Aston Villa v Bolton Wanderers Post-Match Thread

[AVFCRob]

As folk on here have been indicating, yesterday's performance was a hell of a mess. I just want to go back to one thing that again I know has been mentioned by a number of posters but i just can't shake off and that is the contribution of Stilyan Petrov. The only aspect of his play that I can think of as a positive is that he is fairly comfortable and composed in possession.

Apart from that though....he offers nothing going forward. When was the last time you can remember a crisp, incisive forward pass from him. He has zero mobility, his passing range runs from slow and laboured passes to one side to slow and laboured passes to the other side. He slows up our play continually. He runs out of gas after 60 minutes. I mean, what is he there for?

For me, GH's first act should be to take the captaincy away from him so that the option of dropping him becomes viable. There's more wrong with Villa at the moment than Stilyan Petrov, of course, but his ineffectiveness and general anonymity must cost him his place soon surely?

Incidentally, looking at last year's 11 v Bolton in the 5-1 win the centre midfield pairing was Reo-Coker and Sidwell  and I can remember them both having solid games. Again, to win in the premier league regularly you simply have to have a strong base in midfield. Luckily for us, with yesterday's powder puff selection in there, Bolton didn't have the wherewithall to take full advantage.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

The first 20 minutes we looked like team with a purpose. After the Bolton goal we really lost our momentum and were very lucky to get away with two straight forward penalty decisions and but for a couple of fine saves from Brad, we could easily have lost the game. A point was a fair result.

Dunne has to be dropped until he's fit again. His positioning for the Bolton goal was shocking. Instead of marking Davies, he was pulled completely out of position, ending up marking Stephen Ireland at the far post. Carlos deserves to start on Wednesday.

Collins had another solid game for us but he was always onto a loser having to cover for the AWOL Dunne.

Luke Young put in two superb blocks and overall had a good game but still needs to cut out his hoofs up field.

Warnock concerns me. Maybe he's not getting supportive cover on the left but he's not half the player he was when he first joined us.

Gabby apart from having a heavy touch on his one half decent chance, linked play up very well but we're still failing to get players into the box to be a real threat. Knight had a very good game and although lucky to stay on the pitch, was probably MOTM. Gabby needs better service and like any good striker, until he gets it, he's unlikely to play to his potential.

As other have mentioned, Ireland, despite his excellent passing is never going to be effective in such a deep position. He really needs to be more box to box if we are to see the best of him.

Petrov? I'm still undecided. I just wish he would stick to doing what he's good at rather than trying to play everywhere. He certainly missed a NRC alongside him. The whole team did.

Albrighton was having a fun time against Robinson so it made no sense to move him over to the left. I'm still not convinced he can play 90 minutes but he's improving as a player from the experience.

Downing seems to have grown in confidence these last few weeks, the important thing now is to get him settled in a position. That may be on the right at the expense of Albrighton; the two should be fighting it out for one shirt with one coming off the bench on 60 minutes.

Bringing on Carew made sense if we were going to get balls to the line and crosses in for him and Gabby. Floating the ball in against another big defence was never going to work, especially when he had little support in the area, something along with Gabby, Ireland could and should have been doing.

Finally, Ashley. He works so hard, he tries to create but he has to add to his game, it can't just be picking up the ball and running with it. He's good enough to be a great player, he just needs to learn that there is more than one way to hurt teams. It will be interesting to see what Houllier does with him. I hope the first thing he does it take him off corner duty.

Kevin Mac deserves our thanks. It was never going to be an easy time and I think yesterday he tried to go out with a bang. The problem was always going to be the disjointed midfield and up against a rough and tough Bolton side, where Bolton were always going to win ever ball in the air and boy did they like to play it up in the clouds. We'll need a lot more discipline if we're too beat strong, physical sides like Bolton, Blackburn, the Rags, Wolves etc, not to mention the top 5 teams. There's a very good group of players at Villa Park but it's going to take some serious work to get us playing as a team.

Just to add, after the debate last week about our lack of training of free kick/corners, it was great to see a goal that came straight of the fields of Bodymoor Heath. Well done all.

[Ads]

I cannot understand why Ireland is played as part of a central two, where the boy has to go deeper and deeper to collect the ball and he’s too far away from the opposition penalty area to influence the game. The one time he did, it was off the back of a good run where he beat two players and his crafted shot was about as close as we got second half.

Ashley has to go back out onto the wing and Ireland needs to fill that spot behind Gabby.

[Somniloquism]

Just to add, after the debate last week about our lack of training of free kick/corners, it was great to see a goal that came straight of the fields of Bodymoor Heath. Well done all.

