Aston Villa v Brentford Pre Match Thread

[VillaTim]

Loads of seats available still , Upper Trinity looks particularly bad

Pay £72 for a ticket to sit on the cold, or watch it for free as part of my Amazon Prime subscription in my parents' lounge. Tough choice...

Say £35 I'd be tempted to get there after work through the traffic etc. This pricing is ridiculous and offensive to be honest .

[cdbearsfan]

The kick-off time and the habitual incompetence of West Midlands politicians don't help. We should really kick off at a more sensible time, and leave the 8.15 starts to cities with a better functioning public transport system, like Mariupol.

[Clampy]

Loads of seats available still , Upper Trinity looks particularly bad

Pay £72 for a ticket to sit on the cold, or watch it for free as part of my Amazon Prime subscription in my parents' lounge. Tough choice...

I've just looked and i cant see too many £72 tickets. The average price seems to be around £50 which still makes the Amazon option more favourable though.

[VillaTim]

GA+ from £125 upwards , good luck with that Chris
Corner flag is £230 to sit in the lower north . Ridiculous

[cdbearsfan]

I've already paid and I'm struggling to summon up the energy to be arsed. I'll be fine once I have a couple of refereeing decisions to rant about.

[Perthvillan]

It looks like Olsen is in for tonight.
I think we need to get him to hoof the ball as he doesn't look confident with the ball at his feet.
It's going to be a nerve wracking night if we are still trying to play out from the back with him between the posts.
I feel sorry for those going to the game with those ridiculous ticket prices and amazingly late KO time.
The kick off time suits me here in W Australia though.
Picked a draw, anything less than 4 points from the next two games would be unacceptable really.
UTV

[eamonn]

Any Sao Paolo Villans meeting for this one?

[dorsetvillian]

Just need a win. Not. Going to be pretty. Difficult to see what Uni will change with the lack of Onnana and Ramsey. Needs to freshen the team up and maybe a formation twerk. I would Watkins and Duran and play longer with Olsen in goal.

[sid1964]

Hopefully the fans that do bother to turn up tonight are rewarded with a winning performance.

Obviously judging by the comments on here about the attendance tonight, it was a good decision by the owners not to increase the stadium capacity.

[PaulWinch again]

Stop being so fucking easy to play against please Villa. One of the most frustrating things is that teams don’t have to play particularly well to score against us.

[wince]

3-2 to Villa. Gotta believe!

[Mister E]

I really do not know why so many think the answer to the problem is to go to a Back 5.
Thankfully Emery does not do 5 at the back either.

Mainly because we need defensive solidity and some pace out wide. The players we have with the best pace are our fullbacks.
And, all of what we've tried thus far has not delivered.

So with the team struggling defensively, introduce a completely different system? It takes a lot of time, planning and training to go to a back 5, doing it in 3 days is almost impossible. It is why teams rarely change to it and stick to it during the season. It also offers less in game flexibility than a back 4, where it is relatively straight forward to increase deployment / emphasis in defence, midfield or attack.

We've been playing a back 3 on and off all season. Yes, it's the asymmetric-fullback version, but they will be practised in playing it in different ways; I'm sure. They have also played against teams that deploy the 3-5-2 set-up.
You say "a back 4, where it is relatively straight forward to increase deployment / emphasis in defence, midfield or attack": I'd say that 3-5-2 offers equally as much flexibility, particularly if you have the likes of Onana and Kamara in the middle.
Anyway, it's academic at the moment because Onana is still not available to play.

[Mister E]

-------- Olsen --------
Cash Konsa Mings Digne
--- Kamara - Tielemans
McGinn----------- Buendia
--- Watkins --- Bailey -----

Still pretty strong just need to fully protect Olsen , limited playing out from the back and a bit more old school tomorrow

Blimey, Buendia and Bailey in the same side and on the left. Good luck with that (FWIW, I'd like to see Bailey play wide on the left, as he did against Brentford 2 years' ago, but it is pretty unlikely based on all the games he's played for Emery).

[Demitri_C]

Good luck tonight you lions and everyone going.

Hopefully this horrendous run ends tonight

[VillaTim]

Another option I was thinking was play Rogers further forward to play just off Watkins .