Worried about who Dean Smith is going to start for this one, that is.
If I see Lansbury or Hourihane start, I think I’ll have totally given up with the manager.
I’m also worried about how this game is going to go too, as I fear it’s going to be a case of men against boys, with Burnley bullying us all over the pitch.
The problem is then who comes in?
Well, if we need to move from powder-puff, flair players in the middle, we probably need to go with Nakamba and Luiz. The trouble is, they’ve been tried together and it really didn’t work.
Am I the only one who wishes Whelan and Hutton were still here? I know they weren’t the future, but at least you knew they’d get stuck in and dish some stick out, just to make the opposition think, which is what we’re sorely lacking.
Anyway, squad news and on our part, Kienan Davis and Tyrone Mings are back in contention.
Matt Targett is suffering a hamstring problem and the extent of it isn’t known yet, but I don’t think he’s much of a loss anyway, as he’s been awful of late.
As for Burnley, defender Ben Gibson and Aaron Lennon are back in contention. Johann Berg Gudmundsson will be pushing for more game time after making his second consecutive substitute appearance.
I have a connundrum.
If we’re not going to go gung-ho, surely this is a game where we should go 3-5-2?
Or more accurately 5-3-2, which I think is what the formation more often reflects.
To be honest, I don’t think formations are as solid as they used to be years ago, as they’re more fluid these days, with players moving well out of position and more following the play (which explains why our RB in particular is so often caught out of position), but we definitely line up with four at the back when defending under the current system.
Ideally Targett would have been available for the system to work at it’s best going forward, but he can’t defend for toffee anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
The point is, we add another defender to beef things up.
Either way, Elmohamady starts for me.
Or does Dean stick with the more flairy side of things and go for it?
We’re on a hiding to nothing, in my opinion.
But regardless, we cannot keep playing Jack Grealish on the left, as he has been sussed out in that position and teams just double or triple up on him, safe in the knowledge that there’s very little threat from the rest of the team.
He simply has to play in the middle, where he might well drift left, but the defenders can’t track him so easily.
The player himself has said out on the left is not his favoured position (but added that he’s happy to do the job, to keep Smith happy), after all.
And he has to play further forward, just behind a or the striker(s).
How long will it be before Smith sees that he’s wasted playing in our third of the pitch, as much as he’s probably more effective at tracking back recently than Targett is?
Okay, I hold my hands up in saying that I don’t have a clue as to how we can possibly win this game, but if Dean Smith sticks with his philosophy of being gung-ho, I think we’re going to be beaten easily.
I don’t see a big scoreline, because Sean Dyche is a canny manager and knows that he doesn’t need to win big.
I’m going for a very straightfoward 2-0 win for Burnley, although I hope, probably in vain that we can get something out of it.
9 minutes wow
I’m bricking it!
Please hold on.
Brickin it, I’ve just thrown one at the tv , if we don’t get this then all’s lost, 2 invites left.
Good collect of the ball , nearly there, yes yes
Yes!!!!!!
Not good for my heart. Finally we saw a game out.
Well called Nath – you deserve that. Great result to start 2020.
Mings is back – can’t be mere coincidence!
He was drunk Hitch.
🙂 🙂 but tbf Bill he’s always been optimistic – or perhaps we all need to be drunk more often 🙂
Tried to loose it in 2nd half by dropping back…but should have got at least one more ..
Weak efforts at shooting.
Big confidence boost. Easy home game up next.
VAR controversy again. If you see the photograph on which they disallowed our first goal it’s clearly stupid. Even Burnley fans and Bluenoses on social media agree. When that happens you know the system is bust.
However VAR in general is being destroyed by the EPL’s intransigence can not recognising that their directive that ‘clear and obvious mistakes’ should not apply to offside. All the authorities need to do is take their heads out of their backsides and apply the ‘clear and obvious error’ to all four VAR categories including offside. How difficult is that?
They’ve done it is La Ligua (Spain) and VAR generally works well. France apply the same approach as us and it’s creating massive problems.
I am so happy to have called this one the wrong way earlier today.
Credit where credit is due. Smith made player and tactical changes that worked. I really hope he now leaves Grealish in the middle.
It is clear the players respect him as the rollicking they received after Watford resulted in a response.
I listened to the march on TalkSPORT 2 and they praised Weasley. Never thought I’d say this, but I hope he is back quickly, as they felt he had turned a corner today in his play.
If we are to buy / loan players, I hope this happens quickly.
Well done Villa.
Sid, I take the credit for that game , what ever I say goes Tits up, when I say we will win . We loose. Visa versa.
Keep forecasting the losses then Bill 🙂
Credit to Wesley who alongside Grealish in the first half caused Burnley lots of problems. One thing he does well is once he has ball at his feet, he nearly always plays a good pass. When you look at Kodja, you wonder why he’s never been run over because he doesn’t look left or right.
The problem with going on a series of losses (apart from the obvious is fans lose heart and can’t see where a win comes from. This then leads to nonsense articles like this (sorry Badger) where all our players are terrible, the manager’s an idiot and we can’t possibly win.
We have good players, we have an effective manager, we are in a hard league but we can win games and are now outside of the bottom 3 so how anyone can say it’s inevitable we go down is beyond me
We only need to look at Southampton and Watford to see how quickly things can turn round, or Villa last season as before the 10 game winning run we were getting exactly this type of article.
Having said that the injuries will hurt us and Man City coming up looks very difficult but come on guys let’s keep some positivity or at least avoid a bizarrely negative outlook that says we can’t beat a very average Burnley team or that being within a couple of points of safety means we are definitely down