The Paul Lambert thread - poll reset after our capitulation to Hull

[Toronto Villa]

A lot of revisionism from our home crowd as well. Very quiet for most of the season but on top form on Saturday. Who can blame them?  We go to be entertained and we were. Nice to see that little mob in the Witton End winding the Chelsea up. The style of football will win over the fans. Very rare we go down when we have such a buoyant crowd. Villa Park is capable of making a right racket. It just needs getting in the mood.

It has been said many times over the years that Villa Park in full voice is amongst the very best stadia to be in. I've heard loads of commentators and neutrals say that. Some crowds for other teams get into it from the start. I've never found Villa crowds to be like that, and we generally need a little bit of encouragement to get us going. It works the other way too, that if things down start too well we get very quiet and aside from the odd chant from various spots in the ground it's not a collective thing. However on nights when everyone is on the same page and the team is playing well, a great place to be.

[eastie]

Vila park is one of the great football stadiums - some people say because of the open corners you don't retain the noise but there have been some great times when the ground has been rocking - in honesty though probably the noisiest and best atmosphere I've seen there though was probably euro 96 when holland played Scotland .

[LeeS]

Even the Sky commentators mentioned the noise coming from the Holte. There seemed to be a huge sense of relief and an outpouring of emotion coming through the telly. It was great

[supertom]

If we've been particularly quiet in the last couple of years it doesn't surprise me given our home form. But the atmos in the last two games, particularly the Chelsea one, prove that if the team gives us something to shout about, we will.
Long may it continue.

[Jarpie]

I'm undecided as I don't quite know what to make of Lambert, sometimes he gets us to play very well against good teams like against Chavski and Liverpool, but sometimes we play just utterly dreadfully under him, like against Everton and West Ham.

He is young manager who's still learning so it might be a good idea to stick with him if he can learn from the mistakes.

Why do you presume it's so easy to play against teams who sit back? We're built for the counter attack – hence our good record against the better teams – and we will be until we get some creative players. Those players cost a lot of money, and Lambert has been tasked with refreshing the entire squad, so it was always going to take time. To me, I don't see it so much as he's making mistakes, at least not to an unreasonable degree because nobody can get everything right 100% of the time, but I think managing a football club is a great deal more complicated than most fans give credit for.

I don't think we were even dreadful against West Ham – we let them score two ludicrous goals from individual mistakes, and at the Everton game we were set up defensively and lost to a world class free kick. I get frustrated because when I hear these kinds of views it seems to me people are saying, 'Look we won, why can't we win all the time?' as if it is that simple. Other teams change their game plans, have their own star players, all of which has a say in the results.

The problem I see with the poor games is that our players were afraid of taking the responsibility, and they all shrinked away, with Vlaar on team we have leader who will instill at least some belief into our players but we'd need someone to do that in midfield too. Not sure is this just the players or haven't Lambert been able to instill this into them.

After the two very good games against Liverpool and WBA, our team just sat back against Everton let them find chinks in our armor. IMO Lambert got that wrong, the way to play against Everton would've been to press them, not to let pass the ball and force them to make the mistakes, and not just sit back and play McLeish-style hoping to prevent them from scoring.

You are right that creative players costs a lot of money, same with the players like Petrov who are leaders on the pitch. Four-five years younger Scott Parker would be perfect for us. Delph might be that but probably not quite ready yet, maybe in couple of years.

To be fair, young players and teams with young average age are always inconsistent, which our on-off-on-off form shows.

[Dante Lavelli]

I think Delph will grow into that talisman midfielder you describe and hopefully with us.  You'd hope that Westwood's form will fluctuate less as he gains experience too.  In my opinion KEA is the man who should be replaced (obviously he'll still play a fair amount to cover injuries/loss of form etc) because at his age, with his experience, he should be pretty mature as an individual and therefore is unlikely to change his personaility now and become the vocal (or lead by example player) that we need.

 

[ciggiesnbeer]

Updated this.

Average points per game Season over Seaon



Total points by game Season over season.

[Tom_Mc9?]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

[Toronto Villa]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

I reckon it will be a draw. I just cannot see this team given its inconsistency winning 3 straight. Off course I'll gladly be proved a complete fool for doubting the lads if we come away with all 3 points.

[Chris Smith]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

You know it will be horrible against Stoke, it always is. I reckon you could give them £500m to spend on players and they would still be shit to watch, it's just in their DNA.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

You know it will be horrible against Stoke, it always is. I reckon you could give them £500m to spend on players and they would still be shit to watch, it's just in their DNA.

I'm sure you'd find plenty that would say the same about us. Hughes has done a decent job there, certainly better than I'd imagined he was capable of achieving but I really do expect us to beat them. We've got to start learning to play dominating football at home rather than the counter attacking away tactics or bust we seem to be limited to. It was my only criticism of the Norwich game; it was a wonderful opportunity to put it into practice instead of letting them have the ball for all the second half and frustrate them.

Saying that, the practice in that 2nd half certainly did us well on Saturday. For all the Chelsea possession, we never really gave them a sniff. Lambert still has to demonstrate he's more than a one dimensional tactician. If he can develop we really can go places. Fail to and we need to look for somebody else but right now it looks like he's bought himself another season.

[Mister E]

Pressing is something we can do against any opposition. Stoke will come and sit back on Sunday, but that doesn't stop us pressing and squeezing them, the difference being, most of this can be done in their half.

We're actually very good at it and make very good sides look ordinary when we get it right.

true, albeit we did this against WetSpam and they suckered us bigtime.

[danlanza]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

I reckon it will be a draw. I just cannot see this team given its inconsistency winning 3 straight. Off course I'll gladly be proved a complete fool for doubting the lads if we come away with all 3 points.

Shall we have the Aston Villa v Oatcake munchers pre-match thread started a bit early ? It seems to have worked for the last two games.

[Monty]

We'll see, he still needs to build on the Norwich twenty minutes. We've always known we're capable of these underdog performances, but that first half against the folk of the Nor, after going behind so abjectly and playing so genuinely shite and the crowd getting on their backs, was really, really impressive. More of that, and there's no problem. Back to West Ham/Palace etc performances, and the crowd will remember what was so annoying before.

[robbo1874]

I've always wanted him to stay, but understand the frustrations of others. I think that it would be absolutely typical for us to balls up against Stoke after beating Chelsea though!

You know it will be horrible against Stoke, it always is. I reckon you could give them £500m to spend on players and they would still be shit to watch, it's just in their DNA.

completely agree Chris. Had high hopes before Chelsea and wasn't disappointed, but instead of us being able to rise to the likes of Chelsea's level, stoke just drag you down. It's almost like playing blues. I'll be both expecting at least a point and happy with a point from stoke. If that makes sense? Probably not...