Aston Villa v Burnley Thursday 17 Dec 18.00 | Vital Football

Aston Villa v Burnley Thursday 17 Dec 18.00

Not a great Day or time for football is it but some interesting team selections with Matty Cash and Douglas Luiz out suspended.
Obvious choices Elmo and Marvelous but we have other options Like Hause coming in and Konsa to right back, before you all go 57 has gone mad again Burnley are a threat in the air and Hause would nullify that threat as he wins most balls in the air.
Certainly not a given 3 points given our home form Burnley with Dyche never are a pushover for us.

Will Barkley start?
Will Ramsey get another game?
Will we even have enough players to make a bench?
 
Will definitely be interesting to see how we deal with the enforced changes. The back 6 players have been constants so far this season so seeing if we can change a third of them seamlessly or not should give us some indications of how we'll cope over our next 6 weeks or so when invariably some changes are likely to be required (suspension, injury, rotation, etc).
 
I doubt we’ll change formation but we do need to cut out the space they might find on the right and left side particularly behind Traore that we know exists. If I see a repetition of where Burnley pump two balls in the box and score both, then I think we are foolish.

Jack in a more traditional left wing, perhaps bring Trez right wing to cut out the threat from the right and let Traore push on to join Watkins up top a bit more.

Watkins can’t go on being so isolated, Traore looks a threat in the final third but can’t handle 90 mins getting up and down - so the sensible approach for me is to push him up to a right forward role and Jack has to be a bit more disciplined to a left wing role.

I’d bring in Conor actually :throw: with more firepower in the final third we’ll get more set pieces and their central midfield aren’t going to run through us so it’s one of a handful of games made for Conor. Nothing against Ramsey who I thought has a good debut all things considering against wolves.

Unpopular opinion probably, but I don’t see why every game we need to always go through jack as it makes us predictable and credit to jack, he’s very good at his defensive duties despite what souness thinks.
 
Last edited:
6pm on a Thursday, reminds me of Clough's rant about there being too much football on TV.

"You don't want roast beef and Yorkshire every night and twice on Sunday"
 
As I said in the Wolves match thread the fact that Deano has enforced changes to make is maybe a good thing. I don’t like that our first 11 or 12 picks itself. Players are too comfortable, performances since Arsenal have not been to the levels they set themselves earlier.
Not been impressed with Luiz‘s form lately so I can’t say I’m that worried about him not playing. I think he is class on his day though and will...ahem....go again .

Going to be Conor or Marvellous for Luiz isn’t it?. Marvellous is the biggest MEH player in the squad, adds nothing, so for that and the fact that the game is against Burnley, who are championship shite, we can get away with Conor for Luiz. Conor has his limitations at this level but has more than Marvellous to bring to the table that’s for sure.

Guilbert for Cash . Reallly don’t know what Freddie has done so wrong to be as dreadful as he now appears to be in some people’s minds.

Hopefully Barkley is fit for the biggest no brainer decision of the week which is him for Ramsey.

Good start to the season but still lots of questions. The defeats v West Ham, Leeds, Saints, BHA leave lingering doubts. I do realise that we will be defeated of course but the manner of those defeats and the errors within them still concern me as we slipped into our old school brain fart performances that I hoped had gone after the 4 game winning start.

The next on the list to tick off , now we have seemingly shaken our inability to get any result against the top sides, is the bread and butter games such as Burnley and Baggies. 4 points at least from these two games would have us in a brilliant position into Xmas compared to this time last year.

We do though , without a shadow of a doubt have an opportunity to grab 6 points from these 2 games .
FACT.
 
Pangloss said:
Marv is the only player who can sit in front of the back four a do a defensive job, Conor there would be a joke, especially given Burnley are one of those rough and tumble teams. I'd personally put Marv in for Luiz.
Click to expand...

We could go with a back 3 I suppose and bring in Hause, but yes Marv is really the only like for like. A lot depends on Barkley being fit or not.
 
Pangloss said:
Marv is the only player who can sit in front of the back four a do a defensive job, Conor there would be a joke, especially given Burnley are one of those rough and tumble teams. I'd personally put Marv in for Luiz.
Click to expand...

Missed the point, Conor wouldn’t be in there for a defensive job. We don’t need to be defensive against Burnley at home.
 
Melon Donkey said:
Missed the point, Conor wouldn’t be in there for a defensive job. We don’t need to be defensive against Burnley at home.
Click to expand...

We need to protect our back four and we always do, no reason to change that as far as I'm concerned. Burnley can be pretty tough and have some half decent attacking players when they show up. No protection in midfield would be a mistake.
 
Villan57 said:
We could go with a back 3 I suppose and bring in Hause, but yes Marv is really the only like for like. A lot depends on Barkley being fit or not.
Click to expand...

Well a back 3 won’t happen will it. Blimey, I know you don’t rate Conor but moving our entire system to avoid playing Conor:lol:.

And if Freddie is all of a sudden shite then Hause is national league standard by that standard .
 
Pangloss said:
We need to protect our back four and we always do, no reason to change that as far as I'm concerned. Burnley can be pretty tough and have some half decent attacking players when they show up. No protection in midfield would be a mistake.
Click to expand...

Mcginn is combative.

I haven’t seen Marvellous sufficiently protect our back 4 once tbh. I must be missing something that Luiz gives us a Norman Hunter effect. Tough, combative midfielder is not what Luiz does so why are we saying we have to replace him with one when we don’t play with one in the first place.

Oh I know, so it means some can justify not playing Conor.

Look, neither Conor or Marvellous are the future but based on what I have seen Conor pisses all over Nakamba for team contribution at AVFC. So based on that he gets the nod from me. If that’s the lesser of 2 evils that’s the squad inadequacies being laid bare.
 
Last edited:
Always going to be a slog against this mob of dirty cheating tossers. Hopefully Ben "scissor tackle" Mee gets a stray whack at some point but our lot are probably too nice for anything like that.

Marvelous in place of Luiz for me. We need someone in there who is going to stick a boot in and tackle and Hourihane isn't that man. If Barkleys fit obviously he comes in for Ramsey otherwise we may as well leave him in as we'll likely see more of the ball than against wolves.

As for right back I'd normally go Freddy in but as its Burnley I'd be tempted to stick in Elmo as he's pretty good in the air or do as 57 suggested and put Konsa rb and bring in Hause.

If Trez is fit then he has to come back in as I wasn't impressed by Traore at all yesterday. If Davis isn't fit then bring in one of the youngsters to the behch. We need some attacking options on there.

This will be a tough one. They'll kick us all over the park and fall over if we breath on them. But if we turn up and play the way we can we'll win. 2 nil to the real Claret and Blue side is my prediction.
 
Pangloss said:
Marv is the only player who can sit in front of the back four a do a defensive job, Conor there would be a joke, especially given Burnley are one of those rough and tumble teams. I'd personally put Marv in for Luiz.
Click to expand...
Without the reliability of Luiz I think there might be an option for both Nakamba and Hourihane, with Ramsey unfortunately back on the bench. Would be unfair to throw Ramsey into an unsettled midfield as neither option does the same job as Luiz, he’s so important to us now. Nakamba is definitely the more defensive option he but is well out of favour so far, so I wouldn’t really trust him and he doesn’t offer the same passing ability as Luiz (which at least Hourihane is closer to)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.