I can't recall Sutton ever having a good word to say about us to be honest. The man is a total who is now stealing a living as a supposed pundit after being nothing more than a bang average foil for better strikers around him as a player!
Remember the last round? Sutton went for a 4-0 win for Stoke........................... please log in to view this image
Riza has already implied this game is inconvenient with Burnley more important. The chances of us (1) scoring against Burnley who’ve had 12 clean sheets on the spin and (2) us keeping a clean sheet with just 2 since late October are less than slim. I haven’t seen the team selected yet and maybe we won’t be embarrassed like at Leeds but Riza owes it to the 6000 odd fans there tonight to put out a competitive team.
Strong starting 11 in the circumstances. A lot of weary legs after Tuesday. 2 untried youngsters starting and another on the bench.
Well, that's it, we have to win now.. one of the guys I used to work with but not seen for about 4 years has just popped up with a message ahead of the game... He's a villa fan of course!! He's actually due down to Bristol next month for the first time in ages so the beers are riding on the result...
No pace at all; Ashford & Davies on the bench. Not sure how we’ll progress up the pitch from midfield not that we’ll have much ball The Villa team is good enough to win most PL games. Anyway we’ll see and hope Lawler & Giles do ok.
A workman like performance from our boys. The second 20 better than the first 20. Some good individual performances. Colwill having a big game. Giles looking composed, Lawler doing OK. Couple important stops by Horvath.
Battling 1st half. Colwill showing his class. The Willie Boland Gareth Stoker type lovers won't appreciate mind
All told, probably as about as good as we could have realistically hoped for given their strong starting 11. El Ghazi trying a bit too hard to score I think and Willock better defensively than offensively bizarrely. If we can stay solid and maybe bring on a bit of pace later on we could possibly nick it against the odds!! Unlikely but who knows eh??
Could have been a lot worse as Horvath was excellent thankfully! Pity Sakech couldn’t notch that chance but did well to get a shot in. Colwill showed some quality as expected, and nice to see some our youngsters showing up well. But how has the gap between the two clubs grown to such a chasm in half a dozen seasons?
Lost but not disgraced at all. Should have done better to defend their second, 4 players around him and no one got a foot in. We have shown we know how to defend but need to get on the front foot and score a few. Next 2 games would be a good start.
Some good performances out there tonight. The difference in quality was just a bit too much for us in the end. Back to the bread and butter now but I think we can take some confidence from some of what we did and as Remote pointed out, plenty of our own developed players on show and doing a decent job...
