Stoke 0 – 1 Villa; We’re gonna win the league!

Well, maybe not, but it was great to hear the fans singing it, wasn’t it?

So, what to say?
Simply put, I thought this was a very competent performance against a very poor Stoke side.

I’m not taking anything away from us, as you can only perform in comparison to the team you play, but Stoke did seem to have very strange tactics, before Crouch came on.
I can only assume Mark Hughes was overly worried about our threat on the counter-attack, but whatever the reason was, the opposition didn’t attack with any numbers; something I found quite strange, given our poor defence last season.
Note the “last season” part there, as we looked way better to me in the Full Back areas.
Cissokho looked very solid, but I’m happy to say that Alan Hutton did too.
To my own astonishment, for a large part of the game, I was actually looking to give Hutton MOTM, but I feel Vlaar pinched it overall. At least you can’t say I’m biased against Hutton.

In fact, I thought it was a very good defensive performance overall, with Vlaar and Sendoros getting very good blocks in and you have to wonder if the CBs are playing a more relaxed style because they aren’t babysitting kids.
I suspect so personally.

Most of the play revolved around the midfield and I don’t think anyone was outstanding here, myself.
It was all very much functional stuff and no one stood out.
N’Zog looked bright in small glimpses, but I thought it was right that he was hooked, with Grealish to replace him.
It was a good game for the latter to come on and his start was steady, just what I wanted to see.
I suspect he’ll be getting plenty of game time this season and rightly so, as I get the feeling he has that “something” about him, which could lead to something special.

Onto the attackers then and I’m not sure there.
Gabby didn’t particularly impress me, but where it seemed he missed a sitter, I don’t believe he did and it looked to me that Shawcross stole the ball off him with a very good challenge.
As for Weimann, he didn’t get that much of a look in really, but he won the ball against some poor Stoke defending and put it in the net. You can’t ask for more than that, can you?

So all in all, an excellent win in a game where I really didn’t expect us to get anything. Happy days.

Big shout for those that were there.
There wasn’t vast amounts to sing about until we scored, but the Stoke fans were pretty subdued too.
Of course, once we scored, there was only one set of fans in it.
So much for Stoke fans being the noisiest.

I’m off to give a Stokey friend of mine some abuse.
As you do.