Jim Smith 2,610 Posted November 7, 2011 That is the question. Obviously the answer is no we don''t panic but ny the same token nor should our continued top half league position mask the fact that one or two cracks are starting to appear which need to be addressed. If Lambert is the top class manager we all firmly believe he is then this is where he proves it and earns his corn.Ultimately losing at Villa is no disgrace and on another day we would have got something. The game was lost as a result of 2 main factors. The first was Barnett''s stupid mistake at a time when the game was evenly poised. Mistakes happen and i''''m sure he will put in in the stand next time. The second was our inability to deal with Agbonlahor. In truth he was pretty much their only major threat but he is a great player and will give better teams than us a hard time. other than him I thought Villa were decidedly ordinary.The positives were that once again we showed that we will give any opponant a game whether home or away, we created planty of chances and scored two excellently taken goals.For me (and i suspect everyone else here though) the area that really needs addressing is our defensive fragility. The warning signs have been there at Anfield and with the goals we conceded at home to Blackburn and again on Saturday I thought the goals conceded were just far, far too easy. The defence had a collective bad day and maybe its time to think about bringing back in a specialist CB in place of Martin. However its not just the defence and for me the biggest concern in the last couple of games has been the lack of protection and the backing off in the midfield. Earlier in the season we were not allowing teams to run at our defenders. Now they seem to have free reign. Personally i thought Sir Paul (who remains the messiah) got it wrong with the team on saturday, Villa only looked dangerous on the counter attack and we played into their hands by losing the extra midfielder. When Wes pushed foreard we therefore became too stretched and they were able to break at pace. If we do the same against arsenal then i fear we will get a hiding. So for me, its back to 4-2-3-1 against Arsenal and we have to hold our shape at all costs. The crowd has to be patient and realise that perhaps we have to sacrifice a bit of attacking intent in order to try and stay solid and above all we have to stop backing off and be in their faces all match.This is the first really testing period in the prem. Whilst at the moment you could argue we have only lost 1 and this is not bad run with the fixtures we have coming up it could very easily turn into a bit of a slump and the bottom half of the league is not very tight. We should not kid ourselves that we are mid table. We are only 4 points off the bottom three and the next couple of months are going to be a real scrap. The good thing is I believe we have the players who have the stomach for the fight! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim Smith 2,610 Posted November 7, 2011 The bottom half of the league is NOW very tight even! Apologies. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BarclayCanary (Former HDDH) 0 Posted November 7, 2011 Personally, I do not think we need to Panic there is still a long way to go and anything can happen.We were sat in 8th place earlier (before the Villa game) and I feel that it had raised expectations, now that we have dropped down a little bit, maybe peoples expectations will lower of a top ten finish?I am confident we will survive but in order to do so I feel that we need to get behind the boys Home or Away and sing our hearts out, and not get fickle or Complacent like the Doncaster and the Blackburn game.OTBC! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Aggy 944 Posted November 7, 2011 We don''t need to panic yet. I''d like to ask a question to some of you who saw more game time at the start of the season than I did. We obviously set up to attack and go at teams. What was the defensive line like when we were doing this earlier in the season? Were we still sitting pretty deep a lot of the time, or were we out and in the oppositions face all the way through? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Aggy 944 Posted November 7, 2011 (I''ve got a pretty good idea, by the way, but I''d like to know what some of you who got to see the whole games think - a lot of my season so far has been watching highlights.) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