If a million Monkeys on a million type writers for a million years can write the works of Shakespeare, then I would suggest that Ash scoring direct from freekick is also a possibility occaisionally.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Just to add, after the debate last week about our lack of training of free kick/corners, it was great to see a goal that came straight of the fields of Bodymoor Heath. Well done all.

If a million Monkeys on a million type writers for a million years can write the works of Shakespeare, then I would suggest that Ash scoring direct from freekick is also a possibility occaisionally.

It looks like a monkey just stole your log in. (winky)
It was a pre-planned free kick with Collins in the wall making the space for the shot.

[Somniloquism]

TBH I have only seen it on the small screen as I'm not a good enough fan, so did not notice the space creation. I have always wondered why refs never seem to give that as a foul against. Still, no guarantees that this was a training ground routine as the same thing has been tried before, normally with either an easy catch for the keeper or over the bar.

[pauliewalnuts]

Clearly we have a number of players who are not conditioned enough to be playing 90 mins and struggle with the pace of the game, like John Terry said we are knackered after an hour and every team know's it.

Its probably not a coincidence that the fitness guy left along with MON, I think.

Its worth pointing out that a recent poll on here about what changes you would like the manager to make, the most popular was 'better football', well we had our technically best XI players out there yesterday and I think it was the right game to try such an experiment, shame it didn't come off.

Maybe, just maybe, MON wasn't so tactically inept as he was often accused of?

I think it's more a case of KM being woefully out of his depth, to be honest. Some of his tactical changes and substitutions have been bewildering.

[pauliewalnuts]

TBH I have only seen it on the small screen as I'm not a good enough fan, so did not notice the space creation.

You're a better fan than I.

I've got a season ticket and opted not to go, and to spend the day with the Mrs instead.

On reflection, not the wrong decision.

[villa `cross the mersey]

TBH I have only seen it on the small screen as I'm not a good enough fan, so did not notice the space creation.

You're a better fan than I.

I've got a season ticket and opted not to go, and to spend the day with the Mrs instead.

On reflection, not the wrong decision.

Not alone there Paulie - I too am a season ticket holder and took my lad to the Southport airshow - we got soaked but had a bloody good day . I must confess I didn`t miss going to the Villa one iota - neither did VCTM jnr.
Pretty much sums up how I feel about the Villa and football in general.
 

[cheltenhamlion]

It was a rather depressing second half but showed exactly why Kevin Mac should not have been given the job full time.

Hopefully Houllier can tightemn up the defence and provide us with a bit of organisation that we are lacking at the moment.

At least nobody will be guaranteed a start.

[Chris Smith]

TBH I have only seen it on the small screen as I'm not a good enough fan, so did not notice the space creation.

You're a better fan than I.

I've got a season ticket and opted not to go, and to spend the day with the Mrs instead.

On reflection, not the wrong decision.

Not alone there Paulie - I too am a season ticket holder and took my lad to the Southport airshow - we got soaked but had a bloody good day . I must confess I didn`t miss going to the Villa one iota - neither did VCTM jnr.
Pretty much sums up how I feel about the Villa and football in general.
 

Well piss off to an airplane forum then. <wink>

If we've got to suffer it then I don't see why you and Paulie should get out of it.

[Monty]

Its worth pointing out that a recent poll on here about what changes you would like the manager to make, the most popular was 'better football', well we had our technically best XI players out there yesterday and I think it was the right game to try such an experiment, shame it didn't come off.

Maybe, just maybe, MON wasn't so tactically inept as he was often accused of?

Having technical, attacking players on the field does not make good football by itself. All of our technical players, bar Petrov, want to play high up the field, which means that if they all play we have no way of retaining possession deep. Look at what Man Utd did yesterday - for large periods of the game they had Liverpool at arms' length because they held the ball so well in the middle third.

K Mac and MON have very different tactical flaws: K Mac's just naive, whereas MON's actually from a different era.

Also, the game was a great example of the 4-4-2 bear-trap which managers still fall into. K Mac brought on the extra striker to try and make us more attacking, but all it did was introduce an enormous gap between the midfield and attacking lines, which made us more defensive as we kept giving the ball away. 4-4-2 is a defensive formation, not an attacking one - especially with our players.

[PeterWithe]

Having technical, attacking players on the field does not make good football by itself. All of our technical players, bar Petrov, want to play high up the field, which means that if they all play we have no way of retaining possession deep.

You're right, as was proved but the alternative was bringing on NRC and I'm not sure that would have helped with the ball retention and would have been seen as settling for a point. As I said my main point was that I thought it were the right game to try that line up and it might be worth persevering with if we can get the attacking midfielders supporting the forward quicker, him showing a lot more movement and we can stop surrendering posession so easily.