Aston Villa v Swansea City (FAC3) Match Thread - Sat 5th Jan, 3pm | Page 12 | Vital Football

Aston Villa v Swansea City (FAC3) Match Thread - Sat 5th Jan, 3pm

Not long got home and even though I got in for free I feel cheated. I blagged off work early to this travesty and I'd have been better off staying the last 2 hours.

First of all Kalinic. Awful debut for him really, no other way of saying it. Didn't have a great view of the 1st but I'm told he's culpable. The 2nd he should have done better with. The 3rd he charged out then backtracked but not fast enough. Hopefully he's got all his mistakes out of the way.

The defence was terrible. Bree had a shocker. Elphick was poor. Hutton isn't a centre half. I think Smith wanted to see if Hutton could bring the ball out like Axel can but it just never worked. Taylor, nothing more to say about this empty shirt.

Whelan tried hard but was painfully ineffective. He never got anywhere near anyone all game. McGinn again tried his bollocks off but nothing was coming off for him. He has a tendency to hold onto the ball for too long. O'Hare looked lively enough but did give ball away a couple of times, certainly didn't deserve being hooked 1st.

Adomah. The bloke runs the line and does give his all but he's just not a threat. He was a complete waste of time going forward. El Ghazi was occasionally ok going forward but failed to track his man for the 2nd.

Scott Hogan, fucking hell. Missed a sitter. Missed a half chance. Can't control a ball. Can't pass a ball. Never seen him outpace anyone. The bloke is a waste of time.

Honestly it was a depressing experience. The substitution of O'Hare drew boos. I can understand in the context of us going to 4-4-2 Smith wanting to go with 2 more tough tackling blokes in the middle but I still think it was a stupid thing to do. Kodjia looked awful as well when he came on. Our only thought was to get the ball wide and whack cross after cross in, which invariably sailed way over or hit the 1st man.

It was a shit performance. Not because they didn't try or didn't care, they did try they just weren't good enough and didn't have a clue what to do. That's the scary part. We've lost 2 key players and we're probably losing another and we seemed to have lost any spark.
 
Thoroughly unimpressed with that garbage. Players looked uninterested, as if they wanted to lose. I’d only pick out Lansbury and O’Hare, possibly Davis as players who get any credit from that, the rest were rubbish. Special shout out to Hogan who once again proved to me he deserves no place in this squad
 
The one thing I noticed about Kalinic is that he doesn't stretch to get to the low shots.
He should have saved 2 of their goals.
 
Just got home. What a waste of time that was. Only positives McGinn and Lansbury when he came on. The rest of them don't deserve their wages this week, I'd possibly cut Davis some slack too.
El Ghazi was the most fucking atrocious though out of a very bad bunch closely followed by hogan . Worryingly the keeper looks as bad As Nyland if that's possible !
Smith said on wm he's had words with them so could go either way now what with the modern world of player power.
We need a big response at Wigan
 
I'm hearing an "immediate fix" solution. 5, 7, 11 players should do the trick?

Have we not learned from the past. Thankfully Wes Eden has said that he will build the foundations. This may take time and there will be bumps along the road but we must remain patient and supportive. I have already seen enough to encourage me that we are on the path but it won't be sorted this window.

We will probably make the play-offs and take it from there, but it is rare for a team to transform over a January transfer window. Let's not prove previous managers correct and act "fickle" or "hysterical". Let's accept that we have a building job to do and Dean Smith is the man to do it. Yes I expect improvement but we will always get sub-par performances and are not currently good enough to always get results.

Everyone in the Championship is suffering a loss in form at some stage so don't give up.
 
JW1985 said:
Not long got home and even though I got in for free I feel cheated. I blagged off work early to this travesty and I'd have been better off staying the last 2 hours.

First of all Kalinic. Awful debut for him really, no other way of saying it. Didn't have a great view of the 1st but I'm told he's culpable. The 2nd he should have done better with. The 3rd he charged out then backtracked but not fast enough. Hopefully he's got all his mistakes out of the way.

The defence was terrible. Bree had a shocker. Elphick was poor. Hutton isn't a centre half. I think Smith wanted to see if Hutton could bring the ball out like Axel can but it just never worked. Taylor, nothing more to say about this empty shirt.

