It’s a funny thing isn’t it, coincidence?
Just as the club has been embroiled in world headlines about supposed anti-semitism, today we face the UK’s club most known for it’s Jewish support. I’ll have to say Spurs, because I daren’t print the word that the club’s fans actually call themselves, for fear of being accused of anti-semitism myself. You know what it is and just in case you don’t, it begins with a “Y”.
For the record, I view all religions with equal disdain, but do have the opinion that some come across as more peaceful than others. Extreme wings of Islam AND Judaism are amongst the worst in my book. I’ve seen much said that the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv has been based on anti-semetic grounds. That stupid councillor apart, I’m not entirely convinced that’s true. I personally think that the Israeli club’s fans have a really bad reputation and while it’s probably true they don’t get banned at other grounds, I do think there is a serious risk of serious trouble for this game because of our demographic in the area. Now, I totally agree that the demographic of the area should have nothing to do with who the club plays. But I’m of the belief that the decision was made on the grounds that the police wouldn’t be able to police the game adequately. I think that’s definitely true, as was demonstrated with the Legia Warsaw fans, where many police got injured. It looks to me that this decision is going to be overturned because of the backlash and I’m fine with that. As long as we get adequate, extra, resources that the club doesn’t have to pay for, I’m happy for the Maccabi fans to come. As long as innocents, particularly Villa fans don’t get caught in any crossfire, any hate type groups can knock seven bells out of each other and I wouldn’t care less.
What did make me laugh amongst all of this is that some Jewish entity has threatened to sue the club. As if we even had anything to do with this decision.
Anyway, on to the game I’m hoping for a good one.
Squad news first and it’s more good than bad. Ollie should be available, as should Emi Buendia and Jadon Sancho. Tyrone Mings should be available too, but none of those four sound much more than 50-50 to feature, in my opinion. Watkins is most likely, because of what he brings to the side generally, I guess. The fly in the ointment is Youri Tielemans, who it seems will be out for a few weeks more yet. That’s not such a bad thing as long as young Bogarde can maintain his excellent form in the pivot. I’m sure I read that his passrate is amongst the best in the whole Prem. I believe it.
Ah, that word. “Prem”. How good is it to hear that again after yet more of that World cup qualifying rubbish? I found it notable to myself that I never watched any of our recent qualifiers and really couldn’t care less. Going back to the title, it’s no coincidence that we’re the first European club to qualify. To think we stop the best football league in the world for this rubbish.
And then, Spurs. Randal Kolo Muani looks likely to get his first start in the league, Djed Spence and Destiny Udogie could also feature, but the bad news for them is that Yves Bissouma is definitely out.
Thomas Frank has got Spurs playing quite well, which is no surprise, because I think he’s a very good manager, who sets his teams up properly, unlike the clown Postecoglou, who has just been sacked at Forest, I see. (Not as much of a clown as their owner though). Whatever, Ange made Spurs great to watch but I expect a much tighter game today.
It’s another tough one to call (aren’t they all?), but I do have a feeling we will come away with the goodies here. My heart feels this is a 2-1 win. But my head says a 2-2 draw sounds a decent bet.
Would I be particularly downbeat if we lose this one? Well, it all depends on the performance. I want to see something from Watkins, if he starts and Rogers needs to continue his improvement in form too. If both perform, I’m confident we can win this, but their performances will prove central, in my opinion.
Sod it, I’m going 2-2.
UTV!
What the hell!!!!!
No prizes for guessing which muppet thought it was an 8pm kickoff. Just got home and put the TV on half way through added on time to see we are 2-1 down. By the sounds of it I’m glad I missed it.
Without having seen any of the match I see we scored after a few minutes. I hate that as it usually backfires unless you go for the throat while we usually just sit back and play passively.
Annoying to lose a game we should have strolled. One eye on the Man City game? Never pays to get ahead of yourselves. Ah well.
Absolutely knew we’d miss it – there is no way we’ll get anything from this game.
Why didn’t Malen take it.
I don’t understand -Marlen is meant to be the penalty taker. What the xxxx are we playing at?
Sid – we didn’t deserve it anyway – it’s been a sh*t performance but so typical of Villa against a team they should be beating,
Too casual – too arrogant – hopeless.
Europa League favourites – do me a favour.
