Match Thread: Villa v West Ham under the Monday Night Lights | Page 22 | Vital Football

Match Thread: Villa v West Ham under the Monday Night Lights

Platypus said:
Taylor gets no hatred from me, but he's just a body whenever we have the ball. He can't beat anyone, he won't cross it and that means he only needs to be half marked by defenders who can concentrate on other players. That's why we almost never get an overload on the left. Defensively he's fine, but not good enough to justify the lack of options going forward.
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Taylor isn’t bad like you I have nothing bad to say about his attitude.

He’s also not particularly good and in my opinion the one thing we are currently missing is a quality left back who can get around Jack when he’s silly and dallying, take on a player and deliver a good ball.

I’m not sure if Targett is that player yet, hopefully he is but if he isn’t I think we need to find a left back in January.

Would Edna Stevens come back to the club who gave him the platform to make millions? Or does he not like us anymore ?
 
I agree, Taylor is limited, and definitely not a long term plan if we are going to want full-backs who do more than defend and occupy space. That's why we bought Targett. Taylor is an adequate player (in the same role that we kept Elmo, to provide cover and competition for Freddy), . However, some of the vitriol aimed his way is very OTT in my opinion. He works hard, tries hard and has improved dramatically in the past six months. I'd take him over Cissoko!
On a positive note, it seems like Hourihane is now off the hook. :grinning::grinning:
 
The Fear said:
But not only that, these are match threads, we should be able to talk about an individual game without people thinking we are haters.

So far this season, I've seen nothing to give me confidence, that doesn't make me a doomsayer, nor does it mean I don't think something will gel and I will gain confidence.

I thought, second half especially, we weren't very good v hammers and not to make changes to go for it when they were down to ten men was ridiculous.

Sue me. :oops::khat::sorcerer:
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I think the reason I like Dean Smith so much is that he isn't afraid to admit stuff like that. He said himself in one of the interviews that he and the staff were questioning whether they should have changed things earlier against West Ham. I think he thought that adding Luiz would stretch them with his passing range, but unfortunately, the players forgot how to pass in the last twenty minutes....
From the stands we can see the obvious, but some of these kids on the pitch don't think too clearly and maybe don't understand the "big picture" with tactics and decision making yet... It will come!
 
Agreed gm. And yet if you express the same view on social media people wet themselves. Funny old game!

Same as Jack. He gave the ball away too much second half, say that and you are a hater, which is odd because he said it after the game. Maybe he's a self hater!
 
danvilla2 said:
I think in his defence, a player will take time to get up to match fitness let alone a player who isn’t used to the premier league. First half I wasn’t impressed, several sloppy passes but he did well second half.

I used to play in a side with half a dozen Zimbabweans and one thing I always found quite interesting was they all had a very similar trait in the things (flicks, turns, passes) they used to try and the amount of risks they took - some of that in Marvellous’ play on Monday.
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Yup. Time. But I was talking about this game, he was slow, gave the ball away too much and didn't look at the races for large periods.
 
The Fear said:
But not only that, these are match threads, we should be able to talk about an individual game without people thinking we are haters.

So far this season, I've seen nothing to give me confidence, that doesn't make me a doomsayer, nor does it mean I don't think something will gel and I will gain confidence.

I thought, second half especially, we weren't very good v hammers and not to make changes to go for it when they were down to ten men was ridiculous.

Sue me. :oops::khat::sorcerer:
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Well said JF.

I'm not a hater either, but like you I don't see anything in this team that gives me enough confidence to believe we will definitely beat the drop.
 
The Fear said:
Agreed gm. And yet if you express the same view on social media people wet themselves. Funny old game!

