Aston Villa v Tottenham Match Thread - Sunday 16th Feb, 2pm | Page 26 | Vital Football

Aston Villa v Tottenham Match Thread - Sunday 16th Feb, 2pm

robbali said:
Jenas was was spot on for once. Our back three were too high and gave them as much room as they wanted. And drinkwater and Luis lacked the mobility to press so spurs ran between the lines or hit long balls beyond our two so called wing backs.
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Interesting, so why isnt John Terry having any success in getting this defence sorted?
 
Bonker said:
With respect mate, starting Drinkwater for an hour ahead of Nakamba then taking Samatta off was bizarre, again, DS is plenty culpable for these losses in games we coulda/shoulda won on the day.
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Samatta was taken off because he was whacked. He's not yet fit enough to do 90 minutes. I'd have thought Drinkwater was a good fit for this game. If he wasn't then maybe DS has learnt something. Danny in theory has a good pass, good tackle and experience. He was pretty good at Leicester.
 
Villan57 said:
Exactly, it was a good game of football perhaps those watching on sky need to get their lazy opinionated fat arse down Villa Park now and then and support the team rather than shout at a TV screen.
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Umm, it was a sell-out wasn't it?
 
Fulford said:
The analysis on MOTD was spot on. Our tactics were suicidal and were the reason we got beat.
We let a very poor spuds team get 3 points at VP and that just isn’t good enough.
Out of our final 12 games 8 are very difficult, so for the first time this season we need to win a game that we are expected to lose as sure as hell the teams below us will manage to do so.
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Thought the analysis was OK; it was risky, DS decided to take the risk. I have a feeling that a "safer" strategy would have played into Spurs hands. We missed Mings.

"Very poor spuds team"? Come off it. They're not at their best but they're doing quite nicely under Jose.
 
danvilla2 said:
One thing I see week after week (well based on the home games I watch at least), we aren’t utilising our speed and skill down the right hand side enough.

One of my Watford mates from uni said all we do is get it to Grealish and hope for the best, 90% of our play must come down the left hand side.

We need to start lashing some diagonals to Freddy to get him on his bike, the few times Davies was run at he was easily outpaced by both El Ghazi and Freddy.

I remember those early games this season and Freddy looked like one of the fastest players I’ve seen down VP, haven’t seen it since.
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We don't have speed or skill down the right-hand side which is why the ball hardly ever goes there and when it does, a decent cross is rarely forthcoming from either Ghazi or Guilbert.

Guilbert looks less keen to get forward than his early days but even when he does he can't beat the first man with a cross, like Ghazi, so it's pointless him trying IMO.
 
McParlandTheGreat said:
Thought the analysis was OK; it was risky, DS decided to take the risk. I have a feeling that a "safer" strategy would have played into Spurs hands. We missed Mings.

"Very poor spuds team"? Come off it. They're not at their best but they're doing quite nicely under Jose.
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We have other stategies??
 
Melon Donkey said:
Well according to some posts 42,000 at villa park seemed to be ok with the performance despite losing . I'm saying losing (especially in this manner) at this stage of the season is not acceptable however well we played. We cannot keep waiting for the points to come. We seem to have been saying all season that if we play like this, play like that we will get enough points.
Well we haven't got them have we?. And to me we dont look like getting enough. We will win before the end of the season. Win enough for 38-40 points? . It's not looking likely on our current trajectory in my humble.
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Well I had tickets to today's game and still managed to not attend so who knows what the local bigots will make of me or my opinion eh?

I have no earthly idea how we get 40 points from here - I suspect we will be cut adrift 3-4 pts by the end of March though.
 
CDX_EIRE said:
I never said any of that.

The narrative earlier in the thread was that Spurs 'let us' have all those chances. You don't need to pull out a few stats to try and make your fantastic argument resonate with me. Here I'll do it too, we had 54% possession and 12 corners. We clearly dominated.

So yes there is a narrative perpetuated in the thread that we were shit, spurs let us have game-ending chances and that it wasn't mistakes it was tactics that cost us the game.

Here's the truth both are true tactics could have been better and the mistake could have simply not happened. You're upset because we were so fucking close to points and you're sick of the same type of mistakes being made. If's, and's and but's about what the manager should have done or shouldn't have done. His tactics gave us a chance to win but we could have been blown away too if not for Reina.

Conceding by a late goal is the only reason this thread is on fire right now because the performance against Bournemouth and 60 odd minutes very Watford were a million times worse than that today. As well as so many other games this season.

I think everyone on here needs to stand back and think about why they're actually upset. It has nothing to do with 90 minutes of the game it is last 30 seconds plus the farcical performances against our fellow strugglers and games we threw away at both Spus and Arsenal.

