Stoke City v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[pauliewalnuts]

Richard Dunne needs to get rid of that spare tyre, it seems to be affecting his concentration and basic common sense too.

It really is not on for a professional footballer like him to come back from the summer looking like he's spent the last three months in the pub all day.

[Moorski]

I think that you might find that Dunne has frequented a pub or two

[Phil from the upper holte]

If you only turn up for 15 minutes what do you expect. We deserved nothing.

Think thats about right Mark, anonymous until we scored, played well after that then were shit second half, I couldn't see them scoring though they lacked quality then as soon as the equiliser went in I knew they were gonna win.

No fight and we were 2nd best in Midfiled again!! What was the point in bringing Hesket on for Agbonlahor. Petrov's dyed his hair so I didn't know he was playing! Fucking awful. we lost half our games already!!!

[gti2win]

i thought for final 20 mins of the first half we played some great football, the type you would want to see week in and week out, preferably for longer than 20 mins a match though!

Thought dunnes position for 1st goal was piss poor, plus he looks like he is still carrying some timber, thought the game passed gabby by tbh, thought ash and albrighton played well, and reo probably had his best game in a villa shirt ive seen in a long time. It once again was clear with 10mins to go we needed to close the game down, flood the midfield, take off alrighton, ireland into midfield, ash back to the wing, see the game out.

Makes you wonder big time that if pulis can make it to the touchline, wtf is happening with us and houllier.

[The Situation]

Stoke should be banned from the Premier League.

[Somniloquism]

Richard Dunne needs to get rid of that spare tyre, it seems to be affecting his concentration and basic common sense too.

It really is not on for a professional footballer like him to come back from the summer looking like he's spent the last three months in the pub all day.

Another thing to blame the French for. If Ireland had gone to the world cup he wouldn't have spent 3 months drowning his sorrows/ celebrating the demise of France.

[pauliewalnuts]

Richard Dunne needs to get rid of that spare tyre, it seems to be affecting his concentration and basic common sense too.

It really is not on for a professional footballer like him to come back from the summer looking like he's spent the last three months in the pub all day.

Another thing to blame the French for. If Ireland had gone to the world cup he wouldn't have spent 3 months drowning his sorrows/ celebrating the demise of France.

Ha ha, very good point.

[adrenachrome]

Can't believe this twonk has another match in charge with us. Fuck off MacDonald.

Warnock = Stupid, rash challenges that mostly lead to freekicks. Also gets stranded and caught out of position time after time, and has to run back which he never does on time. Wouldn't be surprised if Houllier chops him. Wouldn't miss the prick.

In fairness to MacDonald (and with the Heskey sub and the Newcastle game, I'm finding this difficult), once the players are out there in the second half, winning the game, if they collapse, they need to take the brunt of the blame. Especially conceding in the last minute again. As something that continues, regardless of the current manager, it points to the players having no focus, or simply not caring.

Two things he did wrong in the second half.

One
He decided that even though we ripped stoke to pieces down the wings and both wingers had the making of their fullbacks he decided that they should swap wings. They pretty much played that way all the second half. Albrighton couldn't get past Huth cause he wanted to come inside every time and Downing didn't have the pace against Collins.

Two
It was obvious from 60-70 minutes that unlike the first half, the Stoke players were up for it with Pullis return and changes. He should have subbed Albrighton, moved Ash to the wing where he could track back and brought Ireland on to give more energy in the midfield.

Instead his first reaction to the wrongness on the pitch was to bring on Heskey after they had scored and were in the ascendency. If he was only going to make one change at that time he should have brought on Cueller for  Albrighton as at least we would have had more height in the box to fight off these balls in the air.

I think Mac did that because Warnock was getting slaughtered on our left and thought Albrighton would supply better protection.

[toplad4u]

Not sure what to say on reflection would of hope the lines man would of seen that it wasn't a foul on Pennant! It's the second time this season we've taken gabby off and lost the game doesn't it say something about Heskey! Better a tired Gabby than him!

