I attended this game with three grandsons and one of the son in laws in tow and it turned out a decent day, as the kids really enjoyed the family fun day. I’d highly recommend that, if anyone is contemplating taking their kids down a game.
And I certainly enjoyed it more than the game itself.
After a pretty bright start, things soon settled down into what was a game that just lacked any quality.
I mentioned the other evening that I was concerned about the state of our passing after the Albion game and we were just as poor in that area today. It amazes me that professional footballers can’t make simple passes, especially when they’re not under massive pressure. You can see the ideas are there and some of the through ball attempts would be great if the execution wasn’t constantly so poor.
As for formation, I still don’t see what we’re doing. We actually started off with five across the back, but it then quickly changed to a four. At one stage, it actually looked like we were playing four up front.
Sometimes we’re so narrow it’s crazy in my opinion, but I’m not the professional coach and you would expect Lambert knows what he’s doing.
My point is though, if I can’t see it stood high up in the Holte and am confused, it has to beg the question “do the players actually know what they’re doing?”.
Many of us had this down as a banker, including myself and ultimately this is a pretty poor result.
We were again limited to mostly speculative punts and rarely got the ball in the area to create decent chances.
Yes, we worked hard and I really can’t complain about anybody today as, erm, as per usual they all worked hard.
Except maybe Benteke.
For me he was incredibly poor and should have been hooked at half time. It seems he hardly wanted to get involved.
Perhaps I’m being harsh there, as it wouldn’t surprise me if he still hasn’t got over his injury.
That’s a few games in a row though, so he won’t be getting the benefit of the doubt for long.
If I’m honest, I think Sunderland possibly deserved it more than we did. I don’t know the chances stats, but I’d guess Sunderland might have edged it although the SIL thought we were the better team overall.
Don’t forget Sunderland at least had the ball in the net and hit the bar.
My eleven year old grandson summed it up for me as we were walking out. His opinion was that if we were playing first goal wins, we wouldn’t have seen a goal for ages. Pretty astute, I thought, as it did seem that the game had 0-0 written all over it with about ten to fifteen minutes to go.
Gabby got MOTM, a decision I can’t disagree with, as at least he offered something different with his pace, as opposed to the mediocrity everywhere else.
And regardless of the scoreline, the two (six year old twins, bless ’em) virgin attendees quite enjoyed it in the end.
They were even starting to sing along with myself (not the swearing songs of course).
I remembered attending a home Sunderland game in the late seventies, that was also pretty drab.
At that game, we sung to the tune of “give peace a chance”, “all we are saying is give us a goal”.
I was close to starting it again today, as it seemed incredibly apt and I wondered why we’d stopped singing it these days.
I bottled it in the end.
As the title says, at least we didn’t lose, but is a point at home against Sunderland a decent result?
Not for me. Just no way.
The title of the post says it all about the apathy of most Villa fans. ‘At least we didn’t lose’ and ‘We won’t be relegated’ are the two most overused phrases of the Lamberk Lemming community who have been brainwashed into believing we’re unable to compete with Southampton in the transfer market and 17th is a successful season. Could somebody from the club – Lerner or Fatty Faulkner come out and tell us which season this transition period is going to end that the fans also seem to have swallowed. The football now is no better than under McTwatt but at least Lamberk never managed b-loose so that’s ok. Those are mostly his players now and he’s had plenty of Tranfer Windows to get in a creative midfielder and a right back but has chosen not to. Do we now have the record for most times last on match of the day? Shit football and another season of relying on there being three worse teams.
Spot on sir earl and hull are above us now ffs assuming they hold I to their lead over Liverpool
Fair comment sir earl barrett
Fair comment indeed SEB.
It’s not a case of me being brainwashed though. It’s more a case of recognition of what Lerner is up too.
I’ve been very critical of him over the last year or so, but it won’t make any difference what any of us say, as he owns the club and there’s nothing we can do about it, a total boycott apart.
And that just isn’t going to happen.
As for “at least we didn’t lose”, I was struggling to think of something not overly critical.
The truth is the first headline to spring to mind was “we’re quite simply shite”.
I decided not to go with it though, as we get slated for even the merest criticism sometimes.
3 worse teams?
I’d say there’s more than that myself, which is even worse when it comes to a player acquisition pov.
But yes, I very much agree with your point.
It’s all rather depressing really, as I can’t see see how we get out of this constant “transition” without a serious spend.
And contrary to what some fans think, I really don’t believe the academy is producing the required quality.
Even if you disagree with that, it certainly hasn’t done so historically (yes players have come through, but any we’d class as quality?).
So imo, that’s not going to be the answer either.
Badger, you see my point about the brainwashing though? Can any Villa Fan – Old twats like me who know that football existed before Sky – put their finger on the exact moment that this shite became the norm? That fans came out of the ground saying things like ‘we were never going to win anyway’? Expectation is so low it got to the point last season that some even thought going into the second tier may benefit the club.
For the love of God our manager came out after the game yesterday and said ‘if you can’t win then don’t lose’. What is he on about? That’s Sunderland’s SECOND point away from home all season I believe. They are bottom and in disarray. Where’s the anger at not putting shit like that away? He should be out saying how disappointing git was and if you want to achieve anything better than mid table you need to be beating tossers like Sunderland, Hull and Wet Spam.
I totally agree with your sentiments re the Academy. If these players were any good they’d be in the team now ahead of shit like KEA.
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with you.
My tuppence worth says we’re far too accepting of our current situation.
Many fans I speak to say they feel the same, but no-one wants to do anything about it.
I think this is a general trend these days, where people will stand for any old shite, even this zero hours contracts at work, for example, but I’m digressing.