Whelan tried hard but was painfully ineffective. He never got anywhere near anyone all game. McGinn again tried his bollocks off but nothing was coming off for him. He has a tendency to hold onto the ball for too long. O'Hare looked lively enough but did give ball away a couple of times, certainly didn't deserve being hooked 1st.

Adomah. The bloke runs the line and does give his all but he's just not a threat. He was a complete waste of time going forward. El Ghazi was occasionally ok going forward but failed to track his man for the 2nd.

Scott Hogan, fucking hell. Missed a sitter. Missed a half chance. Can't control a ball. Can't pass a ball. Never seen him outpace anyone. The bloke is a waste of time.

Honestly it was a depressing experience. The substitution of O'Hare drew boos. I can understand in the context of us going to 4-4-2 Smith wanting to go with 2 more tough tackling blokes in the middle but I still think it was a stupid thing to do. Kodjia looked awful as well when he came on. Our only thought was to get the ball wide and whack cross after cross in, which invariably sailed way over or hit the 1st man.

It was a shit performance. Not because they didn't try or didn't care, they did try they just weren't good enough and didn't have a clue what to do. That's the scary part. We've lost 2 key players and we're probably losing another and we seemed to have lost any spark.
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Well you missed ElGhazi in that assessment which is hardly surprising because he was missing most of the match too. Can’t count the number of times I saw him either lose it off a weak touch or fail to even make an effort at a 50-50 ball. Based on today, He’s the definition of a luxury player who only plays on one side of the ball...
 
The most disappointing thing is that we had hoped we'd seen the last of these performances. Despite the encouraging start to DS's tenure, as my old man would have said, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". In reality, the majority of the squad aren't promotion material are they.

We all knew that defence was a problem but without Axel bringing the ball out of defence and JG's command of the ball, the midfield is devoid of creativity and we now have another issue in replacing Abraham's goals.

Two or three quality players apparently make a world of difference to this squad. Whereas under DS at Brentford, the team was stronger than the sum of it's parts. DS needs to find the answer one way or another.



Play offs will be difficult if confidence drops again.
 
VillaTomB38 said:
Absolutely terrible, that’s why I don’t normally bother with the early rounds of the cups as they’re just dead. Atmosphere was completely flat today and the players just didn’t look up for it at all either except McGinn. 30/31,000 announced at the end but looked pretty full to me ?

On the bright side, our home game with Ipswich in 3 weeks time remains a Saturday afternoon as they were knocked out too, every cloud ?
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Dont see how they can say 30,000, they were saying estimated crowd with 5 days to go was 34500 already sold and upper tier open.
 
That's almost 30 goals conceded at villa park and were only just out of December. That is fucking disgraceful.
Defence has to be the priority and we need to go back to basics.
 
May as well do my player scores before I completely lose the will to live after that shambles. Probably the first game under Smith we've been out of. That bad I left 5 mins before the end and I never do that.

Kalinic: 4 Where do we find them? Took him 2 mins to mess up and be picking the ball out of the net, the other two goals he just lay down for as the ball trickled past him. Looks nice in Orange though. He must be better than this, and I think he will be.

Bree: 4 Well just as you think he'll shine at right back he puts in a performance like that. Poor.

Elphick: 4 May as well have stayed at Hull if that's his best.

Hutton: 3 Shocking, couldn't believe he was playing let alone playing CB, 35 and playing in Cup games when he should be rested.

Taylor: 3 May as well close the academy if he is the best left back on the books.

Whelan: 4 Needed a rest and never got one, why?

McGinn: 7 If only we had 9 more McGinns and one Jack Grealish, Showed them all up for what they are today.

O'Hare: 6 I thought he was doing OK and judging by the boos when he was subbed I was not alone.

Albert:4 Never seen him not put a shift in before, looked injured he was so bad by his standards.

Hogan: 3 could have put us 2-1 up after 3 mins, hardly touched the ball again, needs to go. we were sold a pup by Deano

ElGhazi: 5 Does what he does brilliant one minute and the next looks awful. Wasn't the worst player today.

Subs.

Kodj: 5 Looked better than Hogan but that's not hard.

