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Author Topic: Anyone starting to get worried?  (Read 220104 times)

Offline tomd2103

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #315 on: September 23, 2019, 02:23:46 PM »
It pains me to see Villa struggling after all that effort to get out of the Championship.

we are not struggling! - we have held our own for most of the matches against Spurs and Arsenal who have finished top 6 for how many years?. More than held our own against a decent West Ham team, beaten Everton and should have beaten Bournemouth. We have been denied 2 points from ludicrous VAR decisions against Palace and Arsenal. Had we got those we would be on 6 points only 2 points behind Spurs and Man Utd! Naïve yes, struggling definitely not. It is a massive learning curve in the step up from the championship to the premier league and this takes time. I will see how we are doing at Christmas time - until then I will ignore the negative opinions of many fickle supporters on here and twitter who are exact same ones calling for Dean Smiths head in January last year and we know what happened after that!

Agree with this.  Think we will have a far better idea of where we are after the next three league games.   

Offline Gerrin

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #316 on: September 23, 2019, 02:38:23 PM »
It pains me to see Villa struggling after all that effort to get out of the Championship.

we are not struggling! - we have held our own for most of the matches against Spurs and Arsenal who have finished top 6 for how many years?. More than held our own against a decent West Ham team, beaten Everton and should have beaten Bournemouth. We have been denied 2 points from ludicrous VAR decisions against Palace and Arsenal. Had we got those we would be on 6 points only 2 points behind Spurs and Man Utd! Naïve yes, struggling definitely not. It is a massive learning curve in the step up from the championship to the premier league and this takes time. I will see how we are doing at Christmas time - until then I will ignore the negative opinions of many fickle supporters on here and twitter who are exact same ones calling for Dean Smiths head in January last year and we know what happened after that!



I agree with this. The only game I'm pissed off about is the Bournemouth game, we should've won that one, but gave them a 2 goal start. After watching the Newcastle home match on Saturday, they are in a much worse state than us. The team are hopeless, 25% possession at home against Brighton. The club as a whole is in a similar state to when we went down, nobody cares. At least there's optimism back at Villa. I think we'll have enough to stay up, see where we're at Christmas like you say.

Offline Abbeyfealeavfc

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #317 on: September 23, 2019, 06:30:34 PM »
Hahahaha qwerty
Get over yourself mate!

Online dave.woodhall

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #318 on: September 23, 2019, 08:49:20 PM »
also known as a person entitled to an opinion?

Why is it that those who moan about not being allowed to have an opinion are invariably the ones who think nobody should ever dissgree with them?

Offline AllanW

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #319 on: September 23, 2019, 09:24:12 PM »
Yep. This may be crossing-over with the 'Realistic Expectations' thread but I agree there are at least 3 teams who are obviously worse than us and I'd expect after the whole season to see us finish above them;

Watford
Brighton
Newcastle

I'd add that Crystal Palace and Southampton may well perform worse than us as well.

We've begun gelling a new team and that will take time. We have a capable and skilled set of staff, a terrific set of players who are more than good enough to get better and better and, most importantly, a big and growing fanbase wager for good football. The future is bright. 

No, I'm not worried, I'm excited. UTV.

Offline tomd2103

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #320 on: September 23, 2019, 11:43:43 PM »
Yep. This may be crossing-over with the 'Realistic Expectations' thread but I agree there are at least 3 teams who are obviously worse than us and I'd expect after the whole season to see us finish above them;

Watford
Brighton
Newcastle

I'd add that Crystal Palace and Southampton may well perform worse than us as well.

We've begun gelling a new team and that will take time. We have a capable and skilled set of staff, a terrific set of players who are more than good enough to get better and better and, most importantly, a big and growing fanbase wager for good football. The future is bright. 

No, I'm not worried, I'm excited. UTV.

What also provides some reassurance is the thought that if things do begin to slide badly enough for the button to be pushed on DS, the ambition and the money is seemingly there for a more than decent replacement to be attracted to the club and reinforcements brought in during the January transfer window.

Obviously hope the former of those is not required.

Offline boozey182

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #321 on: September 24, 2019, 10:54:49 AM »
On Sunday, after the match, I thought we were doomed. I expected to get battered by them, losing 3 or 4 nil, but somehow losing like that was much, much worse. Yesterday, I was angry, mainly with the officiating - it felt a bit like the world was against us.

Today though, I feel much more positive. I've watched our goals back and they are both excellent; the first a long, patient build up, stringing together passes from back to front, right to left - they didn't get near us. And the second was all about Jack - driving 50 yards, with the defence to scared to make a tackle, and our star striker being clinical. It's the goal we've been waiting for all season.

So on Sunday, I was very much of the opinion that if we couldn't get something from that match, how on earth are we going to get enough points to stay up? Not a wholly unreasonable position, but one I've shrugged off. Now I'm thinking that things are just starting to click. That we're seeing glimpses of what we expected to see this team doing: passing through teams, running at defences, taking the game to teams no matter who they are. We outplayed Arsenal for a long time on Sunday, now we have to build on that.

