Aston Villa v Leicester Post Match Thread

[Stu]

Can't really see Smith getting another striker in order to drop our record signing that he signed.

[BoVillan esq]

I'd be amazed and disappointed if we didn't bring in 2 or 3 players, I doubt we'll be spending £100m for example but I fully expect we'll be doing some business, or at least will be trying to as one thing I do believe is we don't do any panic signings.

Appreciate this is all conjecture and what might be, but rumour has it that Liverpool could offload Shaqiri in January, just a thought.

[Stu]

Is there any indication that money will be made available in January? I'd say that there's a pretty good argument to be made by the chairman that Smith has had enough money already.

True, but then the CEO has to live with the consequences of making and acting upon making an argument like that, horrendous.

It's bad signings that cost managers their jobs mostly. Not saying that Smith ought to be sacked, but his signings aren't performing.

[Sexual Ealing]

Is there any indication that money will be made available in January? I'd say that there's a pretty good argument to be made by the chairman that Smith has had enough money already.

True, but then the CEO has to live with the consequences of making and acting upon making an argument like that, horrendous.

It's bad signings that cost managers their jobs mostly. Not saying that Smith ought to be sacked, but his signings aren't performing.

Aren't they Suso's signings?

[BoVillan esq]

Is there any indication that money will be made available in January? I'd say that there's a pretty good argument to be made by the chairman that Smith has had enough money already.

True, but then the CEO has to live with the consequences of making and acting upon making an argument like that, horrendous.

It's bad signings that cost managers their jobs mostly. Not saying that Smith ought to be sacked, but his signings aren't performing.

Agree, bad signings, expensive signings and not making them work, then its curtains. 

[villadelph]

Is there any indication that money will be made available in January? I'd say that there's a pretty good argument to be made by the chairman that Smith has had enough money already.

True, but then the CEO has to live with the consequences of making and acting upon making an argument like that, horrendous.

It's bad signings that cost managers their jobs mostly. Not saying that Smith ought to be sacked, but his signings aren't performing.

Aren't they Suso's signings?

Over the summer they did try to make it apparent that it was a team effort and they had a plan all along.

[Flamingo Lane]

Granted Leicester are/were very good, but I cannot think of a single positive to take from this afternoon, from team selection (bizarre) through to performance, individual and collective.  I don't know who it was, but one of the posters on this post match thread was of the view that this was at least the last in our run of 'difficult games' - errm, Sheffield United away next, not a difficult game?

Of many disappointments on such an afternoon though, the lowlight was possibly our 'captain's' senseless but thoroughly deserved yellow card, in the last minute of a game that was already lost.

[LukeJames]

We were like headless chickens today. Guilbert should of played but it would of made little difference.

Were conceeding atleast 2 a game, many of them have been avoidable.

Big big period coming up for us now, but going forward we need to get over the superiority complex that we seem to hsve against the better teams.

[nick harper]

We are a lazy team without the ball - far too open and leave acres of space. Vardy must have thought Christmas had come early.

Smith needs to make us harder to play against. For all the demands for another striker it’s not scoring goals that’s our problem, it’s looking like we will concede every time the opposition go forward.

A big 3 weeks coming up.

[David_Nab]

Poor today gave poor goals away but overall MF just never got into the game .McGinn has gone off the boil and Luiz too slow on the ball .Team selection I'd question Elmo but would have likely had the rest the same despite spending 100mil we are short of quality.Houraine as good as he was against Newcastle was hopeless against Chelsea and Luiz came on and looked better.

Lansbuy and Kodjia are just making up spaces on the bench neither are good enough , Kodjia I think will be sold in Jan whilst he still has some value.Transfer window we need bodies in and if they have to be loans so be it worrying about developing other teams players comes secondary to staying up IMO

[Toronto Villa]

For me they were comfortably the best side we've faced this season. Add in that we made a load of stupid mistakes, had a number of players below par and we're probably lucky it was only 4.

We've been saying the same thing all season. At Spurs stupid mistakes let them back in the game late which we ended up losing. Against Bournemouth stupid mistakes gifted 2 goals and we lost that. In every game we have lost stupid mistakes have cost us. Even in the win vs Norwich a stupid mistake cost as goal. The question is why are we still making stupid mistakes week after week? Why has a manager like Steve Bruce, who we all saw hardly has an amazing team managed to do what is needed to climb to a very solid mid table position. Or Chris Wilder not having spent much at all over the last few seasons got his promoted side to a very solid top half position. This comes down to the manager, who is revealiong himself to be both naive and dare I say it arrogant in his unwillingness to adapt. His stubborness to continue to persevere with a CF who is struggling is mind boggling. If it's not working try something else. Change things up. This is not going to end well for Dean Smith because new contract or not if we start to get detached from the mid table postions then he'll be gone.

