Match Day Thread A Classic City goal v Liverpool to savour
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When you are top of the league, luck goes your way and a gust of wind helps you win a match, when you are bottom of the league luck goes against you and the ball hits the post.
McLean looked really good today. Thought he played really well given the opposition. Seemed composed on the ball and able to find an outlet while under pressure. Cantwell, Krul, Hamleys and Aarons too were my other standouts. Had my heart in my mouth a few times with a couple of Zimbo's touches tho.
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Happy to oblige! Solid Air 2 is absolutely correct when he says we have regularly surrendered points which we should have gained, the reason being that the way we play involves regularly leaving ourselves defensively wide open. Game after game -- unless we are playing the likes of Liverpool or Man City. This is also why we are not truly competitive in this league; everybody, including our immediate competitors, is confident of taking points from us because they know they just have to wait to be handed the opportunity.
It wouldn't be difficult to "turn in performances like this and Man City" against our immediate competitors; all we need to do is treat every team as though they are Liverpool or Man City. The interesting question is why don't we?
Does anyone else think if we had scored that goal after pushing over a defender that VAR would have ruled in our favour?
I'm sure there would have been several more minutes of replays and camera angles, that's for sure
I don't think it was a foul. Zimmerman mis timed his header and should have done better. If pukki had been the scorer snd Van Dike the defender then Norwich fans would have been furious if var had disallowed the goal. We went toe to toe with the best team in the world and nearly got something from the game. We should just take confidence from the game amd move on.
The only good thing about going back down is that we won't have bloody VAR for at least one season. Yes, the refs will be utter crap and make glaring errors, but at least the decisions will be made instantly, we'll all know where we stand, and there won't be 'several more minutes of replays and camera angles' before some faceless official informs us that the decision has gone against us.
And poor ref's decisions do tend to even out as the season wears on - whereas VAR
decisions seem heavily weighted in favour of the big(ger) clubs. Always.
Hanley & McLean both had excellent games, as did Tettey & Krul. Great decision by DF not to succumb to fan pressure to play Buendia & Godfrey. On today's performance if Godfrey is to get back into the team it may well be at Zimmermann's expense. Buendia when he came on wasn't great giving the ball away too easily in decent positions and standing still and waving his hands in the air when things didn't go his way, when he would have been better using his energy to get the ball back. Lewis did well but we will miss Byram, who I think is the stronger of the 2 at the moment. I think for the next game I would start with the team that started against Liverpool with the obvious exception of Lewis for Byram and possibly Godfrey for Zimmermann.
I agree that we lost a lot of points early in the season because we didn't achieve a balance between defence and attack, especially given the injury situation. In recent games we've improved on both fronts and it shows in the performances and results of late.
The changes have been subtle but effective and last night showed it clearly as we defended well against the most dangerous attack in the league. The other element of this is settled CB partnerships (this was only the second time this season we've had 3 CBs available). I hope we play the same way at Wolves, using our counterattacking abilities to the full but also working the ball forward when we can without pulling defenders out of position. I can only remember Aarons being caught out of position once last night as we effectively kept our shape.
From BBC Live coverage: "Paul: And that's why [they] will be relegated. Better team for large parts of a home game and then end up losing. Doesn't matter how well you've played if you lost." The reference was to Villa but the cap fits ..........
Not sure the cap does fit Robbie. Villa had 18 shots, only 4 of which were on target. One of their 2 goals was an own goal. Spurs had 23 shots, 10 of which were on target and 3 were goals. Spurs are a good team, but they're not unbeaten Liverpool. Last night was more than just a good performance after most of us thought we'd get stuffed 3 or 4 nil. The chronic injuries in the first half of the season and our failure to compensate for them have probably left us too much to do now, but our play has improved and we have only two injuries. The difference shows all too clearly.
But Buendia did in that brief time manage to give Pukki his best chance of the game. A tough call either way but for me we are struggling horribly to score goals, Buendia should be straight back in.
Bah!
Enjoy him while we can. Imminent relegation plus DF not playing him means the clock's ticking. I've been impressed with Rupp but I agree we need to play Buendia. I've not swotted up on the stats but maybe Duda should make way?
If only we could glean points as opposed to plaudits! 
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Rick, I understood the reference to be an observation about Villa's season as a whole, not just the latest one-thirty-eighth of it. That's the cap that fits us too. How often has it been said that we played well, that we didn't deserve to lose, that we were the better team, etc. etc. But the cold facts are that we have won fewer games than anyone else, lost more games than anyone else, and have a far worse GD than anyone else. Playing nice, good to watch, losing football quickly palls -- for players, not just fans.
Strangely enough, it hasn't palled for me. I felt confident that we could compete with Liverpool and we did, much like we did in both games against Spurs. There is a difference now from the first half of the season when we were crippled by injuries and not doing enough to compensate for that. In recent games we've had fewer injuries and our CBs available, but we've also played more balanced football. If we can continue with that for the rest of the season I'll be satisfied, even if we go down. The reality is that we are underdogs in every game we play and yet we've been competitive. Had this been the case for the whole season, we wouldn't be bottom of the table.
So what exactly does "being competitive" mean? You say we are underdogs every game. Every other team from 19th upwards expects to beat us. I bet every single team we still have to face have us pencilled in as a banker for 3 points. How is that "being competitive"? Seems to me that all you really mean by "being competitive" is not being trounced every week by teams who don't even have to break sweat.