Aston Villa 0 Watford 1 Post Match Thread

[PaulTheVillan]

SG and the whole management team need to be sacked tonight.

They haven’t a fuckin clue. 

Absolute chancers.

What a drama queen.

[Taylor]

If anyone starts banging on about “plan f**king B” I will f**king explode.

[N'ZMAV]

If anyone starts banging on about “plan f**king B” I will f**king explode.

we could do with one

[astonvilla82]

Can't be arsed to comment, except I take time away and chill out

[TonyD]

If anyone starts banging on about “plan f**king B” I will f**king explode.

we could do with one

You need plan A before you move onto plan B. 

[Malandro]

The players could do with a couple of weeks off. A mini pre-season.

[manic-road]

I did something today that I always swore not to and that was walk out before the final whistle. I expected changes after last weeks awful performance and SG comments about changes, Sanson must have pumped his Mrs as he can't get a look in even when it's so bloody poor.

The second half we looked clueless, the substitutions made us far worse losing our shape and relying on Bailey most of the time. Woy gave SG a lesson in tactics and I hope he starts to learn bloody quickly.

[Bobby Boy]

What a horror show that was! Let's not mess about, Watford were awful and we managed one tepid Buendia shot on target in the entire match.

The tempo was slow and pedestrian from the outset. No urgency, no quickness of thought, no movement....

I heard that Cash and Digne had been practicing crossing all week but if our bombing on wing-backs refuse to bomb on, won't take on their last defender and won't put a cross in then what's the bloody point of the practice?

Time and time again during the second half Villa had a two man attacking overload in space on the left but Digne refused to bomb on preferring instead to hang back so when he got the ball he simply played it back inside, safety first, no risk football.

It was doing my head in.

Watford were lousy so that cannot be acceptable. It wasn't anywhere near acceptable.

Let's see what Gerrard is made of.

[Skerra]

On the way to the match I said to my brother that I thought we would struggle again today.
Young coming on as a sub was a total mystery. The shape of the team just looks all wrong. I suggest SG looks at videos of the first few games he was in charge and revert to whatever he was asking the players to do then and not what they are doing now. Until we get to at least 36 points, I won’t feel comfortable about us not being dragged into a relegation battle. At this moment in time, sadly, I can’t see where our next point is coming from.

[LukeJames]

We're piss easy to play against, stop our full backs from having space so that we congest the middle and we have no answer.

That will work in Scotland were your squad is playing a different sport to 99% of the other teams, its been found out very quickly here.

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

Here’s how this plays out.

We’ll finish 14th this season.
A few players will leave.
Gerrard gets a pre season and a window and spends a lot.
Gerrard is sacked by Christmas latest and we go again.
Pitiful state of affairs.

That’s entirely possible. I mentioned it after the Leeds game but how come other teams with supposedly inferior players can implement the managers ideas and tactics and it appears we haven’t got a fucking clue. Beale was supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, is it the coaching side? Are the players unwilling to change, don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing or just not good enough?

I don’t know the answers but for a start the players need to be tactically flexible and so does the manager. It seams to me that his preferred tactic at the moment is just destroying the midfield, Luis sits deep which he’s unsuited to and McGinn becomes some kind of deep lying midfield come makeshift full back to cover the actual full back further up the pitch, again negating his natural game and limiting his major strength of breaking into the box.

You need to look at the players and their strengths and pick a formation and tactics to get the best out of their skill set. At the moment it’s just too muddled and previously good players are now playing like they’d struggle to hold down a place in a bottom half championship team.

For me this is on Gerrard and the coaches.

[eamonn]

Coutinho is a wonderful player but he's not someone the team needed. Gerrard whatsapp'd him on the off-chance he was interested. An opportunist move and as he's probably the most skilful player we've ever signed, understandable that we were giddy and went for him but he was never going to solve the structural issues at the heart of our team.

As Nick Harper pointed out, playing both Coutinho and Buendia means you HAVE TO have a central midfielder who can pivot, block, tackle, lead and direct those ahead of him. Luiz, McGinn and Ramsey are not that player. As much as I want to see Sanson given a go, he nor Chuck fit that profile either. We're relying on a 2020's Nigel Reo-Coker, Marv Naka to return as he is the only player in the entire squad, limited though he is, that comes close to what we need.

We also have a pair of erratic full-backs who are not cut-out for the type of system we play (Benitez was right - Digne is not up to it defensively), Cash is bog-average.

As a unit we look so disjointed a lot of the time. Our recruitment since Grealish left looks hit and miss at best. I used to hate the fact we were draw specialists. Boring, boring Villa - under Gregory, O'Neill, McLeish's season when we just survived - all eras punctuated by tedious games where we couldn't break the opposition down to win. This season we're losing those type of games. The number of defeats we've suffered is relegation-able. If we're not going to win games, we have to be harder to beat and learn to eek out a point. 

[DB]

Midfield had no clue how to play together, defending was awful for their goal and the chance they had later on, totally exposed.
I thought today was a chance to make a statement after Newcastle...we did, but the wrong one. He need to turn it around quick.

[rougegorge]

I thought last week was shambolic enough, but the second half today surpassed that. To lose to a team which hadn't scored in over 6 hours and hadn't won in ages was bad enough, but the performance just got worse and worse all game.

It wasn't a Roy masterclass, it was incompetence from us. Watford looked shaky a few times at the back but probably realised we weren't going to hurt them with our woeful crosses and corners.

The substitutions were odd. I can only assume he thought Young would have an impact like he did in Gerrard's first match against Brighton.

We are definitely looking over our shoulders now.

[Smithy]

We're not very good when teams sit deep and invite us on to them, that much is clear.  Which is a surprise given the attacking talent we have at our disposal.  We need to correct that, and quickly.

Plenty of possession in around their box, but how many clear-cut chances did we create? They float one cross in and they score from the six-yard line.  Then everything they did was on the break.

A really disappointing day at the office.