Spurs v Villa Post Match Thread.

[The Edge]

the 4th goal , the only highlight was when they all jumped over Cov lad and he was more worried about keeping his syrup straight before doing his wanky dart throw thing

Never a foul in the first place and Solanke had the cheek to start on Carlos after he blatantly dived. And Pau seemed determined to give the ball away for their third. He had two attempts to find a Villa player and failed twice.

[The Edge]

Having slept on it i'm still fuming. The one stat i keep thinking off is our shots on goal, apart from the tap in i can't remember one. What's happened to the free wheeling attacking Aston Villa?

If the midfield cant get a grip on the game you aren't going to create many chances and the defence will be put under pressure.

Agree, games are won and lost in midfield, and despite us having good players there it is not functioning the way it did last year.

if Watkins puts his 1 on 1 away its 2-0 and the game is totally different . He misses too many of these and todays effort wasn't even close

Also the one where Digne puts in a lovely cross which he failed miserably to get anything on it. Really really poor from Ollie.

[aj2k77]

There's a reason why Diaby was a £50m player. We do miss him a bit. FFP dictated we had to make that choice. Today is shit, Tottenham are wankers. We will improve.

[Chip Butty 111]

15 goals conceded, 2 more than Palace in 17th place, tells you where the problem is. Luiz scored 22 goals in 5 seasons, his highest tally last year when he was the penalty taker. Diaby scored 6 goals. Decent players but not golden boot contenders. Rogers will out score Diaby comfortably. Get organised at the back and we'll be OK.

How many assists? Whose supplying them now?

Our goals for isn't the issue, 17 is ok, it's the goals against. Diaby has scored 1 in Saudi, Luiz 0 in Italy. Tielemans will out score Luiz from open play. Rogers will out score Diaby. Both provide assists. Teams in the bottom half of the table scoring regularly against us is the problem atm.

[Beard82]

Having slept on it i'm still fuming. The one stat i keep thinking off is our shots on goal, apart from the tap in i can't remember one. What's happened to the free wheeling attacking Aston Villa?

If the midfield cant get a grip on the game you aren't going to create many chances and the defence will be put under pressure.

Agree, games are won and lost in midfield, and despite us having good players there it is not functioning the way it did last year.

if Watkins puts his 1 on 1 away its 2-0 and the game is totally different . He misses too many of these and todays effort wasn't even close

Also the one where Digne puts in a lovely cross which he failed miserably to get anything on it. Really really poor from Ollie.

That was a really odd one - I rewatched it a few times and have no idea how he made such a hash of it. 

[Percy McCarthy]

Having slept on it i'm still fuming. The one stat i keep thinking off is our shots on goal, apart from the tap in i can't remember one. What's happened to the free wheeling attacking Aston Villa?

If the midfield cant get a grip on the game you aren't going to create many chances and the defence will be put under pressure.

Agree, games are won and lost in midfield, and despite us having good players there it is not functioning the way it did last year.

if Watkins puts his 1 on 1 away its 2-0 and the game is totally different . He misses too many of these and todays effort wasn't even close

Even if he had just taken another touch it was a nailed on penalty. Although with that ref, who knows?

[Meanwood Villa]

I think the one after three minutes was the better chance. Any half decent contact on the Digne cross and it's in.

[Meanwood Villa]

Although I agree that the real problem is how many goals we're leaking. I hope Kamara's return goes a long way to resolving that particular issue.

[PaulTheVillan]

Annoyed. I can’t stand them lot.

Worried as soon as they scored we were going to come away with nothing.

Liverpool up next. Great.

[Demitri_C]

Annoyed. I can’t stand them lot.

Worried as soon as they scored we were going to come away with nothing.

Liverpool up next. Great.

Then our next away game vs chelsea. Two terrible results last two. I just dont understand how this team falls to shit when we play spurs. We dont just lose to them we get battered by them when we lose. 8-1 last two games. Thats abysmal.

[Bobby Boy]

We have an extremely soft underbelly. It has been noticeable in games even that we have won this season that we have not pressed much, we lack intensity. Whether this is the coaching strategy or whether we are not fit enough, we have often played at a walking tempo.

Results wise has been ok but we have not had a fully convincing performance in the league all season.

We need to match teams in terms of aggression or we are going to come seriously unstuck.

[Clampy]

Not good was it? We seem to take a couple  of batterings a season under Unai. Let's hope that one is out of the way for a few months and we bounce back quickly like we tend to under him.

