Birmingham City v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[Villa Lew]

Aston Villa's updated league record against Birmingham:

WWWWWWDDDWD

12 years, 11 games and counting... 💪

That's a club reckon apparently, so at least we achieved something today

Mile immense as he was 12 months, gotta play Wednesday ahead of Whelan. Keinan very good, inches away from becoming a Villa legend, Kodjia doubtful for Wednesday, so the likelihood is he will start. Overall far from great but reckon a draw was a fair result.

[ez]

If we follow that with a win against Preston I'll be satisfied.

[Three Spires Villa]

For me we got a er, battling draw! against a horrible, horrible club, so well done. It wasn't pretty, never is, they could have scored, we could have scored, but they still cant beat us, ha ha

Ye Preston away is important, just glad its over tbh

[Gareth]

Typical derby, very little quality - other than the suicidal ball from Hourihane to put Jota in I didn’t think they had much once Hutton sorted out the Vassell threat.

We still looked what we are, a team that doesn’t commit enough going forward - play with these inverted wingers who are too predicatable (maybe swap them round occasionally?) & rely on Kodjia producing a moment of magic too often.

Bench options seemed strange-with Jedinak & De Laet on there why do you need Samba - O’Hare or Grealish offer something different on the ball, positive to change. 

Why bring Hogan on for the left wing? Surely Bjarnasson would have been more suited to that role?

Win on Wednesday and today can quickly be forgotten

[Brend'Watkins]

Drop the negative comments guy's.  We've taken a point and we can move onto Preston knowing a win would be a good return on 2 difficult away games.

No divine right, it's a difficult division. I don't care.

With the money spent and the squad of players, we should be causing teams more problems. Football is not a mystical thing, if you have resources and underperform, it's usually down to the manager.

Bruce must set us out to be cautious in this fixture. We clearly have more quality than they do but don’t utilise it. Yes, you’ll expect a battle but really, a bit of width and movement and we’re well capable to control such a game. Instead, we have a midfield too deep and fuck ups like Hourihane’s always a possibility. That said, I’m pleased with a point but with a bit more drive and imagination 3 were there for the taking.

[Legion]

Johnstone can consider himself lucky not to be added to the select group of GK clangers over the years.

[Gareth]

Johnstone can consider himself lucky not to be added to the select group of GK clangers over the years.

He’s earnt his slice of luck this year :-)

[Fin Feds Dad]

Just got out of the ground.

Yet another painful episode of “Bruceball” - he’s so negative .

[astonvillan]

Over an hour on the hill to be moved to the fucking car park.

fuck me, I watched the game in Nottingham and have got back to Birmingham before you guys have even moved. That is ridiculous.

Terrible. If you look on Twitter, our football police officer guaranteed a chap he'd be out the ground by 1430 'easy'. The guy has an 1855 flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg!

[Ads]

Avoid the Woodman and the Eagle by Curzon Street. About 50 or so of their lot are grouping up.

[wittonwarrior]

All the way down the road to town are small mobs just by new steeet now

[Ads]

An escort of Villa has gone through. Lot of faces and even more police. Nothing happening but you know what these are like for bullying.

[tomd2103]

Just got home after watching the game out earlier.  Decent start and finish, but absolutely horrendous 60 minutes in between.  We might be able to do it at home, but yet again we've seen that Whelan and Hourihane as a midfield two is pretty weak.  When you added in the fact that Kodjia was being being bullied up front (thought the ref let their centre halves get away with a lot), we were all over the place.  Bringing Jedinak on shored things up a bit in midfield and bringing Davis on meant we were able to hold the ball up.  Again it concerns me that Bruce left it quite late to change things (we could have been out of the game by then) and that we somehow ended up with Hogan on the left wing. 

In terms of our players, though Johnstone was OK but got a bit lucky in the first half, the back four did OK on the whole even if the distribution was poor at times, Whelan and Hourihane were overrun in midfield and gave the ball away quite a bit, Onomah and Snodgrass were poor, Adomah did OK and Kodjia had another tough time there.

On a separate note, whenever it went out for a throw or corner and it showed the first few rows of their fans, it looked the kind of scenes you would see in a cage at a rescue home for deranged chimps. 

[sirlordbaltimore]

Fairly poor performance, half decent result.

[davidb]

Big fan of jedinak