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

[curiousorange]

When you think of the fine squads who've tried to win this cup for Villa over the past 55 years and not managed it, this bunch of collective turd weren't going to be the ones to go down in history. I honestly couldn't give a shit about this team any more.

[mattjpa]

people may get into hutton as well for the goal but watching it back with a clearer head, its warnock that again gets fingered by walcott. hutton is an easy target but they didnt have much joy down out right, oxlade didnt have too much joy against him

So when did Warnock get fingered by Walcott?

And is it on youtube?

lol, very good. but it was warnock who missed the tackle when walcott broke into the box

[PeterWithesShin]

All we had to do was hold out for 10-15 of that second half and the game was ours. The fans had already turned on Arse, half of them seemed to not bother going to their seats until they scored.

2 up, half time, away form home in the cup, home fans turning on a side low on confidence common sense to me was to take either Keane or Gabby off at HT and stick a midfielder in there and fill up the midfield. Do you really need 4 attacking players on the pitch in such circumstances?

Arse biscuits, i'm well and truly fucked off with Villa right now.

[Somniloquism]

Even at 2-0 .you knew it

This.

My brother said the same. I defended us saying we can sit back and defend and then Arse will leave space at the back for us to counter attack like the second goal and like against Chelsea. Instead we suddenly decided to try to attack them and the full backs and "defensive" mids were trying to get into their half.

But as soon as they got the first you knew the confidence would go from our lads. Just not that fast.

One question though, Ireland through into the box, no defenders near him, so why did he try to play in Bent who had three defenders on him?

[toplad4u]

McCleish claims the second goal came off Walcott hands replays suggest it did but the ref would never give it.

[tarzansbrother]

The Manager had the right idea today. The players just let him down with some shocking decisions.

Did he? Playing Warnock, buying and playing Hutton. 2 in midfield, Gabby on the wing. Continuing with Dunne,Collins and Cuellar who's mind is elsewhere. I would have took Bent off at half time as well playing Gabby up top and adding an extra defensive player.

Ok, so where are the 4 replacement defenders coming from?

Do you propose that we should have played the youth team against Arsenal at the Emirates?

Clarke needs time at centre half. So needs to be played now. To often Dunne,Collins keep playing.  Warnock and Hutton need to be shot. I would now start to play the youth players, why not.

[pauliewalnuts]

Our problem is that we are pretty much incapable of playing a match which does not include a spell - usually of thirty minutes or more - in which we are utterly, utterly terrible.

Sometimes it is the first half (Wolves), other times it is the second half (today), and at times it is the entire match (Liverpool, Spurs), but that spell is pretty much always there.

Outside these awful spells, we sometimes play some decent stuff, but that's never, ever going to be enough when you can put together a spell of such ineptitude, it just undoes all the hard work you do at other points, and you're always up against it at some point.

What scares me is that we cant do anything to get new faces in to freshen up this cack defence - there's no money, so we're stuck with them.

In fact, with the club being set up for mediocrity, which is the inevitable consequence of being self-sustaining (which has become the club's buzz phrase just as convincingly as Proud History, Bright Future did), we're going to have to get used to a decent spell of just making up the numbers at the very best, and flirting with relegation at the worst.

There's a lot wrong with the club at the moment. Days like today when you get a bit of false hope are really just distractions from the general trend of the way things are going.

[PaulWinch again]

I knew we'd fuck it up, but didn't think we'd be quite so poor as we were. The defence all has to go. Clark was also very very poor today and didn't do anything. I'm fed up with all this.

[littlevillain]

on a positive note our fans sounded brilliant today.

[pauliewalnuts]

Oh well, look on the bright side, work tomorrow.


*goes headfirst off bridge*

[ez]

As soon as Randy paid for the coaches i had a bad feeling

[Chris Smith]

It was obvious they were going to hit us with everything in the second half and for 15 minutes they played extremely well but the goals were all avoidable. If you give away 2 penalties, although I thought the second was harsh, then you're unlikely to get anything at Arsenal.

That said, we shouldn't forget how well we did in the first half. The talk was a few months ago that we didn't mind losing to the top sides as long as we had a go and we certainly did that. Perhaps our expectations have changed since then.

[Jockey Randall]

On another positive note, we do look like we have more goals in us than a couple of months ago

[garyshawsknee]

Once they got their first it really showed how slow and light our midfield is. Clark is young and is allowed a poor perfromance,Petrov's better days are way behind him,Ireland is showing his class going forward,but won't really put a foot in,he and Keane can't play in the same side as we become too light weight. The fullbacks were fully exposed against two of the quickest players in the league.

 The sad things is,as others have said if we got through the first 15 mins,i think we'd have been ok.

[Nii Lamptey]

What the hell were ESPN doing with the sound - Anyone else notice?

All I could hear through my surround speakers was some posh Arsenal twat pretending to be 'one of the boys', and on the odd occasion some French guys would start having a conversation in the other speaker. Sounded like they'd placed the mics under their seats?!

Made watching the game even more infuriating.... Thought the ref was fair though - Any other match and Dunne would have walked. Common sense prevails for once!