Manager Paul Lambert has given a very quick verdict on our two nil loss to West Ham this afternoon.
Villa went into the half time break not exactly looking good, and certainly not comfortable, but we were level and as a few on the match thread commented, we had hope that was going to be our ‘bad half’ of football, so things were set for the second 45 minutes to be a touch more exciting.
And they were.
Unfortunately by the time that happened though we were already two nil down.
We’re all used to Lambert guffing after games and talking about how unlucky we were and all the rest of it, but today, he’s focused perfectly on what we all saw when speaking to the Official Site.
‘It was disappointing. The two goals were really disappointing. That’s the thing, especially right after half time. I had just took my seat, then it was the long ball and we never dealt with it. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or experienced, you deal with it. That’s just a long ball, we should’ve dealt with it better.’
But the annoyance wasn’t over there.
‘The second goal is a basic error. Then you come to life in the game. But the two goals were not good enough, they know my feelings, you can’t defend that way.’
The gaffer goes on to say that we had a foothold in the game at half time, and more importantly the players were coming out for the second period ‘attacking your favourite end, you think something can happen.’
And happen it did, some of them must have been wondering if they’d left the gas on when they left the dressing room and we are two nil down and buried….again.
I’ve just checked with all this blather about improvement. We have won (league) seven games all season. That’s seven wins and we are now into the seventh month of the campaign. One a month woohoo! Since October specifically, we have won four. Not four at home, four fullstop.
‘The two goals were not acceptable. The first puts you on the back foot, at 1-0 you have have 40 minutes where you can pull back, but then you’re 2-0 down through an error and you’re on the back foot even more.’
There was one positive, the introduction of Marc Albrighton, who again did his desire for first team football absolutely no harm whatsoever, and Lambert acknowledged that.
‘When Marc came on, we picked up. We looked like we could get one, if we got one, you never know. Marc was a bright spark, he did great, he’s hit the post and set up a chance for Chris when he hit the bar. He was a plus point and put in some balls that you would expect us to get on the end of.’
So presumably he’ll be starting the next game then?
As for Ryan Bertrand, Lambert also confirmed that he came off in the second half with a rib injury, and at least on that score with the introduction of the almost forgotten Joe Bennett during his spell out injured, Bennett does look like he’s bulked up a bit to me. I also don’t think he did much wrong when he came on which is promising.
Difficult to judge admittedly as he didn’t have long, we were almost all over them at the time and when they did break it was more often down the right…but in any case, let’s hope Bertrand makes a quick recovery.
So we look to the next one again don’t we. Surely our home form has to turn eventually?
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