You know your side is struggling when both strikers get subbed off and Hutton looks your most attacking player, don’t you?
Good grief, I thought that game was horrendous and we came away with what we deserved, which was absolutely nothing.
It’s genuinely not sour grapes against Wolves, as I have nothing at all against them, but I really don’t think they were as good as Sky seemed to be making out. It’s more that I thought we made it far too easy for them.
Don’t get me wrong, for the first half I found myself often wondering if we might do a smash and grab, but always had the nagging doubt that you just can’t play a game constantly defending and expect to not concede.
And when Wolves did score, you just knew it was game over.
What’s annoyed me most is the fact that our midfield was totally non-existent and created nothing. Well, it couldn’t could it, when it was just an extension of our defence?
You have to blame Bruce for that, as that’s no doubt how he set us up.
That said, there are mitigating circumstances as we were without a recognised Left back, which was always going to cause us a problem.
Adomah was basically totally nullified because he had to spend too much time covering the position and without his threat I though we didn’t look balanced.
Of course, you have to ask who left us with only one Left back in the first place?
So Wolves got the goal and then eased off somewhat, which seemed to let us back in the game. Not that we offered any major threat, a Snodgrass free kick apart. And we got caught again in what might have been a more realistic situation if we’d played how we should have in the first place.
I said I’d be ok with losing this one, but never for one minute did I think we’d make it so easy for them.
In fact, I’m struggling to think of when we last demonstrated such a lack of intent in a Derby.
That was poor. Piss poor.
Come on. It’s embarrassing. Wolves showed us just exactly what is wrong with Bruce.
If anybody on here can’t see it then they really shouldn’t be following football.
You’re right.
Wolves showed us something.
Over one game.
I’d still take us to beat them over a season and I’ve already said it.
That said, I’ve just watched a bit of Albion vs Leicester.
That’s what we’re aiming for?
Seriously, don’t be surprised if I just close this site altogether.
Footy nowadays is just utter shite, imo.
badger
dont give up just yet or at least wait to we start winning so we have no need to vent our frustration
unless you happen to be a city fan,or psg even maybe wolves if they can keep playing like that on saturday
,if we had lost to wolves after giving it a go you could say we were improving but even all our wins under bruce its same utter crap football
When we put in a performance like that against a promotion rival I will see hope. Yes it is one game, but they are top of the league, and I can’t remember the last time we played that well against anybody of note.
All I see is dross football, and I’m struggling to think of a team that has won this league playing dross football.
If we finish above Wolves this season I will be stunned. The only hope of that is if they lose key players to long term injuries or we sack Bruce and get the replacement right.
Anyway Badger. I’ll take your bet. £10 says Wolves finish above us.
Ok, DS, I’ll take that.
To keep things simple, the loser gives to a charity, ok?
Yes cool. Winner names charity?
1 defeat in 9, 1 point off playoffs after 12 games. It’s not that bad guys. Win on Saturday and we’ll be in the playoffs. And before people start- Villa under Bruce have been decent results wise at home. Slowly but surely we are sneaking up the table.
However, lose next two and the “mass hysteria” will start again. And rightly so. But I think we’ll have enough to get 4 points from next two and then we can build momentum for another good run. Man U under fergie used to lose to their rivals a lot (Villa took 4 points off them 92-93 but we came second) beat all the shit teams and we can still go up!
Where there is hope there is life.Otherwise why bother watching at all?
Because you can back a team without backing a manager. It’s not about winning every game. We’re not going to win every game. It’s about playing football, not defending and allowing pressure and having the team look completely clueless.
How is it the team under Bruce still hasn’t learned to pass it around? Or cross the ball correctly? When Hutton is considered the best player on your team against Wolves, there’s a giant problem. He’s garbage and was out of position and still outshone everyone. Why? Because he “tried”. We’re not a team where our players should be praised for trying. We’re a team that should be outplaying teams that are praised for trying.
We watch because we support the team. And we do love it when we win. However when we win, and the team plays like shit, we know it’s not going to last. Because you can’t play 46 games like shit and go up. Look at Newcastle. They were awesome last season, had a slow start, but they’re playing football and are now mid-table. 8 games in, Leicester just sacked Shakespeare. Why? Because they’re sitting 18th, and while look okay at best, don’t look like picking up points all that often. Palace sacked De Boer, Hodgson lead them to their first win, against Chelsea of all teams. And they did it pretty well too.
People keep coming up with this 1 loss in 9. Like the two losses to Reading and Cardiff don’t mean anything. The problem isn’t we’ve won 5 games, drawn 4 and lost 3, usually that would be a convincing-ish record that we could do better in the future. It’s the performances against Wolves, Reading, Cardiff, Bolton, etc. They’ve been god awful and Bruce has had a year, two windows and this is his team, 100% and he still can’t get it right. For the best Championship manager ever, he should’ve gotten it right already, but the performances aren’t there and you need to put in the performances to actually stabilize, not just get a couple results because as we know, like last season under Bruce, it takes a couple games to go on an awful run.