Had enough and turned it off.
Why have we gone back to passing side to side and back to defence? Why? We deserve to be beaten wrong tactic again by Unai.
We struggle against ‘lesser’ opposition. Oh well. We’ll still win the cup!!!!!
Utterly disgusted.
We looked like we thought we were going to walk it and it was a training game.
League 1 equivalent side and we let them beat us. Disgusted.
Watkins looks like he’s decided he doesn’t want to score again for us as well.
I feel sick.
Sancho? Really?
Badger – I did warn you!
Indeed you did. But I thought it was because you thought they might get lucky,
not that we should be so amateur in our approach.
Emery rightfully should be fuming.
Aha, here we go. Taken from the Guardian:
Details of the assessment that led West Midlands police to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a football match in Birmingham next month have been leaked to the Guardian.
They unequivocally show that police feared the Israeli club’s fans would be the ones to instigate violence.
Starmer misrepresented the police assessments to demand that the ban be reversed. It is inconceivable that he was not aware of the police intelligence.
1. Dutch police told British counterparts that the Maccabi fans were behind the trouble in Amsterdam last year.
2. A source with inside knowledge of the police assessments said: “The biggest risk was always the extreme Maccabi fans who want to fight.”
3. A huge Dutch police effort, involving 5,000 officers across three days, was needed to quell the trouble.
4. According to a community impact assessment by West Midlands police, members of the Jewish community were among those who wanted the Maccabi fans banned.
5. So severe was the risk, police believed that at least 1,500 to 2,000 specialist riot police officers would need to be drafted in from around the country to cope with the Maccabi fans, at a minimum cost of £6million.
Starmer knew all this. So why did he effectively accuse the police of antisemitism and overrule their decision?
Who else has he been falsely accusing of antisemitism?
More here: https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/o
That’s interesting Badger
Starmer’s wife is Jewish. It would seem reasonable to think that this may have some influence on his positioning with respect to this and other related issues
Badger and Hitchens
I’m really annoyed by that loss.
I thought Sancho played pretty well, so I don’t support any negatives towards him.
My ire is aimed at:
* Watkins – this lack of form is turning into career decline. I don’t care if he didn’t play against PSG from the start or had to share time with Duran. You may for Villa, you are experienced. But you lack mental strength.
* Onana – £50m and Bogarde is making you look like your the trainee. Really thought he was light weight today.
Finally, and lacking was composure – Guessand looks great in defence and running into space but is lacking the final product. I expect that to come.
I think Emery can turn around to a number of players asking for time and tell them exactly where they can go!
A poor loss.
Completely agree about Onana and Bogarde. I was very surprised based on his form with a poor Everton why Villa wanted Onana, except that his size made him difficult to intimidate. 50M was crazy. We have seen enough of him now to know this is a player Emery will struggle to improve – he is lazy and does not anticipate where the ball might go. He might be OK as the sole change from the best 11, but he never appears in that circumstance.
A fair weather team. Not storm-proof anyway.
I am not sure where the attitude starts. It could be with the team selection. Fielding half the team of second stringers tells everybody the manager thinks we can win this at a canter. Or the fact that that combination has not ever played a competitive match before leaves too many people playing as individuals, not on the same wavelength as the nearest colleague.
No sign of a right back, Lindelof absent when needed. Ian Maatsen poor defensively as he always has been. Surely Cash or Malen would be better at penalties, Buendia has not taken one for 5 years and you can see why. Two other players should be red-faced about their display – but it wouldn’t show. The NEP (no end product) tag was up for audition today, claimed by Jadon Sancho whose dribbles did not create any opening for himself or others.
Watkins for me doest want to be at a Villa however what top 6 side would take him – None
Surely after tonite Elliot must be thinking mmmm . Don’t get me wrong he hasn’t started well for us but he ain’t Gona get better with zero game time .
For me 2 many changes with players who are not match fit
All will be forgotten Sunday 🤞👍
Watkins for me doest want to be at a Villa however what top 6 side would take him – None
Surely after tonite Elliot must be thinking mmmm . Don’t get me wrong he hasn’t started well for us but he ain’t Gona get better with zero game time .
For me 2 many changes with players who are not match fit
All will be forgotten Sunday
Sancho was terrible, Sid. A couple of quick footed plays and absolutely nothing else.
