Following another disappointing defeat to Brighton and Hove Albion, Aston Villa were looking to get back on track this evening as we travelled to the taxpayer funded stadium to face off against the Claret and Blue Bubble Blowers – aka West Ham United.
Head coach Dean Smith’s side have faced a few starkly disappointing results so far in 2020/21 but nobody can deny it has been a better year (and set of performances in the main) than most expected. Whether we can get there or not (likely not), win our games in hand and we would be joint top. I’d consider that massive improvement, even if we are far from perfect and still have plenty to learn and improve upon.
It was certainly a bright start, but not for us. 1-0 to the hosts two minutes in and it looked like it would be ‘one of those’ performances as we were disjointed again and nowhere near as sharp as we’ve proven ourselves capable.
We were working our way more into the game and with chances falling to a few players, Jack Grealish made no mistake to level the scores up in minute 25. Game on…
Apart from totally avoidable errors, West Ham didn’t really get a sniff and we were more dominant and on top, but with no breakthrough. 1-1 at the break, which Villa would join us for the second half?
Shock horror, the same one that started the game. A minute in and it was 2-1 and we had everything to do again having completely blown our own momentum. It’s not like some of the team had turned up even when we were on top.
Having seemingly lost the plot totally again for ten or so minutes, we upped our game and Trez, in particular, missed another guilt-edged chance – but at least there were signs of a fightback.
Slightly back on top and looking more dangerous, the chances kept coming and we ended up with a stonewall penalty that Ollie Watkins ballooned off the bar.
One of these days we might stop making life difficult for ourselves and despite being poor, West Ham were utterly there for the taking.
We did have the ball in the back of the net, but Watkins’ front tooth was apparently offside (never offside) – the game has gone (like we didn’t already know that) and those Christmas Turkeys at PGMOL and IFAB should put themselves out of our misery before the New Year.
But we can’t blame VAR here, we beat ourselves with stupidity yet again. It doesn’t matter how poor we were in reality, we bossed the game, we had the chances, this was possibly the easiest win of the season but too many under performed (and were allowed to with massively late substitutions again) and nobody seems to be addressing the regularity of almost identical defensive/midfield tracking errors.
Until we now get our heads around the next steps we need to take, this is going to go from a season of improvement to frustration, inconsistency and fury at our inability to learn.
No Man of the Match poll, pick from Jack or Ezri Konsa.
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One Villa Youngster Proves He Knows Where The Target Is – October Loan Round Up
London Stadium
Premier League
30/11/2020 9:00 pm
Attendance: 0
Referee: Peter Bankes
| West Ham United | Aston Villa | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ogbonna (2), Bowen (46) | Grealish (25) | ||||||
| Fabianski | Martinez | ||||||
| Balbuena | Cash | 88 | |||||
| Ogbonna | Konsa | ||||||
| Cresswell | Mings | ||||||
| Coufal | Targett | ||||||
| Rice | McGinn | ||||||
| Soucek | Douglas Luiz | ||||||
| Masuaka | 45 | Hourihane | 74 | ||||
| Bowen | 79 | Trezeguet | 74 | ||||
| Fornals | Watkins | ||||||
| Antonio | 45 | Grealish | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Benrahma | 45 | Taylor | |||||
| Lanzini | Steer | ||||||
| Noble | 79 | Traore | 74 | ||||
| Haller | 45 | Nakamba | |||||
| Diop | El Ghazi | 74 | |||||
| Johnson | Elmohamady | 88 | |||||
| Randolph | Ramsey | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 6 | Goal attempts | 16 |
| 2 | On Target | 6 |
| 3 | Corners | 7 |
| 20 | Fouls | 7 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 34 | % | 66 |
I cant wrap my head around how many times we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot .no amount of money spent can solve this problem . The same misserable problem as last season has slowly worked its way back in , All of last season’s hard work will go to waste if villa dont start games in the right manner at the beginning and after half time ,Mings is quick to berated a team mate yet who berates him when all he does is mark space at corners and free kicks ,space never scores a goal or wins a pen ,we haven’t learnt the lessons of last season ,when was the last time we stuck a player on the post or a big 6 foot 5inch defender pick up the best header of ball from the opposition, na not us, put the little guy on the tallest player that will do the trick ,na dont cover the posts ,and yep leave your runner to attack the ball ,its okay …… NO ITS NOT OKAY ,hard work and a new approach is needed .
