Villa 1 – 2 Chelsea; Tactically poor and lacking bottle

For what it’s worth, the scoreline I had in my head for this game was a 2-1 defeat, but I’m not at all happy that I got it right.
Hence it’s no surprise to me that we lost, but I didn’t think the way we approached the game was good.

You just can’t let a team like Chelsea put you under pressure for such long periods of the game and expect to withstand it. They’re just too good in attack and it was always just a matter of time before they scored.

That said, there’s no doubt that at half time the tactic was working and somehow we went in 1-0 up, but even so the writing was always on the wall.

I found myself asking what has happened to the swashbuckling footy that we played early in the season?
Are we really going to be doomed to watching us sit back and let teams attack us without really taking it to them?
Okay, this was against Chelsea, who we all know are a good side, where you might want to be very cagey against them.
But look at the fixture list.
We have Newcastle (a), Wolves (h), Liverpool (a), Man U (h), Palace (h), Everton (a), Arsenal (h) and West Ham (a).

The Wolves, Liverpool, Man U, Everton and Arsenal games are games that I would think we can pretty much write off as defeats. Are we going to sit back against them too?
Which leaves Newcastle, Palace and West Ham as maybe our only winnable games. And two of those are away.

My point is that if you consider 36 points will be required to survive, we are simply not going to get them as it is.
Hence we need to change something.
It can’t be the personnel, because I think most would agree we’re playing very close to our best eleven.
So that only leaves the tactics. Which means we need to really start attacking the opposition.

I’m sure Dean Smith would say we’re playing tactically as well as we can, given what we have and the opposition we face.
But it simply isn’t working and as it stands, I think we’re doomed.
Fair enough, going out and really taking it to sides might be doomed to failure too, but surely it’s better to have a proper go and maybe catch one of the big boys on the hop?
If we can pinch just one result against the big boys, it might make a massive difference.

The sad reality is that we just aren’t good enough, but we have nothing to lose by at least having a proper go.
The problem there is I just don’t think we have the battlers to do it. Take the odd couple of players out who I think might have the mental ability and frankly the team just looks like a load of wimps.
How many of them would cope in the Championship, where you have to battle even more, is a worrying thought.
I wonder if Dean Smith secretly sees it like that too?

As for the actual game today, well, there’s not much to say.
Our nine men behind the ball did as well as they could for as long as it lasted, but the result was always going to happen with the way we approached the game.
Which leaves me thinking that Dean Smith has bottled it too.