Aston Villa (A) | PL | Post Match Thread

I don't understand how every single outfield player last night was utter shite. There lies a big problem for me, you can maybe have three or four not performing in any given game, but to have the whole team looking like a bunch of strangers causes alarm. Not sure we'll get a reaction on Sunday as well
 
Man City WERE NOT SHITE yesterday.

Emery's Aston Villa were absolutely brilliant, they deserve respect


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Let’s see how good they are against Arsenal.
 
Every team gets up to play their Cup Final against us, while we struggle to get up for another 90 minutes every 3 days knowing it’s same old, same old.

Sure, we look like it’s fun when we are running up the score, but the slog of chasing and pressing and recovering when the press is beaten is very fatiguing…mentally and physically.

This year, we came out of the blocks fairly well, as we had a fairly easy start of the season. The last 4 have been against top teams just as we were starting to look ragged and bang average…yet we still should have won all 3 draws (wins lost to last minute goals!) and we’re good for a win tonight, albeit a draw would have been a fairer result!

We are not getting the run of the green on the field or in the treatment room, let alone the disciplinary stupidity we have seen to date.

Get 2 PL wins, play the kids and subs in the CL rubber, go and win the CWC in the sun, and we might come back with some renewed purpose for the second half of the season, even though we could be 9 points behind by them, with only 1 game in hand!

Two fairly straightforward PL games after Christmas and an FA Cup Third Round Draw that has been pretty kind to us, should give the players some time to recover and recharge before the Newcastle game.

The lads look leggy and a little short on ideas. Alvarez HAS TO be benched from that midfield link role, because he loses the ball too often and it puts us immediately on the back foot. Throw Foden or Bernie in there and it will instantly improve both control and creativity.

Anyway, it’s been a bad run of fixtures, but only really one bad performance tonight, with half the team either missing of returning from injury…and we lost to a Top 4 team on a 14 game home winning streak, 1-0 at their patch. It’s not the end of the world, but the timing is fucking horrible, with everyone around us seemingly scoring last minute winners!
 
Desire, hunger, the will to win, that all seems to be missing. The collective drive to continue being that machine after the machine has won everything. Maybe they're all knackered I don't know. It's all a bit like my plastering skills, stodgy and lumpy, waiting for somebody to fix the errors. Whereas what I should be is smooth, fluid and leaving a great finish.

And yet we are 6pts off top spot, that could change very quickly but my positive metric calculator has gone down by 35% after last night
 
Side note, but the over-reliance on Rodri in this side truly is crazy. 4 games without him and we've lost every one. What the hell would happen if he, god-forbid, got a long lay off? Would we be unable to win a match?

No other side in the division has that reliance on one player. Take any Arsenal player out that side and they play the same way, take any Liverpool player out and they play the same way. Of course the likes of Saka, Salah and Van Dijk are important, but they still know how to play as a group. We looked absolutely clueless last night.
 
I don't understand how every single outfield player last night was utter shite. There lies a big problem for me, you can maybe have three or four not performing in any given game, but to have the whole team looking like a bunch of strangers causes alarm. Not sure we'll get a reaction on Sunday as well
We were completely overrun, but this performance had been coming. We need to gain control of the match tempo again. The opposition are starting to dictate now and we aren't responding.
 
Hard to change things from our bench last night. As a team we look shattered. Our midfield 3 consisted of a defender and forward. We did ok the first 20 of the second half when Bernardo came inside. But they tweaked it and took control again. No out ball from the back. Lot of players were sub standard lat night, however they were very good and deserved the win. We need to play midfielders in midfield.
 

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