Ratings & Reactions: Villa v West Ham

[VillaFaninLondon]

3 hours ago, TRO said:

They are not the first team to do that, and get purchase on a game.

Martinez, was at Fault....but he has been magnificent, if we play like that, trust me, we will ruin another good goal keeper.....he was left exposed through lily livered, defending further up the pitch.

Why avoid discussion, its clear, we have issues, they were there, against Southampton and we won.....its not a forum, for just commenting on positive results, we should be grown up enough to discuss our short comings too, especially, in a season where, we are relatively free of the threat of relegation, but as you say, relegation form, right now.

The worry for me is, I don't see too many players in our squad who have that mischievous trait of getting after players and winning the ball......

Apart from Jack with his sublime skills, I don't see too many of our players who can worry the opposition, in any way.

I agree we must discuss this, in fact we learn so much more after a defeat than a win. It just feels sometimes that if you post something negative or constructive criticism about the manager or players you get shouted down and told to support the team. The whole point of this forum is to offer valid criticism as that is what we as the fans are for.

 

Relegation form in the last 6/7 games but also if you go back to the first 4 games when we took 12 points, we've since taken 20 points from 16 games and that included a fabulous run of form in December.

 

Take away December's run and our first four league games and ultimately our average points is barely any better than last season and I sometimes still feel we have the same problems that we had at times last season.

 

The consistency is the biggest worry for me, you just don't know which Villa is going to turn up on any given day. Quite often it depends on how the opposition play, if they stop us you just know it's going to be a bad day at the office.

[AVTuco]

18 hours ago, The Fun Factory said:

Ah I see the season's scapegoat has moved from Mings to Barkley. I wonder where it will go next?

Yes, the same Barkley that single-handedly got us three points four days earlier.

[QldVilla]

7 hours ago, TRO said:

If that was the case and I heard Dean say he asks the players if they feel up to it?.....They also have sophisticated data monitoring equipment to help......why did we set up quite open.

Why did we not play and energy conserving game, of stay in a close block and catch them on the counter, like they did to us......We tried to use the whole pitch, chasing a goal and opening up spaces for them to exploit, when we lost the ball.

West Ham, was not a team to go gungho against, we should have started cautious and grew in to the game....closing down the space and playing miserly.

If we want to play like the equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters, we have to learn to pay the price.

West Ham was well worth their Win.

Believe it’s still Smiths naivety as a coach.

West Ham was a danger game, Moyes has got his mojo back, well organised and difficult to break down and has his Cahill Mark II in Lingard.

Smith still thinks it’s the Championship and you can play twice a week, but not after COVID and not sharing the load with the bench. I agree in part with what your saying, but Smith would also see that they nearly went one up in the first half through Watkins. For me they lacked energy from the start, but the tipping point had came because they didn’t read what was happening  in the last 20mins of the last two matches.

[jimmygreaves]

2 hours ago, AVTuco said:

Yes, the same Barkley that single-handedly got us three points four days earlier.

FFS.... Great goal but zero contribution anywhere else on the pitch... Maybe ok for a striker, troublesome for a central midfielder.

[flashingqwerty]

20 hours ago, smg said:

Agree with your assessment of Barkley, McGinn also suffers from his inclusion but the selections will be based on figures produced by players in training which will show that the players were not clearly exhausted, they were just beaten tonight, god forbid, by a better team on the night. I expect changes will be made for Saturday and if we lose it will because the manager took too long to bring them in. It’s interesting that we can tolerate a weak bench when we are winning, but those same players become viable options when we are losing. 
Finally I have no need to give my head a wobble just because you have different opinions.

You're getting me confused with someone else.  I've always criticised DS for his lack of rotation and subs, good times and bad, and I stand by that criticism.

As to your point about stats in training, I find that incredibly hard to swallow in the case of McGinn, as he was clearly blowing after half an hour.  If hes that tired after 30 minutes he is either unfit, which would show up in the training stats you mention, or he is being worked too hard in training and not getting enough recovery time before playing a game, which would also show up in the stats from their biody monitors.  So, I don't accept the point, as i think everyone can see McGinn was blowing before half time, I dont need to see a readout to see he was tired - it was plainly visible.

In Barkleys case, he hasn't had a decent game 8n a long time, and I cannot understand, in 2 games where our midfield was clearly not coping with the opposition, why he would leave such a massive hinderance of a player on the pitch, when Nakamba, who was our best player against Newcastle, and is more defence minded sits on the bench.

DS is clearly choosing to ignore this, and i will continue to criticise him for it until he starts making rational choices.

[TRO]

16 hours ago, flashingqwerty said:

You're getting me confused with someone else.  I've always criticised DS for his lack of rotation and subs, good times and bad, and I stand by that criticism.

As to your point about stats in training, I find that incredibly hard to swallow in the case of McGinn, as he was clearly blowing after half an hour.  If hes that tired after 30 minutes he is either unfit, which would show up in the training stats you mention, or he is being worked too hard in training and not getting enough recovery time before playing a game, which would also show up in the stats from their biody monitors.  So, I don't accept the point, as i think everyone can see McGinn was blowing before half time, I dont need to see a readout to see he was tired - it was plainly visible.

In Barkleys case, he hasn't had a decent game 8n a long time, and I cannot understand, in 2 games where our midfield was clearly not coping with the opposition, why he would leave such a massive hinderance of a player on the pitch, when Nakamba, who was our best player against Newcastle, and is more defence minded sits on the bench.

DS is clearly choosing to ignore this, and i will continue to criticise him for it until he starts making rational choices.

There is one good thing about Nakamba, at least he sits and doesn't go walk about.......west ham caught us on the break, just like Brighton did.....what do we learn?