He hasn't got another striker. Kodjia is no good post-injury. Let's see what we look like in February.

We simply don't know that for sure because he hasn't been given a run of games. He seems to do ok for Ivory Coast whenever he goes away with them. I would give him two or three games because he will need to get into things but he offers a very different way of playing. That or we stick AEG up there with Trez out wide. We simply have to play a different way because this, right now is not working.

We've just had a run of games against the best teams in the country (and possibly continent/planet) plus Man Utd, Wolves and Newcastle. We're not as good as them. We knew that.

And somehow with the exception of Liverpool and Leicester all of those upper echelon teams have lost games to teams they should not have based on their status in the game, and yet we managed to lose all of them bar Man U. Newcastle have beaten Man U, Spurs, Bournemouth, Sheff Utd and drew with Man City. You work with what you have. We all know Steve Bruce is limited as a manager but he's made best use of what he has whereas Smith just hasn't. We are simply dreadful defensively and a player like Mings, who we would all hope would be the leader of the group has been the most careless of them all. Why hasn't that been corrected? And what the fuck is Dean Smith doing playing Elmo over a fit Guilbert today?

[geolex]

While i fully agree that it was always going to be  big ask to turn leics over its more the manner of the capitulation that's worrying... i've tried to give Wesley the benefit of doubt (and time) but i have very grave doubts if  he will cut it at this level

[john e]

best players I saw on the pitch today were -


Cowans, Nicholl, Aitken, Mcnaught, Little, Bremner

[Keeno]

For me they were comfortably the best side we've faced this season. Add in that we made a load of stupid mistakes, had a number of players below par and we're probably lucky it was only 4.

We've been saying the same thing all season. At Spurs stupid mistakes let them back in the game late which we ended up losing. Against Bournemouth stupid mistakes gifted 2 goals and we lost that. In every game we have lost stupid mistakes have cost us. Even in the win vs Norwich a stupid mistake cost as goal. The question is why are we still making stupid mistakes week after week? Why has a manager like Steve Bruce, who we all saw hardly has an amazing team managed to do what is needed to climb to a very solid mid table position. Or Chris Wilder not having spent much at all over the last few seasons got his promoted side to a very solid top half position. This comes down to the manager, who is revealiong himself to be both naive and dare I say it arrogant in his unwillingness to adapt. His stubborness to continue to persevere with a CF who is struggling is mind boggling. If it's not working try something else. Change things up. This is not going to end well for Dean Smith because new contract or not if we start to get detached from the mid table postions then he'll be gone.

He hasn't got another striker. Kodjia is no good post-injury. Let's see what we look like in February.

We simply don't know that for sure because he hasn't been given a run of games. He seems to do ok for Ivory Coast whenever he goes away with them. I would give him two or three games because he will need to get into things but he offers a very different way of playing. That or we stick AEG up there with Trez out wide. We simply have to play a different way because this, right now is not working.

We've just had a run of games against the best teams in the country (and possibly continent/planet) plus Man Utd, Wolves and Newcastle. We're not as good as them. We knew that.

And somehow with the exception of Liverpool and Leicester all of those upper echelon teams have lost games to teams they should not have based on their status in the game, and yet we managed to lose all of them bar Man U. Newcastle have beaten Man U, Spurs, Bournemouth, Sheff Utd and drew with Man City. You work with what you have. We all know Steve Bruce is limited as a manager but he's made best use of what he has whereas Smith just hasn't. We are simply dreadful defensively and a player like Mings, who we would all hope would be the leader of the group has been the most careless of them all. Why hasn't that been corrected? And what the fuck is Dean Smith doing playing Elmo over a fit Guilbert today?

And yet we looked incredibly comfortable against Newcastle and far better than them, winning convincingly. Indeed we have generally played well against teams around us all season.

As ugly as it may be this season, winning purely against the teams you "should" do is enough to keep you up in this league, where the gap between the top 6-7 teams and rest is so wide. It hasn't been 40 points to stay up for a decade - more likely 35-38.  I still feel we're at about par for where most of us deep down expected we would be this season, despite the bad recent run. If we stay up by 1 point on the final day, that is job done. And then we can begin to expect more upsets and big results, IMO.

[Sexual Ealing]

I won't do a megaquote Toronto, but I agree with your last point. The thing is though that, when faced with a better team, there will always be mistakes that you can point to that will be the cause of the defeat. Good teams make inferior teams make mistakes.