Post match thread Go Ahead 2 villa 1

[andyh]

The defence had 3 ‘situations’ to deal with last night.
The free kick in the first 5 mins that was blazed over, albeit offside.
And the 2 goals.

They were shambolic however you cut it up.

[aj2k77]

Someone last night said Mings is shot and unfortunately it appears he's right. A great servant to the club but on his last legs now.

[simon ward 50]

It's deja vue all over again!

[eye digress]

This team, this squad - and I’m including Unai - has a mentality problem.
Whether it’s a massive, massive cup final or equivalent (olympiakos, palace, Utd), or what’s considered an ‘easy’,opponent, we show the wrong mentality.

We have it in us to completely bottle it, or act like swaggering prima donnas who believe they don’t need to put the effort it.


Unai has talked about our mentality since he got here.
He still can bloody well sort it though.

See where you're coming from, but don't agree with that, really.

I think a fairer criticism is that Emery always has the players approaching games in exactly the same manner, and there is relatively little variation in intensity if we're winning or losing, or it's a big game or small game (with the exception perhaps of when we play man to man against the superclubs). I think that's deliberate on Emery's part – "trust the process" – but that it's sometimes hard for us fans to reconcile. When we're losing, we want to see some blood and thunder.

Last night we had something like twice the possession and twice the number of efforts on goal. We should have won, but didn't execute well enough.

As disappointing as that was, I think Emery will look at the bigger picture: 9 times out of 10 with those kind of stats, we will win.

[AV82EC]

Someone last night said Mings is shot and unfortunately it appears he's right. A great servant to the club but on his last legs now.

I don’t think he was great last night but this is proper knee jerk to a poor team performance.

[eye digress]

Someone last night said Mings is shot and unfortunately it appears he's right. A great servant to the club but on his last legs now.

I don’t think he was great last night but this is proper knee jerk to a poor team performance.

To me, he looked like you'd expect someone to look as they learn a new role. Specifically, in the build up, in order to take balls played into him from the left, he was doing complicated flicks through his legs instead of letting the ball roll across him and playing it off on his right foot. And that made him look awkward. Also, it felt like he and Torres were struggling to get the right distance apart (and therefore, right distance from the full backs). So the defensive shape was an issue.

[martin o`who??]

Too easy too much possession we became complacent and paid the inevitable price and you could see it coming.

[Clampy]

Someone last night said Mings is shot and unfortunately it appears he's right. A great servant to the club but on his last legs now.

I don’t think he was great last night but this is proper knee jerk to a poor team performance.

To me, he looked like you'd expect someone to look as they learn a new role. Specifically, in the build up, in order to take balls played into him from the left, he was doing complicated flicks through his legs instead of letting the ball roll across him and playing it off on his right foot. And that made him look awkward. Also, it felt like he and Torres were struggling to get the right distance apart (and therefore, right distance from the full backs). So the defensive shape was an issue.

Wasn't he playing on his wrong side?

[Beard82]

I think we have a real problem breaking a low block.  Around the box - we just dont have the quality to regularly beat overcome it.  Too few of our front players are able to regularly find that quality.  In the first half was useless (which isnt really suprising). 

Guessard is a worry - going forward he looks way of the level we need.  Our left was good in the first half but tended to over play it.   Combined with a failure to take chances that you need to take. 

Our forward players do continue to worry me - too often they have shocking performances - and we seem to rely on just hoping one of them having a good game.   

[London Villan]

This team, this squad - and I’m including Unai - has a mentality problem.
Whether it’s a massive, massive cup final or equivalent (olympiakos, palace, Utd), or what’s considered an ‘easy’,opponent, we show the wrong mentality.

We have it in us to completely bottle it, or act like swaggering prima donnas who believe they don’t need to put the effort it.


Unai has talked about our mentality since he got here.
He still can bloody well sort it though.

See where you're coming from, but don't agree with that, really.

I think a fairer criticism is that Emery always has the players approaching games in exactly the same manner, and there is relatively little variation in intensity if we're winning or losing, or it's a big game or small game (with the exception perhaps of when we play man to man against the superclubs). I think that's deliberate on Emery's part – "trust the process" – but that it's sometimes hard for us fans to reconcile. When we're losing, we want to see some blood and thunder.

Last night we had something like twice the possession and twice the number of efforts on goal. We should have won, but didn't execute well enough.

As disappointing as that was, I think Emery will look at the bigger picture: 9 times out of 10 with those kind of stats, we will win.

The only time we have “gone for it” was the second half vs PSG. Then it was curtailed when he took SJM and Rashford off. Other than that we always play in a “controlled” way, which has caught us out more than once.

[brontebilly]

I do think yesterday, in addition to recent games, shows our best CB pair is Konsa and Torres. It isn’t helped by Cash and Digne not being there, but balance was off.

I don't think conclusive evidence was presented either way on this last night. If Mings is at LCB that second goal doesn't happen for me. Thats just absolutely woeful from both Torres and Maatsen, what's wrong with blocking off the run. Only one player to deal with between both of them. Mings at minimum would have stepped across him to check the run, was too risky to play offside with their guy running deep from midfield and no pressure on the pass. However good Torres and Maatsen are on the ball if they defend like that we are going to have problems on our left side.

In addition Mings at RCB is awful, proven awful v Brentford and we didn't need to see it ever again. That's on Emery as it unsettled the balance of the defence. He's like a fish out of water there. Can't kick a ball with his right foot for starters but his body position is all wrong generally as he struggles to turn onto his right side. Routine balls over the top and his positioning is all over the place. Put him at LCB and he deals with that all night.

I thought we also got a bit of an eye opener last night on if we ever had to rely on Lindelof at RB for anything but an emergency then we are in trouble.