AFC Bournemouth v Aston Villa FC. Sat Aug 8th 3:00pm.

George wrote:http://www.footytube.com/video/afc-bournemouth-v-aston-villa-363964

MotD highlights - watch carefully as the Villa players run over to celebrate with the traveling hordes at 4.58 - one of them, whose a little front heavy and probably had a sherbet or two too many, takes a tumble and bites the dust. V entertaining!

Dont know if anyone else has mentioned it, nice of the BBC to have The Snake as The Villas representative in the start titles

TBH, we were extremely poor for 9/10s of the match and if Bournemouth had taken their chances, we could have easily lost 3-1 or 3-2 (had Gueye's shot gone in) on another day. I'm glad we crashed the party and ended the media lovefest with Bournemouth, but I think some of the celebrations are a little overboard. Wait until next week when a heavily favored Manure beats us at home and the doom mongers reappear, claiming we're already relegated because we were "so shit..."

- Gestede looks like a bargain already. He has fantastic touch for a big man and that header was fantastic.
- Amavi looks like he'll be world class in 2 seasons. He's a very special player, so enjoy him while you can, boys.
- Gueye was MOM for me. He was everywhere on the pitch, breaking up play, starting attacks, running into the box, etc. He looks like the player Delph could have became for us in another season or so.
- Veretout showed flashes of his quality and slowly grew into the match. I though he was excellent in the 2nd half and think he'll be amazing once he gets match fit and adjusts to the league.
- Richards, overall, was good. I think he still made too many mistakes that the better teams in the league will end up capitalizing on, but he looked a lot better today than he has during preseason.
- Ayew was nonexistent. He was invisible for pretty much the entire time he was on the pitch. He looked completely lost and didn't know what to do. Hopefully playing with some of our more creative players like Gil and Grealish will help him improve, but it was an awful debut for the player.
- Clark, Westwood, and Guzan were solid today. Nothing bad to speak about, but nothing great to say either.
- Bacuna, Gabby, and Sinclair were all poor. Add Sherwood to the long list of managers who think they can get Gabby playing again, but Gabby plays worse and worse as the years go on. Sinclair was ineffective on the wing and Bacuna struggled to defend for a lot of the match.

KMitch wrote:Add Sherwood to the long list of managers who think they can get Gabby playing again, but Gabby plays worse and worse as the years go on.

Gabby doesn't need a manager who can get him playing again but a manager who will stand up to him and tell him he's no longer good enough to play for us. My heart sank when I saw him in the team yesterday. Is Kozak injured or frozen out? I'd much rather see him play than Gabby. He might even score for one thing. I just hope Gestade gets the nod to start against the Manc scum on Friday night.

EbeneezerGoode wrote:

KMitch wrote:Add Sherwood to the long list of managers who think they can get Gabby playing again, but Gabby plays worse and worse as the years go on.

Gabby doesn't need a manager who can get him playing again but a manager who will stand up to him and tell him he's no longer good enough to play for us. My heart sank when I saw him in the team yesterday. Is Kozak injured or frozen out? I'd much rather see him play than Gabby. He might even score for one thing. I just hope Gestade gets the nod to start against the Manc scum on Friday night.

I had the same feeling when I saw the team sheet. Gabby is complete trash, but he's on a huge long term contract that will see out his career, and no other team will even bother to match it, if we try to offload him. No, he's stuck here for another 5 seasons. He'd get even more hate than Heskey got from the fans, if he wasn't an academy product and a Villa fan.

Hopefully, Kozak is alright and will at least make the bench for Manure.

I think saying we were extremely poor for 9/10s of the match is harsh. We had a flat half where we tried to take the fizz out of the situation (good call?) and then, with a team still getting used to each other, took control without dominating.

I personally wasn't expecting a dazzling display at this stage. I think we'll get a better idea where we are in a month or so. In the meantime all the points we accrue are very welcome.
I don't see many teams hitting the ground running this weekend apart from perhaps Leicester and West Ham. And that was mostly down to their opponents being totally underprepared in my opinion.

With that in mind, I think we can praise the team for getting a job done without getting carried away.

I was very pleased that we didn't seem to panic if a player got away from us. We did that a lot last season.
I like Amavi already and I think Veretout and Gana will be amazing.
Ayew seemed a bit overwhelmed by the occasion - gee, hope he's not playing on friday night.
I was very pleased with the other results apart from Snivelpool. I would be quite happy to see them relegated.

I'm not scared of this season so far....I think we will be more than OK.
UTV VTID COYVB

9/10s??? 

No chance. 1st half we were 2nd best to everything and could've been a goal down (I don't count the two Guzan saved, because he's a player, on our team, and did his job. If a defender made a last ditch tackle and stopped a striker running through on goal people wouldn't say anything. So they doesn't count as  phantom goals against us. Only the one blazed over the bar. Gueye's shot the same.) 

2nd half we were by far the better team, beat them to most of the balls and controlled the tempo. So at worst a draw would've been fair

Ok only 37 points to get to the golden 40 safety zone. Loved the second half performance but I thought we were lucky to get away with not being 2-0 down in the first. Rudy was excellent, and the cross from Westwood was perfect for him.
Manure Utd next and we will have to be a lot better in the first half of the game this time or they will punish us. I am going for a draw just looking at what UTD did with Spurs, and our second half performance. Come on you Villa boys.

jeffvilla wrote:Ok only 37 points to get to the golden 40 safety zone. Loved the second half performance but I thought we were lucky to get away with not being 2-0 down in the first. Rudy was excellent, and the cross from Westwood was perfect for him.
Manure Utd next and we will have to be a lot better in the first half of the game this time or they will punish us. I am going for a draw just looking at what UTD did with Spurs, and our second half performance. Come on you Villa boys.

I agree we will need to come out stronger right from the get go, but I'm a little confused by what United did with Spurs? As it looked like both teams left a lot to be desired and were as slow out of the traps as we were. Not to mention Spurs scored the only goal in the Red's victory.

I'm really not having a go and I also don't want to get carried away (opening weekend is far more a carnival than it is an indication of how the season will play out I know) but potentially Saturday highlighted more "early days" problems for a team of United's expectations than it did for Villa.

Hi VTID85. On past performance our results against utd have been poor, and as it has been well documented in the past, Villa either are good in the first half and poor in the second, or vies verser. Although utd were a tad sluggish I still think we need to be on top of our game to get a result. UTV

jeffvilla wrote:Hi VTID85. On past performance our results against utd have been poor, and as it has been well documented in the past, Villa either are good in the first half and poor in the second, or vies verser. Although utd were a tad sluggish I still think we need to be on top of our game to get a result. UTV

Agree on all of that, I guess I just think the pressure is more on United than it is on Villa and let's not forget we came away with three points at the weekend from a goal scored by one of our own against opposition that everyone except for Villa fans were rooting for.

Interesting to note that of our starting XI only 1 started the debacle which was our FA cup final - Westy

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CL5gCFlWwAA897g.jpg

Love this picture, if Rudy didn't get it, Micah sure as hell was gonna get it

UTV

Villa_Dan wrote:Interesting to note that of our starting XI only 1 started the debacle which was our FA cup final - Westy

Yep, we now know more then half the team selfishly couldn't give a fuk or didn't want to get injured because of future plans.

Good riddance to the mediocre so and so's that Lamberk kept saying "they did ok"...........fuk ok, fuk mediocrity.....lets try and win eh!

UTV