I absolutely detest the international breaks.
So much so that I just totally lose interest in football temporarily. I haven’t even looked at the site for a while and have just realised that there were comments waiting to be approved.
Apologies to those who were affected.
But it’s like the season just loses all it’s impetus and there’s only so many clickbait, utter rubbish supposed transfer stories that I can stomach.
Hence I just tend to turn off.
Which for me has a tendency to make me a bit slow getting back into it.
Never mind, it’s Brighton at home today. I know we played Arsenal away last, but for some reason it feels like we’ve had loads of games at home lately.
Oh and blimey, it’s actually at 3pm. On a Saturday.
I honestly can’t remember the last time we kicked off a game at it’s traditional time, so I’ve just had to check. It transpires we haven’t played one this season. I think we were supposed to play Man City on a Saturday, but of course it was postponed.
Not one Saturday kickoff in seven games then. That’s just so, so poor to my mind.
Still, here we are and I’m thinking we should be pretty comfortable in this one.
Except that Brighton’s play doesn’t suit us and they always make it difficult to say the least.
That said, for all their good build up play, they have struggled to find any end product this season and sit 16th having won just one game of their eight.
Villa, conversely, have been doing very well thank you and I’m struggling to see past us winning this one, the usual caveats applying (oh no, don’t let me jinx things!).
Squad news and Tom Heaton played in the midweek friendly with seemingly no ill effects.
Kortney Hause is training , but Bjorn Engels and Freddie Guilbert are both out.
None of those would have started anyway and otherwise I believe everyone is fit, so it’s all good.
Do we need to ask what the team will be? Probably not and there’s a lot to be said of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. It does make it a bit boring when you’re trying to write stuff, but then we all know the usual first eleven is pretty much all we’ve got to go with.
You have to wonder how long it will be before injuries start to kick in though and I wonder if Dean Smith should be looking to swap players out earlier, especially if we’re in a good position?
It’s his choice and quite simply, the table doesn’t lie, so he can choose to do what he likes.
As for Brighton, Lewis Dunk’s three match ban is up and you’d expect him to go straight back in to the team. Aaron Connolly and Solly March are back in contention, but it’s probably too soon for Leandro Trossard. Davy Propper has recovered from an achilles problem, but has been ill, so today might be too soon for him too.
If the stupid international break hasn’t killed our momentum, I think we’ll win this.
Will Brighton score?
Well they have got too many up to now, so I’m saying we’ll do our usual and help them in that area.
Let’s say they get one.
It has to be 2-1 to us then, doesn’t it?
Which would keep us rolling along very nicely.
UTV!
Fucks sake!
Our defending is horrendous!
They should never have scored that.
Piss poor for me.
I’d be considering going 3 at the back and getting Hourihane on.
Our defence is fucking useless anyway.
What is it with teams winning away from home!
WTF VAR!
No pen, for me Holte.
I’m fuming.
That’s one of the worst VAR decisions IMO
Does it matter if the ball touched the defender? He still fouled him in the box
Once again we lost this in the first half with a combination of poor defending and a failure to take our chances.
The reality is we’re a mid table side at best.
i give up how that was not a penalty is beyond me. the defender is clearly seen to clip the ball and following through on trez. it was clearly a penalty the ref gives it then var instruct the ref to watch on monitor and somehow come up with the clear error. the ref indicates the defender touches the ball lol yeah he clipped it and then followed through to take out trez
end of the day villa players looked tired second half grealish was very leggy and you could clearly see this with his lazy passing and misplace passes. brighton probably deserved the win overall. but we had enough chances to draw and win this game. the referee and var clearly edged this result and wasnt that why it was brought in to stop controversy. i seen the pen replay twice or three times.and my first opinion was stonewaller and after the replays i stand by that decision,
I don’t think Villa are set up to take the game to the opposition, that’s why we are doing better away from home. Maybe we should let them come at us in home games too. We are too easy to get in behind when we are counterattacked. Disappointing that we keep allowing this to happen.
Lack of respect for our opponents caused the first goal. Welbeck is the nearest player on the pitch to our goal when he gets the ball – and he is 2 yeards inside his own half! Our defence goes awol up field and expects Brighton to wait for them? Our defence should sit back when at home until we have a 2 goal cushion.
What was Luiz doing for the second, letting a ball go past him right across our area?
Neither of these would matter if we could shoot straight and keep the ball down. It could have been 5-1at half time not 0-1.
Ball control and superb interplay are new and welcome evidence of better quality players. Next item on the practice board at BMH shooting past the first body in the way and under the bar.
I’ve watched penalty decision back again and again and Trezeguet is fouled in box, simple!
Another gripe I have is them watching replays in slow motion. It gives a false impression of the incident.
Absolutely!