I couldn’t wait to go to Villa Park today, the weather was warm, spirits were high amongst the fans and the first half performance was very promising. Gary Gardner was by far our best player in the first half pulling all the strings. With Jack Grealish’s performance not too far behind Gardner’s and Nathan Baker scoring our only goal to give us the lead, things looked promising, what could go wrong?
The second half however, was a load of rubbish. If you thought we were going to win the Championship on the strength of our first half performance, then you were made to think again with what we produced in the second half, it was awful!
Alarmingly for me, a friend of mine whom I attended the match with thought the players look really tired and unfit! I think he was being a little harsh, but maybe some of you out there saw the same thing? I can’t say that I did! But heads did definitely dropped once they took the lead, and worryingly, so did some of the individual performances.
Looking very weak in possession, Jordan Ayew must have lost the ball about five times in the second half! His body language when the ball was being cheaply robbed from him was really terrible. He needs to be on the ball this season in this league; the Championship doesn’t care about sulkers when things don’t go your way!
Also, Rudy Gestede was pretty ineffective all match! Maybe he would be better coming off the bench with twenty minutes to go if we need a goal to salvage a point through direct play? I hope RDM signs a recognised goal-scorer for this league (maybe Ross McCormack), I really think we need one!
Absolutely agree with you about Gardener being by far our best p!ayer and pulling it all together in the middle, in fact I think things started to fall apart when be as taken off at half time, we seemed clueless I the middle and going forward. I was surprised to see that the Evening Mail had to given him 6 the same as Muton & Cissockho! I would make Gardener captain.
Gary Gardner looked good, left side of defence shaky. No midfielder getting behind Gestede. Team lacks pace for me, Andre Green might be an important impact player for us. Not enough shots at goal, Grealish and Ayew need to be more ruthless in front of goal. It was pre-season. I think we need to get as many points as possible early doors. Second half of season we will be stronger.
Team fell apart around 60 minutes really bad passing again caused problems, same old issues after the first Middlesbrough goal!! Shame it all seemed so good and actually villa fans started to think this could be a good team after all !! Maybe let’s give RDM a chance it’s early days
This team will still have 3 or 4 new players coming in,,,,,, And it’s beneficial to see the team fall apart,,,,,, this proves we need players
A lot can happen till the window closes and this team is no where near finished
But there are many positives but it’s clear to me we need a forward who can play in the system employed, a right back, and possibly another forward who can play behind the front man
I think we will need to get points early on because we will need them. The second half of the season will be even harder for us.
No matter what we need or don’t need on the pitch, I will do my best to make as much noise and support as possible from off the pitch. More than could be said for some of the fans last season.
Disappointing or not, all this hype about being the 12th man was rubbish as many times I heard more boos than cheers. Playing in any career, you will never get any positive play from a boo…but if they were 2 down and the crowd were still buzzing, they have made a come back and won….
Good or bad…..make noise during the game and do the moaning after the game…..not during.
Its no good having attacking wing backs, so called if no-one gives them cover when they are up front. Leicester last year did not play this system they made sure of a solid defence with full backs at all times. They did not have the situation yesterday of only one defender to deal with a break-away or counter attack.
I watched the game yesterday and I was disappointed with the formation and the usual second half collapse ,you can’t play ayew and gestede n a front three with over lapping wing backs who keep getting caught out of position all the time this was our down fall last season and it could be our down fall this season coming .RDM would be wise to switch to a traditional 442 for this season keeping the fullbacks tight in defense , I can’t see any real improvement in the 4 3 3 formation which has failed for the past 4 seasons because we don’t have the players to play this system.gestede works better in a front two ,ask Jordan Rhodes .
I know I don’t sound optermistic about the new season coming but I’ll do what I always do and give the manager 10 or 15 games to get his head around the new season but I fear a mid table finish is all we can achieve if we continue to play a 4 3 3 System .