Well, I’m truly happy to say I called this one totally wrong.
I didn’t get to the game and only got to listen to the WM commentary for the final half hour or so.
We were missing chance after chance and it seemed like it wasn’t going to be our day, as I could see Derby catching us with a sucker punch.
It wasn’t to be though and it was great to hear that McGinn had scored. Imagine my joy when the goal was soon followed by a second and then a third!
And then, to cap it all, the WM commentators were saying that this was easily our best performance this season and even our best performance in a very long time.
On the face of it, it would seem that Dean Smith can indeed get the team to produce top performances that have previously been so lacking, as much as the players look good on paper.
What excites me about that and has me licking my lips in anticipation, is if he can get us to play to the max, there’s probably more to come.
And given that we could possibly have beaten a side that were being touted as one to watch this season by six or seven goals on their own turf, that bodes really well. You would expect that this result has made the rest of the league sit up and take notice.
After the final whistle, I spoke to my Derby mate (who had called me pre-match, to wish us the best of luck for the rest of the season, “after we’ve annihilated you”).
His opinion was that the first half could have been 2-2, but in the second half they were sh*te and we played really well, fully deserving the result. He’s quite balanced when it comes to footy.
Then, I specifically asked what he thought about Grealish and the reply was interesting.
His opinion is that he’s a decent player, but goes down way too easily.
I pointed out that he gets us a lot of free kicks, but unprompted, he said “maybe, but he slows down your game far too much and ruins your impetus”. He went on to say that all our best play happened when he wasn’t actually involved and he’d probably be more suited to the Premier league.
It’s certainly a valid viewpoint and one I touched on last week, where some Villa fans would be sympathetic.
Not that I’m criticising.
How can you, after such a brilliant result?
Best of all though, is that this is a massive confidence booster, not long before the blues game, where up until now, I’d been having nagging doubts that we’d win against them.
The bonus is that we’ve moved above them in the league on goal difference.
Three goals away, to a team on a roll, with a clean sheet thrown in, has made my weekend.
It’s as simple as that.
Brilliant result.
Well done Dean Smith and the lads 🙂
Indeed a brilliant result and, on reflection, I think the ‘nil’ part of the score is the best thing of all. We know we have the players to score goals but our defence has been rubbish. If Dean and JT can get the defence playing well then I honestly think we’ll do it this season.
Confidence breeds success and it couldn’t have come at a better time with the noses being next up. If we get 6 points from the noses and Forest I think we’ll be very close to the top six.
Happy days!
Pat – I agree; three clean sheets in 4 games from a defence reckoned to be weak with a dodgy goalkeeper and after losing our only left back (whatever one thinks of him) at half time. This is where we have massively improved and it’s credit to Smith, JT and Neil Cutler (already?!)
I understand we played well at QPR without getting a result – now we have to show a consistent level of performance which was lacking under SB.
My only criticism (not wishing to be niggardly in my praise) would be the ratio of shots on target to the total number taken but then again we converted a high number of shots on target to goals.
I’m so reluctant to be too optimistic but if we go on a run bewteeen now and January and our owners finance clever moves in the transfer window we could rip this league apart.
Now off to the bar.
UTV
I know exactly what you mean Hitch.
Every time things start looking good, it all goes boobs up, doesn’t it?
I’m quietly hoping Smith might be the right man at the right time, although I’ve had doubts and said that he might be the right man at just the wrong time, because of the defensive problems we have.
But it seems he’s already nailed one of my niggling doubts about his away record with Brentford.
If he keeps nailing my niggling doubts, he’ll become the next Sir at the Villa.
I just keep going back to how well he did at Brentford with very limited resources.
If he can do the equivalent with our resources, we should be laughing, particularly in the second half of the season.
But with age, comes reticence to be too confident.
Fingers crossed.
It’s the likes of Kodja that slows us down. The chances he’s had to Finnish the game is unbelievable, heads high and wide on clear cut chances shoots wide it goes on, if Grealish steadily plods on gaining advantage it will do for me.that one defender took him down 5 times and didn’t get booked.we are getting it together now may it continue.
In fairness Bill, it strikes me that Abraham misses way more chances, but I could be wrong.
While it’s frustrating, I like to look at it as at least it means the attackers are getting into the right places and it’s just a case of them needing to get their striking boots on.
We know Kodjia can do it, after all.
But yes, point taken, he does tend to get it stuck under his feet or try to hold it up too much, which also slows us down sometimes.
Hopefully Smith can improve things.
In fairness to Abraham’s missis his presence put defenders off, Kodjia is not at at Abraham’s level to show aggression. Please watch the game Badger and see why he’s lacking for Villa.
I’m not sure how if you miss, putting the defenders off makes any difference Bill?
