Aston Villa v Watford Saturday 28th November 2015

Sometimes the signs are there. 3 times a deflection broke to them for goal 1. The second there's nothing Hutton can do about it and the third is a deflection straight up for him to run on to. What can you do!?

This team is better than the others around us but we need results and fast. At least 5 wins out the next 9 gets us to 20pts from 23. That's a platform if we can get there!

Ok, on a more serious note, Clark and Richardson are shit. I don't know if Clark would be fine if he had a decent LB next to him but we neither have an attacking presence down the left nor any kind of defence. Everything goes down the right, and aside from Hutton's blunder today, we're good on that side. I don't know if Okore and Bennett is the answer, but we need something on the left. That or Richards is so good he makes Clark look terrible.

Ayew looked great today. Thanks, Sherwood, for not playing him for most of the season.

Very disappointing but we experienced some horrible luck there. Richardson, Clark and Hutton were our undoing and with every one of those individuals the word "again" could be applied.

I'm still on the fence about whether another of the perennial "agains" - Guzan - deserves that epithet this week. He did some good things but I 'd have to watch it again to decide whether he should have done better and I can'[t bring myself to do that.

One thing that did perplex me. Traore came on and instantly wreaked havoc down the right. Why the fuck was he over on the left within ten minutes doing fuck all that was in any way effective?

Sky wrote:Game over. Were a joke. Hope Lerner is watching

Haha like he gives a fuck?

Doubt he will give a fuck when we are relegated either, the massive financial losses the club will incur he will probably be able to spin into a way of tax avoidance so it won't effect him at all.

More than 2 wins adrift, relegation is no longer just a possibility it's almost a certaintity. Club deserves relegation, even if the fans don't, just for the shambolic way it's been run for the last 5 years.

If or when we are relegated we will join the long list of big clubs unable to return to the top flight too. Lerner should have took his money in the summer as he wont even get the amount he paid for the club back now.

It's fine though, we will all still buy our tickets, replica shirts and other assorted shite and take it more willingly than Graeme Norton at a KY promotion party in the mean time

Another loss. And I am fast approaching getting really depressed. I thought the team playered OK, a fecking own goal ffs. We complain about the defence we complain about the midfield we complain about the attacking. It appears that no one seems to look at the board.
Learner has been an absent owner for years now and he is doing to us to what he did to the cleaveland brown. I now know we will be in the championship next year due to the ineptitude of the boards senior contingent. They will still be lifting large pay packets for feckin this club over. I love the villa do these reprebates I think not. Prehaps a time in the championship will do us good get rid of the top money and bring in footballers brains not these twat playing with my beloved club.

Lerner will keep the parachute money, sell off the better players,and sell the club if he Can get a buyer .I did not think I would see villa go down again in my life time, it was bad last time, if we go down this season it's going to be much worse, because the way the club is run.mind you apart from the defending we did have a go, ( but Watford at home )was 3 points lost.

I agree its desperate, but its too soon to say we're down, January will show us whether we are down, we need an influx of quality especially in the forward line & defence. If we get that then I'm confident that things will change, if not then I can't see where the next goal is coming from out of this team, shocking I know but thats about it.

It's the hope that gets you so I thank our team for being so incapable of generating hope.

The lack of passion in the side is frightening, when we got a goal back to make it 2-3, where was the passion and desire to get another goal to get a draw!
It seems that most of them don't care (i.e. contract release clauses) as though they won't be there if we go down anyway.

Very disheartening and the club is in a very bad state of repair!

Yesterday was a bit of a roller coaster for us. You can see that there has been some work and progress on teamwork and tactics but we still fell short against one of the worst sides in the division.
The goals were all hammer blows and with our confidence on the floor we did well to respond even though we fell short in the end.
We need to shake up the defence at this stage. It was obvious that even when we were well on top we were only ever a long ball away from being in trouble. We seem to allow dangerous situations develop from nothing with depressing regularity. Yesterday we were in complete control of the game twice and in seconds we conceded poor goals against the run of play.
We managed two great goals ourselves but we were always chasing.
I'm not sure what the manager will or can do to change this but I have a fear that Richards is not a good defensive organiser (he's not played centrally for long enough) but he is the strongest personality and that might be a problem. Clark looked a totally different player yesterday to the player who was marshalling the irish defence a few weeks ago or last season when he was the senior partner alongside Okore.

On a personal note it was great to be back at Villa park. My son loved the day up to a point and he got to see two great goals among all the dross. We also were right in the game up to the final whistle.

Well that was depressing. We huffed and puffed and ok scored a couple of decent goals but Watford didn't have to even try that hard. Watford will not have had an easier games in years, every time they went forward they looked like scoring. Even after Ayew pulled it back to 2-3 Watford just closed the game down and we spent most of the added time defending corners because we can't clear our lines.

Garde needs to recall Cissoko from loan at least he is a solid defender as Richardson is as rubbish at defending as he is going forward.

I am at a complete loss about this team though and how poor it is. I lay the blame at Lerner's door 100%. The transfer policy over the past five years is the only reason why we are where we are.

Well our policy of buying potential is working well and we would have been better off buying using EA Sports FIFA 15 rankings as a guide.

Lerner is a prick and I now worry we are stuck with him for years to come.

I think that's a very fair analysis Cha Ching. I'm glad you and your son took some joy from the game although it ended in disappointment. Never give up. Up The Villa!!