[AV82EC]

So a dismal half a game down in London which meant a slightly subdued trip back north. However on reflection some scores on the doors:

Martinez - 6 am worried that with our constant need to play out from the back he isn’t being encouraged enough to vary his out ball.
Cash - 6 played well I thought until he had to come off, had Son in his pocket in the first half.
Konsa - 5 ok but do worry about him being shifted constantly between right and centre back.
Torres - 4 not a good game for Pau.
Digne - 6 I thought Luca had a good game as
Most of the issues were not on his side and he kept Johnson pretty quiet. He was inacres of space for most of the second half and much to his constant frustration everyone ignored him.
Onana - 6 I felt ironically this was his best performance for us as firstly he lasted beyond half time and he was much better on the ball than previous matches.
Tielemans - 5 not Youris day yesterday, everything he tried just didn’t seem to work.
Rogers - 5 has got to start linking play better yesterday was a case in point. Loses possession far too frequently.
Ramsey - 6.5 my player of the match for us, I thought he worked Porro who I rate as a RB very well and was a constant outlet for us.
McGinn - 4 good first half, terrible in the second
Watkins - 4 lack of service didn’t help but skewed that shot badly first half and kept taking the wrong option in the second.

Carlos - 4 pretty average
Bailey - 5 worked some good positions but his lack of delivery is showing some rustiness
Philogene - 3 ran around to not a lot of effect.
Kamara - 5 getting back up to speed
Durán - 4 a bit like Philogene but at least added some physicality.

Unai - 5 needs a bit of rethink on that midfield and imv an over reliance on Rogers and the constant cutting the ball back delivery in the box.

There’s always going to be bumps in the road on the road to World Domination.

Also a round of applause for the referee who seemed to want to keep his cards in his pocket no matter what which after last weeks referee performance was unbelievable.

[Mister E]

Random thoughts:
- Re left back, I was thinking about this after seeing Moreno's performance for Forest on Saturday. The Maatsen purchase does look a little strange in the context of PSR and the Digne-Moreno situation.
- Re substitutions, it has appeared to me that UE seems to have decided before the game, almost, who will be replaced by whom and at what time. Taking Ramsey off seemed weird: was he struggling with a niggle? Duran for Rogers didn't make sense given that the MF was so under pressure.
- I'm a big fan of Nedeljkovic: on Wednesday he looked defensively very sound and also seemed to find good pockets of space. If Cash has an injury issue, I'd be giving the boy some more gametime rather than losing Konsa's pace and game-reading skills at CB.
- I've said before: I don't get why Bailey and Philogene are so reluctant to get to the byline and put the ball in or pull it back for an oncoming midfielder. Is this playing to instructions or a confidence thing? Weird stuff. Right now, the front three has to be the three which started yesterday.
- No Buendia again: UE doesn't seem to trust him.
- The comments above about the season to date: we seem to have sacrificed defensive surety for a more risky, swashbuckling approach of quick passing triangles interspersed with long balls into the channels. Neither is working that well and piles more pressure on the defence. Now that Kamara is fit, I would - like others - like to see him start with Onana and Tielemans.

[Drummond]

Can't believe Bentancur got away with not being booked. The ref had ample opportunity. Not saying that it would have made a difference but him and his colleague at centre-back were dirty bvstards.

Bentancur not getting a yellow was ridiculous. That it took until the 58th minute for a yellow even more so.

That Udogie for repeated fouling didn't get one was nuts too.

It's not the first time this season that we've been roughed up and the opposition have been allowed to get away with it; teams are cottoning on to the ManC method of rotational fouling it seems.

xG was 2.44 v 1.86 yesterday, suggesting a closer game than it looks from the scoreline and seems about right, only because our heads went in the last 15 minutes was the scoreline what it was.

Can't really explain that either, other than the lack of Rogers holding the ball.

Our finishing wasn't what it could have been, that Watkins dragged shot was such a shame, the pass and his first touch were spot on.

They were bound to pile the pressure on and press us as much as they did, and they did it very well. I thought we coped really well in the first half and limited them to sniffs here and there.

Son's ball in was inch perfect, it was a good goal. That got their tails up, and they went for it, whereas we seemed to drop off. They tried things and it worked, we tried things and it didn't.

We move on, no wholesale changes needed, no kn-jerk reactions required from Emery. We're a good side that had an off half.