Aston Villa vs Man Utd Post-Match Thread

[Percy McCarthy]

I think our growing reputation means a lot of teams’ first priority is to stop us playing rather than play themselves.

[Drummond]

I think our growing reputation means a lot of teams’ first priority is to stop us playing rather than play themselves.

I think you're right, but I'd also add that we seem, at times, to do the same thing to ourselves. Restrained control rather than going for it and ending up in the end to end stuff, unless we are completely confident we'll win.

Today was a good example of where that had gone wrong before and us not taking the risk.

[VillaTim]

Yep, for example when Bologna rock up next few weeks they'll likely park a huge pasta type bus and say come on then, relying on counters and a tight defence . The Bayern win puts us on the European map again .

[Pat McMahon]

This is my least favourite fixture of the season and I feared a flat performance after Bayern. I think Wednesday must have taken a lot out of the players and I think that seemed to be the case with the fans too as I thought the atmosphere was generally flat.

We never really exerted any pressure and I think their keeper only made one real save. A draw was a fair result as we never took advantage of some decent positions to cross, often failing to beat the first defender. Disappointing that Rashford didn’t get a second yellow but that would have simple made them less inclined to attack and I think it was one of those games where we wouldn’t have scored even if they had half their team sent off.

Farcical delay with the ref’s equipment but that was outdone by the VAR announcement popping up on screen after 34 minutes for a possible handball in the 23rd minute. Ludicrous

[edgysatsuma89]

Some context on this.  We have the same record in our last five games as Man City and Arsenal.

Arsenal have had us away, Tottenham away, and Man City away, for more context.

For even more context we have played Bayern Munich and Manchester United in the last four days and not conceded a goal despite having five of our best players out.

I didn't think we hadn't done well to get clean sheets with our injuries, just that having the same record as those teams does belie the fact that their fixtures, particularly Arsenal's, has been more difficult than ours.

[eamonn]

Not sure that was worth the five and a half train trek back to the south coast tonight - well it wasn't but good to catch-up with Olof's Beard and I dug the museum bit in the Villa store and the murals around the ground I hadn't seen yet.

[Mister E]

A poor game (understandably, given the absentees), enlivened by the good performances of Martinez, Torres, Carlos and Tielemans. I thought Philogene again looked secure and reliable even if he didn't sparkle. Watkins again was pretty reliable without getting the chances that we'd like him to get.
Digne, Barkley and Rogers were good in parts; disappointing in others. As others have said, Rogers needs to get his head up sometimes and find the quicker pass. I was pretty disappointed with Cash and Bailey: the former gives too many fouls away and doesn't get down the line enough; the latter seems very reluctant to beat his man, use his vaunted pace and find space.
It's regretful that we didn't make more of the porous central defence presented to us by the opposition - they were ripe to be absolutely punished. I think with McGinn and Ramsey, we'd have done so.
Another game where the opposition earn 5 or more yellow cards to our 1: rotational fouling seems to be a thing against us.

[Demitri_C]

I’m not sure anyone is particularly disgruntled with how the season is going though are they? This is really about the game today.

Exactly paul. People are expressing their disappointment that we failed to beat a pretty hopeless united team at home. If we put in a good performance and were frustrated at 0-0 i think most would be ok with that. It was just a really poor performance.  I think onana made one save all game.

Really poor game overall from both sides

[Villa Lew]

Difficult to assess our season so far in the league, we're 5th, which is very good, but 6 out 7 of our matches have been against teams in the bottom half and none of our performances I would put in the outstanding bracket, injuries have played a factor though. We're be able assess the season much better by 1 December by which time we would have played Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea and another 3 CL matches.

[Clampy]

Away from the game itself, got in straight away in the Upper Holte yesterday. Not sure what it was like elsewhere.

[sid1964]

No problem getting into the ground yesterday - lower Holte was open 1 hour 45 minutes before the kick off

The only game for me where there was a problem was the Arsenal game.

Poor game played by 2 teams who did not seem to have the ability to create a decent chance.

[The Edge]

No one mentioning the blatant dive by Garnacho which earned the free kick that led to Roland hitting the bar. If that had gone in and we had lost it would of been the epitome of crap ways to lose to them. Having his sending off last week overturned in a season where they are going to great lengths to stick with the refs original call was bad enough in the first place. For him to score the winner in front of the Holte from a free kick won by cheating would of been excruciating to witness so from that perspective I'll happily take the draw and move on.

[Keeno]

Going into the second international break sitting joint 4th with Chelsea, one loss in 10 in all comps, averaging 2 PPG in the league, with a break to get players back. And one all-time classic match/goal/performance thrown in there too.

A very good start to the season overall. I agree with Tim's point from further up that looking back on the last 6-7 games, the only one that I feel 'disappointed' by is the way we played after going 2-1 up at Ipswich, resulting in a few lost points there. I'll allow them a poor 45 minutes though in the grand scheme of things. I think this game was a case of tiredness from Wednesday - especially as we had a lot less of the ball than we usually do.

So given we weren't really at our usual level, it was good not to lose, keep a clean sheet, and keep the points tally ticking over. We're in a very good position I think to be aiming for last season's finish.

I really don't like doing the thing that I've seen some people doing in comparing like-for-like each result with the corresponding fixtures last season, e.g. "how far up/down are we at X point last season". Teams will go in and out of form, fixture runs and injuries etc. make each year totally unique, so it's really just about staying in the mix of it past Christmas.

[Clampy]

The last 2 league games indicate we don’t have quite enough to challenge the top 3  and cope with injuries and the demands of playing every 3 days.
Watkins had one of his could not hit a cows arse with a banjo days, he had enough chances to win the game today.
This feels like a transitional season where we learn to cope with the demands of multiple games, our younger players get nearer their potential and we fill in the gaps in the squad.

I can't recall Ollie having any chances other than the speculative shot he took on which barely registered as one.

Neither can I. Very harsh calling out one player when most of the team were off their game.

[Mortimer's Bear]

As with every season, just glad to get that one out of the way.