Re: Nottingham Forest V Aston Villa Saturday 4th February 5:30pm kick off. (Sky TV match)

by Chris Harte Sat Feb 04, 2017 8:51 pm

villabromsgrove wrote:Forest 71% possession

Villa 29% possession

I rest my case M'Lud!

Bleeding hell. Really?

It didn't seem like that.

by **Sandie** Sat Feb 04, 2017 9:30 pm

I really wish we sold Grealish when we had the chance. Assuming Boro wanted him.

by **villabromsgrove** Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:29 am

We've said regularly and even very recently that Grealish should not start a game and should only be used as an impact sub. Yesterday saw him do a couple of decent creative things but the rest of his game lacked so much.
We know he can't tackle, but the "system" we played saw him encamped within ten/twenty metres of our penalty area for most of the 75 minutes he was on the pitch.
I believe that we have better players than Brentford/Forest, and yet we decided that we would deliberately use a tactic of allowing the opposition to have three quarters of the possession in order to draw them up the pitch as a team, so that we could hit the ball over the top into breaking space for our striker/s.
Why did we buy Lansbury/Hourihane/Bjarnason? That's not the way they've played for their respective clubs. You do not need creative midfielders if all you require from them is to defend our final third.
We played a 9-1 system against Brentford and an 8-2 system against Forest and we got our just deserts both times .... nothing!
This cretinous misuse of our players has to stop!

by **villabromsgrove** Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:56 am

Looking back at the recorded match is an eye opener. We regularly allowed Forest to string 7/8 passes together, sometimes as many as 10/11(we also did the same against Brentford), and yet both teams were lower in the table than us. At the same time we never put more than 2/3 consecutive passes together ourselves, because the defence and midfield were condensed into each other. I lost count of the hopeful long balls we hit that went straight to Forest players 95% of the time. Were we seriously playing just for the 5% of ball that actually got to our striker/s?
If you listen to both Smith and Brazil speaking after the last two games, they both said that they knew what "system" Villa would play, and could afford to play with three at the back while flooding the midfield and flanks. In Dean Smith's case he said he decided to "flip" his tactics three weeks before they played us after having had us watched against Cardiff and Spurs. We made their respective manager and caretaker manager jobs so easy that they were able to look like Conte and Mourinho!

by **villabromsgrove** Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:10 am

https://www.avfc.co.uk/News/2017/02/04/the-boss-forest-away

Sorry to be Mr Negative this morning but this report from his post match interview does not sound encouraging. He basically says that we were unlucky last night and we've got to stick with the system! Villa had a paltry 29% of the possession last night Steve .... did you not notice that?
He also says that Grealish was unlucky to be sent off .... no he wasn't Steve, he was a pillock and deserved his two yellow cards!

by **villabromsgrove** Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:17 am

One other thing that Bruce said is worth highlighting. He said that "every mistake we make at the moment we're being punished for".

When you play as deep as Villa do (away from home) the vast majority of our mistakes are going to happen close to our goal in a dangerous area, so the likelihood of being punished for them is much higher than if we were pressing the opposition higher up in the midfield. It's not rocket science.

by **Sandie** Sun Feb 05, 2017 7:18 pm

villabromsgrove wrote:We've said regularly and even very recently that Grealish should not start a game and should only be used as an impact sub. Yesterday saw him do a couple of decent creative things but the rest of his game lacked so much.

Apart from petulance, which he demonstrated in spades and not for the first time. He needs to grow up or piss off.

by **Sandie** Sun Feb 05, 2017 7:25 pm

villabromsgrove wrote:One other thing that Bruce said is worth highlighting. He said that "every mistake we make at the moment we're being punished for".

When you play as deep as Villa do (away from home) the vast majority of our mistakes are going to happen close to our goal in a dangerous area, so the likelihood of being punished for them is much higher than if we were pressing the opposition higher up in the midfield. It's not rocket science.

There's a lot of truth to this. How about we set ourselves out to punish other team's mistakes?

We're Aston Villa and we've spent a fortune, we should not be playing like this. We're not Burton Albion who are happy to be in this division and doing anything to get by in it. With the reputation of our club, the vast sums spent by the last two managers and the fact we desperately want out of this division we shouldn't be playing like plucky underdogs.

by **villabromsgrove** Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:33 pm

I think you've hit the nail on the head Sandie. I don't think that Bruce intends for us to look like "plucky underdogs" but that is the impression we give each time we play away. Regardless of his intention he is slowly diminishing our stature by over respecting very average teams. Home teams don't fear us anymore, instead they rub their hands together and can't wait for their turn to collect three points.
If we lose matches it should be despite dominating teams. If we're going to be "unlucky" it should be when we've battered teams for 90 minutes. At the moment we're setting up like a bunch of wimps.

Villa are a lot bigger than the way our manager currently portrays us!

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