I agree Delboy. Nothing will change while RL owns the club. Well meaning perhaps, although some would disagree, but ultimately utterly clueless. He inherited his wealth and has never had to make anything himself and so has no idea how to run anything, least not an historic football club.

Will he ever find a buyer? Who knows. If, and it now looks highly likely, we go down, a club the size of Villa, should be able to bully their way back into the PL. We should have massive pulling power and relatively huge wealth. However somehow I can see us making all the wrong decisions and struggling for mid table. RL has to go, but how that can come about and if we replace him with someone worthy is a question I can't answer.

Cha Ching wrote:I'm not sure what the manager will or can do to change this but I have a fear that Richards is not a good defensive organiser (he's not played centrally for long enough) but he is the strongest personality and that might be a problem. Clark looked a totally different player yesterday to the player who was marshalling the irish defence a few weeks ago or last season when he was the senior partner alongside Okore.

On a personal note it was great to be back at Villa park. My son loved the day up to a point and he got to see two great goals among all the dross. We also were right in the game up to the final whistle.

Judging by the way Richards made some great runs yesterday do you think we'd be better off with Richards at RB with Okore next to Clark? They did look like they were starting to form a good partnership last season. The big problem remains LB though, and with a weak LB we don't have a decent attacking threat down the left and we're exposed in defence, which causes Clark big problems. I think Hutton has been doing ok though, and with Traore and Veretout in front of him that's a pretty good right side. So can we risk moving Richards to RB and letting Clark take over?

Great to hear your son had a good day, I suspect that's more about you than the result!

Thank you. I think that is why the manager has such a difficult job. He sees these players every day on the training ground and he has come up with the same central defence as we would have because we were all blaming Lescott for a while. The game that Richards missed had Clark on the right hand side having a nightmare against Spurs and the memory of three centre backs against Stoke is not very fond.
All I know is that until we start defending better we are going down because at the moment we can't keep a clean sheet unless we park eleven plsyers behind the ball and get very lucky.
Worryingly our alternatives like Okore was part of the team that conceded two against Fleetwood in midweek so the problems run deep at the club.

Plus if Garde was to consider moving Richards to RB he'd have to balance the potential improvement against the likelihood of upsetting his captain and the only player who looks like he gives a shit.

I really don't think we made it easy for Watford so a little bemused that so many seem to think we gave it to them on a plate. There were moments sure and of course too many of them but we didn't get thumped.

Also, aside from his own goal I thought Hutton was better than the general reception he seems to be getting and where we're talking about a lack of passion both he and Micah seemed to be the most visibly up for it out of the whole team. It's the left/centre-left of defence that was the biggest worry for me and will continue to be so until we have a proper left-sided and defensively minded replacement for Amavi as Richardson is not and Clark's flaws became massively amplified because of it.

Also, this mentality of throwing away an easy three points yesterday is frustrating. Of the new arrivals Watford have looked like being the most likely to finish lower-mid table - based on form so far this should never have been considered an easy three points. If anything, they should've been ashamed of themselves for not picking up an easy three points from us had they lost.

Villa will soon just be another club that used to be famous, have some great European and domestic achievements and will Languish into insignificance in the lower leagues as year after year we fail in our promotion bids, parachute payments reduce this season, so it makes perfect sense that this is the year that Lerners lower league attitude starts us on our path to lower league football.

In light of our defensive frailties it makes even less sense as to why Senderos was not included in the squad of 24 by Tim?

What a mad game yesterday was, two teams so shit it made for enjoyable viewing, I am 99% certain we are down which weirdly took some of the nerves away when watching.

Our starting XI unfortunately is not PL quality & I think we will be so far adrift come January that Lerner will not commit to any "huge" signings, & which players in their right mind would want to be part of possibly the worst team in PL history?

one thing that stuck with me the last time we were relegated was hearing "you're going down with the Villa" on MOTD, we will be hearing every this every week very soon.

Dead club walking!

I really feel the worst for our great club I wish it could be different but I can't see us winning a game at the moment I hope I'm wrong and we go on a run and get out of this mess fingers crossed.

achilles wrote:In light of our defensive frailties it makes even less sense as to why Senderos was not included in the squad of 24 by Tim?

The mistake there is applying the word "sense" to Sherwood reasoning. That will merely put you on the path to bemusement.

While we're on about Sherwood, I wish he'd consistently played Ayew. He had some good attempts yesterday, the first shot on goal he looked up, saw he had no options and went for it himself. He smacked one into the crossbar from the corner that was retaken when Hutton and one of their players went down, and his goal was a scorcher. He's starting to show some real class and has some goals in him, albeit probably playing on the left of the four-man midfield (surely Traore on the right rather than Gil, and a striker in January?).

FoxyAV wrote:While we're on about Sherwood, I wish he'd consistently played Ayew. He had some good attempts yesterday, the first shot on goal he looked up, saw he had no options and went for it himself. He smacked one into the crossbar from the corner that was retaken when Hutton and one of their players went down, and his goal was a scorcher. He's starting to show some real class and has some goals in him, albeit probably playing on the left of the four-man midfield (surely Traore on the right rather than Gil, and a striker in January?).

Gil had a bad day yesterday, but I still think he is a key player...or could be. I would like to see him played centrally personally.
Adama looked up for it when he came on, and whilst showing glimpses of potential, also showed some desire and passion. He wasn't happy at all with Sanchez when he failed to return a 1-2 in the middle of the park.