Aston Villa 4-1 Newcastle United - 19/04/2025

[STM]

43 minutes ago, Rod said:

Great post, however Aston Villa are not an excellent side.

 

Villa aren't an excellent side? They are, IMO, one of the top 5 sides in the best league in the world, are likely to reach the FA cup final and have just reached the quarter final of the most prestigious continental competition.

 

I mean... what are we doing here? 

[Skeletor]

Villa are an excellent side like.

[Palestoon]

We really saw 2 sides of the coin yesterday. Villa gave us a taste of our own medicine, but also showed us the recipe/what we're lacking to deal with it, that they have.

 

Best way generally to beat an effective press (unless your peak City) is to simply bypass it. 

 

Villa have 3 players in their front 6 who are excellent with their backs to goal (Rogers, McGinn and Watkins)

But rather than lump balls over the top for Burn to mop up all day, they played direct passes across the ground. Forced our unathletic back line to chase them around, and then held up the ball, and waited for the runners to come in. It worked all day. This is what teams like Bournemouth fulham and Brighton have done to us. 

 

It's why getting some mobile CBs is critical if we want to play this high pressing man to man style. We have no recovery pace in the defense. As soon as a ball goes forward and it sticks, it feels like all our defenders are struggling to get goal side.

 

And on the flip side, I think it exposed what our problems are offensively when teams press us high. They basically surround our midfielders and dare us to play directly into the attackers. 

 

Our front line is amazing on the front foot, but back to goal is a major issue. Isak struggles to hold up the ball against strong CBs, and Gordon and Murphy are not technical enough to receive the ball under pressure and turn it into a positive situation.

 

Hope it's something we look into addressing in the summer. We need to add another dimension to our attack

[joeyt]

Good post

[Kanj]

It’s very rare that people beat our press. If it was that easy we wouldn’t have the record we have. 
 

I do obv agree that we need fix that glaring weakness in our side, only will turn us into perennial challengers.  

[El Prontonise]

1 hour ago, STM said:

 

Villa aren't an excellent side? They are, IMO, one of the top 5 sides in the best league in the world, are likely to reach the FA cup final and have just reached the quarter final of the most prestigious continental competition.

 

I mean... what are we doing here? 

 

It's rod, he's fucking useless.  Ignore him.

[Rich]

Think Mbuemo solves that. Not sure Akliouche does. It’s a big part of why Big Joe at LW balanced us out so nicely at times.

[JUICE690]

And a keeper with good distribution. Honestly feel like I'm looking forward to seeing that over anything else.

 

 

Edited April 20 by JUICE690

[Rod]

4 hours ago, Skeletor said:

Villa are an excellent side like.

They are really not.

[Disco]

4 hours ago, Palestoon said:

We really saw 2 sides of the coin yesterday. Villa gave us a taste of our own medicine, but also showed us the recipe/what we're lacking to deal with it, that they have.

 

Best way generally to beat an effective press (unless your peak City) is to simply bypass it. 

 

Villa have 3 players in their front 6 who are excellent with their backs to goal (Rogers, McGinn and Watkins)

But rather than lump balls over the top for Burn to mop up all day, they played direct passes across the ground. Forced our unathletic back line to chase them around, and then held up the ball, and waited for the runners to come in. It worked all day. This is what teams like Bournemouth fulham and Brighton have done to us. 

 

It's why getting some mobile CBs is critical if we want to play this high pressing man to man style. We have no recovery pace in the defense. As soon as a ball goes forward and it sticks, it feels like all our defenders are struggling to get goal side.

 

And on the flip side, I think it exposed what our problems are offensively when teams press us high. They basically surround our midfielders and dare us to play directly into the attackers. 

 

Our front line is amazing on the front foot, but back to goal is a major issue. Isak struggles to hold up the ball against strong CBs, and Gordon and Murphy are not technical enough to receive the ball under pressure and turn it into a positive situation.

 

Hope it's something we look into addressing in the summer. We need to add another dimension to our attack

Spot on mush 

 

Going man to man in huge swathes of the game killed us further as it was easy as is piss for them to get the ball into said players one on one and with space around too. Watkins was class but Rodgers was superb. A bulky Willock whose ability to force the ball forward is amazing. He was really good at SJP too. 

 

[macphisto]

5 hours ago, Rod said:

They are really not.

Agree, good team but not excellent. Excellence belongs to teams like Man City in the past few years. 

 

You can't be excellent when you're in 7th with a +6 goal difference. 

 

I'd also say a team has to have a few world class players to be in that bracket too. 

[NEEJ]

Jusy reading the BBC "Your Views" bit on the match... Ozzy: "Our away form has been very disappointing this season and with two away games left at Brighton and Arsenal, we will have to improve a lot if we want a top five position."

 

Aye Ozzy, that'll be our very disappointing position of 3rd in the away league table. 

[Geogaddi]

12 minutes ago, NEEJ said:

Jusy reading the BBC "Your Views" bit on the match... Ozzy: "Our away form has been very disappointing this season and with two away games left at Brighton and Arsenal, we will have to improve a lot if we want a top five position."

