Agree with all of this but would add that Livermore ran his blood to water, Thudd looked like he was beginning to turn the corner but Meyler, as much as I like the lad, looked ****ing lost tonight. Whatever his positives or negatives you can usually rely that he will bust a gut and give 100% but tonight, for whatever reason, it just didn't happen for him, no closing down, no pressurising, **** all, the boy looked like he was in a trance most of the game.
Oliver was ****ing useless, but really, who expected any different? For both teams I might add, that booking Agbonlahor got was probably his worst call of the match, it was an excellent tackle on Jelly.
Couple of my thoughts from tonight. Oliver gave everything Villa's way. I know as the away team , they should fall over to get the free kicks etc but I think it is the ref's job to work out when it is a foul or a fall. Oliver was conned a lot tonight or just wanted Villa to win??? N'Doye looked the business and we defended well. I thought at 1 nil, Villa were all over us but could not penetrate with the killer pass. If they had strikers that could hit a cow's arse with a banjo they wouldn't be in the mess they are in, IMO. A lucky first goal, after being the best team in the first half, good reaction to score the 2nd and game over. I did sense a bit of nervousness until that 2nd goal went in, but afterwards we were much better. Just a note on Shagger, awesome double save to keep it a clean sheet! He had nothing to do all game, Benteke even offering to be ball boy. Not out the woods yet, but what a great 4 points in a few days UTT
It does make it a bit easier on the old ticker though when you have the possession & the points. Remember Leeds in our promotion year, hammered them 2-0 & it was a walk over.
He did a lot of dithering but, tonight, Meyler seemed to catch whatever disease it is that Tom has. At least Thudd made a couple of nice long passes out to Elmo and appeared to be attempting to play further forward, probably after a talking to by Phelan, but I can't really recall Meyler doing anything at all other than stand and watch as it all went on around him. Did I miss any decisive play by him?
I hope we don't bring him back in the team and hopefully Chester will be fit soon enough so that we don't have to. Problem is Dawson is perpetually injured, but I would have kept Maguire on our bench. Davies is a liability now for me. As for Ndoye, he looks the player that we thought Sagbo might become and never did, a proper striker even if he has a tendency to roll around hurt a bit like a lot of foreign players instead of getting on with it.
I read he was on £48k a week net in Russia. We'd of had to pay him about £90k a week for him to net that.
100% agree. It was quite funny when Burnsy interviewed McGregor post match, he quizzed Greegs a in a couple of different ways in an attempt to get him to explain why we'd looked so tighter defensively in the last couple of games. It was obvious that Burnsy was angling at the fact that there was no Davies in the team but McGregor wasn't getting sucked into it, he just said that the team had cut out the mistakes.
As a Yorkshire man in Lancashire I'd probably be safer on the Gaza strip. I did however make the drive across and I'm glad I did as well. Haven't seen us win since the fa cup semi, and it was a nice change to see some premier league football after watching PNE a fair bit.
Worst stat today (or best depending on how you look at it), is that today was the first time we've scored in consecutive matches since mid-October!!! (when it was mandatory that we scored 2 each game). Hopefully we can put back-to-back wins together against QPR, which would be a first this season.
If he does well for us this season you can see some of the bigger clubs who can pay 90k/week coming in for him in the summer.
