Fulham v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[ChicagoLion]

If you devide the league teams into these categories:

Lucky if you get anything
Tricky
Winnable

Sadly we are now on everyone's winnable list

Who come the previous 5 teams we played couldn't beat us? O.k on balance of performance probably two of those should've won (Sunderland and WBA) but the reality is we're a mid table team.

A mid table team will win some, draw some and lose some more. We'll pick up enough points from those below us to not have any relegation battle this season but frustratingly just when we have a chance to kick on after a good result we play and lose like today.

I'd be happy with top 10 this season, it's looking like it will just be sneaking into 10th but still it's small progress. I do have my doubts with this current policy when we can really challenge the top 6 again (which Everton and Newcastle are doing). At some point we will have to sign some better players and shock horror these guys will be earning decent wages at the clubs they're at.

Not sure we can consider ourselves as a mid table team, we are a bad run away from fighting it out down the bottom and bsed on the last 3 performances we are more than capable of stinging some bad results together.

[silhillvilla]

Most worrying is the brand of football we play. Square pass x5, Hooooooofff !

[Nastylee]

People can blame Benteke and the other forwards but until the midfield is sorted no one will score goals. Delph excepted, we are devoid of drive, presence, skill or ability to dominate a game. The fact is that we were bossed around by Parker and Sidwell and had no answer. If you don't get a grip in a game then chance will be hard to come by and then strikers will look disinterested as they suffer goal droughts. We need to invest in a proper player who can come in and transform the middle of the park. Will it happen? Probably not!

[Kingthing]

What a load of utter bollocks and my record still stands of not seeing us win away this millennium

Keep away from Everton inFeb, I'm there for the weekend.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Most worrying is the brand of football we play. Square pass x5, Hooooooofff !

You're talking out your arse.

There's no way we can put fives passes together.

[villajk]

We were shit. The ref skanked us twice at least, but doesn't change we were shit. Bacuna was really really shit as was Weimann. And Benteke didn't cover himself in glory again. Delph got booked so is out the manure game.

I await a call from the beeb to go professional.

That about sums it up for me.

I await a call from Lambert to see which position he wants me to play against Man Ure.  I may be nearly 100 and on crutches but doubt I could do worse than some of our lot today.

[eastie]

We were shit. The ref skanked us twice at least, but doesn't change we were shit. Bacuna was really really shit as was Weimann. And Benteke didn't cover himself in glory again. Delph got booked so is out the manure game.

I await a call from the beeb to go professional.

That about sums it up for me.

I await a call from Lambert to see which position he wants me to play against Man Ure.  I may be nearly 100 and on crutches but doubt I could do worse than some of our lot today.

Centre half please pauline with the mercurial dc5 as your rock alongside

[mal]

We were shit. The ref skanked us twice at least, but doesn't change we were shit. Bacuna was really really shit as was Weimann. And Benteke didn't cover himself in glory again. Delph got booked so is out the manure game.

I await a call from the beeb to go professional.

That about sums it up for me.

I await a call from Lambert to see which position he wants me to play against Man Ure.  I may be nearly 100 and on crutches but doubt I could do worse than some of our lot today.

This is a great post sums up the level of comment, in the main, to be found on this thread. A little perspective would not go amiss from a lot of the posters on here.  Sunderland for instance may be shit, may have lost 6-1 at Villa last year and so will easily roll over. Or maybe turn up intending to be very solid and give nothing to avoid a repeat of last year? Fulham with a new man in at home have everything to prove, perhaps? We are clearly a developing team, there are issues and injuries and we are just not going to win comfortably every week.  It's football. I didn't see an awful performance today just agame where luck, the referee and a couple of individual errors went against us.  Fulham weren't that great but we weren't that awful in a keenly contested and very even for the most part, game.  The worst thing was Delph's soft 5th booking but I still dont think Manure will roll us over easily next time out and if anything this defeat might propel us on to that. Up the Villa!

[frank]

How quickly things can change! Against Southampton just a few days ago most of the team played well. Today, nobody did apart from Guzan. The passing was appalling and Westwood's corners and free-kicks were straight out of the Barry Bannan manual (except that Bannan's got getter since he left us). Weimann was completely anonymous. As for Benteke - if he wants a big move in January he's hardly putting himself in the shop window.