I think you are right to criticise Bruce for poor performances and he’s not perfect by any means but we won’t play a better team than wolves this season and the 442 since Kodjia has come back in had seen us win 4 and lose 1, Reading and Cardiff were along time ago. Wolves, I think that was the first time Snodgrass and Kodjia had experienced defeat this season. Fulham and Blues next two, if we fail to get 4 points from those two then Bruce will kop more flack and that’s fair enough. But why are we moaning about Bruce’s style like its a big shock. He’s always been defensive and pragmatic. Results are all that matter. We are not nor ever have been Real Madrid. And we’ve been shit since 2011 so it’s difficult to turn round a 6 year malaise. Just read some of the excerpts from Shay Given’s autobiography today. The club has been rotten to the core and there is still people like Gabby to get rid of. He’s not doing brilliant is old Potato head but he’s doing ok. Last year was the first season since MON that we won at least as many games as we lost. 7 years of losing doesn’t just evaporate over night.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/penny-pinching-suits-stopped-holte-11351863
few fairy tales by given ,mcleish had probably worst transfer window in villas history,almost 20million spent on given hutton and zogbia and not 1 penny back , along with two 5 year contracts handed out to given[ 37] zog[80] hutton[128games played]add jenas season loan
Club was a shambles though which is my point
leicster looking for anew manager,wonder do they need a spud for their crips
I think Owen has a good point.
The club was indeed a total disaster, as backed up by the examples JVillan quotes.
And certainly it’s difficult to turn things around quickly when the club was rotten to the core, imo.
I can see why some say Bruce isn’t good enough, but I still don’t see what happens if we sack him.
Who will come?
Especially if it seems he won’t have a pot to piss in for new players?
I don’t know, the debate will rumble on and on, but I suspect Xia will be very loathe to sack another manager if he sees things are progressing, albeit not as fast as he would like.
are wynes and round any better than what lerner hired over the years,even the club was a shambles off the field with the money xia has invested we should not get turned over as easy as last match or as often every defeat looks same,no effort ,fight ability to pass/keep the ball for any period of time,along with gabby isstill at club
One thing i will say in Bruce’s defence, we won two games away recently 3-0 and 4-0 and he still got stick on here – we did blow those teams away particularly Burton – which is what we are supposed to do – which we did. Yet people said we shouldn’t celebrate that. On here, some people would rather villa lose to win an argument and even if villa got 100 points this year would still moan, which is depressing.
Nothing would please me more than to be proved wrong. My problem is with Bruce. It was last season, and it is now. He should have been fired in the summer but we are stuck now as I accept it’s nigh on impossible to replace him at this point and expect a real turnaround. Who of real quality is available?
I take no pleasure in our defeats, but our performances are predictably bad. Let’s see Fulham and Blues results. Maybe they will be better than I’m anticipating.
It’s not quite hard to understand we’re all happy when we win and with the points we’ve gotten, we’re in a decent position. However you seem quite hard of understanding THE FACT that the performances are crap. A couple good performances against the worst teams in the league isn’t good enough, which is why I said celebrating beating Burton with ease isn’t to be celebrated when we get destroyed by the decent top 10 sides in the league.
Lets see the performances put in, in the next 3 games. Not just points, performances. Which matter just as much.
It’s not fact – that is your opinion – even if you write it in capitals. Good performances have happened, in my opinion against Hull first half, Forest first half, Norwich, Barnsley, Burton, Bristol City second half. That is my opinion, and I would never presume to push it on people as absolute fact. The only facts are the results which are what get you up the table. A 1-0 win over Bolton gets 3 points with a poor performance as opposed to playing well and losing. So a win is a celebration to be celebrated….
So 3 halves, and 3 games overall out of 12. But I guess that’s okay.
My whole point this whole time is you can’t go an entire season of playing poorly and win games. Mourinho doesn’t even do that. It’s fine if we were going to play defensively against Cardiff, Wolves and a couple others, while dominating the smaller sides like Mourinho does, but we don’t do that. You can’t win ugly from the first game to the 46th game, it doesn’t work.
I’m aware Bruce is also negative and has always been, I said that when we signed him. But I don’t remember his teams ever playing so poorly before. His Hull side was not this bad. But then the game changes quickly, and foreign managers are even entering the Championship and making dinosaurs look like what they are.
DS, yes, winner names the charity 🙂
My biggest problem will be remembering the bet come the end of the season.
You’ll have to remind me.
On a different note, I see Scott Sinclair has bagged 35 in 66 games for Celtic.
I said he’d be good up there and fair play to him.
It does show what a shockingly poor standard there is in Scotland though.
Oh, what’s happened to Tshibola?
Struggling at MK Dons, seemingly not trying and just all round not happy at all?
I liked the look of him, but it would seem he’s just yet another poor buy in a long list.
Cor, we haven’t half wasted some money over the years 🙁
Tshibola has never been good, and that’s the problem is we’re scouting and hoping these average Championship players come good when we sign them. And they go the complete opposite way. We bought him based on 12 appearances in total for Reading in one season, 6 starts and we expected him to be good enough to start for us. It’s becoming a giant problem when we keep going for players like him, instead of actual talents.
Hmm.
