Smal

I don't know what the stats are now, but earlier in the season he had covered more ground than anyone else in the league. He might not be the best on the ball, but he is always available for it whether it's in deeper areas or further up the field. His understanding of the press is probably the best in the side. He is much, much better at running back than Willock is. Maybe these aren't overtly obvious things, but they were all missing yesterday.

After a sleep I don't think we need to twist for the Spurs game. Bring Longstaff and Miggy back into the team, get the midfield and pressing structure right and keep doing what has worked for us all season. Write this off as a one off. We had too many players who didn't know what they were doing yesterday tactically - primarily Gordon and whoever was playing right central midfield (first Willock, then Joelinton). If you have two out of 6 front players not pressing correctly it will always be a disaster. He completely outcoached Conte in the reverse fixture - played the full backs deep and narrow and Spurs couldn't deal with it. He knows how to be flexible.

This could end up being 10+ the way it's going

Stones is just an unbelievable footballer. So good.

Our average touches on the ball today. This doesn't show you where they were without the ball but it does show you that you're probably gonna get fucked in transition. edit: you cannot just leave nowt in front of the defence.

If you play a high line with slow defenders you need really good pressure on the ball, which is what we've had most of the season. Our press got absolutely schooled today. They always had a man free and we didn't seem to have the athleticism to get near them.

I swear most of the season a normal feature of our defensive play is playing a reasonably high line and Pope sweeping everything up that goes in behind. Pope was bad in every aspect today. I'm so annoyed

They were horrendous. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Didn’t seem ready for the ball in behind them all game and it’s been the most obvious feature of Villa’s attacking play.

Love Bruno but today was the kind of game where you need a player like him with his quality to step up and try to get a foothold on it. Can't do it on his own but he wasn't anywhere near sadly.

Absolutely. I also thought he was shit at Everton, he's not done anything to change my mind unfortunately. I don't know what we see in his game at all.

I think it was worth trying this midfield, but now with hindsight he would've made quite a significant difference imo. Trippier was badly exposed, didn't have the same passes available and Bruno needs someone to drop in for him when he goes wandering, which just didn't happen today.

Or just a proper 6. None of our midfield got anywhere near them today defensively and Bruno abandons the position quite regularly, which is where Longstaff usually comes in I guess.

Yeah, I've wanted to keep him in the team but you cannot play like that and expect to start the next game. He was poor defensively but he really hurt us in build up today. Can't be shit at both of those things I'm afraid.

At least with Eddie you can expect good things to come out of this. They will identify the faults and work on them.

That was absolutely tragic from start to finish, like. Not sure what we've been doing all week but everything was wrong.

Howe did say we'd be having a lot of rest this week and not much training... but we don't look to have benefitted from the rest at all.

We are absolutely nowhere near them in midfield. Pressing structure is all wrong.

Would do this but keep Murphy on for Gordon. He's a significantly better player unfortunately.

Yeah, just stand offside Ant. That's fine.

No threat in behind again. Wilson on for a midfielder at HT.

Not sure why that's a yellow like

Sven looks shaky today

Burn . Anything but that there, Dan.

In his first season he was definitely good enough and was performing at a high level, though ofc not worth £80m. Something's obviously happened with him mentally during his time at the club. He's been an absolute mess since then. You are still mostly a counter-attacking team that sit fairly deep tbf. Third lowest defensive line actions in the league ahead of only Bournemouth and Forest.

Watkins is having a purple patch, I don't think he's at the same level as a fit Wilson at all. Think we're forgetting how good Wilson was earlier in the season - there's a reason he was in the England squad.