Bruges v Aston Villa PMT.

[kippaxvilla2]

HS2

[LeonW]

Awful awful awful performance. Completely one paced, zero dynamism. Players like Bailey playing within themselves. Ollie just can’t hold the ball up at all. And in Mings stupidity, we’re on track to continue to find new and interesting ways in conceding.

Despite their comparatively reduced resources compared to ours, they absolutely did a number on us. Much the better team without a doubt.

The themes we’re seeing are consistent and need arresting.

[sid1964]

I saw a similar mistake as Mings made by a player in another game I watched earlier this season - it was during a game with Wrens Nest Under 8's.

An awful mistake by Mings, he is not at the level we need to compete against Europe's elite.

[Mortimer's Bear]

For once the international break comes at a very good time for us.

[Tom_Mc9?]

It was really poor. Too many players of out of form and have seemingly forgotten how to pass. Or concentrate.
We need to just get past our inevitable defeat to Liverpool and reset. A task ahead for Unai.

[jwarry]

Been thinking about what’s going wrong and I suspect it’s other teams have worked out Unai’s master plan A for this season ie play through the middle to get Rogers running at opponents.  Once teams figure that out we seemed to be fucked with no plan B

Time for Unai to rethink his plans for this season

[Neil Hawkes]

Maybe I'm reading to much into it; from my perspective it looked as if there was on field rebellion against Unai instructions as he was frequently going ballistic on the sidelines.

What every player needs to realise (and soon), is they are never perfect and the only reason we have achieved such high finishes and European qualification is by playing collectively and to a plan determined by the manager/coaches - if the plan is followed to the letter and is not going well, then the subs can be made to change to another plan, that has also been determined by the manager/coaches.

In short - stick to the plan and let the management/coaching team on the sidelines determine if they want to change anything.

[langleylions]

With all the constant swapping / changing/ resting players we are slowly one by one playing them out of form....started with bailey & mcginn now watkins pau konsa the list is getting bigger ...who exactly have we got playing well

[Clark W Griswold]

I saw a similar mistake as Mings made by a player in another game I watched earlier this season - it was during a game with Wrens Nest Under 8's.

:-)
Made me laugh.

Yeah lack of concentration, if he’s going to play we need the much improved Mings of the 9 months or so before his injury where he didn’t seem to have the concentration issues.

[PaulWinch again]

It was really poor. Too many players of out of form and have seemingly forgotten how to pass. Or concentrate.
We need to just get past our inevitable defeat to Liverpool and reset. A task ahead for Unai.

As I keep saying so many players out of form can’t just be down to individual circumstances. There seems to be a bit of a muddle in terms of how we want to play at the moment. I don’t think there’s a clear understanding.

[Chris_Jephcott]

It was really poor. Too many players of out of form and have seemingly forgotten how to pass. Or concentrate.
We need to just get past our inevitable defeat to Liverpool and reset. A task ahead for Unai.

As I keep saying so many players out of form can’t just be down to individual circumstances. There seems to be a bit of a muddle in terms of how we want to play at the moment. I don’t think there’s a clear understanding.

The thing that is so frustrating is that this is a style of football that Emery has implemented successfully in various games - but it’s exceptionally inconsistent at the moment. And it was in the 2nd half of last season too.

I think our other issue is that we have players out of form at the moment too:

Bailey is a ghost of how he was last season
Watkins - yes he’s scoring a few goals, but is continually missing more chances than he puts away.
McGinn - it’s almost like he’s lost the spark or they’ve figured out his bum turns.
Konsa - not a RB
Morgan - despite all the amazing running, his finishing is frustrating

I could go on and on. But we’ve got a strong team, but too many are out of form at the moment.

And I am still really pissed off about last night today. Really pissed off. Every time that we have a chance to do something, we fart and follow through, and end up drifting into the mid table.

[Mister E]

A few 'morning-after' thoughts:
- looking at the last 3 months or so, PSR forced us to sell 2 players - Luiz and Diaby - at a time when 3 players were still recovering from season-long injuries (Kamara has been massively missed). The incomers were opportunistic (Maatsen), makeweights (SI-J, Barrenechea) or gambles (Philogene). Only Onana looks like a properly-considered purchase.
- Our reliance on Tielemans and Rogers is being stretched.
- Emery seems unable to recreate the discipline that saw us deservedly beat Bayern. Nonetheless, we have played some decent football this season (even on Saturday, apparently, we played some good stuff).
- Don't know why Onana didn't make an appearance last night: being saved for our defeat at Liverpool, presumably, but we needed to stabilise the MF and he could have come on and done that. Also, starting Bailey was an act of unwarranted faith - Ramsey could have started. 
- Emery needs to review the playing style to be both tighter and more intense - too much pitty-patty stuff that results in nothing.

[VillaTim]

For once the international break comes at a very good time for us.

We said that for the last international break

[Louzie0]

I’ve just worked out that the PMT in the title stands for post-mortem.

I was rather puzzled, before that.

[AV82EC]

After a night of reflection on my home end hand sitting, a rather panicked trip back to the airport to catch my flight and a crap nights sleep I’ve come to the conclusion we were shite.

3 defeats in a row and I’ve been to all of them. We’ve got worse in each one as well, which doesn’t make me think a trip to Anfield at the moment is top of anyone’s list of things we’d like to do.