So what happened? | Vital Football

So what happened?

InvincibleBrianMan

InvincibleBrianMan

Vital 1st Team Regular
For me this was pretty much the high point of our last decade:

Two teams who matched each other in one of the most exciting games I have seen in the last 20 years. Both sides playing expansive, attacking football. A true advert for the game at this level. The game finished 5-5 and neither side defended badly, it was just a day when two very talented sides came face to face and put on a show. Both teams were full of talented, technically gifted players who played their part in one of my personal favorite games ever. ( I watched it twice on the day of the game and have watched it again two or 3 times since)

But what happened...Villa went on to much better things and are currently in 9th place in the premier league wedged securly in between Everton and Arsenal. And we are pretty much stuck firmly were we have been for the last couple of decades.

Within a couple of months of this game Owd Kranky had gone and we had pretty much shot it.

With the benefit of hindsight, what do you think we should / could have done differently if we could wrench back the arrow of outrageous time?

Pour yourself a tall glass, pull on your slippers and smoking jacket and enjoy, then let me know!


 
Very simple- some of what you say in the second paragraph is not true.

It wasn't "two expansive" teams at all. Expensive maybe, but not expansive. Forest scored 5 through brilliant counter attacking, despite having Fig sent off. I think every goal was a great counter attack. And there was some awful defending: allowing Cash to run at the defence, allowing Grabban's shot for the equaliser.

You just need to look at the scorers and assists to see why we went in different directions; Tammy Abraham, now a regular for Chelsea, scored four. Jack Grealish had an assist. Even players like El Ghazi (scored) or Bolasi (assist) were in a different star system to the forest squad.

On top of that, Dean Smith had recently been appointed at Villa, while Karanka was on his way to throwing toys out of the pram and falling out with the owners.

In terms of what could have been different; nothing. We were never in the playoff picture that season. But we could have been playing them in the PL this season if we had taken our chance last season; but that would have required vastly better recruitment in the January window (which was a catastrophe) and the players not collapsing, both at the end of the season and at the end of games
 
The difference is / was poor recruitment policy, Villa prepared to invest in quality players while we went for the scattergun quantity over quality approach, hoping that a few would come good which as we all know didn't happen. The mental attitude of the players / management probably had something to do with it as well
 
seasider red said:
The difference is / was poor recruitment policy, Villa prepared to invest in quality players while we went for the scattergun quantity over quality approach, hoping that a few would come good which as we all know didn't happen. The mental attitude of the players / management probably had something to do with it as well
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Oh come on.

Their own policy was no less scattergun.

Smith was their third manager in 2.5 seasons at that point.

The difference was that the had parachute payments, a couple of huge sales of players who were never going to set foot at this level, and had Grealish in pocket to sell. They had vastly greater resources than anyone else in the division.

Not only would any one of their players have walked into our side, but I doubt we could have afforded more than a couple of them
 
Parachute payments & the fact Kranks is one of the most dour to have ever walked through our door & we’ve had some terrible dour managers.


Our revolving door is stupid & counter productive but we keep appointing the wrong manager in the first place.
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Very simple- some of what you say in the second paragraph is not true.

It wasn't "two expansive" teams at all. Expensive maybe, but not expansive. Forest scored 5 through brilliant counter attacking, despite having Fig sent off. I think every goal was a great counter attack. And there was some awful defending: allowing Cash to run at the defence, allowing Grabban's shot for the equaliser.

You just need to look at the scorers and assists to see why we went in different directions; Tammy Abraham, now a regular for Chelsea, scored four. Jack Grealish had an assist. Even players like El Ghazi (scored) or Bolasi (assist) were in a different star system to the forest squad.

On top of that, Dean Smith had recently been appointed at Villa, while Karanka was on his way to throwing toys out of the pram and falling out with the owners.

In terms of what could have been different; nothing. We were never in the playoff picture that season. But we could have been playing them in the PL this season if we had taken our chance last season; but that would have required vastly better recruitment in the January window (which was a catastrophe) and the players not collapsing, both at the end of the season and at the end of games
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Definition of expansive:

having a capacity or a tendency to expand

Just watch the game and we were clearly "two expansive teams" expansive is exactly what we played that day - we counter attacked, and just attacked, explosively (expansively)

This game was the fruition of Kranky's reign, he had been guilty of some dour- Dougery up untill this point. We were organised at the back and strong in midfield, but we too often had just sat deep and waited for a singular counter- punch to knock the wind out of the opposition.

