Reflections on Conference League

[MalcolmP]

Pau has looked off it recently, think it's the knock he's carrying. What I will say is I don't think it's coincidence our first dip from winning the league form was when he was out.

Torres has indeed looked off it not helped by Konsa who has also been a mixed bag .

Konsa a mixed bag? He has been outstanding all season bar a couple of recent games despite playing numerous games out of position at right back. He was also outstanding in both of the England games

[Skerra]

If my memory serves, last time the team had a good break, we were shit in the next match.

[AV82EC]

I agree with Lee. There is no space in the calendar, as shown by them cancelling FA Cup replays. The PL plays more games than most European leagues as it's a 20 team league but that is not going to change as it would take 14 of the 20 teams to agree to reduce to 18 teams and turkeys don't have a strong history of voting for Christmas.

I would have happily played brighton midweek next week of meant we got a week off to prepare for olympiakos

Trouble is Brighton have a game on Wednesday (rearranged from the latters cup run I imagine without checking). The only way is to reduce the division to 18. Will it happen ? Most unlikely. Personally - and perhaps not for this thread - I would take the top 5 divisions (120 clubs) and with the top 32 create a PL and PL 2 then 4 divisions of 22. There's enough top sides to make 32 attractive for TV so the money keeps rolling in for the teams who sit from 10th down - and fewer games for the elites to allow them to concentrate on Europe as well as the PL.

That’s far too sensible a solution, you won’t get very far talking sense like that.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I agree with Lee. There is no space in the calendar, as shown by them cancelling FA Cup replays. The PL plays more games than most European leagues as it's a 20 team league but that is not going to change as it would take 14 of the 20 teams to agree to reduce to 18 teams and turkeys don't have a strong history of voting for Christmas.

I would have happily played brighton midweek next week of meant we got a week off to prepare for olympiakos

Trouble is Brighton have a game on Wednesday (rearranged from the latters cup run I imagine without checking). The only way is to reduce the division to 18. Will it happen ? Most unlikely. Personally - and perhaps not for this thread - I would take the top 5 divisions (120 clubs) and with the top 32 create a PL and PL 2 then 4 divisions of 22. There's enough top sides to make 32 attractive for TV so the money keeps rolling in for the teams who sit from 10th down - and fewer games for the elites to allow them to concentrate on Europe as well as the PL.

That’s far too sensible a solution, you won’t get very far talking sense like that.

Indeed. People would start thinking football is a sport.

[Pat McMahon]

I am just back from Athens and I want to thank our super fans who made it an enjoyable experience. Good natured in town, supporting the Villa all the way through - especially the half time 'Thursday Night' singing and then the class act of applauding the Olympiacus team and fans at the end. A shame that we are out but we are at the beginning of an exciting journey and there is a lot to look forward to.  UTV

Brilliant. I saw a video this morning where he filmed from the away section, underneath the Villa stand during half time. The fella just looked up, turned to the camera and says "Class!". Don't be surprised if we get grouped with them in the Champions League next season.

Do you know who posted that one Mark? I haven’t seen it but thought the others were very good. One Olympiacos fan  in particular (AZ something ?) was basically shitting all over bluenose interlopers and telling them  to go wax their dolphins and return to division 3. He sounded like an adopted Villa fan!

[KevinGage]

Cash fouling himself in their box with a gaping net in front of him, and nobody else within miles, summed up the whole tie.

Think we all knew then it wasn't going to happen for us.

[brontebilly]

Torres will be much better with Mings back next to him. Mings is a brilliant defender and a good footballer. Torres is a great footballer, who will hoepfully benefit from having Mings do a lot more of the defensive work next to him.

Mings playing at RCB would be ghastly. He can hardly turn onto his right side without falling over. It will be Mings or Torres I'd say, unless Emery hasnt kicked that horrible habit of 3 x CBs. Maybe Torres has been carrying an injury of late as he really has been struggling for form. Defenders have to defend at times, his efforts for that first goal was piss poor. Competition with Mings will make us stronger.

