Aston Villa - 1 Southampton - 0 Post match thread

[darren woolley]

I'm happy with the three points and clean sheet.

[olaftab]

I may have missed it but when did Villa Rewards started auctioning the  "In match Spectator on the Pitch" awards? The winner came on wearing number 32 last night. Lucky bastard.

[Skerra]

Overall that was one of the worst matches I’ve ever seen and I’ve watched a few. Only plus side was Mings who really seemed up for it. The rest looked like 2 teams that will be happy to avoid relegation. I honestly don’t think we are going anywhere under SG and still wouldn’t mind if he went before he World Cup starts. I also wouldn’t mind Villa paying me a reasonable fee to teach Watkins how to control a football. Any true striker must have a very good first touch to give him the opportunity of gaining an advantage over the defenders which he clearly doesn’t have. On the plus side, I still think we have the nucleus of a good team but not sure that SG is the man to bring the best out of them.

[Villa Lew]

Mings and Konsa partnership is now looking very good, so hopefully we are not now going to miss Carlos too much, special praise to Tyrone in England form, were you watching Gareth?

The match certainly won't live in my memory very long, but what will always live in my memory is the 1 minute silence, my favourite soprano Laura Wright singing the national anthem and VPs fantastic ovation for Her Majesty on 70 mins.

[Martyn Smith]

See of [sic] the Saints...

[pauliewalnuts]

Positives

- three points
- defence looked good although in fairness, Soton posed zero threat
- much better from Coutinho
- table looking a little less concerning now after 4 points from 6
- club handled the tribute very well indeed, turning the lights off, the hoarding message, everything about it top class - why do we get so many things right off the pitch but churn out years of shite on it?

Negatives

- absolutely zero clear game plan, it reminded me very much of Bruce. Or Lambert. That's not good. What are we even trying to do?
- one of the worst games I've seen us feature in in years, which given the last ten years plus, is saying something
- McGinn very poor as usual
- Bailey looked devoid of confidence again
- manager just going to limp on, Lambert style, scratching out the odd result for it to drag on longer than it should before resulting in the inevitable. It just feels like we're wasting more time.

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

It obviously wasn't great but I don't get that it was that bad. Quotes about worst ever TV match etc - have they watched 10 years of Stoke under Pulis ? Or us under Lambert / McLeish / Garde ?
We stopped a team that's already beaten two of last years top six from having a single shot on target. And could / should have had a second from Jacob in the second half in which case we stroll to the win.
Still lots for Steven Me to do but he's made us tighter and the team are playing for him. It's not his fault Bailey gives the ball away 23 times in an hour or Watkins can't trap a bag of cement. With Kamara injured we basically have the team that finished 14th. Not sure what everyone expects.

we saw one of the best performances under him last week , this was built on a midfield platform of Kamara and Luiz.
So you would expect him to build on that.
But no, he went back to the system and players that have been failing under for months now.

Wot CL said.
Spot on!

[Ads]

I woke up, went to the box. I've come back, dying. I'm going to go out to the pub at 1 and watch the rugby, not really bothered about the result, as I don't particularly care for league. I'm going to go for food later. Pray for a Newcastle win as I have £200 on the line in last man standing. Probably mow the lawn tomorrow, then as a bonus, I get Monday off.

And none of that, absolutely none of it, will be interupted by a negative pull that we lost last night. Because we won and they don't get to spoil my weekend when we win. I don't care how good we are when we lose, as ultimately I remember, we didn't win.

Last night was poor in two thirds of the pitch. Defensively, very solid. Mings did well, not so much with distribution, but his primary job. Totally untroubled.

Full backs didn't get up a great deal, largely down to their shape.

Hurried is the word that consistently came to mind about the midfield, for both sides. It was a game played at 110mph, which was beyond either sides ability to control. McGinn is consistently guilty of giving the ball away, but I think Ramsey is too. Neither seem capable of exploiting space created.

I hope Kamara isn't injured too badly and I felt Dendonker was played in the wrong position when he came on.

Coutinho was bright, but didn't have an overlap option until the 2nd half and Watkins efforts off the ball aren't matched by those on the ball. First touch wayward, but not the only one guilty of that.

Bailey wasteful, with poor delivery, but consistently pressed- so where was the counter press? Those Southampton players vacated space-exploit it! Not to be.

A dull affair really, not much happened. I thought part of our challenge for improvement would be to scrape draws where we've previously failed and to learn to win games where we don't play well. The past 2 games have ticked those boxes. Can we exploit that bedrock over the next few games?

Eitherway, a happy weekend, well, judging by the rest of this thread, for me at least.