I’d put him in the youth side to get minutes. He did nothing for me.
Up there with Stevenage,Bradford,Wycombe and Bolton absolutely shite how the fuck are we still losing to shite like this totally embarrassing and we can’t even take a penalty
So annoying and emery believes we can win the competition what a joke
Sidforever. Watkins can go for me, he doesn’t want to be at Villa you can see it in him. Onana, another waste of a football boot, Emery wants to wake up and smell the coffee about his methods, which was a disgusting match.
As Badger pointed out, the second-seed team would make a monkey out of us.
I’m beginning to believe in the ‘Watkins is no longer committed’ viewpoint. Maybe it’s that he can’t cope with not being number one – but that’s not really Emery’s way.
I think there might be a big shake up in January starting a rebuild of the squad / first XI
Interestingly – I read somewhere – BBC maybe – that Emery didn’t see this game as a priority?
“Emery didn’t see this game as a priority?”
Yep, I read that as well. A pathetic way of looking at it, if you ask me. Qualify, then do what you like.
And learn a bloody lesson. It doesn’t matter how good your players think they are, they’ll still lose if they don’t go all out.
I haven’t posted for a while. I’m trying to remain positive overall despite this embarrassing defeat. To be honest when I saw how many changes Emery made, I was expecting a tough game. Football is about partnerships in the team and today there were too many new ones. Torres and Mings were disastrous and Lindelof at RB!! Maatsen with Sancho worked well till half time. They did play together at Dortmund so they had some understanding. Maatsen second half however was shocking. Bogarde did well but his partnership with Onana didn’t work mainly because Onana offered little. Buendia was lively first half but like Maatsen, disappeared second half. Guessand might have scored but I really don’t think he’s an improvement on Bailey other than his defensive work. And then there’s Ollie (Barndoor) Watkins. One thing he had in his locker was workrate but now even that’s missing.
We could have been 1-0 down before we scored. We had enough chances to put the game out of reach but complacency and a total disrespect we showed them in our attitude to the game, backfired and we got what we deserved.
The Europa League is probably our only route to Europe unless we address major issues in the January window. We will do well to get anything from our next two league games. Every time we ‘rest’ players for the ‘important’ games it usually proves worthless.
One other thing we need to improve on is our mental strength throughout the team. We are a nice team to play against with a soft under belly. We need a few dirty nasty players to toughen up our pansy squad, as well as a striker who knows where the goal is, even If that means selling Watkins to fund it.
When you analyse it – this was the Spurs game in reverse!
Martinez didn’t make a single save but collected the ball from the back of the net twice from two shots on target.
We scored early but let the game go.
Have a look at the stats!
Are we now Spurs in disguise 🙂
I hope so in one way. Spurs did win this competition!
Could do with Digne being back for Sunday after Spuds did their best to break his ankle. Twice.
This GA Eagles result may not be a bad thing. We only need to qualify for the knock out round which I think we’ll do. We can see it as a wake up call. And the fact certain partnerships need more work and time to gel. Part of the learning curve.
So Bumbum think Emery was after the extra games for the money? The crafty old sod,
Emery used the ‘we’ in his Deventer debrief. No hint of ‘it was my fault’ for the team selection. But against a low block there are two ways to defeat it. The Manure way is to keep running into the penalty area aiming for the gap between two defenders hoping for: a penalty; a rebound of a defender that drops to an attacker; a shooting chance. The other way is someone with a powerful shot striking from the edge of the area that beats the keeper with pace. Onana has done it once, the rest of the starters don’t have that skill.
Guessand and luck responsible for Go Ahead’s first. Guessand out on the right plays a runner on the left onside – he should not be the furthest back. Then the shot is heading for Martinez gloves until it loops over him off the turned back of Onana.
Their second an example of dim thinking. Go Ahead manager said they had practiced against a high line at a free kick. Villa know that, so why not drop the line from 18 yards to 12 yards, leaving Go Ahead with a different puzzle which they have not practiced? Torres and Maatsen typically not close enough to the scorer – a repeated weakness.
CORRECTION
I watched the real time TV and thought Go Ahead’s first goal was deflected. But the Villa TV shows another angle and it is clear there was no deflection, just a clever chip.