Aston Villa vs West Ham Match Thread

[xbiggy]

I know its early doors but..........................the future is bright, the future is still claret and blue.

ONeil who?

[Arsey]

great 1st half performance, could and should have scored more.

[PaulWinch again]

Brilliant first half.

[Tom_Mc9?]

I'm on http://www.hqstreamz.net/ch1.html, which has been reliable so far.

[achilles]

What was Petrov doing that far forward, he should be fined he is our defensive midfielder! LOL

[pablopicasso_10]

superb so far, albrighton has looked excellent, good movement, a nice mixture of passing ranges and very direct in our attacking..

[pr_N'villa]

2-0 h/t, no o'niell and the best performance from all 11 players in last 2 seasons

[Irreverent ad]

We are playing free flowing football!!!!! I can't believe it.

The Petrov goal was fantastic!

Albrighton looks very good indeed

[Arsey]

match thread seems much slower than those last season

[KevinGage]

Albrighton looks like he's been in the topflight for years.

Credit to MON in so far as we were playing with five in midfield pre season, Ash was playing in the hole and Albrighton out wide. But would he have gone with that when the serious stuff got underway?

[Rigadon]

Impressive start.  Be interesting to see if they sit back on the lead second half like they have done traditinally under o Neill.

[Monty]

What a start. Still problems, lapsed into old habits during the middle of the half (I suppose he's had less than a week to work them out), but the opening 15 minutes was so enthralling. And unexpected! I was expecting to tune in, see some decent moves maybe, slack defending perhaps, heads down, but no. What a start.

[Toronto Villa]

Clouds well and truly lifted.

That is some of the best football we''ve seen at VP in a long time. I said in the pre-match thread I expect Petrov to play a little further up, and he is. Because he has it in him. I thought the two young kids looked very assured indeed. West Ham don't like us running at them and the nice thing is when we scored we didn't just sit back. We went looking again.

ps. Very happy for Marlon Harewood. I thought the criticism at him was unfair during his time here. He didn't come in to save us, he came to be part of things. I hope he helps Blackpool this season. Great start by him.

[Beijing Villan]

This is shit! We should have eight by now, can't believe we are playing so poorly.

Doom, gloom, moan, blah, blah, blah...

Couldn't resist, this thread is far too positive. Can't be a H&V thread!

[Apyadg]

I wouldn't say it's our best performance in two years at all.

We've been good, but considering West Ham have been atrocious, us looking good hasn't been tough. We're sitll suffering from poor retention of the ball, and the same old 'if it doesn;t work, try it again and again and again' tactic of banging our heads on the wall. Just give it to the wingers to whip it in.

It's not been as tedious as we were at home last year, by any stretch of the imagination, but we've been far from brilliant, there's a lot of improvement to be had.