Norwich City V Aston Villa Tuesday 13th December 19:45

Team news...


Suddenly feeling less confident.

Me to! I guess Gabby's going to surprise us sometime .... tonight?

Adomah rested, Gardner left out in favour of Westwood. Ayew needs to stop running down blind alleys and play for the team.

Gollini, Hutton, Westwood, Gabby all playing together. It worries me more than a little bit!

Gollini and Hutton I can take due to the lack of an alternative and how they usually offer a fair bit more. There shouldn't be any place for the other two who offer next to nothing. When has Gabby justified this latest chance since coming back? He's been poor each time I've seen him and tonight is in for one of our best and most effective players (I hope that's due to fatigue as it isn't a tactic).

Desperately poor in midfield. That's the Westwood effect right there. The less said about Gabby the better. Bruce needs to abandon the Agbonlahor experiment.

Grealish doesn't seem to be interested in tackling or making runs. Lazy looking first half. Get Kodjia in the box, he's totally wasted pinned to the touchline. Good job Norwich aren't much cop either.

Arse kicking time Steve!

Too early for some subs? Gestede or McCormack on? Maybe both considering how poor in various ways the existing front 3 or 4 are doing.

Could Kodjia get a retrospective three match ban for deliberately kicking out and making contact with the players head?

I'd bring Adomah on for Weswood and put Gestede up the middle instead of Gabby. It's about time we started to get balls into the box.

villabromsgrove wrote:Could Kodjia get a retrospective three match ban for deliberately kicking out and making contact with the players head?

Wondering about that. Might end up being a blessing in disguise actually as we could end up giving McCormack and Gestede a run where they wouldn't be getting one and they might actually build form and confidence. Assuming that it doesn't see Gabby's run being extended.

I still think we'll grind something out of this one. Probably once the subs are involved, mind.

Dreadful touch from Gabby ends in a deserved Norwich goal.

Why no subs yet?

We deserved nothing. Poor team .... poor application .... non existent supply and not a shot on target. Westwood was still on the pitch running around like a headless chicken at the end of the game. Norwich were backing each other up in the tackle all the time, we played as individuals and got totally bossed. I do not see a Villa team on the pitch, and it's getting worse. The fans still seem to know more than Steve Bruce about where our problems are.

Sandie, we knew the result as soon as we saw the team selection. Why do we go away to a team who have lost six out of the last seven games and make it easy for them? That wasn't just a bad day at the office, it was completely mental. We seem to have created yet another old boys club, where if you're a member then choose a comfy armchair and put your feet up.

Bruce has got too many mates .... he needs to start making a few enemies!

I'm furious about that "performance". I said at the back end of last season that I wasn't expecting the rebuilding of Aston Villa FC to be easy or quick. I though talk of immediate automatic promotion was premature and a run to the play offs should have been the sensible goal because of how broken the club was. When I was thinking that I wasn't really expecting seven months down the line for us to still seemingly be going backwards and for Gabby to have slithered his way back into contention.

I don't really blame Bruce too much. There is only so much that can be done with the unbalanced squad and non-existent midfield that was the residue of the disastrous Di Matteo appointment. Bruce can't be judged now until he has brought in some players. There is only so much turd polishing he's capable of and the good start he had probably heaped more expectations on him. That aside, I think he got things badly, badly wrong tonight. First clanger was the selection of Agbonlahor. Just why? Second was that Gabbu lasted seventy three minutes. If I was in charge and a player put in that performanxe on my watch he'd probably be off even before the half time whistle. Another issue was the midfield. Selecting the invisible man Westwood and Grealish together left Jedinak with a lot to do. Big mistakes there but hopefully lessons will have be learned. First is that Gabby must never play again. There is no justification to be found for it. He'll never be the player he was and has had too many chances this season already without delivering much. For the midfield, I think Gardner, Tshibola and Bacuna are all more deserving of a place than Westwood. Westwood is the common denominator in all our worst performances and most ineffective midfield displays. He plays in a crucial position and it's no coincidence that our ineffectiveness in that area is the thing that kills us so much.

Other than that, it was extraordinarily obvious how much we miss Baker. Elphick was back as captain(!) and looks like another poor RDM signing. Another centre half is another essential signing and as it is someone who will probably play a lot of games, no, I don't want it to be Alex Bruce. Ayew was also distinctly unimpressive tonight and Kodjia was wasted on the left (a tactic that seems to have been found out in double quick time) overplaying it so many times (a bit like Ayew did) and now faces suspension for that bit of petulance.

At the end of the day we went to a team who had lost six out of seven, who were playing like a team with zilch confidence and turned in that performance. No shots on target according to the BBC in spite of three strikers being on the pitch at all times. It's indefensible and changes need to be rung before we end up in another of our pits of despair. Bruce has been very good at getting the player heads right in the early part of our time with him and he needs to do it again. There are two or three players who are needing either a confidence boost or a boot up the backside and it needs to be delivered promptly. He was obviously pissed off post match and wasn't giving any of the spin/guff that Lambert or RDM would have done so that's positive. It's about showing that, of course. There's a game on Sunday (in front of the Sky cameras we haven't won in front of in two years) against QPR and it needs to be a substantial improvement.