Same as Jack. He gave the ball away too much second half, say that and you are a hater, which is odd because he said it after the game. Maybe he's a self hater!
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Nice to see a bit of self-loathing now and again... :throw:
The thing that bothers me (and this reinforces your point) is when folks just make their mind up about a certain player and that's it. Doesn't matter what that player does in the current moment, he's either untouchable and immune from criticism or completely crap. Mings and McGinn are cases in point, along with Hourihane and Taylor.
 
gmvillan said:
Nice to see a bit of self-loathing now and again... :throw:
The thing that bothers me (and this reinforces your point) is when folks just make their mind up about a certain player and that's it. Doesn't matter what that player does in the current moment, he's either untouchable and immune from criticism or completely crap. Mings and McGinn are cases in point, along with Hourihane and Taylor.
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A player is either good or bad. Opinions can change based on performances a la Hutton, Dunne, Gabby, Guzan, but when it comes down to it you have to look at the players we have and decide are they good enough, or are they not. Taylor is 29 and is absolutely functionless when we are in possession and hardly world class in defence either. McGinn has been involved in more shots and goals than any other player, and Mings has been our besr player and has earned a call up to England.
 
Spot on BB. Any chance you could let me know the winner of the 2-30 at Cheltenham?
DeanoVilla said:
Taylor has been one of our most consistent performers this season. 7 out of 10 every game for me.

And this coming from a guy who proper hated the bloke last year. I'd have driven him to any club stupid enough to pay the money for him, but he's improved 100 fold.

If we're looking for weak links in the current setup i think it's easy to pick him as he's not the most fashionable player, but he's not doing much wrong.

The weak link is so obviously our No.9. His ineffectiveness at holding the ball up or putitng the ball in the back of the net is putting pressure on everyone else.

I'm not writing him off entirely. it's early days. But he needs to improve quickly.
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Plenty of us wanted
JP Healy said:
Spot on BB. Any chance you could let me know the winner of the 2-30 at Cheltenham?
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Plenty of us wanted Maupay and Bowen,two goalscorers,rapier and the sword. When l played football (county level) managers thought players who scored goals often meant a win, rather than a defeat.
 
I get the sentiments about Taylor and agree that he is not the quality that we need. However, before anyone slates him again, we have Guilbert, who by general consensus is energetic, attack minded, pacey etc but we haven't managed to exploit fully his undoubted attributes. Someone will know his stats so I'll put it to the forum, has he any assists, successful crosses, killer through balls.

This is not to defend Taylor, but is just to remind people that Taylor is not the root cause of our woes and replacing him with "somone better", won't necessarily change the team dynamic. His job is primarily to defend and I think we are all in agreement that he has improved dramatically in this area.
 
Sorry to disagree Merd, i think a more effective left back would change the dynamic of our side. Play up our left side breaks down far too often when Taylor is given the ball. You see very few real good interchanges between him and whoever is playing on our left side. In terms of individual players he is our least gifted, but i don't question his commitment.Maybe Jack would push further up field if he thought some creativity were coming from that area.
 
zaijianforth said:
Sorry to disagree Merd, i think a more effective left back would change the dynamic of our side. Play up our left side breaks down far too often when Taylor is given the ball. You see very few real good interchanges between him and whoever is playing on our left side. In terms of individual players he is our least gifted, but i don't question his commitment.Maybe Jack would push further up field if he thought some creativity were coming from that area.
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A more effective player in any position would change the dynamics. A problem we have run into is that the interplay down the wings has been stuttering, and that applies to both wings; Jota and Guilbert were said to be a match made in heaven, but that has gone off the boil a bit. Taylor and El Ghazi looked fine until recently.

Part of the problem is simply that opponents are capable of applying more pressure than we're used it; we have to step up as a team. As a result of that pressure is that Jota is looking less effective and El Ghazi even more so. I'm more confident of Jota upping his game than El Ghazi, and Trezeguet is an unknown force still getting used to the team.

So I don't think the problem is really Taylor as such. When he takes the ball forward he needs better movement from the left winger; El Ghazi has started to cut inside
when he should be going down the outside. It's possible that this sort of thing can be sorted out in training; as the players do a detailed analysis of each match is should be pretty obvious.
 
The formatting of the page is bad. The text doesn't all fit on screen and when I swiped left to read the end of the line, a beer ad come up.
 
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