Unai Emery

[Toronto Villa]

While the starting XI wasn’t t the one we all wanted, the fucking mistakes were incredible. These are professionals and those mistakes were absolutely inexcusable.

[TonyD]

While the starting XI wasn’t t the one we all wanted, the fucking mistakes were incredible. These are professionals and those mistakes were absolutely inexcusable.

Yes but it was shite formation - that put everyone under pressure - a Gerrard like formation.  Totally different to Sunday’s formation.  Come on can’t you see that?

[Risso]

I don't think we can judge the line up until we see how they play under this manager. Under Gerrard this would be a disaster. I'm going to play the wait and see game.

Well having waited and seen, it was every bit as bad as anything Gerrard served up. Crap starting line up, poor formation, and subs that Bailey apart, made things even worse.

[TonyD]

I don't think we can judge the line up until we see how they play under this manager. Under Gerrard this would be a disaster. I'm going to play the wait and see game.

Well having waited and seen, it was every bit as bad as anything Gerrard served up. Crap starting line up, poor formation, and subs that Bailey apart, made things even worse.

The subs were right but he took the wrong players off. 

[algy]

Probably alone in thinking that Emery probably did the right thing long term last night.  He has to assess the players at his disposal, and he has to give them all a fair shot.  Everyone in the squad needs to feel like the first 11 isn't a foregone conclusion.

It's a proper shame that it's come at the expense of the League Cup, which I love to bits ... but given it's his 2nd game in charge - it seems the right choice to me.


Just hope that the outcome of this game is for him to see that there are players in the squad who are simply not good enough to take us any further than they already have.

[Footy-Vill]

[LeeB]

That's a good summary, and he seems to be aware of our ability to catastrophise which needs to be stamped out. You can't play the way he wants then bin off your principles every time you get a setback.
Hopefully the next month together can resolve that.

[john e]

I like him a lot but I just can’t help feeling a little deflated from The way he went about this game last night
I don’t want The shine to fade but for me last night was about players

You either want to win or you don’t and treat it as some sort of experiment, rotation have a look at what you’ve got type thing, I don’t know which one it was but you can’t win fights with one hand tied behind your back and that is the equivalent to what we were trying to do last night

The only thing that Gerard got right in my opinion is taking the cups seriously
I hate British managers as I’ve said a million times before but foreign managers really don’t get the cups and I was hoping for a bit more from him last night

Can’t help feeling a bit disappointed and deflated but I do
It’s a long way to go with two kids to sit in the first half watching a team with no pace no creativity and no chance of winning a football match

[ez]

I'm looking forward to seeing his transfer targets arrive in January.

[Villan82]

Cannot believe some of the posts I am reading in here.

[olaftab]

He didn’t need to assess the squad away at Old Trafford in a crucial cup match. I hope this doesn’t show a poor attitude towards domestic cups.

No different to what we put out at Chelsea last season, could be wrong but can't remember him getting pelters.

And we played scratch teams up to SF of league cup 19/20. Luckily we played the under 12s of Wolves and Liverpool in that run.

Fact is for all this weak side stuff we were 2-1 up and had most of our first choice team on the grass. Just poor defending and game management from that point.

It was Smith at Chelsea not SG not that I am his advocate.
The thing about having the first team on pitch and terrible mistakes being made is due to the wrong tone being set with the starting line up.

[boozey182]

I don't think we can judge the line up until we see how they play under this manager. Under Gerrard this would be a disaster. I'm going to play the wait and see game.

Well having waited and seen, it was every bit as bad as anything Gerrard served up. Crap starting line up, poor formation, and subs that Bailey apart, made things even worse.

This is utter nonsense, with all due respect.

I'm not happy that we're out of the cup, and I think he got it wrong last night - we should have played a stronger team. But the crap starting line up was doing alright until half an hour to go. We completely nullified them in the first half, and looked dangerous on the break when we grew into the game at the start of the second half - which I think is evidence of an actual game plan. We utterly capitulated in the last 25 minutes, which is unacceptable. It seemed to come from making too many substitutions in key areas - I agree that we looked worse after the subs were made.

But I think we need a bit of perspective here. Yes, it's frustrating, and yes, it seemed unnecessary. But Emery needs to asses the squad, and I can only assume he used the match last night to get an idea of what they are capable of - the sort of thing you can't always learn about in training (how long have we had a team that were always world beaters in training, but useless in a match?!). There will be some players that he found out a lot about, which will benefit us in the long run.

I'm certain that we will get better and better under Emery. There were plenty of positives last night, which were over-shadowed by the fact that we were knocked out the cup. He's two matches in, and we've won one and lost one - both against a 'top 6' team that has been in great form. Supporting Villa has been miserable for most of the last year, but we finally seem to have a good thing going. So I'm going to try to enjoy it as much as possible, even through the setbacks like last night.

[john e]

Cannot believe some of the posts I am reading in here.

We haven’t won a cup for 26 years mate or finished in the top half of the prem for a decade
Once we give up And accept rubbish lineups rubbish performances and rubbish players Nothing will change

It doesn’t matter whether the manager has been with us for 2 games or 200 games you should never throw in the towel, Which is effectively what happened last night

So you might not like it but I will never give up Wanting us to win every game and every cup game, last night‘s first half was complete bollocks On every level
And the moment we accept that we’re fucked

[Risso]

Cannot believe some of the posts I am reading in here.

We haven’t won a cup for 26 years mate or finished in the top half of the prem for a decade
Once we give up And accept rubbish lineups rubbish performances and rubbish players Nothing will change

It doesn’t matter whether the manager has been with us for 2 games or 200 games you should never throw in the towel, Which is effectively what happened last night

So you might not like it but I will never give up Wanting us to win every game and every cup game, last night‘s first half was complete bollocks On every level
And the moment we accept that we’re fucked

Absolutely John. He *didn't* have to have a look at Olsen last night. That he did so was a huge reason we lost. Whoever is reserve keeper is only ever going to play in emergencies, and it's not like they ever get picked just to give the main keeper a rest, so really, what was the point? He didn't give us the best chance of winning the game, and that for me is completely unacceptable, especially for people like you who travelled for hours there and back to support the team. We've never accepted it with a manager before now, and I'm not going to start just because he isn't Gerrard.

[Brazilian Villain]

I agree with Risso and John e.