Aston Villa really don’t like making life easy for themselves do they!
Having seen Cardiff drop points against Wolverhampton Wanderers, victory over Norwich City was exactly what the doctor ordered after recent slip-ups. We took to the Carrow Road pitch and promptly lost 3-1 ending any realistic chance of automatic promotion and denting play-off hopes in the process.
Speaking to the Official Site in his post game press conference, Bruce rightly pulled few punches as he reflected on the game.
“We just weren’t good enough on the day, which is disappointing for a big game like this. We haven’t done enough. We made a few changes in the second half but gifted them a couple of soft goals. It was a really disappointing afternoon and it’s difficult to take at this point of the season. But that’s football.”
???? The boss reacts to our 3-1 defeat to Norwich City…#AVFC pic.twitter.com/hv4qij334X
— Aston Villa FC (@AVFCOfficial) April 7, 2018
Bruce obviously pointed to the two avoidable goals, although he had to credit the quality of their first strike, and he restated his main disappointment was in not seeing the team ‘dig in’ as they need to do when periods across a game aren’t going our way.
With it being a largely flat performance outside of Jack Grealish’s consolation effort, many fans did credit the gaffer’s matter of fact approach to his after game answers but for many it was broken record time as we’ve heard it before and the same old flaws in our play are costing us heavily at the moment.
Don’t bother……. I’m not bothering listening, I’ve heard it too many times this season….
— Graham Batchelor (@gforce1955) April 7, 2018
“Oh well y’know that’s the championship for you y’know I probably should’ve made some changes looking back maybe subbing 15 strikers on wasn’t the right decision well y’know”
— James (@Shead_AV) April 7, 2018
Sorry Brucey but it’s your job and you are failing us at the critical Moment of the season. Tactics, subs, starting line up and motivation have been missing for a month
— Matt Shelley (@mattshelley__) April 7, 2018
Bruce is far from having no support though as we do still sit in fourth place.
The comments on here make no sense at all, we’re 4th in the league and who’s been the manager all year? Who signed practically the squad who have got us 4th? And now he’s s useless dinosaur? clueless fans with no idea
— LSH1986 (@hadley700) April 7, 2018
Unlucky boys, let’s finish off the season best we can, and perform in the playoffs
— Harry/Villa (@VillaHutton6789) April 7, 2018
So Cardiff City in midweek, second place in the table may not be riding on that result anymore but it’s certainly not any less important to our season now.