[RamboandBruno]

I posted on the pre match thread that after man city, id be happy with Gerard being conservative and grinding out a couple of wins and a smattering of draws to build the confidence again. Many better teams than us have had to do this as well as much better Villa managers than Gerard, SGT comes to mind both in the division 2 season and the year we finished 2nd in Div 1.
The reality that he did exactly that in terms of grinding out a result, was an utterly tedious game, that left me feeling the opposite to the relative elation after the man city draw.
However, posts about the worst match they can remember etc, have short memories, 2011-2016?? Mid 1980s??
Im completely flaky when it comes to Gerard, i thought it was too soon after the Bournemouth and Palace hysteria, but after West Ham i thought he’d be gone after we inevitably got thumped by Man City. If during the international break, Poch indicates he wants to swap the bright lights of wherever he is to manage a lower mid table premier league team in the industrial midlands, id bite yer hand off. Presuming this doesn’t happen, id probably wait  to see if Gerard can put any sort of run of wins and draws together over the next 4 or 5 games to build confidence.
In terms of the team, Mings, Konsa, Young were solid, Luiz did ok when he came on, as did Coutinhio. Mcginn tried hard but is lacking quality, Bailey is very lightweight.

[The Edge]

We need better players. Shortly after coming on Buendia played a superb pass through to Watkins, who controlled it with all his customary grace and precision, and it bounced off his foot like a ping pong ball being dropped onto a pile of bricks.

Those passes from Buendia should be a centre forwards dream. I love the way he plays them so effortlessly and over the last twelve months we should have scored more goals from them.

He’s a joy to watch at times and we need to make the most of him and Coutinho for that matter.

Totally agree. We need a big upgrade on Watkins. Yes he works his nuts off but I want to see a striker with a silky first touch. A striker who can score from any angle with either foot or his head and has a goal poachers instinct. A striker who has a lethal turn of pace. An all round goal machine. Ollie Watkins is none of these and until they recognise that and address it we can forget the pipe dreams of top 6 and European football.

[Smithy]

As everyone else has said, a pretty poor performance, but also a win AND a clean sheet. We will play much better than that this season and lose the game. 

Gerrard made a telling comment after the game about the "prettier stuff" coming when we get up the table, so I wonder if the slow nature of our build-up, with no quick fizzing passages of play was deliberate, and an attempt to make us difficult to beat?  Certainly Southampton never really looked like scoring and I'm not sure Emi had any real saves of note to make?

No one likes winning ugly, unless you're doing it every single week, but it's certainly better than losing prettily.  I do think it's a real shame the Leicester game was cancelled, because a win there would have put us in a nice run of form for the international break.

Our general play still needs to improve, but at least there was a recognition from Gerrard straight after the game that the play wasn't very good, even if the result was.  We've seen crap wins before, and managers praising the players, so it's at least nice to see a recognition that despite the win, the team didn't provide great entertainment on the pitch.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

On reflection it was a game SG knew he had to win, by all means necessary, to save his job. He achieved it, at least for today. What he hasn't calculated in how long our owners will put up with the complete lack of entertainment given the players he has, plus the very poor start to the season.

I expect there to be some very serious conversations over the international break. I don't think Gerrard is as safe as he thinks he is.

[Martyn Smith]

It obviously wasn't great but I don't get that it was that bad. Quotes about worst ever TV match etc - have they watched 10 years of Stoke under Pulis ? Or us under Lambert / McLeish / Garde ?
We stopped a team that's already beaten two of last years top six from having a single shot on target. And could / should have had a second from Jacob in the second half in which case we stroll to the win.
Still lots for Steven Me to do but he's made us tighter and the team are playing for him. It's not his fault Bailey gives the ball away 23 times in an hour or Watkins can't trap a bag of cement. With Kamara injured we basically have the team that finished 14th. Not sure what everyone expects.

we saw one of the best performances under him last week , this was built on a midfield platform of Kamara and Luiz.
So you would expect him to build on that.
But no, he went back to the system and players that have been failing under for months now.

My immediate thought was that we're Big Time Charlies, only capable of raising our game to better opponents whilst failing to shine against more journeyman teams. But that wouldn't account for the collapse against the Arse

[Risso]

On reflection it was a game SG knew he had to win, by all means necessary, to save his job. He achieved it, at least for today. What he hasn't calculated in how long our owners will put up with the complete lack of entertainment given the players he has, plus the very poor start to the season.

I expect there to be some very serious conversations over the international break. I don't think Gerrard is as safe as he thinks he is.

The owners haven’t been to a single home game yet so I don’t think the entertainment is a big issue for them.

[Chris Smith]

We need better players. Shortly after coming on Buendia played a superb pass through to Watkins, who controlled it with all his customary grace and precision, and it bounced off his foot like a ping pong ball being dropped onto a pile of bricks.

Those passes from Buendia should be a centre forwards dream. I love the way he plays them so effortlessly and over the last twelve months we should have scored more goals from them.

He’s a joy to watch at times and we need to make the most of him and Coutinho for that matter.

Totally agree. We need a big upgrade on Watkins. Yes he works his nuts off but I want to see a striker with a silky first touch. A striker who can score from any angle with either foot or his head and has a goal poachers instinct. A striker who has a lethal turn of pace. An all round goal machine. Ollie Watkins is none of these and until they recognise that and address it we can forget the pipe dreams of top 6 and European football.

Those type of strikers are in really short supply, they cost a fortune and have their choice of who they sign for. Much as we’d all love one at Villa I don’t think we’re in that market at the moment.