Lambert doesn’t help matters, as he talks utter rubbish, imo.
He commented yesterday that we always try to win and don’t change anything.
No mention ever that we’re just not good enough and can’t win though.
Which I suppose, is fair enough. You don’t want to be running down the players you’ve signed.
I’d love to hear him saying “we’re looking at the squad and will try to improve it with quality in the window”.
He can’t though, because we all know the constraints that he’s working under.
So all we get is the usual “we’ll go again” tosh, which to me, is just saying “we have what we have and that’s it”.
Where’s the ambition in that?
As for ‘if you can’t win then don’t lose’, I didn’t see that, but yes that’s incredibly poor.
I can just see Ron Saunders saying that; not.
And you’re totally correct in saying we should be expecting to beat the sort of clubs you’re talking about. We’ve been doing it on average for the last 140 years near enough!
It’s a serious indictment about the state we’re in, when I think we’re quite easily capable of losing any game we play, even at home.
In all my conversations with fans of any team, I’ve yet to hear anyone say $ky have been good for the game.
Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert:
“It was not a classic but if you can’t win a game then don’t lose it.
BBC Football
Typical Lamberk comment
What’s even worse is they missed a sitter should of had a pen and hit the crossbar Ffs. Could of lost 3.0
One thing I did forget to write in my thoughts;
What about that bloody ref?
Shocking, imo.
I’m rarely critical about the officials, but he really did seem loathe to give us anything yesterday. I noticed a few times he was only blowing after the lino’s flag went up, meaning he didn’t have much choice.
There was one occasion where Benteke was blatantly tugged, but it went totally unpunished.
How can you miss that when I, with my dodgy eyesite could see it from the back of the Holte?
Badger you were down there yesterday did you see the competition at half time where the fella had to put the ball on that large plastic disk with various prizes to be won? The fella put the ball miles away from the circle but I reckon he was a bit of a Gordon Cowens but as soon as they mentioned a free season ticket for the next five years he thought f**k that!
Quality.
Haha
Yes I saw that.
Not bad for distance, but I reckon these wimpy beachballs they use these days knackered it for him. It didn’t half bend didn’t it? I’m surprised Lambert didn’t sign him up as he looks at least up to our standard of passing.
It quite tickled me that, as no-one cared much until they announced that hitting the Villa crest was worth a 5 year season ticket. Then everyone around us got off their arses to watch.
Cracking prize to offer though, in all seriousness.
2nd prize a 10 year of season ticket?
No that’s to harsh nobody deserves that, it’d be like Papillon.
lol bws 🙂
🙂
Blimey Hull beat Pool.
Could be interesting with me working at Halewood tomorrow 🙂
There’ll be a few pissed off folk, no doubt.
yep we’ve got to be beating teams like sunderland at home.
bloddy typical though that sunderland are currently on the rise with a new manager when we play them, under pdc they’ve been god awful but since he’s gone they’ve beat Newcastle and man city and only conceded the odd goal.
no doubt when we play Fulham in a couple of games they will be on the rise under a new manager and playing really well to impress, it happened a couple of times last season too, god awful sides who when it came to playing us were on the back of a new manager like qpr and ‘arrys 1st game last season and sunderland (again) and im sure there was others, hard to keep up with the modern game and managers being sacked every 5 games.
im beginning to think chairmen are looking at the fixture list and going ‘ok we’ve got villa in 2 games, its time to sack our manager, we’ve got a good chance of 3pts at villa if we do’ 😉
Lol NM it seems to work out that way,haven’t they got it in for us mate.
Three clean sheets and undefeated in four.
Hardly disastrous, but we need to move up a level and try to turn these draws into wins.
As usual Vaze you have a realistic perspective. We aren’t playing that well but still picking up points and hard to beat. I think (hope) we will improve. We really could do with Benteke firing as that would make all the difference when things are tight. I’m sure a number of the players can step up a gear and we could do with that sooner or later. It looks like it’s going to be a slow process so patience is needed, and it’s hard to look at it in this way with each successive disappointment.
We rode our luck on Saturday on another day we could have gone down 3-0 if Sunderland had got the rub of the green,it’s simply not good enough.
As for the stats as Disraeli said “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics”.
Can’t disagree with that BWS. I had a feeling Sunderland wasn’t going to turn out how many predicted. Performances do need to improve by a long way. We can all see weaknesses in the team that look like they will need to be addressed in the transfer market. I don’t have a great deal of confidence that will happen in January, but I think we should improve enough to finish OK. if it doesn’t get fixed in the summer then that’s a different matter
I really fancy us to beat saints. After watching them yesterday they were knackered in last 20 mins and there defending if set pieces was as bad as us last year plus we are better away.
Very true, vaze and a fair point that doesn’t sound too bad on the face of it.
But then you could counter with one win in 7 games.
That’s not pessimistic, just fact.
That said, I suppose we can take a positive in that we’re picking up points while playing totally rubbish and with our best striker out of form.
If we can get it together and either Benteke or Gabby go on a bit of a run, we could be doing quite well.
The trouble is, we’re supposed to be in the middle of a run of games where most of us thought we’d pick up a good few points.
That’s not exactly going to plan, is it?
Then again, my SIL made a good point, in that we tend to play better against the better sides.
Well if we draw every we get 38points and we would be unbeaten but in bottom 3-4. As I said earlier if rather win 5 games and lose 5 games and get 15 points than draw 10 games and only get 10 points. It’s how many you win that matters
December last year we were losing. By bucket loads.
This time we’re keeping clean sheets but not taking wins.
Hopefully we’ll move on next season. I’d say a decent cup run and a few unexpected wins in the Citeh mould is the best we can hope for now.
I’d say a number of levels mate.