MikeMcKenna

71

I am totally devastated. I shed a few more than a tears when I heard this. We knew it was coming but it is still so hard to take. After the misery of the 60s, Ron lifted us up and made us a great club again. He, above any player renewed Villa as a force and was my all time hero. I had the great fortune of spending some time with him about 5/6 years ago. When I asked him what made the difference when he joined the club in the 70s, he simply said “the fans”.. I pressed him, saying surely it was the players he brought in or the work ethic he instilled etc etc . But he insisted saying “No, at the the time finding those who wanted to play was easy, but the fans were something else.” We talked later about the 2nd replay of the league cup final at Old Trafford v Everton with him saying something along lines of how important the fans were that night. You had to be there but he was right, we literally drove the players forward. So sad RIP Ron.

Really don’t get the criticism for DS last night. Whichever way he had set us up we would have been outplayed. We are simply miles behind the top teams in terms of squad quality and the options for our newly promoted side are very limited. We were outplayed by a side with a number of top class players but could have nicked a draw at the death. Keeping it to a one goal deficit was an achievement and at the end of the season GD could be our saviour. Some fans need a dose of realism. At Old Trafford we could have won and got a well deserved draw. Had we done the same at Chelsea, I would have been ecstatic. Bring on Leicester....

Mings worst game for Villa tonight.

Didn’t expect anything, didn’t get anything. Chelsea are way ahead of us. The priority is to stay up then we must invest.

We are drawing away at one of the top teams in the country..... such a den of negativity in here.

Wes actually won most headers yesterday and worked really hard despite our lack of possession.

Yes we have much to learn and are far from a complete side but Liverpool always had the potential despite being lacklustre for most of the game. European champions win games in the last 5/10 mins... there is a long way to go but we will survive.

Reading some of the comments here is depressing and makes me despair of some Villa fans. IMHO that was the best the Villa performance of the season despite losing..... ....in the last minute. Smith nearly pulled off the result of the season. At VP before the game the consensus was that we would be lucky to avoid a thrashing. We were NOT thrashed and could easily have been 2-0 up with 10 mins to go. The lads played their socks off against the best team in the PL - they were fortunate to get all 3 points. The journey home was sh*t and I hate losing but the team made me proud today.

Rubbish. We were always going to be on the back foot against the league leaders stuffed with quality. We didn’t ‘invite’ pressure. We tried to hit them on the break and it nearly worked. I was v.proud of the team today. They worked their bollocks off against the European Champions.

We weren’t humiliated but a have long way to go before we can compete with Citeh. Liverpool next week will be a huge test.

Come on you Lions!!!

Today looks like a rethink Obviously away but will be interesting to see how Luiz and Nakamba play together.

Nakamba looks like has the job on tracking Sterling

DS needs a rethink. It is little wonder they were playing through us. Marvelous was defending on his own in central midfield for much of the game. Great that we won but it could easily have gone the other way, even when they had ten men. I don’t know what to suggest but something has to change as we look so vulnerable when on the back foot.

Delete wrong post

Good game overall for CH when we were going forward, however, he still struggles to have impact when we are going backwards.

So pleased for him. 4 in 8 is a good tally in his first season in the PL. If he had scored the penalty, he would be on same as Kane, Mane, Vardy! We need to cut him some slack.

We clicked ...’Nuff said!

I would be very tempted to bring Trez on and it is something I could see DS doing. Norwich look very dodgy at the back, even if they are threat going forward. Trez could have a field day as the game is so open and will be more so in the 2nd.