It seems to me that whoever we’ve signed has rarely come good, whether good, bad or indifferent.
Agreed, Tshibola looks a bad buy in retrospect. Did I previously hint something might not have smelt right in that deal (I think I did)?
But we’ve also bought some players that were well rated at the time.
RM springs to mind.
I wish I had your eye for actual talents, although in fairness to myself, I think I can say my hindsight is easily as good as yours.
If that’s unfair of me, feel free to call out any of our winter signings before they’ve kicked a ball for us.
No doubt they’ll all be crap, as we just don’t sign anyone good at all, do we?
Just saying 🙂
I think you could. Difference between you and I, it seems, that you largely watch only Villa, and maybe a couple other Championship/Premier League/Cup games. I watch all top 5 leagues, Champions League and Europa League. I could be wrong though, you may watch them all, and if you did, you’d see just how bad we are in terms of scouting talent, and actually most Premier League sides are. Just like the media was with Pogba in England. He was Juventus’s 4th best center mid, but England tried claiming he was the best. He still can’t even remotely come close to the best,
I think I’m pretty fair on my judgements and have done nothing but praise Kodjia (other than for his lack of vision in passing), since he joined. I’ve praised the Chester signing, said I was partly wrong on my claims Johnstone was crap (even though I did say he’d be a top Championship/bottom Premier League keeper. I said Hogan would come good if we ever became a passing side, his runs are amazing but we don’t have a single player smart enough (bar Grealish if he played as a number 10 but can’t when we play 4-4-2), to get him the ball. I’ve praised Adomah when he deserved it, which is rarely but on the occasion. Tell me I’m wrong that on who else deserves praise? Taylor? Terry with the money he’s on? De Laet (harsh but he hasn’t gotten the chance to prove himself yet)? Snodgrass? I guess against small sides maybe. Hourihane? Same with Snodgrass. Lansbury? Shit. Samba? Shit. McCormack? Shit. Bjarnason will never get his chance as a left winger now. Elmo? Waste of space. Onomoh? Not worthy of any of the praise England have been giving him. Where have I been wrong in claiming that searching the Championship for shit players is a waste of a transfer fee, bigger wages and space?
Andrew, you’re right. I don’t watch other teams, as footy generally, bores me these days.
I think it’s been ruined by too many cheating, diving foreigners, who fall over at the drop of a hat if the truth be told. And British players have had to go down the same route, to keep up (Ashley Young ring a bell?).
A small point in hand; I was sat round the pool here, watching some kids having a kickabout. Long story short, the ball ended up in the pool and one of the kids got one of those nets on a long pole, to fish it out.
This one kid, who had caught my eye as being small, but particularly skillful, was behind him and the “fisher” caught his lower leg with the pole.
The kid proceeded to hit the deck, clutching his stomach, as though he’d been shot.
I pissed myself laughing, as the kid, not getting any attention, just got up and started dancing on the stage. Until I asked myself “what was that all about?” and realised where he’d got it from.
Oh and the footy’s just boring because of a lack of attacking intent. I actually blame Liverpool for that part, after they outdid the Europeans in passing backwards, in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
(Nothing in the above personal or aimed at you).
Anyway, back to my point.
Which is that you seem to be commenting on how players have performed and not how they were perceived when we bought them?
I’m suggesting that at least some of our players were seen as very decent buys at the time.
Anyway, I suppose while I’m being verbose in my ranting, I’d better consider writing about our next game 🙂
Maybe I’m just young and naive and still love football for what it is. Actually watching teams outside of England has given me a lot of hope for football in general. Napoli, Lazio, Atalanta, Sampdoria, Nice, Dortmund, Schalke, Monaco, Leipzig, etc etc, have given me hope that Football isn’t all about being borefests and kick the ball up the pitch and wait for it to come back. These teams are also why I can’t stand the fact we buy British, because these sides scout, spend so much money on scouting other teams, other players, from obscure leagues,
Lazio have a 22 year old center mid, who they bought from Belgium, he’s Spanish who has Serbian roots. 2 full seasons and this season and they were rejecting 70m for him over the summer. And now they can reject more now that Serie A’s international tv funds are doubling thanks to a company in America. This same team took Luis Alberto from Liverpool, and have made him into a very decent player. Funnily enough, they have a legend who played for them for years as their manager. They don’t even have what the English media consider their best player (who isn’t actually their best player) fit. Sides like them, give me hope that football isn’t a dying sport.
As you said, back to what we were talking about. Yeah, they were rated pretty highly. For what? I don’t know. England has a great ability to rate even mediocre Championship players as great players, when they’re not. It’s not even just Wolves looking foreign either, a lot of teams are. While we’re over here spending money on crap English players who are likely going to be on higher wages than their foreign counter parts (remind you of someone?). I like stats, while that is true, I base 95% of my opinions on players by watching them.
And hell, Marco Silva was managing in Greece before he made his name at Hull and now Watford. Who I believe sit 4th now Having faced City, Liverpool and Arsenal already. Taking 4 points off them.
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/incredible-statistic-highlights-james-chesters-13781190
Awesome signing- Di Matteo did something right!