Aston Villa vs Stevenage Humiliation Post-Mortem

[RamboandBruno]

Watkins and Mings did not play in the match today.
Their attitude, skills and usual work rate would probably have made a big difference, but they were not on the pitch.


Just confirming this, because they have both featured in certain fans’ vitriolic posts about today’s performance above; why, I have absolutely no idea.

The celebrated internationals and senior players in their roles failed to generate enough wattage to illuminate a gnat.

Spot on.

Im not anti Watkins, but he had a huge role to play in their second goal.

[MillerBall]

There are no excuses. The selection was poor and the players adopted  a "pre season, low pace, keep ball strategy."
It was a spectacular example of shooting oneself in the foot (indeed both feet).
Given the attitude thank heavens tbe game was free to season ticket holders.
Huge commiserations to anybody who paid to watch the pageant of mediocrity which at times almost reached a speed of 10 miles per hour!!
Very, very poor indeed.
Good luck to Stevenage at Stoke but the Potters will give them a game; something we certainly didn't

[AlwaysVilla]

F-cking dreadful! Absolutely f-cking dreadful!
Other than Sanson every other player should be f-cking disgusted with that! Substitutions didn’t improve us at all. Captain for the last home match...where was Young’s leadership when he came on alongside 2 poor cbs. An international goalkeeper who gets beaten at his near post by a daisy cutter is f-cking disgraceful and what kind of hospital ball was that to dendoncker for their 1st. We were sh-t throughout and barely troubled their keeper.
The lot of them can just go and f-ck off!

Sorry but apart from the goal I thought Sanson was, and is, rubbish. If you observe him closely you’ll notice that every single time he receives the ball he plays it safe, dragging it back on to his favoured foot, away from goal, before passing it sideways and quashing momentum. He very rarely does one touch. I just don’t see what he offers and I think we should sell him. He certainly wasn’t the only culprit today, but he’s just so average.

If you think Sanson was average when clearly the best player on the pitch heaven knows how you must rate the rest, many of which are Involved every week. On a bleak night sanson was the only positive and at least tried to move the ball at a speed beyond our usual pedestrian nature

[RamboandBruno]

The selection is not the issue. These weren't the kids or the bomb squad, every single one of those players are in contention every week for a place. To a man, played for their countries, or in Europe, all played in one of the big European leagues for practically all their careers. One week of each of their wages would pay for God knows how much of their opposite number's salary.

It's a team, in short, that would have expected themselves to compete in a Premier League game.

Does he pick that team with that amount of unenforced changes for a key PL game?  No.

So the selection is an issue.  It's not the only one, granted. But it sets the tone and tells the players the result is in the bag no matter what.

Literally every single manager in the world would have rung the changes. Every single one. And every one of the players who came in is a senior member of the squad, one who should be able to contribute to wins in the Premier League. You can say it set the tone, but honestly I can't imagine letting the players off the hook that easy. Every manager would've done the same, and they should have had enough to beat a team in League 2. I'm sorry, it's that simple.

Completely agree with this Monty.

[Mister E]

There was nothing much wrong with the selection, the team picked should of have had more than enough to beat a team from Div 2. The players are to blame here.

Initial selections, fair enough. Substitutions and game management - 2 out of 10. Dick's substitutions weren't great. Leaving Bailey on is a joke, Cash was gash and Sanson should have stayed on.  Olsen is a muppet: poor distribution and being beaten on his near-post is criminal.

[SamTheMouse]

Not going to blame the manager. It's Stevenage. The players should have been able to win that game even if Emery had gone down the pub.

Sadly, too many of them shit their pants when under any kind of pressure.

[Steve67]

Embarrassing, fair play to Stevenage.

Our second string are really poor and the attitude and mentality of approach was poor from the off.  We had two shots on target throughout, one was the goal.  I was Emery to rip it up and start again as we've spent millions on shit.  Tippy-tappy football, all very comfortable but no pace or flair throughout.  A lack of incisive football, other than out goal, which was lovely.  Olsen, Cash, Ludwig, Bednarek, Dendonker, Bailey, Ings all poor and need sending back or allowing to leave if we can get a deal for them.  Chambers, Luiz, Coutinho should be taking the game by the scruff and pushing our players forward, they were just as bad.  Sanson did ok, but can we pause as this was against a league 2 side? We simply don't have the players to do what Emery wants them to do.  That said, I also think that the substitutions lost us some momentum as a second goal looked odds on.  Shambles at the end with a lack of pace, energy, leadership etc.  Rip it up, start again.

[Le Lapin]

Dog dirt.

[RichardBatchelor]

Just remarkable.

Olsen - beaten like the utter fucking chump he is.
Bailey - not good enough yet again
Coutinho - pathetic
Dendoncker - brainless ******

The total lack of marking for their second goal, a thing of absolute horror.

Dendonker was an idiot, Olsen was at fault for both goals. Why play that pass to Dendonker at that moment? All risk and no reward. Then his goalkeeping for the second was astonishingly bad. But fuck knows how you just allow someone to run into the box and shoot like that.

It’s an utterly pathetic effort and every single one of them, bar Sanson, should be ashamed of their efforts. The FA Cup effort from Villa in the last 7 years has been chronic, but this is a new level of shame.

All teams do it and it annoys me not playing your best keeper. There’s no way Aston Villa can win the FA Cup without playing their no 1 keeper. And it’s a goalkeeper, he won’t be tired for the next effing match.

[Legion]

That really wasn't very good at all.

[Flamingo Lane]

Doncaster was worse. I was 20 something and it hurt like hell I'm 45 now and this feels like something we've all seen far too often. The performance tonight was poor but we still looked.set to progress up until that penalty. The collapse from then on was prime prime Villa.

Not so. It was shit from first to last. We were fortunate that their 'goal' in the first half was disallowed, and on the entire balance of play we deserved what we got, the last five minutes of the game epitomising the previous 90.

[ez]

Watkins and Mings did not play in the match today.
Their attitude, skills and usual work rate would probably have made a big difference, but they were not on the pitch.


Just confirming this, because they have both featured in certain fans’ vitriolic posts about today’s performance above; why, I have absolutely no idea.

The celebrated internationals and senior players in their roles failed to generate enough wattage to illuminate a gnat.

Spot on.

Agreed. Ings starting and as captain is laughable.

[Deano's Mullet]

I'm not disagreeing with that but up to ten seconds before the penalty was given we looked set to progress. It felt like second half we'd weathered their storm and despite being shit we were probably going to get away with it. That was my point.

[villadelph]

A Lange masterpiece.

[SoccerHQ]

Probably the most humiliating VP cup defeat, can't think of any worse.

Bradford was still worse given it was over two legs, we were one game away from a winnable final etc.

Today was very poor though.