Quite simply, this was a bad day at the office and I can’t think of a single player who did particularly well today.
Yes, Trezeguet scored, but he looked very poor at times. He wasn’t alone though and even John McGinn was very average.
We looked disjointed and kept up with my recent complaints in constantly giving the ball away far too easily.
The worrying thing is we didn’t look like we had any fight in us and consistently were second to the ball.
Was this a hangover from the Liverpool game, where we gave everything and still lost?
Possibly and it makes sense.
I don’t think Wolves looked anything special, but they were by far the better team today, with our wide players being torn a new one, particularly by Adama Traore, whose pace murdered us.
Things weren’t helped by the fact that Jed Steer started instead of Heaton, who was injured, only to suffer an injury himself in the first few minutes.
Which left us with Nyland in goal. I’m not sure what the rest of the team would have thought about that, but I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence.
That said, I don’t think he did too much wrong today. I was watching the defending more than the goalie and thought it was poor for both goals.
Luiz appeared to duck for the first one and I think the swerve of the ball caught Mings out, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. The impression at the time though, was that he should have kept that out.
The second goal, Mings should have got more goalside of Traore and we should have closed them down quicker.
These things happen though and if defenders did everything perfectly, we’d never have any goals would we?
And then there’s Wesley.
I’m close to giving up on him, I’m afraid.
He had what I think were two very good chances today.
He put one over the bar and had a tap in where he kicked the air.
He should have scored both, simple as, to my mind.
I said in the previous replies that Henri Lansbury looked more of a threat in five minutes than Wesley did in the whole of the game.
I’m pretty sure I said the same quite recently too, in a very similar situation, where a player had just come on and this simply can’t be right.
For a player of his size, I don’t understand why he seems to offer next to nothing in the air.
I’ve seen it said that he had very little to work with today and I’d tend to agree, given that I so want him to come good for us.
But a big part of me thinks it’s because his positioning isn’t right.
I don’t know, but the fact is a striker has to score goals or at least contribute to them.
And he doesn’t seem to do either.
Yes, he’s young and still learning etc, but so is Davis.
We need a striker who would have put those two chances away today and I don’t see Wesley being the answer just yet.
Not that we’d have deserved any points today, but smash and grabs do happen, don’t they?
We missed Grealish too, as we had noone who could take the ball, keep hold of it for a few seconds and actually have a look before passing it.
It all looked too panicky for my liking.
I think this might be one of those rare occasions where I’m actually glad we have an international break. The injured players can now recover and Dean Smith can do some serious work with the rest of them.
They definitely need it after today’s showing.
We were just poor today.
It happens, but we need to be better going forward.
Badger – having checked on AVFC I get the distinct impression that Heaton and Engels are not injured but weren’t selected for some reason.
The web site says (and I paraphrase) ‘Smith makes two changes to the squad from the Liverpool game; Steer and Konsa coming in for …….. whilst Grealish misses out through injury’
If they have been dropped from the squad – I wonder why?
Oh – and no mention of them being missing due to injury in Smith’s post match debrief.
Smith said they both had knocks in training and weren’t 100%
Oh OK thanks Holte – I missed that.
Newcastle up next and a certain Mr Bruce returns. They probably didn’t want an international break with their current form whereas we certainly do. Monday night football so hopefully the atmosphere will be electric.
That’s really worrying Hitch.
Goalies simply don’t need resting, do they?
I love a conspiracy theory and am minded to think they had a punch up or were out on the lash.
But according to the mail, they’re injured;
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aston-villa-team-news-wolves-17232215
It just seemed strange to me that AVFC didn’t make that clear and Smith never mentioned it in his post match debrief?
Maybe reading too much into it 🙂
Don’t know about conspiracy theories although I rather they happen at other clubs. Because it was a surprise to have two players out without warning, I wonder if they collided in training yesterday? I remember last season when Grealish was injured and didn’t play after Albion game for a few months, although we were given impression initially that he was nearly always close to a return. Could we have a similar situation again where he will be out for a long time despite being told regularly that he is near a return! Oops, not a conspiracy theory, just an observation! 🤔
Fair point Holte although maybe the difference this time is we know (or do we) that it’s a calf injury and frankly these alway take a lot longer to clear up than a week or two.
Just hope the International break allows our walking wounded to get fit and that we don’t lose any players to injury on international duty.
Anyway, back to the point and it seems Smith wasn’t happy.
Basically he said you can’t give the opposition a 45 min headstart as we did.
He also hinted that he gave them a bollocking at HT.
I’m not sure that’s enough though.
I think Smith seriously needs to change things up occasionally.
Attack us with pace and strong pressure, as Liverpool and Wolves did and we look very vulnerable and wilt, imo, resulting in too many hoofs that consistently come back.
I think we’ve been found out and sticking to a solid 4-3-3 will ultimately be Smith’s undoing, imo.
today we was poor, particular first half where we struggled to pass the ball. i thought wolves were not much better. second half we improved slightly. we just were not at the races. but saying that why was there only 3 mins injury time. wolves switched off at the death and had there been 5 mins injury time we probably would have sneaked a equalizer. would have been undeserved.
international break finally comes in perfect time, we need to regroup after what was a very poor performance in a game which means much to fans. second goal was so bad, i don’t want to type it out and relive it. but leaving their best striker of the ball, free on the edge of the box was school boy defending. why do we feel the need to all defend the line and ignore the real dangers, it was so obvious the ball being crossed into the box was the decoy and the cut back, or the ball rolled across to their free kick expert was the play wolves were going to do.
wolves couldnt believe their luck catching us so off the pace. see you in two weeks and in time for the newcastle game
Did anyone notice how Taylor ended up right back then left back , he seemed to be following the ball, according to some fans the blame was with our midfield .I personally think we was on an off day and Wolves was up for it more than us.
Pochettino is available. Just saying.
As a goalie????