But on this day he (we) went for it, the gloves were off and we hit them with wave after wave of EXPANSIVE attacking football. And they returned the favour. It was end to end, relentless entertainment. It was what football should be about.

Please feel free to define the word expansive in terms that disclude counter-attacking?
 
This game was certainly an exception in our recent history rather than the rule.

Incidentally, I was thinking of my favourite games of the last decade and instantly the 3-1 away win at West Brom came to mind. Then I realised it was over a decade ago. What... the.... fuck. We haven't been that good once since then, and when I look at our squad now it isn't even much worse.

How we all wish Billy Davies was a bit more mentally stable.
 
seasider red said:
The difference is / was poor recruitment policy, Villa prepared to invest in quality players while we went for the scattergun quantity over quality approach, hoping that a few would come good which as we all know didn't happen. The mental attitude of the players / management probably had something to do with it as well
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I agree in the main. At the end of the day Kranky threw his toys out literally because the board bought players he didnt want and didnt buy players we did want.

We were on an upward curve for that first 6 months under Kranky and we were certainly in the play off picture and we didnt back him.

This time on a flat trajectory we back CH to avoid relegation
 
i am a tree said:
This game was certainly an exception in our recent history rather than the rule.

Incidentally, I was thinking of my favourite games of the last decade and instantly the 3-1 away win at West Brom came to mind. Then I realised it was over a decade ago. What... the.... fuck. We haven't been that good once since then, and when I look at our squad now it isn't even much worse.

How we all wish Billy Davies was a bit more mentally stable.
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Despite his good stuff he literally did keep failing at the next step. Its hard for me to forgive him the negative way we set up for those play offs
 
paz1967 said:
Despite his good stuff he literally did keep failing at the next step. Its hard for me to forgive him the negative way we set up for those play offs
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Oh I agree, but he also had us playing really good football, football that we haven't gotten close to since really, and got players playing to their absolute maximum level, which apparently is rarer than a bird with lips.
 
i am a tree said:
Oh I agree, but he also had us playing really good football, football that we haven't gotten close to since really, and got players playing to their absolute maximum level, which apparently is rarer than a bird with lips.
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it was good for a while..
but then so was Joe Lolley ;)
 
InvincibleBrianMan said:
Definition of expansive:

having a capacity or a tendency to expand

Just watch the game and we were clearly "two expansive teams" expansive is exactly what we played that day - we counter attacked, and just attacked, explosively (expansively)

This game was the fruition of Kranky's reign, he had been guilty of some dour- Dougery up untill this point. We were organised at the back and strong in midfield, but we too often had just sat deep and waited for a singular counter- punch to knock the wind out of the opposition.

But on this day he (we) went for it, the gloves were off and we hit them with wave after wave of EXPANSIVE attacking football. And they returned the favour. It was end to end, relentless entertainment. It was what football should be about.

Please feel free to define the word expansive in terms that disclude counter-attacking?
Click to expand...

If you want to over look the fact that both sides defended with appalling levels of incompetence that night, and put the goal fest down to expansive play, fine.

If goals are the only metric you want to use to determine how entertaining a game is, then it certainly was entertaining; on the other hand, if you find entertainment in watching skilful players attempting to outwit well organised defences, it is not the best of examples.

I have a feeling that if we adopted those tactics week in week out we would be changing managers at a more alarming rate that we do now.
 
mao tse tung said:
If you want to over look the fact that both sides defended with appalling levels of incompetence that night, and put the goal fest down to expansive play, fine.

If goals are the only metric you want to use to determine how entertaining a game is, then it certainly was entertaining; on the other hand, if you find entertainment in watching skilful players attempting to outwit well organised defences, it is not the best of examples.

I have a feeling that if we adopted those tactics week in week out we would be changing managers at a more alarming rate that we do now.
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Weekly change of manager, it might just work we've tried everything else.
I disagree about the defending. It was just the attackers outwitting the defenders for me.
 
mao tse tung said:
If you want to over look the fact that both sides defended with appalling levels of incompetence that night, and put the goal fest down to expansive play, fine.

If goals are the only metric you want to use to determine how entertaining a game is, then it certainly was entertaining; on the other hand, if you find entertainment in watching skilful players attempting to outwit well organised defences, it is not the best of examples.

I have a feeling that if we adopted those tactics week in week out we would be changing managers at a more alarming rate that we do now.
Click to expand...

Goals ARE the main metric tho, usually the be all and win all of points lets face it.

I dont agree that basically the idea of winning 3-1 and then losing 1-3 every other week is a recipe for changing the manager, id love it. Thats why I would have had Olly a few years ago :)
 
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