Mings is just to casual in his approach ,ive never known a defender as tall or as athletic as him be so poor at heading the ball or have poor positional awareness when it really matters ,yes chucking yourself at the odd shot is okay but doing the real bread and butter stuff he fails ,dont be fooled by his England international status ,because there is a real club level problem that needs addressing ,if we are to really progress this season and next ,his position should surely be one that needs a long hard look at .
Connor’s position is another one that will need addressing in jan or during next summer ,alot of this game past him by ,his free kicks and corners are brilliant and a great weapon to have , unfortunately he lacks pace and in midfield you need pace and strength , Barkley is only a short term stop gap ,his persistent injuries continue to hold him back ,which is a massive shame ,hes a great player but not the long term solution . Until we can learn to defend and be tuned in for 100 minutes a game we are always going to be frustrated .
Couldn’t agree more about Ming’s seems he’s frightened he should be in there against the big guys – tough guys what a chance to make a name for himself and lead the defence.bloke just ain’t got itmessing about with the ball just lay it off. You’ve been caught out befor but you don’t learn we need a manager who can see the mistakes and leave them at bodymoor heath .perhaps that’s where we need to start .ta
The problem is poor coaching and I am yet to see what John Terry has done for our defense which gets worse as the season unfolds. I really hope he goes to coach Derby or another team who will have him as I am yet to be convinced as to what he has really brought to the team.
At the back, we are starting to look exactly like we did last year and it seems that we cannot defend any set pieces with conviction. Mings as far as I am concerned has become a liability with each passing game and if he does start for England in any serious games, put your money on the opponent. He has this casual and arrogant strutting around the back approach as if he is in his own world; he needs a serious kick up the ass and Smith should start looking at a Konsa/Engels pairing at the back instead (I rate Engels and believe that he has not had a lot of chances to prove how good he really is). As for Matt Targett, we need to get a replacement asap as he is simply not PL material and gets caught out too often. Sadly, Taylor is no better. Cash is new to the PL and is a grafter, and he will get better with time. Unfortunately, Konsa is the only stable defender we have at the moment!
But with the amount of goals we are conceding, I think we need to change formation and move from the traditional 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1 formation with Ollie leading the line as he is fast and can run behind the defense. By having 2 players such as Luiz and ElMohamady or Nakamba playing in front of the back four, it will also solidify our leaking defense as it seems we always need to score 3 goals in order to win a game.
We are now a quarter way through the season, and losing 4 out of the last 5 games against such mediocre teams is simply not acceptable. The fact that we have lost all those games and not drawn once shows that we have to make meaningful changes. There again, Dean Smith is stuck in his traditional ways and does not seem to be able to coach his way out of any mess (remember we are only in the PL because of a goal that was scored last year by Sheffield and not given due to a faulty goal-line technology glitch)! Yes we are better than last year, but you cannot keep doing the same thing every game and expect different results. Our defense is poor and costing us games. Our finishing is not great, but at least we are creating chances and will continue to score and improve as the season moves on. But we cannot expect to score 3 goals every game in order to win! So fix the formation and the defense first. Oh, and get Trezeguet to stay on the pitch for an extra hour after training to practice shooting! At the goal that is!
That was a hard one to take. I only had the text commentaries to go by but it did seem we bossed all but the first few moments of each half. It’s gone now, like yesterday’s hangover it’s history. We move on. To Newcastle or not, it’s postponed because there is an outbreak of positive tests there. We must hope and pray that none of these people die of this dreadful plague.
On a slightly brighter note it does give time for us to right our wrongs, as mentioned above, and for the injured to heal. Two games in hand won’t go amiss if results go our way this weekend.