Villa Vs City Post Match Thread

[cleavers]

The simple answer to all this is to play on until the referee says otherwise. Had Joe done so, N'zogbia would have been up on his feet and running around within seconds.

I was under the impression that this is in fact the rule now, and teams are instructed to play to the referee's whistle, so we shouldn't have kicked it out in the first place. The ref can then decide to stop the game, and its then restarted with an uncontested drop ball.

 

[Phil1]

I was under the impression that this is in fact the rule now, and teams are instructed to play to the referee's whistle, so we shouldn't have kicked it out in the first place. The ref can then decide to stop the game, and its then restarted with an uncontested drop ball.

We're too soft in this regard. We always put the ball out for the smallest incident. It pisses me off no end because there are far more false alarms, or as in yesterday's case blatant fucking play acting than real injuries.
Let the referee decide, that's what they're there for!

 

[xenon_]

The simple answer to all this is to play on until the referee says otherwise. Had Joe done so, N'zogbia would have been up on his feet and running around within seconds.

True, true. It's a shame though because on the one hand, I hear justified complaints about the sportsman/community/honour side of the game disappearing, but at the same time, how can you condone being taken advantage of when every point in the Prem counts, and there's so much money at stake...

Shit situation.


The game had a bit of the good, the bad and the ugly. (For the ugly, see above.)

Good points to take from the game was that we have taken 4 points from back-to-back banana skins. We've come out of two situations where typical City may have got zero points. We're still top of the league. We've always shown we can defend well on our day, but recently we've shown that can be really solid and protective of our defence. Although we did not get the three points, props to Pellegrini for respecting the situation enough to set up solidly and make sure we didn't get beat.

The most glaring bad point was, for me, the finishing, which has been a very slight concern all season. Our conversion isn't what I'd like it to be. We suffered from the travelling mid-week and some of our lads, Dinho a more noticeable example, looked knackered. Kelechi not getting on sooner was a bit of a bad point too, but there may have been good reason for that, I'm not sure.


Overall, I'm gutted we did not win. I always am, no matter who it is. But I don't see any glaring medium or long term problems that we 'ABSOLUTELY MUST ADDRESS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!' We came into the game with...

-Tired team
-Away from home
-Opposition and their fans with new manager bounce
-A team with nothing to lose that can be easily under-estimated
-Losing our 2nd striker early on... a striker whose strengths can make 4-3-3 work well

And yet we still had 3 clear chances to win this game, 2 of those 3 were golden chances. We win that game on most other days. Shit happens. This is football. Unlucky lads.

*On a brighter note, we appear to be through the worst of the injury storm, and I believe that with a full-strength squad (allowing for a couple of injuries here and there) we have the power to establish a lead in the Prem.*

 

[pete1970]

If you can tell how a game is going to go in the first few mins
Kindly explain to me how my coupon predictions dont come in????

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

We drew at the home of the bottom club and the clamour is to identify the culprit/criminal/scapegoat. In fact, we didn't drop two points because Villa are unsporting, or because Peller's team selection and substitutions were wrong one even because City need to learn to play without Aguero, as Thierry Henri believes. It's true we were a long way short of the level at which we played in Seville but this game should have been a routine win. Guzman knew nothing at all about his "great save" from Sterling's header (with a header of his own!) and had City been a bit sharper we would have won 2-0. Villa didn't manage a serious effort in the whole 94 minutes. We have come through our injury crisis (hopefully!) and won five and drawn two of the games in that time - and it's not just Sergio and David who've been injured. Sunday was frustrating, but now we have time to take stock and get back to winning ways after a one match gap.

 

[Len Rum]

True, true. It's a shame though because on the one hand, I hear justified complaints about the sportsman/community/honour side of the game disappearing, but at the same time, how can you condone being taken advantage of when every point in the Prem counts, and there's so much money at stake...

Shit situation.


The game had a bit of the good, the bad and the ugly. (For the ugly, see above.)

Good points to take from the game was that we have taken 4 points from back-to-back banana skins. We've come out of two situations where typical City may have got zero points. We're still top of the league. We've always shown we can defend well on our day, but recently we've shown that can be really solid and protective of our defence. Although we did not get the three points, props to Pellegrini for respecting the situation enough to set up solidly and make sure we didn't get beat.

The most glaring bad point was, for me, the finishing, which has been a very slight concern all season. Our conversion isn't what I'd like it to be. We suffered from the travelling mid-week and some of our lads, Dinho a more noticeable example, looked knackered. Kelechi not getting on sooner was a bit of a bad point too, but there may have been good reason for that, I'm not sure.


Overall, I'm gutted we did not win. I always am, no matter who it is. But I don't see any glaring medium or long term problems that we 'ABSOLUTELY MUST ADDRESS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!' We came into the game with...

-Tired team
-Away from home
-Opposition and their fans with new manager bounce
-A team with nothing to lose that can be easily under-estimated
-Losing our 2nd striker early on... a striker whose strengths can make 4-3-3 work well

And yet we still had 3 clear chances to win this game, 2 of those 3 were golden chances. We win that game on most other days. Shit happens. This is football. Unlucky lads.

*On a brighter note, we appear to be through the worst of the injury storm, and I believe that with a full-strength squad (allowing for a couple of injuries here and there) we have the power to establish a lead in the Prem.*

A lot of what you say makes sense but no way can I accept a 'Tired team'. We had four full days to recover from the Sevilla game. How on earth do teams cope with Europa League combination of Thursday/ Sunday? Spurs didn't look particularly tired yesterday. I accept they were at home but they only had two full days to recover.

 

[Steve68]

If you can tell how a game is going to go in the first few mins
Kindly explain to me how my coupon predictions dont come in????

I dunno. You tell us. You can certainly see when it's going to be 'one of those games' with us. The lethargic passing, being got at from the off by lowly teams, Yaya moving like he's standing in for Atlas. It's not to say you can predict the score precisely but you can tell when we're in for a long day.

I expected us to win 1-0 but that was predicated on playing with a striker and Yaya rested after half time. I don't know what it is, but sometimes we do give the impression against lower level teams that the walk from the team bus to the dressing room is the hard part.

 

[cheddar404]

It's a pretty fine line between a comfortable 2-0 away win and pretty disappointing 0-0 against the worst team in the league. I thought we played well after half time and were a bit unlucky. My main gripe is that we didn't start the game well and looked pretty disinterested. Something clearly fired them up at half time so why couldn't this happen before the match? It's unlikely Villa would have been able to keep us out playing like we did in the second half but for the whole game.

 

[cleavers]

A lot of what you say makes sense but no way can I accept a 'Tired team'.

"Tired" isn't just physical, last Tuesday must have also been mentally very tough as well, it would have been a huge "high" for the everyone involved. Setting that standard (some fans now seem to think that is the standard), is always going to be hard to live up to. Also nobody is giving any credit to Villa, who fought for everything for their new manager, and a captain who probably felt he had a lot to prove against his former club.

We should have still won of course, and if Sterling could shoot with his left foot, or even risk it, we would have still won 2-0.

 

[cleavers]

against the worst team in the league

Except they weren't this weekend, in fact far from it.