[Villafirst]

Surely Grealish and Carruthers are better than Tonev? Albrighton is much better as well. Lambert is clueless, end of!

[villajk]

We pick ourselves up and we are woeful again.

We were stuck on a number 14 bus for about one and a half hours after the game (bloody Christmas shoppers.  Don't you people have anything better to do this time of year?).  Read the above and was laughing that loudly was getting some strange stares from other passengers.  Thanks for brightening up a very tedious bus journey after that awful game.

[pauliewalnuts]

I didn't see an awful performance today just agame where luck, the referee and a couple of individual errors went against us.  Fulham weren't that great but we weren't that awful in a keenly contested and very even for the most part, game. 

I tend to look on the brighter side of the Lambert regime, but I struggle to see us as anything much better than awful today. We hardly managed to string a few passes together, threatened goal how many times - Benteke's header (which was wide anyway), and his shot on 91 mins or so, but what else?

When Fulham went 2-0 up, I thought they looked far more likely to score the third goal of the game than we did.

The referee was awful, yes, but he wasn't the reason we spent most of the game lumping the ball long at Benteke and hoping for the best.

I like said, I tend to look on the bright side, and we are not in a relegation scrap, which you would think we were to listen to some, but that today was a pathetically poor performance.

[Steve kirk]

We have been riding our luck massively in a lot of games this season which is why I am the same as Irish Villain and also get excited about being tenth, however that is not where I expect us to finish, this squad is marginally better than last season so I expect us to end up 13th/14th so slightly better for the 2nd year running, the improvement is painfully slow but I for now will stick by Lambert.

[pauliewalnuts]

How quickly things can change! Against Southampton just a few days ago most of the team played well. Today, nobody did apart from Guzan. The passing was appalling and Westwood's corners and free-kicks were straight out of the Barry Bannan manual (except that Bannan's got getter since he left us). Weimann was completely anonymous. As for Benteke - if he wants a big move in January he's hardly putting himself in the shop window.

We did well on Wednesday, yes, but let's not forget, on Wednesday our passing was truly abysmal, too. The first time in any of the top five European leagues that a side has managed to complete less than 50% of its passes in a match this season, apparently. The passing was awful today, too, but it's been going that way for a while now, we've just been either getting away with it, or making the most of the chances we do create (Southampton).

If we continue to give up possession of the ball so easily and to pass so poorly, we're going to have a lot more days like today. How many times today did we find ourselves in possession, in space, only for the player to look up and belt it aimlessly up-field?

Horrible to watch. I don't know what scares me most - our players being unable to do much better than that, or Lambert actually wanting them to do that.

[eastie]

We were shit. The ref skanked us twice at least, but doesn't change we were shit. Bacuna was really really shit as was Weimann. And Benteke didn't cover himself in glory again. Delph got booked so is out the manure game.

I await a call from the beeb to go professional.

That about sums it up for me.

I await a call from Lambert to see which position he wants me to play against Man Ure.  I may be nearly 100 and on crutches but doubt I could do worse than some of our lot today.

This is a great post sums up the level of comment, in the main, to be found on this thread. A little perspective would not go amiss from a lot of the posters on here.  Sunderland for instance may be shit, may have lost 6-1 at Villa last year and so will easily roll over. Or maybe turn up intending to be very solid and give nothing to avoid a repeat of last year? Fulham with a new man in at home have everything to prove, perhaps? We are clearly a developing team, there are issues and injuries and we are just not going to win comfortably every week.  It's football. I didn't see an awful performance today just agame where luck, the referee and a couple of individual errors went against us.  Fulham weren't that great but we weren't that awful in a keenly contested and very even for the most part, game.  The worst thing was Delph's soft 5th booking but I still dont think Manure will roll us over easily next time out and if anything this defeat might propel us on to that. Up the Villa!

Can't agree at all with that , keenly contested  fairly even, not that bad ?

I thought we were dreadful and very lucky to lose only 2-0 - Fulham were the better team by a mile .