[Monty]

'They're both left-footed' seems a petty reason to not play our obviously best two centrebacks together.

[brontebilly]

'They're both left-footed' seems a petty reason to not play our obviously best two centrebacks together.

If neither of them can pass and play out with their right foot then we will be very easy to press against. Mings definitely won't be able on the other side and Torres tends to always want to play it with his left foot too. We saw this when Lenglet played RCB for a few games earlier, ok for a game or two but then it becomes very predictable.

Not sure what it is with our lefties.. Diaby is another one who is completely one sided, McGinn too. Bailey seems to have improved his weaker foot.

[Monty]

Why does nobody bring this up with right sided centre backs? When was the last time you saw any of them play a good pass with their weaker foot under pressure? I think people just notice it more with lefties.

[AV84]

I am just back from Athens and I want to thank our super fans who made it an enjoyable experience. Good natured in town, supporting the Villa all the way through - especially the half time 'Thursday Night' singing and then the class act of applauding the Olympiacus team and fans at the end. A shame that we are out but we are at the beginning of an exciting journey and there is a lot to look forward to.  UTV

Brilliant. I saw a video this morning where he filmed from the away section, underneath the Villa stand during half time. The fella just looked up, turned to the camera and says "Class!". Don't be surprised if we get grouped with them in the Champions League next season.

Obviously doesn't make up for the loss but it's nice to think the fans represented the club so well on our first European tour for quite some time. Apart from the Legia fans at Villa Park it seems like we've made some new friends/fans along the way.

[edgysatsuma89]

Why does nobody bring this up with right sided centre backs? When was the last time you saw any of them play a good pass with their weaker foot under pressure? I think people just notice it more with lefties.

This always baffles me. I was just reading an article which was stating how it is preferred to have a left footed-right footed CB partnership and it was broadly right... then they shot themselves in the foot with this paragraph:

'But more often than not a defender can look incredibly uncomfortable, and that's why managers stock-pile defenders with different preferred feet. A prominent example of the ultimate balancing act is Paul Lambert collecting Ron Vlaar, Jores Okore (both right), Ciaran Clark and Nathan Baker (both left) for his central defensive corps.'

Talk about fucking your argument sky high!

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I am just back from Athens and I want to thank our super fans who made it an enjoyable experience. Good natured in town, supporting the Villa all the way through - especially the half time 'Thursday Night' singing and then the class act of applauding the Olympiacus team and fans at the end. A shame that we are out but we are at the beginning of an exciting journey and there is a lot to look forward to.  UTV

Brilliant. I saw a video this morning where he filmed from the away section, underneath the Villa stand during half time. The fella just looked up, turned to the camera and says "Class!". Don't be surprised if we get grouped with them in the Champions League next season.

Do you know who posted that one Mark? I haven’t seen it but thought the others were very good. One Olympiacos fan  in particular (AZ something ?) was basically shitting all over bluenose interlopers and telling them  to go wax their dolphins and return to division 3. He sounded like an adopted Villa fan!

I'll dig it out for you fella.
Coming over for Sporting-Villa game?
Apparently Paddy can't make it.

[LeonW]

Invaluable experience for the team in terms of playing European football again, managing the the extra games and building up stamina in the team over a much longer season. Undoubtedly the team will have learned a heck of alot from this.

Where I think we probably need to be careful is in thinking it we can just as effectively navigate a season playing Europa or champions league opponents in Europe next season. Yes, we effectively played a number of Europa level teams this time out and managed the Thursday/Sunday routine quite well. But there likely won’t be any Hibs or Zelenski level teams that we’ll face. We weren’t often on top of teams for large parts of games in the conference league and that is probably a concern, even when we did have a much fuller compliment of players.

[AV84]

Depends on the draw really, Liverpool had it pretty easy in the group stages, I thought. Then again they are changing the format next season, so it's probably going to be a tough run.

CL will definitely be a massive step up, and I'm not sure I'd be expecting much out of it. I believe there's a play off at some point to join the top teams in the last 16. If we were even in those spots, I'd think we'd done well.