Brighton vs Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[geolex]

We won’t win another game this season. Dreadful all over the place.

It doesn't look like it but we have pulled good performances out of no where so never say never.

The Liverpool Spurs match is absolutely crucial to us, i reckon they'll lose at Man City but win their other 2 so it really does come down to this one, if your prediction comes true.

The're at home to Man city

Ah. Mind you i still think they'll lose as Man City have a track record of winning all their games during the run in. For a change i'll certinaly be hoping they win that one anyway.

Hope your right  but spurs have won their last 4 home games against city....maybe a change is due

[Monty]

That was absolutely terrible. The fourth candidate for 'worst performance of the season' in the space of one month.

Olsen was a problem against Chelsea and Olympiakos. But not today! Today he was great at the saves and fine with the ball.

The problem is the midfield - and the weirdest thing is how similar that problem is to the MON days. Teams know not to press our defenders particularly - just wait for us to play into midfield and snap into action. Brentford did it, Lille did it, Chelsea did it, Olympiakos did it, and now Brighton have done it. And the problem is systemic - unless the two are having really top games they will be outnumbered, and to say the least these two are not having top games.

It's a personnel issue further forward as well. This 4-4-2 with the two wingers (again, I'm getting déjà-vu bordering on PTSD flashbacks to the MON days) is just too skittish, too disjointed to play this football. When one of the nominally 'wide' players is Tielemans or McGinn it's all fine, we can gain numerical advantage - Bailey, Rogers and Diaby just does not work. We have no control of the game ever with this setup.

The subs gave the game away a bit. Unai doesn't really trust the players to play the way we really want too, so he's counting on a bit of chaos and free-running. That's unlucky, of course - no Youri, no Kamara, no Zaniolo even who really helped us gain a foothold vs. Arsenal. We've lost the options at the heart of the team and the guys there are running on empty.

This is obviously way more forgivable than MON, who fucked it up almost on purpose and never knew anything like this list of injuries, at the worst possible time as well. But Unai needed to adapt the system today, and failed to do so both before and during the game. Unusual from him, but that's a big part of the story I'm afraid.

[pauliewalnuts]

Jesus Christ, I might have to watch this on a foreign stream, the Klopp rimming is so over the top already.

[Smirker]

We won’t win another game this season. Dreadful all over the place.

Course we will.

[German James]

We're running on fumes. I know what I would do on Thursday night but it wouldn't be popular.

If Spurs don't lose today we have to play the kids, we can't go into the Liverpool game with the same energy as today.

I agree.  We simply cannot lose 4th.

I think it should have been the other way round. He should have played the kids today and rested every important player for Thursday.

[Smirker]

Couldn't care less tbh. Thursday is more important and we're finishing 4th anyway.

As long as Liverpool win today, that's where I'm at.

Pretty sure they will.

YNWA 

[kippaxvilla2]

So Newcastle are closer to Tottenham than Tottenham are to us but it’s all about Tottenham with the chance of the CL.

[Demitri_C]

Great week

A real inspiring performance to give us belief they can ovee turn a 2 goal deficit

Just need to hope spurs lose today as i cant see us winning another game this season

[Ads]

Really weak performance all over. Not a 50/50 won and we looked clueless in a lot of what we tried. Slow, pedestrian, passive, take your pick really.

Hard to fathom the drop off in levels when you consider how well we played 2nd half against Bournemouth.

Olsen the only player who can take anything from the game.

We really need Tielemans back for his control in moving the ball on. McGinn in particular just gives it away cheaply, as he did trying to switch the play to Cash just before the penalty.

Didn't deserve anything really, against a side who looked just as bereft of ideas.

[Smithy]

Jesus Christ, I might have to watch this on a foreign stream, the Klopp rimming is so over the top already.

Honestly, they can spend 90 minutes literally fellating him as long as his team wins today.

[Baldy]

Villa played as if they have taken for granted that Spurs will lose to Liverpool and Man City*.

I hope they are right!!

[SoccerHQ]

Said at half time we were sleepwalking to a 1-0 defeat.

Depressing to be proved right.

One thing is for sure after watching that....Unai really really really dosen't rate Tim at all does he? We were crying out for an extra body in central midfield just to get a bit more control and free up McGinn and can't understand why we didn't even do it for last 20 minutes.

We played for a 0-0 and got what we deserved. Waste of time even getting on the plane to Athens if we're just going to play in a similar manner over there.

I get the injuries but feels like Unai is making things a little harder than he should currently with some of his team calls. We've gone from playing 4 CMS for much of this season to now completely unloading the central midfield area because he doesn't want to play Tim in prem games that actually mean something.

Have to hope Tielemans is fit for Liverpool as they'll be scoring another three past us with how we played today.

[Rotterdam]

They seemed more determined than us, especially in the final third.

[Smirker]

So Newcastle are closer to Tottenham than Tottenham are to us but it’s all about Tottenham with the chance of the CL.

Yeah why wouldn't it be? Tottenham are closer to 4th than Newcastle are.

[PaulWinch again]

One thing I will say is Brighton have played a lot of games and have a lot of injuries too. We allowed them to build up confidence because we were so passive. We got what we deserved in this one.