Villa lost again to Manchester United. Not a surprise there. Only 1-0. That was a surprise. But, despite the low score line Villa’s frailties were easy to spot.
Bent and Agbonlahor were held in check with tight marking by Vidic & Smalling. Passes over the top were marshaled well by these two and Ferdinand & sometimes by back up keeper Lindegaard.
In midfield Villa’s trio of Jenas, Bannan and Herd were handled too easily by Carrick and Phil Jones, playing most of the game as a midfielder and scoring his first United goal.
Marc Albrighton was a welcome sight in the side and obviously Evra’s job was to be as physical on him as needed. Any other full back would have been booked after 4 or 5 tackles, not to mention his last tackle alone that was overly hard coming minutes after elbowing him in the head. But, if the ref wasn’t going to book Ashley young for his petulant foul on the same player in retaliation of not receiving a free kick himself, then nobody will and indeed nobody was carded.
It was a strange game. Nobody carded. Not really a dirty game, played on a playing surface that looked like something Subbuteo would have been proud to have put out. Yet of the 6 substitutions used, five of them were for injuries, plus there were about 5 or 6 other injuries out there, some for collisions, but most were apparently from the playing surface. This lot should try playing on my field for a week.
The ref had to allot an extra 8 minutes on the end of the first half as Hernandez & Given were stretchered off (Given was helped off, but was stretchered once on the sideline) and treatment to Ashley Young. Then, there was a lengthy stoppage for Jenas who was stretchered off in the second half and the ref had to also check on Ferdinand, substitute Heskey twice, Albrighton, Herd and Collins in the second but only allowed 3 minutes of Fergie time in the second half.
At least Fergie won’t be sending in any bad report cards on him this week and probably won’t recommend he run the line in the Sunday leagues.
Speaking of Sunday leagues. Have you recently seen a player that is decent, gets opportunities and buries some, out there grafting in the non leagues & thought, given a shot he could actually play professionally? Find out his name, the club he plays for & send it to Alex McLeish with a note asking him to negotiate a swap deal for Emil(y) Heskey.
Now, I’m not going to say Heskey is the worst ever Villa player. He’s not. We had Eric Bakke remember, but that substitution appearance maybe the worst ever by a Villa player. Saying that he was the only Villa player to actually get into scoring positions and he did throw himself about, so I could be wrong. He came on when Jenas was stretchered off. My thought was why bring on this guy that goes down injured all the time, in a game that has seen 3 major injuries?
His first action was to shove a team-mate that was facing the right direction off the ball in order to pass a lovely ball backwards to Warnock. Warnock wasn’t there. He may have been the player he pushed. So he set up a nice little throw in on the edge of the box for United instead.
I couldn’t blame him for trying to head in from 2 yards out from Dunne’s header on, but the head back across goal was the better option, but when he did it again this time further out and from a hopeless angle and 2 other times headed from the edge of the area to the grateful keeper I was pissed off.
The icing of the cake when he came in from the right, took the ball to the top of the D and hit his shot out for a throw in. How can he still be in this league?
Herd limped off to be replaced by Petrov. I actually thought this was a positive. Herd had been pretty useless and had allowed United way too much room between 20 and 25 yds out from goal, which had been glaring in the build up to the only goal. But, sadly Petrov came on and did nothing. I couldn’t tell what he was supposed to be doing or where he was supposed to be doing it.
The only Villa sub that was decent was Brad Guzan. But, to be honest, Villa’s back 4 kept their opponents in check. Dunne played well, except he should have done better on the cross for the goal & a missed trap that almost allowed the visitors a 2nd goal minutes later.
For the most part it was a solid performance at the back. They do need to work on taking the ball out of the air. Too many chipped passes were completely missed with Warnock being the biggest culprit. Again it seemed like they cleared things away in a panic, but the midfield seemed to have no clue out there, so couldn’t blame them for that so much. Also the sequence where they blindly passed out of defence to Man U players twice in succession. AMc was seen yelling “What was that?, What the !@#$ was that?”
The midfield was too lightweight. Herd rarely impresses me in midfield like he did at right back against Wolves. Bannan is good on the ball, but not very good when he doesn’t have it and Jenas? I don’t see what he adds. Too much space was allowed in our third of the pitch.
When we have the ball and try to work it, it ends up going back to the defenders or Guzan to lump it and then eventually turned over to the opponent, because Bent isn’t going to win those. That’s not who he is. We do not move the ball fast enough or control our passes properly. Any split second delay is going to be snuffed out by good opponents. To illustrate my point, there was one heart stopping moment when our back 4 played the ball dangerously with one touch fast footwork. It looked like United would intercept, but they got the ball out to Hutton and he one timed it to Bannan, first time back to Hutton then quickly to Albrighton and for the first time in the entire match the Villa winger had the ball with some space. That is how the passing game is played. But, you have to be fast, accurate and able to trap or re-direct the ball properly.
Villa seem a long way off doing this effectively at the moment.