Aston Villa v Manchester City post match thread

[Ads]

It's because he has grown a beard.

[Toronto Villa]

It's because he has grown a beard.

I think he had one last year. What is clear to me is that his beard has had a frank conversation with Keane's. It is the only explanation I can come up with for the sudden improvement in his form.

[villan from luton]

Baker was superb IMO yesterday and he does seem to have improved from last season. As for his passing, Ken McNaught and Allan Evans were not the most elegant of passers, but were ok for me

[Holte Sweet]

The only purpose of yesterday's fixture imo is to see who looked comfortable in that company , as it is a non starter as a competitive football fixture,

Those that looked ok/comfortable:
Senderos
Baker
Cleverly
Delph
N'Zogbia

Those out of their depth

Weimann
Bacuna
Grealish


The jury is out on the rest.

[Percy McCarthy]

The only purpose of yesterday's fixture imo is to see who looked comfortable in that company , as it is a non starter as a competitive football fixture,

Those that looked ok/comfortable:
Senderos
Baker
Cleverly
Delph
N'Zogbia

Those out of their depth

Weimann
Bacuna
Grealish


The jury is out on the rest.

I thought our keeper and full-backs looked okay too.

I've read a lot more sense in the last few pages of this thread than in the first few.

[villan from luton]

Guzan played well, thought Cissokho was very good, Hutton was shattered but did well. You forgot Westwood by the way, he was excellent. Personally I thought N'Zog did well

[Gregorys Boy]

The beard makes Baker look like Mellberg that must be the key to his improvement right?

I will admit I have only seen the highlights from yesterday, but from what I have seen I don't know if he did defend that well.  It seem more a case of Guzan being in great form, City wasting chances, and a little bit of luck on our part why we almost got a point.  Mostly, I blame Lambert for being too negative.  A big reason why we beat them last season was because of how we pressed them in midfield, while still counter attacking effectively.  Yesterday we got that balance wrong.

[peter w]

The reason we lost wasn't Baker so not sure why we're crossing swords over a player who played well yesterday.

Funny how fans of other clubs saw it yesterday. 6 ot 7 different people couldn't wait to give their judgement yesterday and all were saying that they thought we played well yesterday. When you're too close to the emotive side of football it's easy to miss the bigger picture as we just want one side to win.

As it is for next week I'd drop Weimann and Richardson. I have been disappointed with Richardson as I haven't seen what he delivers apart from huff and puff. I'd also drop NZogbia. If Gabby's fit I'd start him wide, maybe give Sanchez a start and put Cleverley further upfield.

[PeterWithe]

I cant understand the criticism of Cleverley earlier in the thread, I thought that was by far his best performance for us so far.

[villan from luton]

The beard makes Baker look like Mellberg that must be the key to his improvement right?

I will admit I have only seen the highlights from yesterday, but from what I have seen I don't know if he did defend that well.  It seem more a case of Guzan being in great form, City wasting chances, and a little bit of luck on our part why we almost got a point.  Mostly, I blame Lambert for being too negative.  A big reason why we beat them last season was because of how we pressed them in midfield, while still counter attacking effectively.  Yesterday we got that balance wrong.

Trust me, you are totally wrong.

As for people having a dig at Cleverley, not read that, just concerns he is too similar to Westwood which I personally dont agree with as totally different players

[OCD]

The only purpose of yesterday's fixture imo is to see who looked comfortable in that company , as it is a non starter as a competitive football fixture,

Those that looked ok/comfortable:
Senderos
Baker
Cleverly
Delph
N'Zogbia

Those out of their depth

Weimann
Bacuna
Grealish


The jury is out on the rest.

Harsh to be saying a 19-year old who has only played a handful of games and only got a few minutes in the game is out of his depth. It would be nice if players were given a decent chance before being written off rather than expecting instant, overwhelming success and anything otherwise is failure.

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

The beard makes Baker look like Mellberg that must be the key to his improvement right?

I will admit I have only seen the highlights from yesterday, but from what I have seen I don't know if he did defend that well.  It seem more a case of Guzan being in great form, City wasting chances, and a little bit of luck on our part why we almost got a point.  Mostly, I blame Lambert for being too negative.  A big reason why we beat them last season was because of how we pressed them in midfield, while still counter attacking effectively.  Yesterday we got that balance wrong.

Yesterday we did well, pressing them in midfield like last season until about 60  minutes when we seemed to suddenly drop back 10 yards. That was when Toure started to come into the game - he'd done NOTHING until then - all of a sudden it was like a game of shots-in, CiŁy doing whatever they liked. Ironic that when Benteke came on to give us a boost, we resorted to hoofball! Either shit instructions from the bench or a collective decision by the team to surrender!
I was honestly embarrassed by the Toure goal - his "dummy" was spotted 5 minutes earlier by most of the Upper Holte.

[peter w]

More likely that we tried to get the ball up to him quickly so that it could stick. We had no other out ball.

[supertom]

We can't really judge Grealish on saturday. He's not a fullback and he essentially had to play as a second left back. Which made his inclusion pretty pointless because his game should be about influencing things in the final third.

Lets give him a start against QPR or Everton and see how he does in games we SHOULD be looking at attacking more. If we're just gonna sit 10 men behind the ball for 90% of both games then we might as well just play a backline of Lowton, Hutton, Okore, Vlaar, Senderos, Baker, Clark, Cissokho and Stevens and then play Benteke up front on his own. Or failing that turn off all the lights, board up all the windows and lock all the gates at Villa park and leave a sign written on cardboad hanging over the gates saying "Closed for business."

Then leave all our players in the carpark hanging out the boots of their cars waiting to be snapped up on the cheap by opportunistic managers. Redknapp would undoubtedly be first to show up, rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of getting a 30 year old as well travelled as Kieren Richardson and subsequently offer him an 80k a week contract for 6 years.

I can just about understand being so negative against the cheating bastards like Chelsea and City, but if we don't try and compete as an attacking force against the likes of Everton and especially QPR, then we might as well pack it in. No football fan wants to see relentlessly negative and dour football. We want attack, goals, we want liquid football. We want to see the opposition goalkeeper with football pie all over his face.

[Clampy]

I don't think the plan was to be negative on Saturday. They've obviously had Man City watched and noticed that they could be caught on the break, hence the reason maybe why Gabby and N'Zogbia were down to start. I said during the summer I would have liked us to bring in another speedy forward player for when Gabby's not around and we could have done with that at the weekend because apart from N'Zogbia, there's no-one else with pace.