Aston Villa v Reading Post-Match Thread

[PaulWinch again]

Of course it’s possible, but there are just far too many games where Villa fail to get the result they should. Bruce makes this squad look poorer than they should.

[villan from luton]

We were functional yesterday, nothing better. Thought we had three players who played well, Bjarnason, McGinn and The keeper, defensively. The rest? Meh.

Should have won and didn’t. With the squad we have I don’t see what better side we could have picked. We will have less domination and score more goals. The decision making by players was poor. McGinn in the first 30 seconds should have squared the ball. It looked as though they had been told to shoot on sight. If so then Bruce should be criticised for that.

Grealish was pretty poor first half before his knock. Hourihane far better second half. He worked better with mcginn I thought.

I agree with you re Mcginn in first minute, and think it affected him after as don't think he was at his best. Agree with Bikar and Nyland, superb imo. We have some top players now, but will they be allowed to express themselves?

[Chinchilla Bathhouse]

Sometimes events are unexpected and inexplicabale.

Yesterday wasn't unexpected though. Plenty of us could have predicted it, I expect plenty did. We played well midweek, many voiced fears that we couldn't do it again because we rarely do. But it is inexplicable, I'll give you that.

[Ads]

Really? Plenty predicted our most reliable player, one of the best centre halves in the league would have a brain fade in the 93rd minute?

That's some self gratification.

[PaulWinch again]

The error was inexplicable, except that if you fail to make chances pay going into the later stages of games you probably heighten anxiety and that leads to poor decision making.

There are clear trends under the Bruce regime though, fail to finish teams off when we’re on top and we invite pressure onto us. Over the long-term they stop us dominating the league, which we should be doing.

[Ads]

Yes,1-0 is a funny score. I disagree there are clear trends though. Yesterday and Ipswich are two rare examples of us dropping points from winning positions under Bruce.

[Chinchilla Bathhouse]

Really? Plenty predicted our most reliable player, one of the best centre halves in the league would have a brain fade in the 93rd minute?

That's some self gratification.

It might be if I'd said anything like it. Plenty are not surprised that the team followed up a good performance with a poor and disjointed one. We've got used to it. It's hardly the one-off freak event you're trying to paint it.

[Ads]

The performance was poor, but the result was positive and then a curious and unusual event transpired.

[SoccerHQ]

Yes,1-0 is a funny score. I disagree there are clear trends though. Yesterday and Ipswich are two rare examples of us dropping points from winning positions under Bruce.

Vulnerability to us though this season. Let's also remember we were 1-0 up v Wigan and also lost a lead although got away with it in that game.

Last season I was never too concerned when protecting a narrow 1-0 lead like Forest away or even the Boro games.

We'd have probably won Ipswich and yesterday 1-0 if we'd had John Terry at the back talking and keeping everyone calm.

Without that authority we have a soft centre particularly on crosses.

[paul_e]

I agree that shock results happen, one of the key skills for a good manager is to make that rare. I can think of 6-7 games we went into as favourites and didn't win in our last 15-20 games, that's far too common.

Under Bruce it's frustrating that there are very few games that look decided with 10 minutes to go, there's almost always a goal in it either way and every result is very much possible.  Sometimes we benefit, sometimes we don't but you can never feel comfortable. My view all along is that his approach is to kill the game as a contest for 60-70 minutes and try to get a goal in the 'active' periods.

The players get the blame sometimes but my issue with that is that he' signed 20ish players for us now, and played probably another 30 who were already here when he arrived and yet the same patterns apply and the same limitations appear.  A good striker, in good form, makes us more effective at grabbing goals when we go for it and a solid defence makes things steadier when we 'kill' it but the overall approach doesn't change.

[mrfuse]

I’m more pissed off with Chester than anyone else. Terrible defending for the pen.

I don't blame Chester likewise I didn't blame Nyland the other week.

Mistakes are always going to happen, But when we are playing teams of the like of Reading those mistakes surely shouldn't be so costly.

I don't get the logic of that.  The reason these mistakes are so costly is that we aren't actually much better than the likes of Ipswich and Reading, so we don't therefore have the luxury of them.  Besides which, when Chester made that ridiculous challenge it wasn't as if he didn't know we were 1-0 up with a minute to go.

Seems fairly logical to me.

We have one of the best squads in the league, So when we face teams like Ipswich and Reading we score more goals than them.

[robbo1874]

Delivery into the box again was exceptionally poor, while we laboured in possession. We missed Whelan's passing,as Thor struggles with this.

Sheffield United, Blackburn and Rotherham- we need 7 points out of that lot. I fancy us to go 433, although Bolasie and El Ghazi may take some to get up to speed.

We cannot afford for days like this to become a habbit, as it puts us in a position of having to go and beat one of Blackburn or Sheffield United away.

i agree - when was the last time we really came out of the blocks? Gregory’s side -late 90’s - top at Christmas? (Least said about the new year, the better)

Trouble is Ads under Bruce it is a habit. As others have said, a proper attacking performance against the likes of Reading for a team looking to go up automatically would see a 2 or 3 goal win.

This clubs motto used to be Prepared, I struggle to think of a Villa team in the first few months of the season for about the last 20years that’s looked anything like prepared.

[Richard E]

I blame the fourth official for not holding up the board saying how much injury time there was.

[Mister E]

I'm really concerned with Jack, and i seem to be on my own apart from one other person i've spoken to this past week. The Jack of the last few games is NOT the Jack of last season. His energy levels and graft look way down. When you see McGinn ratting around chasing lost causes it just makes it even more obvious. He's not giving it the 100%. I'd say he's in pre kidney injury form, wafting around not really doing much and looking a bit half arsed.

If anything we looked better when Hourihane came on for me.

I actually agree with this and said so to my mates at the game.
It seems to me that JG has either been carrying an injury or believes he’s reached Billy Big Bollox status.
And, Hourihane did play some really neat football in the second half; he looked better than at most times last season, apart from his shooting.

[ktvillan]

Bruce is doing pretty much the same as the last two seasons, the patterns of selection, performances and results are pretty much a continuation from last season.  Really not sure why some people are clinging to the idea that a that a different outcome might be on the horizon.