[Apyadg]

We played very well for 45-50 minutes. We kept the ball, moved off it, passed excellently, and looked like the cultured side showing the proles how the game is meant to be played.

Isn't this pretty much what we laughed at West Brom for last season? Playing pretty Arsenal-style football, but lacking the results to make it worthwhile? There's no point playing nice passes and moving the ball about with flair if you're going to get bent over by Stoke.

Maybe it'll all seem less awful in the morning.

[OzVilla]

So we should give it Sven or Southgate because they are available now?

Sven now, or Houllier in November, maybe. It's tempting.

I'd rather we just, you know, bought out Houllier's contract, as other clubs seem able to do. Maybe we couldn't as we hadn't cut the wage budget. So maybe we shouldn't have announced things, until we at least had a firm idea of when he takes charge. As it happens, we went for the worst possible scenario, give him the job, and shout about it from the roof-tops, without knowing when he starts. It's a circus.

I agree, Eriksson would have been there tonight and i'm sure we'd have got a more committed performance and not a predicatble defeat once they equalized.

I almost wouldn't mind if we were waiting for the world's greatest ever football manager but we're waiting for Gerrard flippin Houllier for McGraths sake.

I have a lot of time for RAL and the General but this is a shambles right now.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

There were plenty of positives to take from the match.

We just quite desperately need leadership at the moment, and all we're getting is drift.

Positives? 15 minutes when we turned up, we looked great but otherwise we were second best. We lack leadership on the pitch more than anywhere else. The centre of midfield is still our weakness. No energy, no drive and no vision. Yes we need a manager, Kevin Mac fortunately won't be that man. He's way out of his depth. It was like O'Neill hasn't left. All effort and very little quality.

[Somniloquism]

If you only turn up for 15 minutes what do you expect. We deserved nothing.

Think thats about right Mark, anonymous until we scored, played well after that then were shit second half, I couldn't see them scoring though they lacked quality then as soon as the equiliser went in I knew they were gonna win.

No fight and we were 2nd best in Midfiled again!! What was the point in bringing Hesket on for Agbonlahor. Petrov's dyed his hair so I didn't know he was playing! Fucking awful. we lost half our games already!!!

Everytime we let in a goal at the moment. The team collapses. It doesn't matter how well we have or haven't played. Thank god West Ham or Everton didn't score otherwise it would have been 0 points even if we were leading them 3-0 at the time.

[KevinGage]

Richard Dunne needs to get rid of that spare tyre, it seems to be affecting his concentration and basic common sense too.

It really is not on for a professional footballer like him to come back from the summer looking like he's spent the last three months in the pub all day.

He was in good nick last summer, as he was fired up to keep his place in the Citeh side. And then fired up - for a bit- to prove them wrong when he came here (almost under duress if you heard his interview at the time).

I'd be a wee bit concerned that now he might just have settled, thinks he 's not going to be going for the major honours anytime soon so he can just cruise.

Warnock is looking a shadow of the player we seen in the first half of last season too. I really don't know what's going on there.

Positives:

*Nice 15 minutes after the goal
*Good performance from NRC
*At no stage of the game were we outmuscled or bossed by their lot (see above)
*The black kit looks good

[pauliewalnuts]

We played very well for 45-50 minutes. We kept the ball, moved off it, passed excellently, and looked like the cultured side showing the proles how the game is meant to be played.

Isn't this pretty much what we laughed at West Brom for last season? Playing pretty Arsenal-style football, but lacking the results to make it worthwhile? There's no point playing nice passes and moving the ball about with flair if you're going to get bent over by Stoke.

Maybe it'll all seem less awful in the morning.

I agree, there is no point if ultimately you bend over and let them shaft you.

I'll still take the small positive from what we saw, though.

Ultimately, we need some leadership from the touchline, and we need some bollocks on the pitch. I'm getting more and more concerned about Petrov, who doesn't seem to be up to it much these days. Certainly, in the middle of the park, we can not afford to have a player who stops after 70 minutes.