Manchester City v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[olaftab]

WellSWell first proper test and we were well short.
I am astonished by Ecks post match comments. He accepted the defeat the thrashing as inevitable. This is poor  piss poor  attitude. The man needs to realise he is now managing Aston Villa and for us to lose a game 4-1 any where is a disgrace.

[Eigentor]

Looking at the game from Man City's point of view: How little effort could they put into this match and still win (comfortably)? The answer was: very little. They'll probably be pleased with that knowing that they can stroll into home wins against 50 % of the sides in EPL this season.

Looking at the game from our point of view: was there ever any chance that we could get anything from the match? Well, if we ddn't think so, then we won't. Maybe Gerard was right all along.

[Chinchilla Bathhouse]

WellSWell first proper test and we were well short.
I am astonished by Ecks post match comments. He accepted the defeat the thrashing as inevitable. This is poor  piss poor  attitude. The man needs to realise he is now managing Aston Villa and for us to lose a game 4-1 any where is a disgrace.

Bloody hell.  Get a grip.  The defeat was inevitable.  Most of us on here knew it. Doesn't mean we like it, just that we're realistic about our current situation.  I said earlier, Man City didn't spend £400m to lose at home to the likes of us.  I think Eck knows full well that he is now managing Aston Villa, and he's realistic too about what we can achieve at the moment.  To say getting thrashed by a team light years ahead of us is a disgrace is a massive over-reaction.  You seem to have a very lofty view of our place in the big scheme of things; sorry to break it to you, but we have no divine right to not get thrashed from time to time, never have had.  I'd go as far as to say that outside of Villa Park we're a largely uninspiring and irrelevant outfit, and have been for most of my lifetime.  I don't like it any more than you do, but to imply that our club is above such humblings is bombastic nonsense.  I'd advise you to go to bed and calm down.

[eamonn]

I think his point was that it's the manager's job to be positive and getting the players to believe they can compete even if he doesn't think so himself.

Thankfully there hasn't been too much wanking over Milner's goal and how nice of him it was not to celebrate. Inevitable he'd have one of his few decent games for them in 15 months against us I suppose.

[taylorsworkrate]

This was always going to be the real test, first quality side we have come up against and we lacked all over, our defence was shocking at times.

So forget the results we've got so far,

I certainly haven't forgotten the 5 draws.

Anyway, today's game was entirely as expected.  Even resting a no of players Citeh were always going to be a class above. 

What did annoy me though was the comical defending at times.

Need to forget about this one, and try and take the promising parts of the QPR and Wigan games forward to next week, which is looking like a must win.

[brontebilly]

I thought we did alright today in the first half especially. Pretty obvious we will struggle for goals this year. On the goals we conceded, Darren Bent was at fault for the two set piece ones. Awful attempted clearance for the first header and lost Kompany for the other. To be fair I thought Given could have done better with that one. Warnock's fuck up for the second killed the game and spoiled an otherwise decent performance by him. Milner's one was unstoppable.

There were positives. Hutton was ok I thought. Dunne was good. Clark was caught out of position a bit but will learn a lot from today. Petrov did his best in midfield. Delph and Ireland had good first halves but disappeared after the break. Bent was hopeless but not his type of game to be fair. Gabby did his best with little support.

Big game for Ireland next weekend. He needs to get far more involved than the odd nice touch. Bannan was demanding the ball far more when he came on. Very little again from Nzogbia and Albrighton which is worrying.

The gap between the haves and have nots is ridiculous. That is what today proved. Other than that we are a very average side. One of about 14 in the EPL. Depends on injuries, Gabby and Bent gelling and at least one of Ireland or Nzogbia hitting a serious run of form if we are to top that particular league.

[ROBBO]

One incident that did catch my eye in the second half was Petrov failing to keep up with Barry, how slow is that.

[Phil from the upper holte]

Highlight of the day was a pint costing only £1.92 at the Oyster Bar!

City really are the new Chelsea; arrogant supporters. What were their fans doing fighting stewards in the first half?; saw one get smacked four of five times, strange.

Decent meat and potato pie at half-time.

Couldn't even forget about the game this evening; went to a 40th Birthday Party at the Shrewsbury Town ground to be confronted by a mural of Joe Hart on the stairs leading up to the gents!!     

A steward pushed an old man over that's why it kicked off

[Caiphus]

Apart from Warnock's fuck up for the goal I thought he looked very dangerous and I said to my missus early he on that he looked a threat to score... then he hit that volley straight at Hart.  I was impressed with his overlap.

That surface was slippery as; we didn't seem to have long enough studs on our boots.

City made a statement against Spurs and us, and I think they were well up for both games to show that they have surpassed us to go onto the next level.

I am just so jealous of Man City's depth on their playing list.

Our supporters were a bit stupid to wind up Balotelli: if you ignore him he has no power.

[Legion]

[PaulWinch again]

I'll say one thing that is an indictment of modern football. When a team with 9 internationals in its starting line up gets beaten 4-1 and its fans largely just expected it, it means there is something wrong.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Obviously disappointed, as much with the sheer predictability of it all as anything else.

However, I didnt see anything yesterday that a cash injection of approximately £500-£700million wouldnt be able to easily address.

[PeterWithe]

I didn't expect to get a result, it appeared that the players didn't either.

[Jimbo]

The most predictable outcome in the history of the game. Greece should have put every Euro it could find down the back of the settee on this one down at Paddy Power. Let's move on to the next one, and hope the game implodes sooner rather than later, so we can all start from scratch and have a league with competition.

[Deano58]

As a City fan, I'm interested in the comments on here particularly as regards the death of the game etc etc. I was saying exactly the same before we won the lottery in 2008. How is it different now that City have money except that there are now 5 or 6 teams that can compete rather than the previous 3 ?

Yep, we've spent £*** [insert your own made-up figure here] billions of pounds but you have to to join the Sky 4. It has always been a cartel for goodness sake and no-one, but no-one, is going to join that self-interested club  from a standing start without spending that sort of money. Having spent our way into the reckoning you'll see that we no longer have to spend more each year than say, United, to stay there.

City players are "mercenaries" ? well knock me down with a feather, who'd have suspected that professional footballers were motivated by money ? As for the salaries, we, and any other club lucky enough to find itself in our position, have to pay high basic salaries because we simply can't compete yet (and possibly never will)  with the worldwide personal sponsorship and image rights deals that Sky4 players get as soon as they sign on the dotted line.

Sure the Premier League is all about money, it has been for 19 years which is why only rich clubs have won it (and, in the two exceptional cases, nearly bankrupted themselves in the process) but we didn't light that particular fire.   

As far as Villa are concerned. It's difficult to say anything encouraging from yesterday's performance without sounding patronising but you have stood by them in worse times than these, and with worse teams than this, by a long way and I know for certain that the majority of you will continue to do so because that's what you do. The day before our investors took over, we survived only on hope and had no idea what was around the corner for us. Neither do you. Just hang in there and do what we did for 35 years, take what enjoyment you can, where you can. Things change, something will turn up.