We go again

[Toronto Villa]

I will point to the fact that we have picked up points despite not playing to what we are capable of. We have lost a centre back who we all thought would improve us in Okore and still improved. We now have the challenge, hopefully for not too long in maintaining our resolve without Vlaar which might be a bigger task. What we all know is that Lowton, Westwood and Benteke, three players that excelled way above expectations last season have been way, way below par this time around. However, I cannot believe that it will last forever and eventually something will change and they will come together. I still maintain that Lambert wants to play the type of football he is always advocating but right now is settling for less of that to ensure we improve defensively.

[not3bad]

What odds would you get on Paul Lambert's eventual departure from the Villa being on a par in the acrimonious stakes with that of his mentor O'Neill?
Surely with the myriad of football betting markets around these days, and lower league footballers trying to make a few bob on them, it's only a matter of time before managers' psychological and personality traits are gambled on.

I've just been reading about this app:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/fashion/social-networking-App-allows-women-to-rate-men.html?_r=1&

All you'd have to do is modify the app to rate a manager's traits and you'd be away.

[paul_e]

I will point to the fact that we have picked up points despite not playing to what we are capable of. We have lost a centre back who we all thought would improve us in Okore and still improved. We now have the challenge, hopefully for not too long in maintaining our resolve without Vlaar which might be a bigger task. What we all know is that Lowton, Westwood and Benteke, three players that excelled way above expectations last season have been way, way below par this time around. However, I cannot believe that it will last forever and eventually something will change and they will come together. I still maintain that Lambert wants to play the type of football he is always advocating but right now is settling for less of that to ensure we improve defensively.

This is my thinking at the minute, if we can look pretty and struggle to get a point or look terrible but get enough points to stay comfortably mid-table then only an idiot would take the first option.  We all want to watch good football, including the manager but sometimes you have to settle for something functional for a while.  Our defence was a big problem last year, with our goals against tally far too high for us to do anything but be in a relegation battle.  Loads of people on here were calling it for months and clearly the manager decided he needed to focus on that side of things for a while, so we got a new coach and we altered the shape of the side and we can see the value of it.  Unfortunately the team haven't yet pinned down a way to play this new shape and create the chances we were seeing at the end of last year.

Once we can get a bit of a settled squad together again (we've been top of the list for injured players for most of the season so far, for the 4th season in a row) we know that the players have it in them to play football and score goals, unfortunately we just need to ride it out a little until things start to tick.  It's not like under McLeish where this football was the aim, for Lambert it's a means to an end.