Ashley Westwood - Sold to Burnley

[aj2k77]

Let's just be glad he's gone,  something we can all agree on is £5m is a hell of a lot of money for a scarecrow.

[Mister E]

The guys confidence was totally shot and just reading some of these comments make you understand why. He really was not a bad player, probably not what we needed in the latter stages. I recall arguing with someone at Brighton when he was given a hospital pass and lost out, the guy started giving him grief and it was totally Amavis fault with the pass. Sean Dyche is certainly not a balloon as mentioned above, he is a bloke who knows how to get the best out of his players. I read a local newspaper reporter saying Westwood came on with 15 left last week and made an impression on the game. I agree it was best for both parties for him to go, but I don't agree he is a poor player

well said, Sir!

[Jimbo]

I keep hearing how he's such a nice bloke. He was certainly nice and kind to opposing players, but how does anybody know how nice he is in real life? It took me about a year and a half to recognise his face, so anonymous was he on the pitch.

Maybe some of you attended some kind of Ashley Westwood Nice Guy coffee mornings, or something? I didn't get the invite, so I can only base a judgement on what he's said in the press.

Since signing for Burnley with a face like a bowl of cold custard, all I've heard is him talking about going where he's appreciated, to a proper club, and how he's been rescued from Villa, the club that plucked him out of lower-league obscurity, played him at every opportunity, gave him years of support (before he was found out), kept him for nearly five years and made him rich beyond his fucking dreams.

I don't know about 'nice bloke', he sounds more like an ungrateful, deluded, and ever so slightly catty twit to me. That's on top of being a piss-poor excuse for a midfielder.

[amfy]

When he gave the ball away for the Preston goal, he had passed back a few moments earlier and got seriously booed by us, so he received the ball somewhere where he should really have passed back, and tried to play it instead. (that was something I picked up on one of my visits to the club). This was given as an example of why getting on players backs can be so counterproductive.

Don't get me wrong - I do think our players do need to be tough enough to choose the right ball regardless of any stick they might be getting, but I also think we also need to ask ourselves whether sabotaging our own players in that way is the best use of our support.

I think Ashley Westwood came to us a promising player (as is shown by the early stages of this thread) and was badly affected by how difficult a period we were in. As people have also said, the only one who looked seriously upset by our relegation - a player who really feels stuff so the shitstorm affected him worse than others. In the end, it became a horrible vicious circle with us and him, which was never going to turn from a downward to upward spiral and was painful for both him and us to live with.

It was a good move for him, he needed to go. I hope he is tougher, and I wish him well.

[Jimbo]

Fair comments, amfy, but I think you have to look at it in context. Westwood had been given years of support and turned in some of the weakest, most anonymous performances we've ever seen from a Villa midfielder in return. We dropped down a division because of him and his ilk, and still he couldn't cut it.

At Preston, not only did he make a mistake, but he didn't try to rectify it. He just stopped, put his hands up and allowed them to go on and score. That's when he started getting major stick from the fans. If the fans sabotaged Westwood, what had he been doing to our midfield for the best part of five dreary, disastrous years?

[Ads]

We were on Westwood's back at Preston because we were full to the brim of watching his shit week in week out. He was weak physically and mentally.

Ive watched nigh on every game we've played the past 26 years and I cannot recall a single player who would wind me up like him. He was so out of his depth that it wasn't funny.

By the time relegation had been accepted he was the source of black humour. Id try and shout and invective at him such as "a wanker like you has played 150 times for us" and end up laughing at how fucking riduclous that somebody as awful as him had managed that. More apparences than John Carew! Haha! I'd like to have seen him put in a trebuchet with a bag of badgers infected with TB and launched anywhere but Villa Park.

Absolute shite player of the lowest quality who, and I apologise for repeating myself for the 2000 time, the poster boy for our decline.

[amfy]

If we needed a poster boy for our decline the are quite a few I'd have on my wall ahead of him. As it happens we weren't short of them, and we have had enough who were 'WILFULLY poor', as opposed to 'drained of confidence poor,' to not need to give him the level of stick he got.

He does need to be tougher though, because it's that, his inability to cope with the stick, that turned him into a poorer and poorer player the longer he was with us.

[Ads]

It's his lack of contribution to.anything meaningful. We could play Chester in the midfield if we're after accurate square balls. What did he do going forwards? One ball at Norwich and one goal at the Albion is all that sticks out.

His weak physical presence and the complete in ability to stop runners drifting off him was criminal.

A shocking player never in a million years good enough to play in the top flight.

[Jimbo]

What was said by some fans at the beginning of Westwood's time with us didn't really chime with me. I never saw anything that suggested he was going to be any good, and so it turned out. Some vociferously pointed that out, and got shot down in flames on this site.

The best anyone could say of Westwood is he turned up for training and didn't take the piss off the pitch. When on it he ran his heart out to little effect and sometimes 'kept the ball moving', which for a footballer is hardly an achievement. These are the kindest things I can say about him.

I think some of the things said about him at the start were more out of hope and the kind of subjective football fan's enthusiasm that imbues our own players with more promise than they're ever likely to fulfil. See also Amavi as a full-back.

[brontebilly]

Some very harsh commentary on here re Westwood. The club turned out to be too much for him but that's been the case for umpteen other players, managers etc many of which were signed for a lot more. He was a decent signing with potential, didn't quite work out but we haven't lost any money on him.

Sean Dyche isn't a head banger so obviously sees something in him. Lowton looked out of his depth too with us but appears to be holding his position. Burnley are 20 odd places above us at the moment too let's not forget

[Gregorys Boy]

Yeah no great loss.  Showed promise at the start, but faded quickly and just does very little.  The midfield has been too light weight and I think he was part of that problem. 

[aj2k77]

He can't actually kick a ball properly.

[wittonwarrior]

Lucky man getting out of that mess at villa park

[Chris Jameson]

We've certainly improved since getting rid of him.

[kippaxvilla2]

He's making his debut today at home to Chelsea.