The Villa Match Zone

Will Aston Villa Will Take It On The Chin & Go Again

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To recap the weekend properly, here’s what manager Steve Bruce had to say following defeat to Fulham in the Championship Play-Off Final.

Match Stats: Aston Villa v Fulham – We Blow It At Wembley

Having missed out on promotion to the Premier League, Villa are set for another year in the EFL with an extremely poor and shoddy first-half showing, Bruce told the Official Site that we had to hold our hands up to our own errors in the game.

“If we’re going to be brutally honest, we weren’t good enough in the first half. The second was better. The real defining moment has gone against us, the young boy for Fulham should have been sent off. But overall we were really disappointed with that first half. We didn’t do enough with or without the ball. When you play in a big occasion like this, it’s disappointing.”

The main disappointment from that is, well really we’ve seen it pretty much every game so far in 2017/18. The only game that stands out with us playing for near 90 minutes was victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers. Yes, you can caveat the season with numerous things to offset bits and bobs, but only playing for 45 minutes and showing what we could do in either half has long been an Achilles heel and it cost us automatic promotion and it’s now cost us our back up.

Improvement in the second half wasn’t enough and at too many points we were largely single-handedly relying on Jack Grealish to make something happen with others shrinking on the Wembley pitch.

We can even point to three possible penalty shouts, and two red cards, but however incompetent the referee was, we managed two shots on target and blaming anyone but ourselves would be lame after that showing.

That doesn’t mean reactions following the full-time whistle weren’t mixed though. It’s also not to say that some shuddered at the phrase ‘go again’.

The problem we have is in finding out the true ramifications of Financial Fair Play having spent to bounce back and failed. There are numerous examples of a side tasting defeat at Wembley and next season going one step further via the automatic spots, but there are no guarantees we can even keep the bulk of this side together now.

That could be a far bigger consideration than who the manager is next year for those calling for his head.

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