Have we made sufficient progress?

[kippaxvilla2]

You have to go some to spend gross £100m in 18 months and find yourself 12th in the championship.

[ROBBO]

Bruce has the players he inherited to work with, the way he dropped Westwood and Gardner at half time is recognition on his part that some of our squad are crap, lets see who he gets in this month although it is very difficult to get quality in January. If we had someone in the reserves that deserved a chance on merit they would have been given a chance by now which is damning on the way that part of the club has deteriorated.

[paul_e]

Bruce has the players he inherited to work with, the way he dropped Westwood and Gardner at half time is recognition on his part that some of our squad are crap, lets see who he gets in this month although it is very difficult to get quality in January. If we had someone in the reserves that deserved a chance on merit they would have been given a chance by now which is damning on the way that part of the club has deteriorated.

I'm getting a bit tired of reading that bold bit on here and other places.  He's been here 3 months and this was, I think, the first game in that entire time where he hasn't picked 1 of them.  One of our better players against Tottenham was a guy that he dumped in the stiffs for 3 months to accommodate those 2 in the team.  So we clearly did have someone in the reserves that deserved a chance on merit.

In answer to the original question I'd say not yet.  We're more organised defensively and we're not falling apart in the last 5 minutes but we're also creating far fewer chances.  He needs to address that last problem, right now it's caused by the half a pitch sized gap between our midfield and lone striker but he also needs to work out how he wants us to play in attack and start working on it in training because I see no evidence of training when we have the ball, it appears to have been focused entirely on defensive shape and set pieces and I just don't think that will be enough.

[passitsideways]

Nah, but it's a process.

[RichardBatchelor]

Di Matteo was rubbish tactically for sure, but don't agree about his signings being a waste. Kodj, Albert and Chester are all good ones, and Tish and Jedi aren't bad ones. McCormack, however, annoys me. Worse than Gabby.

[ROBBO]

Sometimes it isn't the player it's more the system and game plan, same with Gestede he scored plenty the season before but somehow the way Villa were set up it didn't suit.
Bruce has to be given the chance to bring players in that fits the system he wants to play then we will see if he has got it right.
The one thing that I am convinced about is that Bruce above all previous managers would bust a gut to turn this club around, he knows that he could have a great future at the biggest club he has managed.

[Salsa Party Animal]

No we have too many crap players and not good system and poor entertainment. But it is better than last season dross.  From the two games I saw this season Spurs on TV and Leeds home it is bad enough.

[simboy]

There is progress under Bruce.

 He has got the central defensive partnership right for a start. If he buys well in the January window he will hopefully build us a decent central midfield platform, one that will on occasion get ahead of the attackers, but that's about mentality and confidence in your teammates as much as ability.

As has been said earlier and elsewhere he didn't inherit a "quick fix" team, instead a team that has been in decline since before MON left, each succeeding manager adding to the layers of rubbish we have to rid ourselves of. It's a helluva job. But its baby steps right now.   

I don't expect us to go up this season, and if we did, having seen us play a Spurs second eleven we would need wholesale changes in all positions to even survive a season in the EPL.

   

 

[ozzjim]

Bruce needs to get the midfield and and creativity sorted very quickly. He also needs to recognise that he might need to find a way of playing 2 up front if we want to score goals with the players we have.  Can't see better than about 9th at the moment. Selling Gestede and keeping Gabby in the side makes even less sense.  About an D- so far.

[ROBBO]

He probably would have preferred to sell Gabby but as you well know there are no buyers.

[sirlordbaltimore]

In the summer I thought we'd be lucky to make the play offs, and that it'd take us 2/3 seasons to get promoted

After the spend, I thought play offs should be the minimum requirement

Once we changed managers I reevaluated that to thinking we may, at a push just about make the play offs

Now all I want to see are clear signs we'll be better equipped to make a challenge for automatic promotion next season. This month will tell us a lot

[chrisw1]

If we make 2-3 astute signing I really can't see why it looks like such a stretch for our expensively assembled squad to bridge a 6-7 point gap over half a season.  I appreciate it's a tricky league and it's never easy, but surely we still have a good fighting chance of making the playoffs?

[ktvillan]

We haven't made anything like £55m worth of progress.  RDM wasted a lot of that to produce a massively unbalanced squad that had no midfield and couldn't defend, but at least played some exciting attacking football.  Bruce has shored up the defence,  but struggled with the limited midfield options, not helped by his bizarre insistence on persevering with Driftwood and Garbagener and ignoring Tshibola and Bacuna.  The creativity has suffered massively as has the quality of the football.  We're still a basket case with far too many mediocre to abysmal players who should never have been signed and aren't fit to wear the shirt.  The fact that some of those are recent signings indicates our scouting system and / or coaching is still shite. I'm not sure how we managed that after spending so much, but hey this is Villa.

[brontebilly]

We haven't made anything like £55m worth of progress.  RDM wasted a lot of that to produce a massively unbalanced squad that had no midfield and couldn't defend, but at least played some exciting attacking football.  Bruce has shored up the defence,  but struggled with the limited midfield options, not helped by his bizarre insistence on persevering with Driftwood and Garbagener and ignoring Tshibola and Bacuna.  The creativity has suffered massively as has the quality of the football.  We're still a basket case with far too many mediocre to abysmal players who should never have been signed and aren't fit to wear the shirt.  The fact that some of those are recent signings indicates our scouting system and / or coaching is still shite. I'm not sure how we managed that after spending so much, but hey this is Villa.

Newcastle and Brighton have Clark and Sidwell as two of their better players so it's not all about individual quality particularly in the second division. Gayle and Murray both flopped for Palace in the top division but both are destroying our one. That Leeds team is brimful of average players. They all seem well drilled teams though, ours still doesn't. Sure some better players should improve things but better tactics, coaching and player selection are the real issue I reckon.

[oswald funkletrumpet]

We haven't made anything like £55m worth of progress.  RDM wasted a lot of that to produce a massively unbalanced squad that had no midfield and couldn't defend, but at least played some exciting attacking football.  Bruce has shored up the defence,  but struggled with the limited midfield options, not helped by his bizarre insistence on persevering with Driftwood and Garbagener and ignoring Tshibola and Bacuna.  The creativity has suffered massively as has the quality of the football.  We're still a basket case with far too many mediocre to abysmal players who should never have been signed and aren't fit to wear the shirt.  The fact that some of those are recent signings indicates our scouting system and / or coaching is still shite. I'm not sure how we managed that after spending so much, but hey this is Villa.

Newcastle and Brighton have Clark and Sidwell as two of their better players so it's not all about individual quality particularly in the second division. Gayle and Murray both flopped for Palace in the top division but both are destroying our one. That Leeds team is brimful of average players. They all seem well drilled teams though, ours still doesn't. Sure some better players should improve things but better tactics, coaching and player selection are the real issue I reckon.

Agree with the second paragraph totally

I thought leeds were very average and like the other teams in the top 6 worked hard, had a shape and everyone knew their role and stuck to it

Bruce has been given a difficult hand and is working towards rectifying it, it will be nice to see the same 11 week in week out barring injuries and a decent shape