The weaknesses in our team are definitely concerning, but the biggest problem at for us at the moment is mental - the sort of thing you learn with experience and we are getting taught lessons by the bucket load at the moment. It may well stand us in good stead later on in the season.

Personally, I think now is the time to really get behind Dean and the team. A lot of us said that we've got to give Dean time, and even if we went down, we'd trust him to bring us back up and build something lasting. (Presumably, having been relegated without losing a match and playing fantastically every week..!) Well this is the moment we need to all step up - three points on Saturday would be massive, and we need to create an atmosphere like the Everton match.

This time last year we were losing to Millwall, Wednesday and QPR, and look how we turned it around. We're just getting started, there is no need to worry.

Online OzVilla

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #322 on: September 24, 2019, 11:20:16 AM »
I had to drive down for meetings in Brisbane today. I went back through a few Villa View podcasts from February.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come from where we were then. I’m not suggesting all is rosy but it bloody well cheered me up.

Online Billy Walker

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #323 on: September 24, 2019, 11:20:56 AM »
I'd say at this stage there's a good ten clubs who are all capable of finishing in the bottom three.  The difference between staying up and going down will be overall squad ability and depth, allied to team spirit and fan support.  If Villa fans, home and away, can stick together throughout the inevitable ups and downs of this particular campaign, and we use our squad and January transfer window wisely, we can survive and build/kick on again next season.  Villa Park, especially, will play a crucial part this season, we have to keep the "Everton match atmosphere" up win, lose or draw. 

Online Billy Walker

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #324 on: September 24, 2019, 11:26:03 AM »
I had to drive down for meetings in Brisbane today. I went back through a few Villa View podcasts from February.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come from where we were then. I’m not suggesting all is rosy but it bloody well cheered me up.

Exactly, this time last year we were losing 1-2 at home to Sheffield Wednesday.  If someone had told me then that we would be back in the top flight a year later, bitterly frustrated due to losing at the Emirates, I wouldn't have believed it.  We have travelled a huge distance in a very short time and a lot of the reason for that, in my opinion, is the bond that was rekindled between the Club and the fanbase.  If we stick together we can push on.

Online FatSam

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #325 on: September 24, 2019, 11:26:08 AM »
I didn't watch the Arsenal game live, but watched a full replay last night, after having watched MOTD on Saturday night, and read people’s reactions on here. 

In my opinion we were the better team in the first half, and despite conceding a goal, looked fairly comfortable until around the 70 minute mark – just before Arsenal made their double substitution. The double substitution was a really positive and well-timed intervention to support the pressure Arsenal had started to put on us immediately before this. From that point on we lost control of the game, only coming back into it after Arsenal had taken the lead – although they saw the game out much more competently than we had been doing previously.

I think Terry Gibson was the co-commentator, and whilst it was fairly obvious stuff, I thought he summarised events very well. He was saying early in the second half that we were the better team, but wasteful, and needed to make the extra man count as Arsenal would have a spell at some point in the game despite being a man down. It felt like we were taking things for granted and lacked urgency in that period between the sending-off and the double substitution – we seemed happy to trundle along with a one goal lead.

We obviously need to learn how to make an extra man count. I think this is partly tactical, and comes from the shape and substitutions made by DS, and partly down to the urgency and decisiveness shown by the players. I think both were suspect on Saturday, and we let a game that we should have been bossing escape from us. Arsenal are apparently the only team I n the EPL who have won more matches than they have lost when they have a player sent off. I can understand why this is the case, as the best form of defence is attack, and they generally take the game to the opposition.

The really important thing is to learn from it. We needed to be the team taking the initiative and asking the questions in the second half, and the substitutions needed to be in pursuit of that.

More generally, the two most reliable weapons we currently have in my opinion are Jack carrying the ball towards the opposition penalty box, and Conor taking dead balls. Jack needs to be in the right position to be making those runs with the ball, as they frequently result in goals. I don’t understand why it only happens once or twice a game – we should be trying to orchestrate this at every opportunity.

Offline Villa75

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #326 on: September 24, 2019, 11:35:38 AM »
We don't seem to be playing as a coherent unit. We look like a group of individuals, with individual ideas, who occasionally link for the odd bit of good play, seemingly by accident rather than design.

Obviously this is mostly down to playing in a new division with a lot of new players. Dean's job is to get us playing as that coherent unit, and quickly, otherwise we will go down.

Online Monty

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #327 on: September 28, 2019, 04:57:10 PM »
This is by no means a certain-doom prediction, but we've taken 2 points from Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley at home, and 0 points away. I think we're a good side, but at the moment I don't think we're better than 3 other sides in this division.

Online curiousorange

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #328 on: September 28, 2019, 05:26:58 PM »
I honestly can't remember how we stopped up during those Lambert seasons; all I know is that somehow we did. That's what I'm hoping for this time around, because quite honestly I don't have the stomach for a promotion battle again. Just work it out, Smith, ffs.

Offline GarTomas

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Re: Anyone starting to get worried?
« Reply #329 on: September 28, 2019, 05:29:47 PM »
Hopefully we’ve not yet played the teams who are worse than us to finish above.

 


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