Aston Villa (A) | PL | Post-Match Thread

[nellyonthewing]

Couldnt agree more...Never rated him that highly...far too often lack lustre but today wasnt his fault....the starting 11 should all have played better. He did nothing however when he came on

He did -he jogged back allowing an overload leading to their goal.

 

[waspish]

Probably coz bernie is our best player even on his worst day? Bringing him off for Mahrez at the moment is like having him sent off.

We would of been better with ten men with the space we would get

 

[blue whippet]

We should have won
We wasted chances
Pep had a bald fraud moment with the berny sub.

Shit happens we are not even 10 games in

A voice of reason but I still feel frustrated.

 

[OrigamiNinja]

For many years now, you have NEVER said a single positive thing about Mahrez. You even said: YOU DESPISE HIM (remember last year's West Ham game ?). That's chronic hatred. That's sickness.

No, it’s called having an opinion based on what’s in front of me. Many times I get it wrong.

In the past I’ve said Rodri isn’t good enough. I then said he was my POTY last season.

I’ve said Stones is no fucking good and gladly had to eat humble pie.

Gundo…I don’t even know where to start with him.

That’s just a few players who are in the current side (all different nationalities). Over the years I have lost count of how many players I’ve been made to look foolish by and you know what…I am big enough and daft enough to hold my hands up and say I got it wrong about them. I’ve just called Pep out in my original post because of his weird tactics/subs today. A guy that I consider to be the best manager of all time.

When we signed Mahrez I was fucking delighted (you probably aren’t aware as you hadn’t heard of City before he signed) but for the most part he has been a major letdown IMO. But fear not, when he starts to live up to his £200k+ pw wages, I will come on here and say I got it wrong and tell you that you were right all along.

You and I both have opinions but we differ because I base mine (sometimes wrongly) on what I see on the pitch and you base yours purely on Mahrez being Algerian. If he wasn’t at City you wouldn’t give a flying fuck about a club I have supported for over 40 years, so apologies if I couldn’t give a toss what you think.

 

[East Level 2]

I can assure you now..If Haaland scores 100 goals we win the title.

I'd settle for second if he gets 40 of those evenly split over 4 games v rags and dippers.

 

[tommy116]

Over the course of the season you will get games like this, just take the point and move on. City have been slow starters over the recent years so this season has started not too bad.

 

[city warrior]

He was constanly running at players and creating space....it was his pass for KDB that set up the goal .....I didnt say KDB had a bad game, I said he had one of those games where he looked like he was trying to hard to do it all himself...

The pass he gave to KDB is a pass that any professional should be able to do easily. But let's give him that, then we have 1 chance created vs 8 chances created by KDB, and you still choose to criticize him above Bernardo, Gundogan, Foden, Cancelo, or Rodri. KDB created more chances than all of them combined!! Thank God he wanted to do it all himself because if he didn't, we wouldn't have created anything today

 

[City Raider]

Pep either needs to trust Foden through the middle or bench him. He’s not a left winger and it’s unfair to judge him in that role.

 

[yeah whatever !!]

Yes we do but you get my point

In my opinion the only plays that really matter are the ones that either lead to a goal or prevent a goal...
Haaland scored a goal and certainly didn't have anything to do with us conceding.

He touches the ball less than any other City player.has done from day 1 so why the sudden criticism?

 

[Brewster's millions]

My concern at the moment is that we just look much less of a team than we usually do, even if we are still unbeaten.

I can accept that our style of play was always going to change with Haaland coming in to the team, but we seem to have aggravated this disruption by making a load of other changes to our play which just don’t seem to be working at the moment.

For a kick off, Walker has clearly been told to play more centrally this year and get more involved in the build-up. So far this hasn’t worked and we’ve looked more vulnerable as a result, particularly against Newcastle.

Meanwhile Gundogan and De Bruyne are playing incredibly high, and don’t show much inclination to drop deep and help Rodri out. We are trying to use Haaland as a diversion and get Gundogan behind the defence, and it almost worked today. But I would question whether he has the legs to do this now, and given how high De Bruyne is playing, we’re now effectively playing with a one man midfield most of the time. This lack of numbers in midfield has been made worse by playing Bernado so far wide, and again I think this failed badly today as he was hardly in the game in the first half.

The other observation is that Foden is playing a bit deeper this year, and playing it back much more often, whereas I think he’s best playing at the very top of the pitch and attacking the space. He is in poor form at the moment, undoubtedly, but I don’t think all the changes around him have helped.

I do wonder whether losing Lillo as Pep’s assistant in the summer is going to be a bit more of a loss than has been acknowledged. He was obviously a bit of an enigma, particularly as he didn’t speak a word of the Queen’s, but so far we’ve looked shaky at the back and less cohesive as a team, and we did improve significantly defensively when he was appointed.