Wolves V Aston Villa: Match Thread

[Sandie]

After a relatively easy month where we topped the form table, we have a bigger test coming up in high flying Wolves.

This, for me, is a game that will tell us much about our promotion hopes.

[villabromsgrove]

I agree, we should find out more about whether we've improved in real terms.

[Jim Villan]

I am now confident that we have a group of players who have belief in themselves and the system that they are being asked to play in. Wolves have a couple of very talented individuals and it's important that we pick up midfield runners in this game, but more importantly that we impose ourselves in the match and don't just focus on the threat from wolves. I'm excited to be watching Villa again UTV

[villabromsgrove]

We need to occupy their wing backs and stop them getting at us. It's the way Wolves play and it wins them matches. If we sit deep and hope to hit on the break then I would go for a Wolves victory at least seven out of ten times.

Wolves will target our left back area and it might not be pretty.

[Sandie]

Who's going to play left back? De Laet? Hutton? Bjarnason?

[villabromsgrove]

Disappointing. What does Bruce say to the team at halftime? We start so slowly in the second half that we must be told to sit deep and keep it tight!
Wolves were decent and were showing for passes all game. We only ever had one player willing to run for a return pass, and that was O'Hare when he came on as a sub.

Nunez 2 Bruce 0.

[Sandie]

Wolves are worlds ahead of us right now. They will surely be a premier league club next August. With us I'm not so sure.

[villabromsgrove]

Nunez said after the match that Villa were well organised with a defensive focus. I said before the match that if we set up too defensively Wolves would beat us. Unfortunately Bruce is incapable of coaching any differently.
Our players are better than they were made to look yesterday, but not in that defensive set up. O'Hare hasn't yet had the movement coached out of him, and it showed glaringly.
We will continue to pick up points against average or poor teams, but the teams with good coaches will continue to show us up.

[Sandie]

Lot of people seem to think the gulf between us and Wolves is not as big as it looked as we were not at our best.

How many times have we genuinely been at our best under Bruce? I can count the good performances on the fingers of one hand.

[villabromsgrove]

It was a joy to watch Wolves play some exhilarating one touch football. They were happy to pass to marked men with only a couple of feet of space and move rapidly to receive quick fire passes. By contrast we made the same old safe percentage passes to deep unmarked players 90% of the time.

Good players help, but good coaching puts the finishing touches to a decent team. We are stuck with what we've got, so any improvements will be minimal and patchy.

[Sandie]

I think we have good players, they just resemble a plate of sick on the pitch.

[Jim Villan]

I hope that Bruce and the players are using Saturday's trouncing as motivation to continue to try to improve upon our style of play and efforts to impress ourselves on football matches. Wolves were terrific and unfortunately for Villa they made us look very average on the day. However it might do us a favour in the long run. Wolves have set the benchmark, and villa know what they have to do, it's clear yes we may now have a team that should beat many of the teams in the championship, but what Saturday showed us is that were just not dynamic enough against a good footballing team. O 'hare looked like a player who could help us in that regard. let's hope he gets a chance ahead of Whelan sooner rather than later.

[villabromsgrove]

I worry that Bruce has breathed a sigh of relief that it was only a two nil loss, and "we go again". I think Bruce will just carry on doing exactly the same, on the basis that we're not playing Wolves this week so we could get something out of the match.

My faith in SB doing something positive is somewhere between infinitesimal and non existent!

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