Davis: 5 Put himself about, not on long enough, looked to be feeling his groin, hope it's not his injury returned

Lansbury:6 Looked up for it and must be a better option than Whelan if he can stay fit.

Coach Smith :4

Played a strong team but why Hutton and Whelan, the first game we've played under him when we never looked capable of winning or indeed deserved to win. The rest of his games we've been in with a shout for the whole 90+ mins
 
South Side Villan said:
What the hell are you on about? If you think I meant for DS to literally fuck off then you are an idiot and why would I be a glory hunting prick and support a team that's doing well? If I was a glory hunting prick do you not think I would have ditched supporting Villa a long time ago? I hate fans like you.
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Pretty pleased the majority of our fan base aren't like you to be honest. You can be disappointed in a result/performance without being so aggressive.....
 
We don't need excuses, DS got to see some other players and we know that we won't get another Grealish over the next few windows.

We are like any team who have two or three key people missing and some serious weaknesses elsewhere. We are on a journey but we are at the start of that journey. We've just realised we forgot our rainwear and umbrella so we are going to get wet.
 
No redeeming factors to that game. That was just rank.

Dean Smith was far from happy. Agree with you as above re the boos as well. There was nothing wrong bringing O'Hare off at that stage, although to be fair I'd have removed El Ghazi.

Yet another no show, that just serves to remind the floating fan, why they are floating and not regular.

Got nothing good to say about that match at all.
 
"Merd" said:
I'm hearing an "immediate fix" solution. 5, 7, 11 players should do the trick?

Have we not learned from the past. Thankfully Wes Eden has said that he will build the foundations. This may take time and there will be bumps along the road but we must remain patient and supportive. I have already seen enough to encourage me that we are on the path but it won't be sorted this window.

We will probably make the play-offs and take it from there, but it is rare for a team to transform over a January transfer window. Let's not prove previous managers correct and act "fickle" or "hysterical". Let's accept that we have a building job to do and Dean Smith is the man to do it. Yes I expect improvement but we will always get sub-par performances and are not currently good enough to always get results.

Everyone in the Championship is suffering a loss in form at some stage so don't give up.
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A bit of realism at last. Instant fixes don't work. We have to build over time. Players are rarely as bad or as good as they're painted. We need a small, possibly very small, number of critical signings at a time, player who will be a step up from what we've got.

Disappointed yes, but don't think we should be despondent. This was a bad day at the office, but we have beaten Swans twice already under DS. If you look back at his record so far, we're playing far better than under Bruce, positive football which is a joy to watch. We've won less than we should, partly due to reasons beyond our control, but other teams no longer regard us as easy meat. Today was an exception (I hope!!!).

With players like Jack out what we need is some hard graft to make sure we get over the line in the next three (supposedly easy) matches. Do that and we are back on the right road.
 
Yes I hated that the substitution was booed. I didn't agree with it but ffs how is the Las coming on going to feel. O'Hare was lightweight and did get brushed off easily a couple of times but so did every other player in a claret and blue shirt unfortunately. He wanted the ball, tried to move it forwards when he had it and just generally looked livelier than the rest In my opinion.
 
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Today again showed that Dean needs at least 2 transfer windows to sort this out. Losing Axel and Tammy is a big blow, and Jack is our only source of creativity and he will probably be gone in the summer. The rest are average at best, shocking at worst apart from McGinn who consistently shows the required level of commitment that most of the others do not.

We play the 3 worst teams in the division on current form (and the best) in our next 4. A 10 point return would keep us in the promotion picture but I doubt that we will get that.

There is so much deadwood who coast along taking their huge wages that I am thinking a bottom half finish is more likely. We still don’t look like a team, just a bunch of individuals and the defence (and midfield) are always so easy to play against.

Without Tammy’s goals we are going to turn some of our many draws into defeats given how badly we are defensively. As for Tammy, if I were in his situation I would honour the original loan agreement (obviously it would be different if Chelsea recalled him to their team) and stay until the end of the season, but most footballers are only interested in themselves. I think he may well struggle at the dingles. He is a very good Championship player but a long way from the finished article, and he won’t get that many chances at Wolves. I think he will be a bit part player there scoring no more than 4 or 5 goals and not being a consistent starter. Sad to see him go from a footballing perspective but not that bothered due to his lack of commitment to the club.
 
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