A striker’s job is to put the ball in the net and anything else he does is a bonus, imo.
But, yes Kodjia hasn’t been scoring enough, I agree.
I normally hate highlights, but will probably go out of my way to watch the extended ones when the club puts them out.
Bill, I’ve just watched the highlights.
Out of the 5 or 6 chances Kodjia had, most were headers, where it seemed he did what was expected, but with no luck.
There was only the one chance that was a rubbish ballooned shot, from what I saw.
Good ball from McGinn and a great take by Abraham for the second.
I still believe Kodjia might come good again, with the way we’re playing.
And I’d give him some more time yet, before writing him off.
It’s just not clicking for him, imo. Probably a confidence thing.
Abraham is still learning, yet looks like he’ll get 20 league goals comfortably. No doubt Smith will have him working on the accuracy of his shooting. I recall a certain Andy Cole being criticised for missing too many chances, but in reality, if he’d put all his chances away, he would’ve been scoring 80+ a season! That we can afford to miss chances and still score 3 away from home is a big plus, although against the bigger clubs coming up, misses may prove to be more costly…
Totally agree BFR.
Although results breed confidence and this was a good one.
Abraham looks like he will be a top striker in a few years time.
I just think I’m a bit defensive of Kodjia because he was getting pelters for being too greedy, even when he was scoring well.
I think he’s cut back on the greed thing and now tries to introduce others more and it’s probably affected his game.
Looking forward to watching highlights later. Well done to Dean Smith and his team for getting the job done. Plus we are above Small Heath in the league.
Smith’s comments on the tactics;
“We set up our stall and knew it would be a cagey affair, with both teams playing a similar style.
We set traps for them. We wanted their centre-halves to have it and block things off.
Tom Huddlestone had too much of the ball in the first half, but then Tammy Abraham took him out of the game and we worked our chances.”
How refreshing!
And about the midfield;
“The back five can thank those in front of them today, who worked so hard to win the ball back.”
I suspect that’s massively important, but can’t understand what Smith’s seen, that Bruce didn’t?
Is he basically saying we win the game in the midfield, which has always been my mantra?
It seems to me his philosophy is to get the ball up there, then let their defenders make mistakes, which lets us in.
All much more sensible than to sit deep and let them come at us, a la Bruce.
My god, the more I think about the way we played under Bruce, the more I think he sacked himself with the way he let our defence become so weak.
brilliant result and performance by villa. lets not kid ourselves derby were on fire before this game. but they got burnt today by the better team. we are growing game by game.
their was a incident where axel was getting out muscled in a out and out race in defending our goal. we managed to defend that threat, but watch the reaction from the defence and goalkeeper. they all high five each other in a show of defiance. that togetherness was missing before smith came. he has brought lots to villa and i am happy and grateful. long may it continue enjoying watching villa.
i thought we were always ahead of derby in all departments. the goals came finally and i was not worried. we grounded them down in a total performance.
That’s good to hear Nath.
I suspect there was a fair bit of discontent under Bruce, myself, in too many players not being allowed to play their own game.
I see Taylor was subbed at half time.
He’s finished then, I’d suggest.
Anyone know of any decent LB’s possibly available?
taylor went off injured he picked up a knock earlier in the first half. hutton went left back and elmo right back. i see the team more togetherness badger. yeah i see us much better without the ball pressing high and we did set traps for derby to fall into and we counter them quickly, we opened them up again and again.
but our team are just that now, a team. we miss the goals together and we concede goals together, you can see this very on show togetherness and this is another important factor, not just the more obvious attributes smiths seems to have given us.
i really am enjoying watching us and we are getting better game by game. beating derby should have been really hard and i kid you not, villa won this game, not easy that would be disrespectful, but we won the game fairly comfortably. derby had a few chances in first half. second half was all villa and wave after waves. from all angles and we rotated them for derby it was hard to get a grips of us and were we would attack next and with who would be our danger man.
bring on birmingham
Nath, from the BBC live text I thought Taylor had picked up a knock but pretty much all the papers are reporting it as an inspired tactical substitution by Smith that changed the game’s dynamic?
Elmo never gets any credit though, eh? Rarely makes a mistake – most underrated and undervalued player by the fans. ‘Elemer Fudd’ as my younger brother once called him on overhearing his name during MOTD :’)
Yes, he’s reliable, but his crossing is mostly poor, imo.
Mind you, we could say that about a few Villa players.
taylor had a knock on his ankle i think. he was down and received treatment. the change happened at h/t i am guessing it was down to injury rather than inspired tactical change. elmo and hutton were more affective second half, but saying that all the team were much better second half.
Makes no odds to me Nath.