 

Aye Ozzy, that'll be our very disappointing position of 3rd in the away league table. 

Whilst 8 away wins is an excellent return 6 of them have been against the bottom 6 and it was actually 7 wins against the bottom 7 before Wolves won yesterday.

 

 

Edited April 21 by Geogaddi

[NEEJ]

5 minutes ago, Geogaddi said:

Whilst 8 away wins is an excellent return 6 of them have been against the bottom 6 and it was actually 7 wins against the bottom 7 before Wolves won yesterday.

 

 

 

It's hardly very disappointing though, is it? Surely it's our home form that has been more disappointing this season. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

On 20/04/2025 at 01:33, r0cafella said:

Was just thinking how villa have essential got this large temporary squad by selling someone akin to Gordon and replacing them with Malen (who's nothing special) and a bunch of very expensive loans. 

 

If they decide to make the loans permanent the wage balloons another 600k at least (this figure would require all of the loanees to take cuts btw) and require transfer fees which would cost more than they got for Duran. 

 

Obviously what they Have done is powerful in the short term and in that specific context but I prefer our approach personally. Although I would love for us to actually do a better job managing FFP. we gave away by trading Anderson and not some random academy kid. 

I don’t think they can make them all permanent. It’s a temporary gamble to get in the CL. 

[Heron]

7 hours ago, NEEJ said:

It's hardly very disappointing though, is it? Surely it's our home form that has been more disappointing this season. 

Winning 8 away games out of 17 in a season is canny decent, I'd have thought, to be honest. Unless you're league winners. Whilst writing I checked, and in the 'Away' league we are 3rd, compared with 5th at home whereas last season we were 11th based on away results and 4th at home. When we got CL last we were also 3rd and 5th away and at home respectively. Which is perhaps a good omen at present.

 

I mean for me if you aim to win all your home games and draw all your away games you're looking at a pretty hefty return. So I guess it's more turning the losses to draws than the draws to wins for us this year away from home but that is just the nature of our play. We're a fairly shit or bust team now compared to two years ago.

 

 

Edited April 21 by Heron

[Ronaldo]

Very disappointing? What’s he on?

[joeyt]

I'm sure I read on nufc.com that we were on course for our best ever away season

 

We're 3rd in the away league table behind Arsenal and Liverpool

[TRon]

On 20/04/2025 at 20:04, Palestoon said:

We really saw 2 sides of the coin yesterday. Villa gave us a taste of our own medicine, but also showed us the recipe/what we're lacking to deal with it, that they have.

 

Best way generally to beat an effective press (unless your peak City) is to simply bypass it. 

 

Villa have 3 players in their front 6 who are excellent with their backs to goal (Rogers, McGinn and Watkins)

But rather than lump balls over the top for Burn to mop up all day, they played direct passes across the ground. Forced our unathletic back line to chase them around, and then held up the ball, and waited for the runners to come in. It worked all day. This is what teams like Bournemouth fulham and Brighton have done to us. 

 

It's why getting some mobile CBs is critical if we want to play this high pressing man to man style. We have no recovery pace in the defense. As soon as a ball goes forward and it sticks, it feels like all our defenders are struggling to get goal side.

 

And on the flip side, I think it exposed what our problems are offensively when teams press us high. They basically surround our midfielders and dare us to play directly into the attackers. 

 

Our front line is amazing on the front foot, but back to goal is a major issue. Isak struggles to hold up the ball against strong CBs, and Gordon and Murphy are not technical enough to receive the ball under pressure and turn it into a positive situation.

 

Hope it's something we look into addressing in the summer. We need to add another dimension to our attack

 

 

Felt like that was happening in midfield as well, we were attempting to press all over the pitch, but they held the ball well and sent runners away into space.

[The Prophet]

It wasn't too dissimilar to the City game in a lot of respects.

 

When the man for man press works, it's brilliant, but when it doesn't, our paceless defence is dragged all over the show.

 

You can see why we pursued Guehi, but it'd be nice to see a bit more tactical flexibility in these situations until we can buy a fix. 

 

 

Edited April 22 by The Prophet

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I expected us to sit back more after half time, but it wasn't really in the plan I guess. 

 

TBF we started the second half quite well IIRC, just the underlying tactical situation hadn't really changed enough. 

[TRon]

Just now, AyeDubbleYoo said:

I expected us to sit back more after half time, but it wasn't really in the plan I guess. 

 

TBF we started the second half quite well IIRC, just the underlying tactical situation hadn't really changed enough. 

 

Given that we were playing 3 games in 7 days, you could argue we should have played a more conservative game and that way we wouldn't have needed to match Villa's energy, which with their resources, was definitely a level above ours. But hard to argue changing a gameplan when we'd won 5 on the bounce. But in hindsight we didn't really have the legs to go toe to toe with them.

[Haz]

I wish we had played the Villa of tonight. They're treading custard as we were. Still; they'll keep. 

[andycap]

11 minutes ago, Haz said:

I wish we had played the Villa of tonight. They're treading custard as we were. Still; they'll keep. 

There new sponsor is ambrosia mate 😂