Aston Villa v Chelsea Post Match Thread

[RamboandBruno]

Which was largely down to the return of Grealish who is/was head and shoulders above anyone else at that level.

The past is the past so this is probably a waster of time now really, but every time an anti smith thread comes alive, the hints that he had nothing to do with getting us up come to the fire. I find that bizarre and again revisionist. However, I’m not on here to defend smith and over this season although I think he has been handed a bad deal to an extent with some of the signings, tactically he hasn’t managed to sort it out. Persisting with the lone striker in the hope that an out of form Grealish and McGinn can get near him is just either belligerence or a coach who has long ago run out of ideas.

[Sexual Ealing]

Bruce had Grealish for all of his time here.

[brontebilly]

We did it once and thought it would work.  If Dean Smith had not been a Villa supporting Brummie he would not got in the top six applicants for the job.  It was an appointment based on sentiment.  There is no place for sentiment in the Premier League.

It was a reasonable appointment at the time I thought. An experienced coach at the level we were at with a clear footballing philosophy and further changes at board level. As opposed to RDM or Bruce who were tasked with buying their way out of the division. Or the current owners previous first choice of Thierry Henry! Awkward questions about Smith's lack of success at Brentford were glossed over a bit too much in hindsight. The spell when Grealish was injured was horrific too. While parachuting Terry as assistant never sat well with me.

But that footballing philosophy has clearly fallen by the wayside a long time ago with possession stats like 25% today. We are a disorganised rabble and have been for much of the season. Recruitment has been poor but no-one call tell me that Newcastle or Sheff Utd for example have much better players in their squad than us. The managers job is to get the best out of the players at his disposal and Smith has failed abysmally to do that in comparison to Wilder or Bruce even.

The board should never have let it get this far. January was the time to make the change, Southampton were ruthless bringing Poch in for Atkins a few years back. That's top level sport. Instead our board backed Smith and paddled our squad with utter shit like Reina, Drinky and Baston to help us out. Shambles!

Purslow, Suso, Smith, ROK, JT all should be gone

[pauliewalnuts]

Bruce had Grealish for all of his time here.

He was out for three months (almost) with that weird kidney injury.

[Sexual Ealing]

Bruce had Grealish for all of his time here.

He was out for three months (almost) with that weird kidney injury.

And for a similar time (?) under Smith.

[SoccerHQ]

Brentford spent more in the summer than ever before. They've bet the farm on promotion.

Selling Konsa to us for 12m and signing Jansson for 5m from Leeds was pretty clever.  Rather had Jansson as he's a bit of a nutter but decent defender and think he'd have been a big crowd favourite as we like our nordic CBs.

Konsa just strikes me as another Curtis Davies in the making. Hyped up as an England CB in the making but in reality will just yo yo between the divisions as an average CB/full back.

[SoccerHQ]

We go down we will lose a few players like Grealish, McGinn and Mings. But without FFP, financially, we get to do what the fuck we like. Which is fortunate when your owners have more money than everybody else.

Apart from Bruce at Newcastle I'm not sure which PL club would take McGinn. He still has a lot to prove at this level.

Yeah I think he'll stay given his injuries. Also think Heaton will stay. Everyone thought Butland would leave Stoke as soon as they went down but he's still there although not very good anymore. Mitrovic staying at Fulham was also a surprise so don't see why we'd lose someone like Samatta.

We'd have to rebuild a little but you simply use the loan market and sign some players from lower end prem clubs/ top end championship which is what we did in August 2016. Still took us a year to fully adapt to championship but we hadn't been out of the top division in 30 years at that point and had Lerner years of decay to wipe out so completely different to know where we've just been naive with decisions in last 12 months.

[SoccerHQ]

He was a good appointment and his positive play was absolutely the reason we came from nowhere to go up. The question I might have in hindsight is whether going up was all a bit too fast? That we structurally weren’t ready for it. Another season down, building properly would have avoided some of the buys we made. Players that were bought to fill needs but not good enough to be quality needed to remain a PL club. And that includes the manager who could have taken more time to know his job at such a big club with immense expectations. It’s just swallowed him as it has done to many others in our past.

It's easy to say that but if we hadn't have gone up we'd have lost Grealish and obviously Tammy wouldn't be there. Mings wouldn't have signed full time so we'd have had to signed well to be up with Leeds and West Brom.

The right thing was to go up. We should've then studied how teams who'd gone up stayed up. I've done the Wolves comparison to death but when Leicester went up in 2014 they picked up Esteban Cambiasso on a free who did a great job in midfield for them.

I assume because we signed pretty big names for a championship team in Snodgrass, John Terry and Abraham that would continue in premier league, 2/3 amongst all the young players we signed, considering the owners ambitions and the pull we still have as a club with 40k through the gate every other week.

Maybe no one of that calibre wanted to join us but dosen't appear we looked that hard in that direction.

[SoccerHQ]

Where did I say it was a bad appointment?

You said he probably wouldn't have been in your top six candidates. He'd proved himself a reasonably capable and steady championship manager. Also would've taken Walsall up if he hadn' left mid season in 15/16 so not far off what attracted Sheffield United to say Chris Wilder which has obviously worked out wonderfully for them.

It's worth remembering we were orginally going for Henry before that idea got ditched for whatever reason (seems it was more from Henry's end). Went to Monaco and hardly won a game. Now manager at Montreal Impact (replaced Remi Garde amusingly enough). Apparently one of Mourinho's former assistant was also being seriously considered so not sure they'd have done much better.

If we can still stay up I'd want us to go and get a manager who's recently won titles and managed in CL. Likes of Marcelinho who won cup at Valencia last season and Jardim who won league at Monaco a few years back. Both out of work. Much smaller quality pool if you're back in the championship.

[eamonn]

A pity Suso's Valencia and Atleti links haven't pulled up anything yet. Instead we've sniffed around B League. Do any of our signings from Belgium share agents I wonder.

[Villan82]

We go down we will lose a few players like Grealish, McGinn and Mings. But without FFP, financially, we get to do what the fuck we like. Which is fortunate when your owners have more money than everybody else.

A whole year in the wilderness (if we're lucky). Fuck that, I want us to be a ruthless club that wan'ts to compete and win. Yo-yo-ing up and down isn't right for villa.

[charlatan]

Other teams foul tactically so much more than we do and largely get away with it. They committed 17 fouls to our nine and ended up with one card to our two.

If you assume that all fouls are committed by the team without possession (a bit of a stretch), then Chelsea would have committed 65 fouls if Villa had been in possession for the whole game whereas we would only have committed 12 fouls if Chelsea had the ball for the whole game (not far off the case).

[SamTheMouse]

Jardim would be my pick.

[adrenachrome]

Other teams foul tactically so much more than we do and largely get away with it. They committed 17 fouls to our nine and ended up with one card to our two.

If you assume that all fouls are committed by the team without possession (a bit of a stretch), then Chelsea would have committed 65 fouls if Villa had been in possession for the whole game whereas we would only have committed 12 fouls if Chelsea had the ball for the whole game (not far off the case).

Yes.

"Savvy" teams do tactical fouls at the point of transition. Tim Vickery, the BBC South America football correspondent who was based in Brazil, was forever banging on about it years ago.

[adrenachrome]

I remember when we played 4-3-3 under DoL, and Gabby and Luke Moore played as defensive cover for much of the time.

Little point in playing Jack wide in this formation. He is clearly losing it and will soon be sent off.

(Edited for spelling).