Interview in today’s Sunday Times with SJM https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/john-mcginn-interview-5s97vcngd (pay wall) John McGinn: ‘I feel I offer something different to other players’ September 22 2019, 12:01am, Premier League | John McGinn Interview Hard-working midfielder had to wait for a shot at the big time but will fancy his chances of hustling Arsenal today Forward thinking: John McGinn is enjoying playing a more advanced role for Aston Villa this seasonADRIAN SHERRATT The thing about Clydebank, says John McGinn, is it sits between Loch Lomond and Glasgow, and that means you can go one of two ways. You go “posh,” he grins, if you travel west to the loch and the mountains and pretty villages there. Or you go real if you head east into Glasgow. In life, McGinn always goes real. No Louis Vuitton wash bag for him, but one he picked up in a Glasgow store. And his car? He used a Football League scheme for players to purchase his, a Mercedes 4x4 with a towbar. Aston Villa’s squad thinks it is hilarious. They call him Eddie Stobart but, McGinn shrugs, “I’d never drive anything my mum wouldn’t get in to.” Mum Mary and Stephen, his dad, are teachers and the biggest influences upon a 24-year-old who reeks of hard work and humble values, but the rest of the McGinn clan have shaped him too. It’s a big one. He has “50 or 60 cousins”, all of whom would knock him back down to earth were he ever to say or do anything flash. His grandad, Jack, was chairman of Celtic and president of the Scottish Football Association and is a patriarch from whom he gets solid guidance. Then there are Stephen and Paul, his professional footballer brothers, and twin sister Katie who “would slap me silly if I ever got carried away,” says a midfielder who interested Manchester United in the summer and is deemed “super” by Jurgen Klopp. After an article where he was rated at £50m, he was asked how much he would pay for himself and “£5” was his reply. He has not forgotten the periods in his life where being here — a flourishing Premier League newcomer and Villa fans’ and players’ player of the year — was very far away. An early hurdle arose when his school, St Peter the Apostle High, had no teacher to take the football team. Mary, who taught there and coached ladies’ netball, stepped in: “It was murder!” When an SFA rule forbade youngsters playing schools football and for a professional club youth team, and John was at St Mirren’s academy, Mary intervened again. “She gave St Mirren an ultimatum — he either plays for his school and nobody or his school and you. We won the Scottish Schools Cup that year.” Clydebank itself “presents its own challenges,” he reflects. “There was loads of football played. It’s all you really know from there. It was a brilliant place but the temptations of drink are common. Deep thinker: McGinn possesses a social conscienceNEVILLE WILLIAMS “At 15, 16, I’d be street-walking with pals. We’d go up the hill and I’d have my Capri Sun — they’d have Mad Dog [nickname for a fortified wine popular in the west of Scotland]. I was always driven to be a player and had training three or four nights a week, nothing was going to stop me. I had good people round me — even if they were on the Mad Dog,” he laughs. He has a social conscience and still supports initiatives in Edinburgh, where he played for Hibs, while being an enthusiastic participant in Villa’s community work, and Scotland’s problematic relationship with alcohol troubles him. “Don’t get me wrong, I like a beer from time to time,” he says, “but [at 15] that was a point where it’s easy to get sucked in. Everyone says, ‘Oh, if I hadnae turned to drink...’ It’s so easy in places like Clydebank. And there are a lot worse places in the Glasgow area where it’s even easier to get dragged in.” He hopes Scottish initiatives to tackle the problem work. St Mirren was a testing but valuable breeding ground. McGinn captained the Under-19s and was charged by fellow players with asking youth head David Longwell to relent. “Everything was old school. We picked litter and cleaned the changing room,” McGinn recalls. “Two or three gym sessions a day. I’d have to ask [Longwell] can the boys go home and he’d say ‘go and do another session’. “Looking back he was doing it for our benefit, making stuff up to keep us there after 5pm, and keep us out of trouble.” His progress took off when a coach, Tommy Craig, converted him to a midfielder. He helped St Mirren win the League Cup and was player of the year. The next campaign (2014-15) is the one he always reaches back to for perspective. St Mirren changed managers, overhauled their squad, and he decided against extending his contract. He felt the pressure of being the young talisman, and the team struggled — ultimately going down. His future was uncertain, no top-flight Scottish club willing to pay the £250,000 compensation required. Then, weeks before becoming a free agent, McGinn suffered serious injury in a training prank — St Mirren captain Steven Thompson speared him with a sharpened pole. It plunged into McGinn’s thigh. “It was a millimetre from the femoral artery. Mentally I struggled. It was a complete accident and there were no hard feelings but the fact I was so close to dying... the surgeon showed me the path of [the pole] and it was 7.7cm deep, somehow avoiding the artery. [Had it not] I’d have bled out in minutes, he said.” That incident felt “like the icing on the cake. Getting relegated was hard early in my career and I thought the world was against me. Nobody — I mean nobody — would pay the compensation fee for me. And it got to the stage, even St Mirren supporters would agree, I was rubbish.” He felt even sorrier for himself when red tape thwarted a move to Houston Dynamo in the MLS, then a transfer to Dundee United collapsed — United preferring to sign a Dutch nonentity, Rodney Sneijder, instead. His last option was Hibs, in the Scottish Championship, but moving there proved transformative — and look at him now, Villa’s best player this season, scorer of last year’s Championship Goal of the Season and the “£170m goal” that earned Villa promotion via the playoff final at Wembley. Dean Smith, Villa’s manager, has unlocked creative and penetrative aspects of his game — moving him upfield to play as an attacking No 8 alongside Jack Grealish. “I feel I offer something different to other players,” he says. “I can hustle and bustle. [In Scotland] what frustrated me, and my dad and grandad, was the impression I was just a rat, a runner. Coming here I’ve proved I can play.” Villa have big ambitions (“everywhere you look there’s building work”) but know their priority — survival. At games are a regular stream of McGinn guests — his parents, his pals and Mikey, a young leukaemia sufferer he befriended visiting Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital and who FaceTimes him daily. Grealish is a close buddy. “We’re similar age and like similar things,” McGinn says. He considers Grealish’s pin-up boy status and is modest to the last. “We’re different looks-wise but I suppose we’re probably a 12 out of 20 together…”

As we all know, team confidence is critical and as yet we have definitely not clicked. I have seen enough to believe we have the talent but the poor passing and amount of balls going astray suggests we are almost trying to hard. Many times we were in good positions against Wham only for them to break down due to a poor pass or over-run. Maybe I am overly optimistic but still believe at some point over the next 4/5 games it will start to click. Wham could have gone 3rd if they had beaten us and it was clear from the game, despite being poor overall, that there really wasnt that much between the teams.

Grealish was terrible tonight. Just one goal! Why hasn’t he been dropped to the u23s?

The criticism of Grealish lately has verged on trolling and being contrarian for the sake of it. Imho he has had a reasonable start. Is he the finished article, not yet, but I will lay money that he will be.. FFS we are three games into our return to the PL with loads of new players settling into arguably the best league in the world. We lost the first to last years European Cup finalists, lost the second because of errors by ‘new’ players but showed enough to suggest we would be improve and against a talented Everton side did just that. Grealish Is a huge talent and imho will make his doubters eat their words. KTF., UTV!

After all the stressing about AVFC losing the first two games, we are one point off the top 6. Funny old game