A LB goes off for whatever reason, a makeshift RB takes his place and the game changes.
It just tells me the LB aint good enough.
Taylor reminds me of that lad we got from Sunderland at LB, whose name escapes me.
Simply not good enough.
Well done Dean Smith.
20 odd shots away from home – wow. Remember under the previous manager it could be 1 shot all match.
Even better is that this is a team we didn’t think could play this way. I can’t wait until he brings in his own players over time.
I will go out on a big limb – the news Ron Saunders. His interviews remind me so much if our previous genius leader.
I won’t resort to calling SB a dinasour but what I’ve seen with Dean Smith is a coach that has a modern approach to learning about the game. The way he talks about what Pep Guardiola brought to Barcelona (for instance) demonstrates that this guy spends a lot of time looking at what the top coaches do and then tries to learn from it. Just relying on past success is not the way to success in the future and I acknowledge that I put too much faith in Bruce’s track record.
Smith learnt his trade at Walsall and Brentford and now he’s on the big stage – is he the new breed of top, top, English coaches?
I’m really trying to contain my excitement but ……
Last thought – Henry looks lost without someone to guide him – it’s a big step from no 2 to no 1 – reckon we dodged a bullet there!
UTV
We should have been at least one up before Derby tried the QPR long ball ………twice……luckily there was not a finish to them…the “crap ” goalie saw to that.
2nd half I could not believe it….chance after chance after chance….terrible finishing….in fact although we were making chances the crossing was awful UNTIL Bolasie sent in a brilliant one – followed by Mcginn..
I watched it on Sky but only found out near the end it was Derby TV…..no wonder the two wallies commentating on it were “a bit biased”…time after time they shouted that we were throwing ourselves to the floor instead of saying there team were dirty.
Great afternoon only bad bit was that late goal at the Trillion Tip.
I was calling for Hogan to get on all 2nd half as he surely would have got on the end of something better than Tammy or Kodjia…..bringing him on with a few minutes left when we have really stopped playing is pointless.
Stunning win. I had a feeling this would be the game where we turned some good performances into a good result. You could just feel it building. I put a tenner on us to get promoted after Smith’s first two games as you could see the change.
I feel a lot more confident over the next fixtures having seen that. We are still dishing up decent chances for the opposition through simple mistakes from long balls straight down the middle, but there is no denying that we have tightened up at the back. Maybe it’s that we have so much possession that we are denying the opposition the chance to attack as much.
Anyway. Huge congratulations to Dean, his coaches and the team. It’s so refreshing, as mentioned by others earlier, that he has a clear philosophy that he can communicate to the players and us fans in his interviews. We will continue to improve, and the players are clearly enjoying the new regime.
“Maybe it’s that we have so much possession that we are denying the opposition the chance to attack as much.”
Spot on.
While possession only tells part of the story if you have lots of it, if they haven’t got the ball, they’re not a threat.
It’s the doing something about it, that makes the difference (think Arsenal over the last few years), imo.
As you suggest, we are majorly prone to errors from a ball straight down the middle and it’s poor.
But good saves from Nyland helped massively there and that’s credit where he’s due.
His confidence must be building, so let’s hope he’s finding his feet now.
Also telling Badger is that we went to one of the best teams in the division and didn’t play an out and out holding midfielder. I thought we might be lightweight there with Hourihane, but hats off to Smith for seeing that we could do without. Maybe derby midfield is a bit lightweight (in the sense of tough tackling). Maybe Boro would be a different proposition but we’ll see how Smith approaches it.
Well, it didn’t take a genius to see that it certainly wasn’t a game for Jedinak or Whelan and I said exactly that in the preview.
I thought Smith might go for Bjarnason, but it’s as I said a short while back; because our defence is not the best, we have to take it to the opposition.
I haven’t seen all the game, but we apparently killed Derby in the midfield.
The good news for me there, is that it was blues’ lightweight midfield that cost them the game against Hull.
I’ll bet Smith already knows how he’s going to approach the blues game and I’d guess Hourihane might get to play there too.
Anyway, if we really get our confidence up, I don’t think the holding mid will be as important as it was under Bruce, where he was basically just an extra defender.
Yes pressure on the ball should stop the long balls through the middle….all teams will be trying it now……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1n24LemUGE
Cheers.villaawayindiv3, i just cannot stop watching ,it reminds me of them days in div3 as well. I’m fighting a very bad cold that to me is the flu after having the jab 5-6 weeks ago. Badger its making me paranoid over Kodjia and Abraham and who miss more. But one thing we can see is a team that’s more in tune than ever before.may it continue.
Another quote from Dean Smith, that I didn’t see before;
“This result was down to what they’ve been doing in training. We’ve been working really hard every day.”
