
And by that, I’m now thinking £40 mill on proven prem players.
We’re down then, because we all know that isn’t going to happen.
BADGER a January spend????not a chance REMI will be lucky to get 10 mil & that’s over estimating MATE.
Sherwood wanted proven premiership players to keep us up, and we know what happened there…. expect bugger all and the transition bullshit to be on the OS soon.
Hey, just thought Championship next year Birmingham, Coventry, Wolves, Derby, Nottingham, we can save travelling fees,
😀 well you can’t moan about that MATE
REMI must be thinking MERD what the FUCK was I thinking taking this job.
I won’t be writing a review for this one as it’d only be based around how obvious it is that we’re going down, after that utter rubbish.
Hopefully Oohah is going to put something up.
We’re shit and only Sunderland are on a par for me.
If we don’t beat Watford, we might as well give up.
And I don’t have much hope of beating them.
What a mess we’re in.
MATE the barcodes are pretty SHITE aswell but I can see a change of manager very soon there.
Just put a post up Badger
I rushed back to watch the match and made it in time for the send half. I turned of at 4 nil.
I can only guess what happened. Teribble defender, some sort of blunder from Guzan and no doubt 2 pointless shoots from outside the box from Westwood that nearly hit the corner flag. I’m so done with this shit now. Ok new manager needs time blah blah blah. It’s starting to wear very thin now.
Westwood and Sanchez our two best players
Good summing up from seeing about 10 mins of the match.!!!!!……..after 10 mins the other bin dipper “fans” were booing their own team…twats.