Mikky

At least Michael "What a great finisher" Owen has the guts to come out say he missed three sitters. No surprise to see Duff not come out and do the same.

 

If Martins and Charlie play today, we win at a canter. Owen's legs have gone and Duff's a gutless disgrace who should never play for us again - but then he should never have played for us in the first place.

Totally agree on the point made about Duff: still baffles me why he is in the team: I don't know what kind of game he had today, but whenever I've seen him this season he hasn't set the place alight: he dithers on the ball too long and slows our attacks down as a result:

One way or another I just want this season to end..... to think we started the season with such optimism, went all downhill from the pompey game...we never quite recovered after that

 

Wrong, it went wrong at Derby, that's when Allardyce started messing with the team and going away to try to stop the opposition instead of trying to take them on and win games.  The players were not able to keep trying to play two different kind of games from one week to the next.

Fair point...can't argue with that

One way or another I just want this season to end..... to think we started the season with such optimism, went all downhill from the pompey game...we never quite recovered after that

Absolutely gutted....sometimes there is no justice in the world

roll on Liverpool

Rozenthal?

Yep he's still on our books

Depending on us staying up: i think the following will be on their way out

Carr

Rozenthal

N'Zogbia (hopefully not)

Ameobi

Unfortuneately I can see Keegan keeping Butt and Smith

tbh it was a combination of both poor tactics (team selection etc) and poor individual performances

 

I'm not sure the selection was bad; I might have preferred Faye at the back because of his physical presence and I know Villa capitalised on this in the second-half. I ask myself, though ,which of their goals I would describe as top class; probably the second although nobody put Carew under pressure. The first was unfortunate, the other two were down to inept performance by our players. There was no need for Butt to head the ball straight to Carew, there was no need for the hand-ball.

Stephen Carr at LB was a disaster waiting to happen as was playing Smith up top

Agree that the 4 Villa goals were as a result of our pathetic attemp of trying to defend

There's a problem up front, because although Smith is our best target man, he doesn't look likely to score. Viduka is the better bet to get goals, but he can be completely dominated by a decent centre back. A lot of people are saying he should have played, but you have to remember how he got blotted out of the game by Laursen at SJP.

 

I'd seriously give Shola a chance. There's nothing to lose because virtually nothing is happening for us up front at the moment. Shola may be clumsy, but there will be 2 or 3 times in a game where he'll use his strength or his footwork to create something for himself out of nothing. Situations can arise where he's actually difficult to stop, and I'd settle for that because the current alternatives look so poor.

i'd be suprised if Oba isnt in the 11 against Man U:

tbh it was a combination of both poor tactics (team selection etc) and poor individual performances

The combination of Carr's flailing arms and his cherub-like appearance made him look like a baby wanting to be picked up.

 

The guy's so fat he hasn't got a neck.

 

His contract's up in June, and he would have been available for nowt in Jan. I wonder if he's had any offers yet.

hopefully we get rid of Carr in the off season. I honestly hope today is the last time we see him wear a black and white shirt (unless he plays for Notts County or Juve  )

We need to set the team up at home to go all out attack and hope we can keep the pressure on the opposition, we need a high scoring game against somebody, one in our favour.  I'm not sure the next home game is the one to try it but getting anything from it seems unlikely.

 

This denifitely seems the likely option.

 

Man U and Blackburn the next two games, both at SJP. Why not just go all out for victory in these two?

because on the counter attack esp against Man U we will get murdered:

We only plays like a team when Milner's involved.

Milner and N'Zogbia are by far the best two wingers at the club, i still haven't seen anything from Duff in the last half a dozen or so games to suggest he is our no:1 winger on the left, maybe with a run of 3 or 4 more games we might see an end product from Duff

Decent from Milner tho, one player who cannot be blamed today

Utterly pathetic and poor performance right from the off: Why he chose to play Carr at left back is beyond me....gave a 90 minute performance of utter ineptness....the same applies for Given, Butt, Barton and Smith. We all knew fully well that Villa rely on set pieces so its beyond me why KK overlooked Faye and Enrique.

 

Can't see us picking up anything from our next 3 fixtures......its very worrying at the moment

 

ffs, we we're the best team by a good margin 1st half

 

it was a case of Villa taking the entire 1st half to get going..once they did it was a familiar theme, we lost shape, belief and were cluecless

 

As I said earlier, the first half was as bad as I have seen us play since MON joined the club, we were toilet.

 

I thought you actually showed signs of starting a decent passing game at times. What shocked me was the way you imploded so easily.

 

I don;t want to underestimate the fact that MON changed the game with his substitutions and HT talk - he did - but you looked in the first half like you'd give us a game in the second.

Give credit to MON for changing things around, but sadly we didnt adapt our play to counter the changes that were made by Villa, tactically it was poor from us: sadly its one of the elements of keegans managerial skills that really worries me

What worries me is the number of supporters STILL stuck in the "We won't go down" mentality - the Smithism the team is suffering from is sending us tumbling down the league as others are slowly picking up points.

completely agree...we're in a relegation battle.....no win in the last 9 matches....three tough games coming up, its roll your sleeves up time

Utterly pathetic and poor performance right from the off: Why he chose to play Carr at left back is beyond me....gave a 90 minute performance of utter ineptness....the same applies for Given, Butt, Barton and Smith. We all knew fully well that Villa rely on set pieces so its beyond me why KK overlooked Faye and Enrique.

 

Can't see us picking up anything from our next 3 fixtures......its very worrying at the moment

 

ffs, we we're the best team by a good margin 1st half

it was a case of Villa taking the entire 1st half to get going..once they did it was a familiar theme, we lost shape, belief and were cluecless

Utterly pathetic and poor performance right from the off: Why he chose to play Carr at left back is beyond me....gave a 90 minute performance of utter ineptness....the same applies for Given, Butt, Barton and Smith. We all knew fully well that Villa rely on set pieces so its beyond me why KK overlooked Faye and Enrique.

 

Can't see us picking up anything from our next 3 fixtures......its very worrying at the moment

 

Ok the first 10 mins apart.......we didnt really do much else after that....the 2nd half was a complete joke though and quite frankly its unnaceptable.

Utterly pathetic and poor performance right from the off: Why he chose to play Carr at left back is beyond me....gave a 90 minute performance of utter ineptness....the same applies for Given, Butt, Barton and Smith. We all knew fully well that Villa rely on set pieces so its beyond me why KK overlooked Faye and Enrique.

Can't see us picking up anything from our next 3 fixtures......its very worrying at the moment

Beye is back now, Faye back today, Martins on way back soon..

Yep they should all be back during the start of this week!!

Haven't we already got an Academy director?

Would rather Keegan concentrated on getting a quality number 2 in........Martin Jol perhaps?

I think it will be Harry Redknapp.....I really can't tink of anyone else who it may be, other than Mourinho 

sh!t: realistically it will be Ian Harte

I'm going for Ben Haim (or Andrade)

Realistically it will be someone crap

Was at the Bolton match on Boxing Day, I was impressed with Edgar, did the simple things really well (positioning, tackling etc) needs to beef up and improve his distribution but for his age he is good (very impressed )

Hall of Fame Thread tbh

What makes this draw better is that the two best teams from every group qualified, can't think of a good team that missed out?

 

Werder Bremen

But from that group the two better (or best) sides were Barca and Chelsea