Ipswich 2 -2 Villa; Two possibly very expensive points thrown away.

I told you, didn’t I?

That’s by no means a self-congratulatory comment though. I’m gutted and worry what today’s result might have cost us come the end of the season.

Did we bring it on ourselves? Well, possibly because we seemed to stroll through the game and our play was way too slow. Which is contrary to Ipswich, who I thought were excellent in chasing us down and forcing us into mistakes, particularly at the back.

The worrying thing is that they basically wanted it way more than us and given what should be a fair difference in class, that’s poor at this early stage of the season. It would seem we had more than one eye on the Bayern game. Which is fine, but you have to do the job in hand first.

There was a big part of that game where I didn’t see us winning and I actually saw us losing. That’s not good enough if we’ve supposedly moved up a level.

So what went wrong?

Well, I’ve never professed to know much about tactics, but quite simply, they murdered us with their rapid counters, which seemed, surprise surprise, to come down our right side. No wonder, as it’s a weak spot which should have been addressed as the number one priority in the summer. That fact that it wasn’t was a shockingly poor decision by whoever makes the transfer decisions, in my opinion. Couple that with Konsa playing at Right Back, a position that I’ve been consistent in saying doesn’t suit him. It means we’re playing with a sub-optimal defence just at a time that it’s total junk.

As much as I think Emery is mostly a great manager/coach/tactician, I struggle to see how playing an England centre back out of position is the best option. Put a bloody right back there, even if it’s the young Nedeljkovic, who obviously isn’t quite up to it. Even so, we can then put our best centre back into the heart of defence, where we are currently, well, porous is probably as good a word as any.

We just don’t look like stopping the oposition scoring, even if it’s only “lowly” Ipswich and that’s a worrying thing. I said before we played Young Boys that we can’t afford to play with a defence that isn’t at it’s best, but the opposition was frankly not good enough to give too much for concern.

I fear it won’t be the same against Bayern and they have the ability to rip sides to pieces. Lets hope Kane really is out for them, but I suspect he’s been rested as a precaution more than anything. Normally, I’d probably take him to score one against us, but now? I’d take him to get a hat trick, so shambollic are we.

The annoying thing is I fully expected us to go equal top with Liverpool today.

And now you young ‘uns have seen exactly why the older fans face games with slightly less belief than you.

It’s the Villa way.

Still, we’ve made massive steps forward over the last couple of years. We have to at least try to believe we can continue to improve. It’s just that days like today make it harder, don’t they?

UTV!