Aston Villa vs Brentford Post-Match Thread

[Somniloquism]

The laws mention attempting to play the ball which Watkins clearly did.

Well it states:
clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or
making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball.

Although he ran for the ball, he didn't touch the defender or goalkeeper or impede them in anyway from playing the ball. Like I stated, if the lino had called him offside, VAR would have upheld it similar to the one against Southampton. Or if he had jumped into the defender or blocked the keeper it would have been changed, but I think with the on-field being a goal, and no real impact from Watkins on them, then VAR would have been pushing to override it.

(Cue "but any player offside in the pen area is interfering" comments).

[Nunkin1965]

I thought Kamara's twist & turn for the Rogers goal was orgasmic.
Is there something wrong with me?

[Smithy]

Brentford were shockingly bad all over the pitch, their league position is a false one. Maybe they can only play at home or maybe their set up was to combat our usual slow build up. Whatever the reason our formation made them look championship level at best. When Mings is as dominant as he was you don’t notice Konsa, that’s the difference he makes. McPhee should work on him for attacking corner routines as he’s a real threat if he’s allowed to get on the end of crosses. Lots of very good individual performances from our lot which is great to see.  Their keeper maybe should have saved the penalty, it wasn’t a well hit shot. His attempt to punch away that 2nd half corner was comical, it would have ended up in the net if he hadn’t made amends with the follow up punch. More of the same V Southampton please.

They've kind of had a reverse recent run to our own, in that they've accumulated decent points by beating Ipswich, Wolves, Leicester and Bournemouth in the last 8 games or so, while we've been losing ground and points with defeats to Liverpool, Chelsea, and Spurs.  The quality of the teams we've played is wildly different.

Last night was a good performance and result, but it feels like it was due.  Apart from Chelsea, and the second half at Spurs, I don't think we've been "terrible" in any of our recent games, and we certainly deserved more from a lot of the last 8 games.  Hopefully this is a turning point.  Beat Southampton and Forest, and things will look a lot rosier going into the City game.  We're still in the fight for the top 4, though I think the current occupants will be there at the end of the season.

If we are to get Champions League football again, it will have to be via 5th place, and I suspect we'll be battling it out with Spurs, Newcastle and Man Utd.

[Risso]

I thought Kamara's twist & turn for the Rogers goal was orgasmic.
Is there something wrong with me?

I think there's something wrong with anybody who didn't at least have a mild semi from that.

[Demitri_C]

So, last night we finally saw what Philogene can do. There was a run he made  - about 7-8 minutes from the end - where he sashayed across the pitch, beating 4-5 players as he went, and then delivered the ball to a colleague. The guy has some skills.
Which leads me to ponder, why is it that neither he nor Bailey get down the wing enough? I honestly think that they are under instruction not to put the ball at risk or become isolated. Which - if that is true - then leads me to wonder why Emery is so keen on playing wingers when he does not want them to deliver wing-play?!
I'm confused!

Yeah thats the first time i saw him beat players. It was veey diaby like.

I dodnt think his performance barring that was gokd though
 
Definitely need to look at strengthening those areas in next couple of windows

[Dick Edwards]

While we played well last night I wouldn't have been confident of defending our lead at 3-1 with Carlos and Pau responsible for dealing with all those crosses into our box. Mings was deservedly our man of the match.

[JUAN PABLO]

Another thing , I dont think Unai was too happy with Bailey when he lost the ball and seem tostop and give up , you dont want to be seeing that .

[Tayls_7]

Another thing , I dont think Unai was too happy with Bailey when he lost the ball and seem tostop and give up , you dont want to be seeing that .

I nearly lost my shit over that too. He does that far too often when the ball's still in play.

[JUAN PABLO]

 We're still in the fight for the top 4, though I think the current occupants will be there at the end of the season.

If we are to get Champions League football again, it will have to be via 5th place, and I suspect we'll be battling it out with  Man Utd.


not sure about them Smithy

[brontebilly]

I was surprised the third goal stood and I must admit I wasn't convinced by the pen decision either

Pen was one of those were that if it was given on the field, VAR wasn't changing it. We have had a few where it went the other way with the ref making the call against us which VAR wouldn't overrule.

I also think the same with the offside, if the linesman had flagged, it would have been called on-field decision potentially similar to the Southampton one the other day. But as the lino didn't AND the defender had a decent chance to head it away with no "interference" from Watkins.......

The pen was the correct decision, as was the yellow card.  If he'd made an attempt to tackle, it would have been a red card.  It was only yellow was he wasn't attempting to stop or tackle Watkins.  It's still technically a foul, but not a deliberate attempt to prevent a goal-scoring opportunity.

For the third, of course Watkins is interfering with play. The defender does quite well to head the ball away from him before Cash finishes it. The refereeing "team" tying themselves in knots rather than using common sense. We would be fuming if that one was given against us.

The second peno was a little soft. Watkins took a big swing at it and made sure the contact was exaggerated. Defender was caught badly on the wrong side, good play from Bailey and Watkins to be fair. No idea why he is taking a big swing at it in the first place. Anyway, it's a goal!

[Somniloquism]

For the third, of course Watkins is interfering with play. The defender does quite well to head the ball away from him before Cash finishes it. The refereeing "team" tying themselves in knots rather than using common sense. We would be fuming if that one was given against us.

The second peno was a little soft. Watkins took a big swing at it and made sure the contact was exaggerated. Defender was caught badly on the wrong side, good play from Bailey and Watkins to be fair. No idea why he is taking a big swing at it in the first place. Anyway, it's a goal!

And we have had them given against us WITH more interference then anything Watkins did last night. Think when Sterling dummied the ball in from a freekick for example. However I honestly think they are looking for the more physical contact from the attacker on the defender rather then just being close to the ball unless the onfield decision is offside. For example, Everton had one disallowed last night because an initial offside attacker blocked off a defender. The offence happened nowhere near the ball though, just that the toffee was offside as the freekick was taken. IF the player was onside, they wouldn't have disallowed it at all.

[tomd2103]

The biggest  area in which we dont have competition is wide. Bailey was average and philiogene again didnt take his chance when called upon.

I agree with that and would add RB too.  It's going to be hard to do business in January, but if we can only bring one player in during the window, I'd like to see a very pacy right sided wide player, not necessarily to replace Bailey, but to just give us a point a difference. 

[AlexAlexCropley]

Loved that Philogene Messi run at the end.
It screamed "let me free,Unai"!

[cdbearsfan]

Bailey played well and Philogene was perfectly fine when he came on.

[London Villan]

Philogene was getting a lot of coaching/advice/bollockings from Unai for the first few minutes he was on the pitch - he then seemed to settle into the game.