Arsenal v Aston Villa F.A. Cup 4th Round Post-Match Thread

[paul_e]

A few people have said it already but the big thing from today was that we kept giving the ball back to them.  If your defence was solid we could get away with having less than 40% of the ball and playing on the counter, when you have comedy defenders like ours the safest thing to do is play keep ball and reduce the number of chances for them to screw up.  The other thing that playing without the ball does is tire you out.  At the start of the 2nd half we looked like a team that wanted another 15mins rest at half time.

Petrov is out on his feet by half time every game now, against a team playing 3 in the middle who can all pass and move you can't afford to carry someone.

Bannan and Gardner should've come on much earlier (half time) to replace petrov and 1 of Bent, Gabby, Keane.  With the remit being to keep the ball and keep things tight in the middle.

We had been ok in the first half and took 2 of the 3-4 chances we got very well.  The problem today was that I don't think he wanted to face the fans slagging him for making defensive subs when we were leading but it ended up being very naive.

Making mistakes in defence cost us but it's not like we don't know it's going to happen so we should be doing everything we can to reduce the chance for them to make the mistakes.

[villadelph]

Chance's we take a shot at a defender before the window closes after this game? I'm saying 15%

[Goldie.7]

We were never going to win with twats like Ireland giving up at 2-2.

[Vanilla]

This will probably get changed, but a Freudian slip anyone for the second bullet point:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jan/29/robin-van-persie-elbow-aston-villa


(by the way in case it does, it says:

• Arsenal striker 'put elbow to Cuéllar's face,' says Alex McLeish
• Birmingham want FA to look into incident at the Emirates)

[villadelph]

We were never going to win with twats like Ireland giving up at 2-2.

A wee bit harsh on him, no? I thought he was a man of the match candidate for us. He was stuck out of position on the wing. He's not a pacey player that can just track back up and down the field numerous times. He's a central player, he has to float in the middle of the park. He and Bannan were the only two who could play a forward pass. The only players with the courage to turn their man and pass up the field to someones feet!

We're never going to win packing it in and playing hoofnanny.

[Malandro]

Is Mcleish the only person talking about the Van Persie elbow? The rest seem to be bothered about losing a two goal lead in about ten minutes.

A non league team would have been more difficult to break down.

[VillaAlways]

Yes but we were playing one if the 'elite' teams as he likes to call them in every press conference It really winds me up with his small time mentality .He needs to stop it

[Percy McCarthy]

Oh well, at least we're a bit more entertaining now we're scoring quite regularly (away anyway).

Luke: We've all known a Mrs Robinson haven't we? Mine was a quite presentable 43 year-old I 'met' when I was 19. Now she is an embarrassing 70-odd and still toddling round the manor with a bald patch. The moral? Have fun, but make sure she lives far away.

Mike: arguing with greg is an amusing diversion for those of us with normal jobs in shops, factories and offices. I'd have thought it's a bit of a busman's holiday for you though isn't it mate?

[N'ZMAV]

I just knew it was going to happen.

[Somniloquism]

We were never going to win with twats like Ireland giving up at 2-2.

A wee bit harsh on him, no? I thought he was a man of the match candidate for us. He was stuck out of position on the wing. He's not a pacey player that can just track back up and down the field numerous times. He's a central player, he has to float in the middle of the park. He and Bannan were the only two who could play a forward pass. The only players with the courage to turn their man and pass up the field to someones feet!

We're never going to win packing it in and playing hoofnanny.

It's shame Ireland didn't have the courage to shoot when he got through on Bannans pass.

But saying that, for most of the second half, you probably wouldn't have realised Ireland, Gabby and Keane were on the park and only knew Bent was because he dived in for the Pen. I'm not totally blaming the attackers as the rest of the team were hoofing too much, but for the second match running, we improved after Gabby was taken off.

[Nev]

Look on the bright side, no really. It was an improvement on last year's cup exit.

At least we didn't give up until the second half this time.

[DerHammer]

Typical Villa, 2-0 & we fucked it up

[OzVilla]

Do the playing staff have any idea how Villa fans feel about the FA Cup?

[ktvillan]

You'd think we'd just lost to Walsall judging by the tone of this thread. Arsenal played very well in the second half, they're a good side full of good good players with the best striker in the league playing for them. Yes, we made mistakes with the goals but we're a club in the process of downsizing and they're in the knockout stages of the Champions League. That's not to make excuses for how we conceded but to put some perspective into events, they're better than we are so we need for them to have an off day or us to have all the luck going.

Let's just skip all the games leading up to the final then, and play it between the top two teams in the division.  Oh hang on, they've both been knocked out.

Like I said have an off day, like Manu yesterday. Second place knocking out first place hardly falls into the same category as us at Arsenal.

That smacks of "Villa know your place".  If you want some perspective, this is the Arsenal side recently beaten by Fulham and Swansea, and who were held at the Emirates by Wolves and struggled to beat Leeds 1-0 in the last round of the cup.  Their defence is particularly ropey when put under pressure, as we showed first half, and they really aren't that good that they should be able to overcome a 2 goal deficit so easily, especially with their own crowd getting on their backs.  Yes they upped the ante in the second half but would they have scored three if Dunne hadn't dived in like a runaway (late) train to concede the first penalty, or if our two full backs hadn't shown their combined ineptitude to gift them the second?  The fact is our wounds were self inflcited rather than being a result of anything Arsenal did or didn't do, or them being better than us.  With just a modicum of composure and /or intelligence form our defenders, it was all so avoidable.

[Concrete John]

I think we saw the best and worst of McLeish's Villa in that game.

They came at us strong in the 2nd half, as everyone knew they would, but that's when you need a little cuteness to drag the game down and nullify them.  The best way to do that is to keep the ball - notice how the game went a lot flatter after they were 3-2 up?  Why can't we dictate the pace like that when we have a two goal lead?  Of course, defending like a team of Pee Wee Herman's doesn't help either!