How attitudes change, eh?
After beating an admittedly poor Chelsea side on their own turf, I thought things were on the up.
Before I say anymore, let’s look at the squad news.
The headlines are that Jacob Ramsey is apparently fit, but he’s still in pain and faces a last minute fitness test to see if he’s able to sit on the bench or not.
What’s that about? He’s either fit or he isn’t. Whatever, it would seem that he won’t be starting and the best we can expect is that he gets a few minutes. I’m not at all convinced that’s a good idea and if he’s not fully fit, we’d do better waiting for him to fully recover. It’s almost on a par with playing inferior players such as Dendoncker, to my mind. You’ve weakened the team straightaway and we’ve already seen that we’re not good enough to be able to do that.
I suppose the question is do you think Ramsey is a better player when he’s half fit compared to some of the options? To be honest, you might have a valid point if you think yes.
Which leads us nicely onto Leon Bailey, who won’t be available. While he can play well and affect a game on odd occasions, they’re all too rare and I personally don’t consider him much of a miss.
Otherwise, nothing has changed, except Tim Iroegbunam is back in training and Moreno is progressing. Buendia and Mings are still long termers.
Blimey, I’ve just realised it’s an early kick off, so I’d better make it brief.
What do I think, then?
Well, if we can’t beat a poor Everton side at home, what chance do we have of beating a high flying side that’s pushing strongly for first place in the Prem?
With our defence, my expectations are lower than they’ve been in this season up to now and I don’t see us having any chance of winning the game.
I suppose there’s a slight chance of us getting a point, but to be honest, I don’t really believe that either.
My optimism has all but disappeared, but I suppose I can muster the little bit I have left and predict a 1-1.
The truth is, I’m not even sure I want to watch the game. But I will. We’re capable of playing well sometimes and after all, Brighton are usually a fairly decent watch.
I live in hope.
UTV!
RAMSEY!!!!!! FIVE!!!!!
SIX!!!! What a day
Luizzzzz!!!!! Up to 4th!!!!!
Aston Villa 6 Brighton 1.
What a day!!!
We’re 4th in the league
We’re 4th in the league
We’re Aston Villa
We’re 4th in the league
What a game what a performance 👏.. I’ve got us in 3rd though not 4th! Happy days
Hard to believe what I’ve just seen. Nice feeling
Villa in 3rd! I was really worried about this one. Brighton are a dangerous and pacy side and we basically dismantled them. I can only think that Emery ditched the Carabao Cup midweek, a hard-nosed decision that we all might come to see as the right one.
A magic performance on a magic day.
COYL
BTW First on MOTD tonight perhaps?
Barring a riot or catastrophe. I hope MOTD show Southgate’s long face – but not the ignorant live commentator’s comment that ‘as a former Villa player he is always welcome at VP’. The Villans Southgate tries not to pick – Ollie and Esra gave him a sharp reminder, and his capping Dunk takes the biscuit.
OLL, that made me laugh too…I shouted out ‘He f***ing isn’t’!!!!
What a game! Emery knows what he is doing. Even better was Ramsey’s run out. He adds a new dimension and I can only see us getting better with him back in the team.
And we still have Buendia, Mings, Carlos and Moreno to come back. That’s some squad we have when fully fit.
Omg what a performance unbelievable
Interesting what John McGinn said after the game. After moving into 3rd place he said that Villa weren’t playing that well and have another couple of gears in them. So, if we beat Brighton 6-1 with gears to go then this season could get very interesting indeed.
Villa win 6-1.
Liverpool, Man U, Man City all lose…
Oh what a perfect day 🎶😁
Actually went to today’s game – although like Badger, I was rather just hoping we could avoid losing.
Never saw that scoreline coming. It was almost surreal.
As one or two have already said, the referee wasn’t exactly giving us much; most 50/50 (at best) decisions seemed to be given to Brighton.
While I obviously have to acknowledge that Watkins did brilliantly, the two who seemed to stand out for me were Kamar and Douglas Luiz – neither did anything particularly spectacular, but both just oozed quality.
Going to enjoy MOTD in a minute…
Not even first on tv MOTD, biased gits,
‘Watkins, who became the first Villa player to score more than one hat-trick in a season since Andy Gray, was the star as the hosts stretched their 2023 points tally to 58 – a number bettered only by Premier League champions Manchester City’.
Badger, was it you who recently said Emery wasn’t quite the Messiah we’d all been waiting for????…Yes, yes, I know, we haven’t won anything yet!!! 🤣
Bum Bum , your forgetting Badger wasn’t very well when he said that and glad to say fully explained by Uni yesterday, I was guilty in thinking the very same , marvellous how times change ,onwards and upwards I say . 😇😅😅
Come on Bill. Badger runs the best Villa site going. We have to keep his feet on the floor somehow!!! Plus he did me a big favour a while back…
Still amazed at yesterday’s results. I wonder when it was the last time Citeh, ManU and Pool all lost on the same day???
WSL Villa V Man U of live on BBC 2 (for those interested)
Watched most of the game and felt the women were hard done by through – what appeared to be – biased or just very poor decisions by the referee which seemed to favour ManU; now there’s a surprise.
Cala Ward obliquely referred to it when she implied that it was wrong that (only) one team were down to 10 players. There was a clear red card infringement by a ManU defender that went totally unpunished. Additionally there was a very clear penalty that Villa were denied.
It seems that generally the standard of refereeing throughout football is falling.
I see or hear that Michael Oliver is one of the VAR refs that cocked up the game for Liverpool the weekend, why am I not surprised. It’s time for the FA to get our beloved football back on track and punish incompetence of wrong decisions.
The VAR refs are either incompetent, biased or just poorly trained on the technology.
Whichever it is, it’s ruining the game.
It doesn’t matter the claim that VAR is more right than wrong – it’s introduction was to correct ‘obviously wrong decisions’; it’s failure to do so having been turned into a re-referring of the game by VAR officials is scandalous.
Agree completely. The only reason for introducing VAR was supposed to be for when the ref and assistants made a totally wrong (and obvious) decision that everyone else could see.
But in the couple of years it’s been here, the refs have completely abdicated responsibility for making any decision, and to compound the problem, the VAR people have taken it upon themselves to replay the 2, 3 or more minutes leading up to any ‘incident’ and look for hairline decisions that the ref has supposedly ‘missed’.
Completely wrong.
It’s taken all of the spontaneity out of the game; at VP on Saturday we were all waiting for a couple of minutes after ever Villa ‘goal’ (however clear) because VAR now reviews everything leading up to any goal. It’s not football…