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Promotion prospects 2017/18 season.

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Post by villabromsgrove Sat May 20, 2017 1:14 pm

I guess we have to consider the P word even though it looks unlikely at the moment.

Dr T has indicated that nothing less than promotion will be acceptable, but can Bruce deliver a team and a system to bring that about?

Last season we just couldn't score the goals to win enough matches. We won just 16 out of 46 games and scored 47 goals. Only three teams scored less than us and 2 of them got relegated .... the other was Birmingham City!

Only 4 teams conceded less goals than us, which shows that Calderwood's defensive coaching had an effect, but we still ended up with a negative minus one goal difference.

New players do not make a difference to our current system. That was proven by the dumbing down of Lansbury and Hourihane, both of whom had previously proven their worth in fluid creative support play. The majority of our forward ball was either lumped up in the air or given to the willing but aimless Hutton to waste. We are a team built on the premise that possessing the ball isn't important, it's getting onto the end of something (anything?) and hopefully putting it in the net. We are tactically naive to the point where we don't appear to have an identifiable "tactic".

That has to change, but will it? If it doesn't then we are doomed to another season of mid table mediocrity, and when you look at the potential quality of some of our players that simply isn't good enough. My own opinion is that we will be outfought, out thought and outplayed by enough teams to make Promotion a wish rather than a fact.

What do you think?
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Post by villabromsgrove Sun May 28, 2017 11:28 am

I'm not feeling any more confident a week on from starting this thread. I know I'm starting to sound like a stuck gramophone record but in my opinion Bruce cannot get the best from our squad. His out of date approach to matches immediately gives confidence to opposition that we should be beating. Setting up with ten men behind the ball against teams like Burton etc will not get us promoted. When lesser teams look forward to playing you and think they can have a go at you, something is fundamentally wrong.
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Post by Sandie Sun May 28, 2017 12:41 pm

One thing is for sure, I think we need to be very different to how we were last season. At our best our performances were passable, which isn't great when we are going into a season where nothing less than promotion will be acceptable.

Something's got to change. In my opinion I think Conor Hourihane needs to be at the centre of it. He was terrific in the last game against Brighton and his form for Barnsley spoke for itself but I don't think he's been the player he could be for us so far.
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Post by villabromsgrove Mon May 29, 2017 1:30 pm

I got the impression that Bruce had an idea of which eleven players he wanted to play, but he couldn't find a workable way to play them together.

The default position for Villa is clearly ten men behind the ball, which means that however much we change the numbers .... 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 5-3-2 etc, it's not going to translate into more goals. There's going to be no way that our midfielders can do what they're best at, simply because the basic coaching premise is far too negative.

That's not a basis for a promotion challenge.
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Post by villabromsgrove Mon May 29, 2017 6:41 pm

Congratulations to Huddersfield on winning promotion to the Premier League. They deserved it as they were the only team trying to win the game. Reading did what Villa have done previously on numerous occasions. They set out to defend their way through the match and snatch a result on the break.
Wagner showed what a tactician he is by adapting his tactics against Reading's really deep and packed defending, and Huddersfield were unlucky not to win in normal time.
Jaap Stam nearly got away with his anti football plan, so the fact that he came close means that managers like Bruce might see no reason to change.
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Post by villabromsgrove Thu Jun 08, 2017 6:49 pm

Life is good at the moment .... Villa getting promoted would be a bonus next season, but if not then as I've just said, life is good. It's all about perspective.
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Post by villabromsgrove Wed Jun 21, 2017 11:31 am

We kick off the season with a televised match at Villa Park against Hull. There are no easy matches in the Championship, but it's imperative that we pick up early points if we want to compete.
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Post by villabromsgrove Wed Jun 21, 2017 11:38 am

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Post by villabromsgrove Sat Oct 07, 2017 11:23 am

It's strange to be sat a place off the play offs without having played well this season, although a run of games against poor teams would account for that. We've shown that we have the players to get promoted, but are we playing the kind of football to get the job done?

With four of the next five away games being shown live on SKY, we will certainly get a close up view of our prospects. Failure to win automatic promotion is unacceptable with the squad we have. In my opinion of course.

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Post by Sandie Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:32 pm

With the form we are in I should be convinced of our promotion credentials. I am not. Time will tell, I suppose.

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Post by villabromsgrove Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:10 pm

We should be looking forward confidently to the rest of the season, but I still see our progress as dependent on how we play the next few (harder) games.
It shouldn't be like that given the strength and quality of our team, but I'm well aware that that Bruce is capable of returning to total negativity at the first sign of pressure.
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