Reading v Aston Villa - Match Thread - Sat 2nd Feb, 3pm
- Thread starter danvilla2
- Start date
tarzansbrother
Vital Football Hero
Dean Smith claiming the teams performance level is back where he wants it.
Sorry but he talking out of his arsehole
Sorry but he talking out of his arsehole
JuanPabloAngel
Alert Team
I have ambition too but we will not be able to realise that ambition in a January transfer window under the FFP microscope. The cold fact is that we are not, currently, the Billy Big Bollocks we all want to be. We are at best a sleeping giant.
I'm not particularly interested in following Small Heath either.
McParlandTheGreat
Vital Champions League
Seems a fair summary to me.
South Side Villan
Vital Squad Member
Wasn't seriously thinking you would regards with Small Heath was more tounge in cheek, I understand about the January window and I'm not a big fan of it myself, infact it should proabably be banned, it would then force clubs to actually utilise their youth systems and give their own a crack. I agree on us been a sleeping giant but we're not small time yet.
JuanPabloAngel
Alert Team
Fair enough, although I do think some of the comments I've read and other fans I've spoken to make me feel like we're small time - the frothing at the mouth when we don't win every match, the clamour to change manager every five minutes because we aren't beating everyone out of sight, etc.
We're not used to being in our current position and I understand that this is hard to accept this for some (not saying you, by the way). But the (with hindsight) reckless spending by Xia, di Matteo and Bruce have left us in this mess. I trust Dean Smith to get us out of it.
danvilla2
I’m not an expert
Given we’re not going up or down, and given Tammy is a loan signing, why not give the kid a shot? In hindsight Tammy going may have been a good thing. I don’t care if we finish 7th or 21st, it isn’t promotion material.
The mad thing is we’re only 4 points off playoffs but a million miles off being an EPL side.
South Side Villan
Vital Squad Member
You do have a good point though mate, I admit I can be one of those knee jerk people sometimes which is sad as I never used to be, guess it's all the trouble and the mismanagement of the club as a whole for so many years and patience has been pretty much bled dry. As I have said before I've written this season off and want to see what team Smith builds next time round, just hope he has more of a punch in the summer window but he really needs to revert back to the style he was drumming into the players when he 1st came, I can't deal with this safey safey way and ironically it's not safe at all. Oh well on to the next game, UTV.
Villan57
Alert Team
I suppose that's why Tammy is on loan to us and not at Chelsea, he will never be their standard despite what some on here think.
He's very good at this level
McParlandTheGreat
Vital Champions League
Meh! Same old crap repeated time and time again by "fans" who're determined that their dismal view of the future is going to come about whatever. Ease up. It's boring.
Today we were the better team. The defence was maybe more solid than it's been all season. We had good chances and they didn't go in for us. Not the greatest performance, but considering we're still recovering from the shambles Brucie left then maybe the sort of performance to be expected.
Me, I'm optimistic. DS knows what he's doing. We still have a good chance of the playoffs. Patience.
Today we were the better team. The defence was maybe more solid than it's been all season. We had good chances and they didn't go in for us. Not the greatest performance, but considering we're still recovering from the shambles Brucie left then maybe the sort of performance to be expected.
Me, I'm optimistic. DS knows what he's doing. We still have a good chance of the playoffs. Patience.
South Side Villan
Vital Squad Member
Yep, flopped at Swansea and I know he did because I had to turf him out of my fantasy team, he wasn't appauling, I'd say he was ineffective, he also missed a couple of sitters there too and an open goal.
Great Championship player though.
If we'd have taken one of our chances, the tone of the thread would be completely different. Started well, two good chances, one for Tammy following up and Elphick's header which hit the bar, then faded a bit towards the end of the first half with one excellent save from Kalinic. We then completely dominated the second half not making many chances admittedly but we pressed, won the ball back high up the pitch and for me played with the kind of intensity we witnessed at the likes of Derby and M'bro without being clinical in front of goal and often disappointing end product from the likes of Albert and El Ghazi. Yes, disappointed with only drawing but to hear some of the comments on here I'm clearly in the minority with regards to the overall performance. After being there and witnessing it first hand, I didn't think it was that bad. A quick word on the defence today, Kalinic did well, feel he's starting to settle, Mings looks very comfortable on the ball, Elphick alongside had a good game and even Taylor did alright as well. Four points off the play offs.....it was five before the weekend started so still all to play for despite the fact that.....'Smith is talking out of his arse'......'Smith has lost his bottle'.......'Smith has morphed into Bruce'......'Wenger should be appointed when Smith leaves'....'We will get hammmered on Friday'......and to top it all...'At this rate we will get thrashed by Blues'......honestly if someone read some of the comments without knowing any results from the season, they'd think we were in the bottom 3 and facing certain relegation!
Silhillvilla
Vital Football Legend
Let's see. 2 months of tough games ahead starting with the Blades on Friday, and it's live !!
Melon Donkey
I am a little bit perplexed
This is why, cliche alert, football is difficult to predict.
Before the run of difficult games pre Xmas people were just wanting to get through naively thinking we should be breezing these current games.
What happened ?.
We got the results in the supposed difficult games and haven't in the 'easy' games.
Could easily happen again and get the positive results in this new run of 'difficult' games.
Clearly the more patient among us will remember the pre Xmas games if this next run of fixtures doesn't go as well.
sirdennis
Alert Team
Taylor and Whelan sta
Just got back and flicking through the comments and I agree 100% with Smith. We dominated the first 20 mins Tammy missed what looked like a sitter and we hit the bar, they came back into the game and Kalanic made 2 good saves but in the second half there was only one team in it and my only criticism is that we lacked quality in the final third. Albert was awful El Ghazi did some great bits and some daft bits but contrary to the knockers opinions was miles better than Albert and Tammy had an indifferent game , probably should have scored with another header but their keeper made a terrific save.
There is what I will call a few lazy posts on here where some posters go with the perception of a player rather than the evidence of how they played today. For instance a few posts saying Taylor is shit etc and I agree he has been , but today he had a decent game. I know he is not the answer but in isolation I repeat he had a decent game today .
On todays evidence Mings looks a top signing , massive unit and it was great to see a left footer on the left hand side of defence we looked so much better balanced. He won all the physical battles and not only that it was very noticable that he is very vocal and even after a couple of minutes was telling the other where they should be etc. I don't think it was coincidence that Elphick had his best game since he came back and that Taylor had one of his better games for us.
Hourihane was poor as was Whelan and if we had a midfield of any note we would have won that comfortably.
I see some are writing Carroll off already and if they can form a judgement on 15 mins off the bench then I reckon thats genius.
pvb1968
Vital 1st Team Regular
I thought elphick and mings were spot on today with defending and passing. The goalkeeper looked solid with a couple of good saves. If we have any hope of the play offs we simply can't play whelan and hurry up. I made a point of specifically watching hurry up, he is so slow and the amount of times he gives a pass away is unbelievable. Super John mcginn works his nuts off, Adomah was poor as well so maybe a draw is a good result today.