We're relegation fodder, we don't have a good enough 11, we're as strong as our weakest link and there are plenty of them.
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I can't say I've seen what I'd term as "overwhelming negativity" in here for today's game/performance TBH.

What may have changed for some, and I felt and voiced it myself even before the match ended, was that watching Villa had started to become pointless as unless we score three goals then we're almost certainly not going to win and that was borne out again today.

It makes a farce out of football when you have to view it like this - people blame VAR for taking the joy out of the game but if you know your team concedes an average of two goals per game then it means unless you're two goals up and in ET then you can't assume or enjoy anything as we're so capable of gifting it back to the other team again.
 
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Disappointing result. I don't know what happened to Engels but his head is gone. He was top notch at the start of the season. He cost us the points yesterday.
 
I genuinely understand people being negative. I understand people having the opinion that we're going to get relegated. What I don't get is this mentality that all of a sudden its pointless even celebrating goals because we're apparently so god awful we'll lose anyway. This I might have understood in 2015/2016 but now when we're still outside the relegation zone and outplayed a very jammy "in my opinion" spurs side. I don't get it. We're having a hard season like 8 or more other sides in this league but that does not mean its the end times.
 
Wurzel said:
Interesting, so why isnt John Terry having any success in getting this defence sorted?
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Terry played in a deep lieing back four for us, and our wingers and full backs didn’t dare take chances in getting caught out upfield. The likes of Adomah and Snoddy would always be goal side of their player.

There’s pros and cons to both. When Terry was on the pitch I felt we created a lot of space between our defence and midfield, which good play makers in this league would love - so we need to be more compact. Secondly, it stifled our players getting forward sometimes and we need Targett to be an outlet not a Neil Taylor Mk2.

We debated what Terry is doing on here a while ago, but it’s the polar opposite of what he would do and yesterday if he was manager you’d have seen two teams playing defensively first trying to keep the other team out.

I don’t think Terry can have any real influence in the defence overall, he is I’m sure helping players individually but it’s hard to see that impact on a Saturday for 90 mins.
 
Sorry Smith you are sounding a desperate man with your comments. We all know that clear and obvious isn't being applied . Deal with it.

Engels got none of the ball. Just because their player was already falling doesn't invalidate the contact made . So no, wasn't clear and obvious but that doesn't change the fact that it was 100 percent a penalty.
 
Bonker said:
We don't have speed or skill down the right-hand side which is why the ball hardly ever goes there and when it does, a decent cross is rarely forthcoming from either Ghazi or Guilbert.

Guilbert looks less keen to get forward than his early days but even when he does he can't beat the first man with a cross, like Ghazi, so it's pointless him trying IMO.
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I agree they probably aren’t good enough being brutally honest, the funny thing is they do have pace and skill between them they just don’t use it. It’s why I keep going on about Freddy not getting the wrong side of his marker enough, he stands on the touch line when he should be on his toes looking to receive the ball over the shoulder of the defender.

I really want to love Freddy, it’s his first season in England and he’s done OK. He’d be like shit off a shovel in the championship, and I think he’ll improve in season 2 in the prem if we stay up. Being brutally honest at the moment, I would be in the market for an upgrade.

As for El Ghazi I thought he was the right option yesterday to start as he’s lovely and a bit unpredictable, and sort of proved his worth sticking a few balls in. But he isn’t good enough to be a starter, he’s a great option off the bench for that reason I’d keep him.
 
My first instinct (from L8) in the stupid world of modern football was penalty, and when Atkinson started walking towards the Holte looking at his assistant he had to pluck up the courage to give it. My mate watching on TV said peno straight away.

Penalty or not, Spurs had 5-6 glorious chances. Concentration cost us the equaliser, the penalty follow up and a long ball over the top. If we’re sat moaning about the penalty for 3 months we deserve to go down, because that decision (as shit as Atkinson and Moss are) was the least of our problems. I’ll admit I went a bit mad about it, more the VAR farce. Luckily I was well behaved with the camera showing the screen on the highlights.
 
Wurzel said:
Interesting, so why isnt John Terry having any success in getting this defence sorted?
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He's assistant manager not defensive coach.

Our defending doesn't reflect well on anyone at the club but it's hard to single out Terry for this.
 
You can’t just look good for 30 minutes in this league unfortunately, we should have been easily 3 up before they equalised.

Once they scored we just fell apart, they could have scored 10 yesterday and were not even that good.

We have worst defence in the league, I wonder how many shots we allow because it must be astronomical, and you can’t do that against good player - you get found out and on and off the pitch this is happening.

Hause and Konsa are championship players, and their communication is non existent, and it’s costing us week after week.
 
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