Ricardo's report v Villa

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Well yes. Our players are pretty pivotal to our chances of staying up. Especially the best ones.....

[ricardo 7,345]

1 hour ago, nutty nigel said:

Well yes. Our players are pretty pivotal to our chances of staying up. Especially the best ones.....

But not if they are laying on the treatment table.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

 

10 minutes ago, ricardo said:

But not if they are laying on the treatment table.

Or even playing.

[Jim Smith 2,314]

7 hours ago, BigFish said:

Thing is @Parma Ham's gone mouldy is that there is a solid cohort of posters on here who have never bought into the philosophy. They went quiet when the team was winning but are back now with a vengence. They really do want to go back to old school English values because that is what they grew up with, and what they understand.

 

7 hours ago, BigFish said:

Thing is @Parma Ham's gone mouldy is that there is a solid cohort of posters on here who have never bought into the philosophy. They went quiet when the team was winning but are back now with a vengence. They really do want to go back to old school English values because that is what they grew up with, and what they understand.

I’ve bought into the philosophy in terms of the passing and playing it out from the back (although when it goes wrong it looks truly awful) but what I don’t buy is that it has to be at the exclusion of good, old fashioned defensive basics such as preventing crosses from coming in or marking opposition players in our own six yard box. Farke has never quite got the defence drilled so they perform on a consistent basis. We simply won’t outscore teams every week at this level. Look at the likes of Palace, Burnley and dare I say it Shef U. They make it really hard to score against them and as a result are able to grind out points in a way im not sure we are capable of. 

[Christoph Stiepermann 1,131]

33 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

 

I’ve bought into the philosophy in terms of the passing and playing it out from the back (although when it goes wrong it looks truly awful) but what I don’t buy is that it has to be at the exclusion of good, old fashioned defensive basics such as preventing crosses from coming in or marking opposition players in our own six yard box. Farke has never quite got the defence drilled so they perform on a consistent basis. We simply won’t outscore teams every week at this level. Look at the likes of Palace, Burnley and dare I say it Shef U. They make it really hard to score against them and as a result are able to grind out points in a way im not sure we are capable of. 

 

I don't see those issues as tactical or something we're not being drilled correctly on. It's simply that we have a small, inexperienced team. To play Farke's style of football you have to be technically gifted as a bare minimum. This squad has been largely built on a shoestring so we've sacrificed physicality and experience for players who first and foremost fit our philosophy. We have some tall players but they aren't quick or that strong and some fast players who are weak and inconsistent, much of our team is also out injured. I would argue there's very little Farke can do on the training pitch to stem the flow of these types of goals.

We're not yet at a place where we can afford players who are physically and technically good enough so we are where we are. It's not fun and this was my main fear coming into this season that we'd be dominated physically and in the air but it is what it is and we have to get on with it. 

 

Kenny McLean, a physically average, attacking midfielder currently being deployed in a holding midfield role is our best header of the ball in the team at the moment. That says it all really, no amount of careful coaching can fix that problem

Edited October 6, 2019 by Christoph Stiepermann

[Jim Smith 2,314]

10 hours ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

 

I don't see those issues as tactical or something we're not being drilled correctly on. It's simply that we have a small, inexperienced team. To play Farke's style of football you have to be technically gifted as a bare minimum. This squad has been largely built on a shoestring so we've sacrificed physicality and experience for players who first and foremost fit our philosophy. We have some tall players but they aren't quick or that strong and some fast players who are weak and inconsistent, much of our team is also out injured. I would argue there's very little Farke can do on the training pitch to stem the flow of these types of goals.

We're not yet at a place where we can afford players who are physically and technically good enough so we are where we are. It's not fun and this was my main fear coming into this season that we'd be dominated physically and in the air but it is what it is and we have to get on with it. 

 

Kenny McLean, a physically average, attacking midfielder currently being deployed in a holding midfield role is our best header of the ball in the team at the moment. That says it all really, no amount of careful coaching can fix that problem

Sorry you are saying we can't afford to buy defenders who can make tackles or mark strikers when the ball is crossed in? You don't need money to drill a defence. You need to work on it on the training ground. The Man City game is the only game I can really recall where I've seen any evidence that the team had been drilled to play in a specific way and the defending was markedly better (although we still allowed them 2 or 3 free headers). Godfrey and Amadou should be capable of basic man marking and Lewis and Aarons of cutting out more crosses before they come into the box even if the guys playing in front of them were inexcusably strolling about for half the game. 

[BigFish 1,986]

13 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

I’ve bought into the philosophy in terms of the passing and playing it out from the back (although when it goes wrong it looks truly awful) but what I don’t buy is that it has to be at the exclusion of good, old fashioned defensive basics such as preventing crosses from coming in or marking opposition players in our own six yard box. Farke has never quite got the defence drilled so they perform on a consistent basis. We simply won’t outscore teams every week at this level. Look at the likes of Palace, Burnley and dare I say it Shef U. They make it really hard to score against them and as a result are able to grind out points in a way im not sure we are capable of. 

Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. It would be impossible to switch from how we want to play to a Burnley style. I think Parma's point is you need to stick at it to ingrain the philosophy in the players rather than "mix it up" which leads to the worst of all worlds and prevents the team progressing. We keep doing and through that get better at it.

That said there have been individual failings, although we have the players we have because they are the ones we can afford. The team is short of a decent CB & holding midfielder. And that is very much down to our injury woes.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Just got back from a very long weekend of Golf away and haven't even seen the highlights as I really don't want to watch them particularly.

Twenty of us were in the bar by 3.10 and keen for the scores. As ours went from awful to disaster, apart from the numpties who don't really follow football but just like taking the urine, the consensus was that we were a decent club who tried to play good football and certainly entertained the neutrals and the hope was we stayed up.

That is it in a nutshell to me. Disappointing as it is  to lose to Villa but beat ManC, our resources from the off were stretched and now the elastic is ready to snap. But that must not prevent us from carrying on in the same way. Some days, the passing will not get intercepted, Some days, the defensive side will have luck or composure and we will prevail.

If we manage to do that enough times then we may stay up. But of we go down then so be it but I'd rather do that playing the way we are.

Thanks for the read Ricardo. I preferred that to trying to watch the highlights.

[wooster 134]

Thanks Ricardo for a very measured report.

I've resisted from commenting until now so that I can reflect on the game (I was there) and absorb others' opinions but I have two simple comments:

(a) I thought Jamal Lewis, despite being injured, was very good; and

(b) Buendia gave the ball away far too easily in midfield which led to at least two of Villa's goals.  Nobody seems to have laid that against his door, I don't know why and I'm not particularly seeking to make him a scapegoat.

I appreciate injuries have taken their toll, what must training have been like with half a squad?  In addition, the negative effects of two away defeats after the Man C game, and then to take on a £140m invested Aston Villa was almost an impossible task.

As Farke said, a result like this was coming.

 

I hope they can re-group over the break.