Unai Emery

[Monty]

Being pissed off with being beaten is understandable. Coming out and saying he's  making similar soundbites as Steven Fucking Gerrard is just laughable and frankly embarrassing

Gerrard for his many faults took the cup games he was in charge for seriously and picked very strong teams.  Emery has pissed about in the ones he's had after basically lying that he wanted to win a trophy.  Sorry, but he can't be trusted

OK maybe Clampy was right.

[Olneythelonely]

And the Emery kicking has started. Wow.

Well why not? He’s lost 4 out of 10 so far this season  conceding 13 goals whilst doing so. It doesn’t look good.

A 60% win ratio doesn't look good?

Maybe less so when it is accompanied by a 40% loss ratio?

A 60% win ratio last season would have got us 5th place in the league.

[Monty]

Yeah if you have a strategy which will either succeed or fail dramatically and it works three times out of five, this will always be better than safety first football that draws all the time, and always will be so long as it's 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.

[Chris Smith]

We hope to play around 55 games this year I reckon. We have to rotate. It’s one of the things virtually every side who sustained a long run in Europe has to do.

This is compounded by our injuries to key players.

He’s getting a lot of flack on here for rotating in the Carabao Cup - do people think we shouldn’t rotate and use the squad at all this year, or do they think we should do it in the league instead?

Exactly, we have to play two games a week and that means that the manager has no choice but to use his squad. He still fielded a fairly strong side but those that came in performed poorly and could not deal with Everton’s pressing game. We have a few players returning from injury and that should give him more options and reduce the need to force square pegs into round holes.

[Dave P]

When I saw the team last night at 6:45, my reaction was the same as it was at 4:45pm last Thursday, which is that isn't a bad team and we should have enough. 

I fully understood the changes and the players coming in have to be trusted.  The fact is that the players who 'let us down' are the ones who have come in.  Chambers and Langlet last week, Olsen and Dendonker this week.  There is a lot to be said about players coming in cold but I understand why we have to do it.

I just hope we find out legs with the whole 2 games a week thing and we have 16-18 players who have played at least 10 games and we can get into a groove.

[eamonn]

For far too much of my Villa life, we've been boring draw specialists (Gregory, O'Neill, McLeish, at times O'Leary and Lamberk), I appreciate these decisive outcomes. Sure, it means us lot go from sugar-highs to pissing-and-moaning lows ("sugarbags", I guess), often from game to game but at least we see our qualities and flaws close-up. Something which a load of 1-1 boring draws can obfuscate. I'll take 60% winning and 40% losing for now.

[brontebilly]

Olsen was poor against Man Utd, but it wasn't him giving away a penalty and ignoring closing down a player from a corner against Stevenage, he didn't play against Legia, it was a wank overhit backpass to him and it wasn't him doing a shit pass that left Konsa in no man's land. He's not great but the outfield players are fucking up a lot more than he is.

He also made two very good saves in the first half to keep the score down. Not a great keeper by any stretch, but blameless tonight.

At the match i obviously wasn’t paying enough attention and thought Konsa had messed up for their 2nd, but that was a woeful pass by Tielemans.

Don't think Konsa was blameless for the second. Poor pass but he hesitated to go for it and that was crucial. Either fly into the tackle and at worst get a yellow or step off and invite the forward to take you on for pace. He did neither.

[chrisw1]

We hope to play around 55 games this year I reckon. We have to rotate. It’s one of the things virtually every side who sustained a long run in Europe has to do.

This is compounded by our injuries to key players.

He’s getting a lot of flack on here for rotating in the Carabao Cup - do people think we shouldn’t rotate and use the squad at all this year, or do they think we should do it in the league instead?

This is it in a nutshell.  We're bringing in seasoned internationals and a kid many are very excited about.  Perhaps Emery can be criticised for the way we set up or motivated the players, but we ought to be able to bring in players like Dendonker, Teilemans and Bailey without this much of a drop off in performance.

Left back is a specific issue, but with Moreno clearly having a set-back I think protecting Digne is understandable. 

[Risso]

Well, either the summer recruitment wasn't as good as it looked at the time, or Emery just hasn't found a way of rotating the squad successfully yet, or it's a combination of the two. McGinn who hasn't been at his best in his usual position, at left back though? A terrible decision that, he was awful, as was Dendoncker in central defence.

[malckennedy]

Olsen was poor against Man Utd, but it wasn't him giving away a penalty and ignoring closing down a player from a corner against Stevenage, he didn't play against Legia, it was a wank overhit backpass to him and it wasn't him doing a shit pass that left Konsa in no man's land. He's not great but the outfield players are fucking up a lot more than he is.

He also made two very good saves in the first half to keep the score down. Not a great keeper by any stretch, but blameless tonight.

At the match i obviously wasn’t paying enough attention and thought Konsa had messed up for their 2nd, but that was a woeful pass by Tielemans.

Don't think Konsa was blameless for the second. Poor pass but he hesitated to go for it and that was crucial. Either fly into the tackle and at worst get a yellow or step off and invite the forward to take you on for pace. He did neither.

There is some truth in this (Konsa) reflecting on it. But the main factor was a piss poor, lazy and complacent pass from Tielemans.

[chrisw1]

Well, either the summer recruitment wasn't as good as it looked at the time, or Emery just hasn't found a way of rotating the squad successfully yet, or it's a combination of the two. McGinn who hasn't been at his best in his usual position, at left back though? A terrible decision that, he was awful, as was Dendoncker in central defence.

Dendonker didn't play central defence.

[Exeter 77]

When I saw the team I assumed that Dendoncker would be at centre back with Torres on the left. That seemed the logical lineup with that set of players in

[chrisw1]

For left back our main problem is moving Torres over is impossible because our other centrebacks are either utterly shite or injured.

Carlos clearly isn't ready and Lenglet looks exactly how I expected him to.

[andyh]

I don't think it is necessarily the team he puts out.....we should have enough in reserve to be beating Everton in cup game at home.

its the approach of that team. When we constantly take 30 passes to move the ball to the half way line, its always going to give the opposition time to get 11 men behind the ball, compress the space and make it difficult to play through.
We barely raised a sweat last night, there was no pace, no urgency. Even at 88 minutes we were still pissing about sideways and backwards.

I know its the way we play now. but we are being sussed out.
We need to mix things up.

         

[Monty]

It's also because the idea of playing Torres at left back given his struggle with pace on the turn is...not enticing. McGinn's played wing-back before and is fast enough at least (in theory!) to make recoveries.

As much as anything, to be honest, I think the problem was that SJM is just bang out of nick.