Just back and reflecting on today, here's my thoughts: Good first half, Villa looked nervous. We let them pass around, but held a solid back line. Zamora was a big loss at half time. In the first half he held up the ball so well and brings others into play. Remy's not as effective as the target man, but grafted well. For all Zamora's good positional play he looked unfit and twice missed the opportunity to play Remy through opting instead to pass inside. Mbia's distribution was poor today all game. He fell into the trap of pressuring the play at times with a loose ball. Townsend is an absolute tonic - pace, guile, control - he scared the Villa fullbacks and creates space. Similarly the class of Taarabt was evident albeit only 30 minutes. He, Hoillet and Townsend showed great understanding with Remy. So it's the usual story - we didn't press home with goals when we held the advantage. We had at least four very good chances and only scored one. We then failed again to see out the half time and Cesar should have at the very least challenged for the cross. That alone might have put Agbonlahor off and snuffed out the chance. Atmospher was superb. A genuine belief we could win even when 2-1 down. Had REMY headed home a minute after Villa scored their third I think we may have had the momentum to go on and win 4-3. But we didn't. And that's football. Got to write this one off sadly. It was there to win and we blew it. Got to now find another 5 matches to win. No panic, no recriminations. Just bloody gutting as it was there for the taking. But hey ho, onwards and forwards.
You're welcome Cerny. I read it back and it's hardly a match report but it's the best I could muster. Not feeling great after this afternoon's result. Good match, great atmosphere, suffocating result. Don't you have boxing tonight??
Thanks for that. I chose not to watch because we have won all 4 of the games that I did not see live this season. At least I know now it's not down to me. From reading the match thread it seems that the game was saved fior Villa and then lost for us by our respective goalies. It seems we paid the penalty once again for having only semi-fit CF and our inability to convert the chances we had coupled with serious mistakes at the back for all three Villa goals. Those are the problems created for us by Mark Hughes From the reports of the last half hour, it also seems that we did not lose because of AT and that he did not damage our attacking threat. That must be the third disappointment for his critics. The second being that they wrote him off too soon by speculating about the reason he did not play in the last 2 games and convincing themselves that Harry had seen the light. To their misery no doubt, they were proved wrong when Harold turned to AT to dig the team out of a crisis they had created for themselves. The reality is we had left ourselves a mountain to climb even before today's match. We can clearly still do it however. We need to get an unexpected win against Everton, Arsenal and/or Liverpool to make up for today's loss. I seem to remember that we did precisely that last season. Against all three. And yes. If I can get tickets I will be attending for the rest of the season when possible come what may. I've been stuck in Scotland for most of the last week so can someone explain to me why Bothroyd was not even on the bench?
Yorkshire - all your points are absolutely spot on. I thought much the same re Bothroyd and the guy next to me said the very same thing. He might not be as effective, but he's the closest we have to Zamora and offers more than Mackie.
Cheers Sku, we are all gutted. How did Samba do? I was hoping he would negate Benteke but alas it was not to be.
Samba did everything he was asked of; very nearly scored the first goal. A rock, but alas he was not able to stop the winning goal.
Thanks for the report Sku. Agreed with that. Not so sure about Samba tho yesterday, he was only stopped scoring twice by top class saves from Guzan, but he got beat in the air a few times, on their first goal critically, though the error was Cesar and Bo's as well. As usual I have to mention Park who seemed off the pace for large chunks of the game again yesterday, but the few times he did get on the ball he was a bit tidier than usual, and his good lay back after Great work from Remy (who looked like Adel right then) set up Townsend nicely for his goal. But Park's poor clearance also led to Villa's 2nd goal.