Both sentences sound like a real dig at Bruce, I’d say.
There was a comment made that it was ‘too comfortable’ for players under SB’s tenure. In the new Barca film, ‘Take the Ball, Pass the Ball’ there is a comment from a player that playing for a Barca ‘was NOT easy’.
In life or business you have to work hard and it’s not easy to be successful – football is no different except it seems that only the best coaches are able to motivate the football nouveau riche.
So far I’m hugely impressed with Dean Smith and his thinking and I readily accept that my continual support of SB was latterly misplaced. I will always be grateful to SB for steadying a sinking ship not just when he came in but during the upheavals of last summer when we could have gone bust.
However, the world and football have moved on and we needed (and now have) a modern thinker. It remains to be seen whether Dean Smith can deliver but I feel much happier about the future.
UTV
I cannot believe that Sky have monopolized football game for the next two weeks not one on national tv. I’m off to buy a V P N and cobblers to Sky., BT sided with Sky about streaming and now BT are not involved. it’s gone now on the red button for championship games.anyone who has sky dump them now please someone has to show guts.
Bill you might be right but not before the Blues game that’s for sure!
Best value for me is 11 Sports where I watch all the Spanish, Italian and Dutch games for just £50 a year. As I follow Barca and Juve that’s not too bad.
Pat enlighten me please, how do i get that.?
Bill just go here – https://www.elevensports.uk/
I’ve been using it for a few months now and I find that it works really well. Besides the live games they also have full replays on demand as well if you can’t watch the match live.
Pat, is it just the continental games or the EFL too?
From the US, I’ve been able to get a fair few games, but it just so happened any 3pm kick-offs are 9am here and coincided with kids games, so I’d only stream midweek games and pay for each one individually (which is about $10 a game) and not worth it.
Bill,
i don’t know if you caught the story about us apparently being part of 15 teams that want to break away from the EFL (in truth, we aren’t part of it), but it’s interesting to note that any deals will be based around internet viewing.
While this would be good for the likes of Leeds and us, it’s totally unfair and I hope the clubs knock it back.
Otherwise they’ll only be creating a Premier league 2, imo, where the big clubs run away from the rest, who will never get a look in.
A deal where all clubs get the same is how it should stay, imo, although I’m sure some might not agree and think we should take every edge we can get.
Whatever, my opinion is that internet viewing is the way it’s going to go.
It won’t be long before you’ll be able to see every Villa game via AVTV, even if you live in the UK.
It’s just a matter of what it will cost.
Consider a super fan who might do a two hour trip each way, then a ticket, plus food and a pint etc and travels in all weathers, plus the time etc
£20 to watch live on telly might very well appeal on a january night.
Even if you miss the camaraderie and banter etc.
Rubbish crowds?
No problem, they’ll be computer generated aurally and visually to look better on the telly.
And they’ll have way better comentary than they do at the moment.
Just my opinion 🙂
Yes Badger, been following that with interest. I don’t think I’m in the same court as you on that issue, but do honestly believe the game should be given back to the club’s.I don’t think its in anyone’s interest to have to be at the mercy of greedy profiteering shit like Sky and BT.bt pulled out on previous negotiating for rights but Sky took the lot. Becauce they don’t have airtime they put it on red buttons.if you stream that from them you don’t get the red button. No its time to turn on Organization like them and now looking into VPN with complete anonymity and stick two fingers up to sky and bt. Villa draw the biggest gates on away games, and them two sky and bt see the money matket and other struggling clubs suffocating under deals like that.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/championship-clubs-led-by-leeds-and-derby-threaten-efl-breakaway-in-row-over-tv-rights-zxw9tw2lc?shareToken=27ced74480ca8636f84fb24a8bba2c3f
Article in the Times today on the wrangling over Sky contract for those that might be interested.
I think the Championship Clubs make a very good point – Sky is all about profiteering – and they make very good money out of clubs like Leeds and Villa.
Its what im on about Hitch, interesting read that Hitch, its not right for Sky to profiteer on our English game, take this as known, in Turkey Sky is only half what we pay, Italian Sky is cheaper, its got to be stopped and given back to terrestrial tv..
A noble thought Bill but terrestrial TV companies did not bid. It looks a poor deal now – but in a worst case scenario Baggies, Villa and Leeds go up and Huddersfield, Fulham and Bournemouth [only one unlikely] go down. Then you are not left with an attractive Championship package.
That’s an interesting point OLL although I think teams like Derby and Middlesbrough might argue the point.
As an aside, did you enquire what odds you could get for that bet?
Bill, if Turkey is half price, that’s actually very expensive, as the Turks earn peanuts, compared to us on average.
Italy, their ticket prices are much lower than ours, I believe.