Lets not try and disguise things and be polite. Southampton are absolutely awful and you can see exactly why they’re going down. A big part of me half expected the Saints to have a bit of a bounce after being relegated, sacking the manager and having no pressure. Which, when you add them all up, makes for a perfect “Villa mess it up again” scenario.
Fortunately and it’s proving difficult for me to get my head around, we’re better than that nowadays. The “it’s just the Villa way” doesn’t quite seem to apply anymore.
We’re up to fifth, which will almost certainly provide a Champions League place, although there’s a couple of teams who have games in hand. How much could we do with Man U beating Newcastle tomorrow?
As for the game itself, I struggled to get into it and found it easier to do some more research about a Solar panel install for the bungalow in Spain. I did keep a good eye on it though and found it pretty tedious for the most part, to be honest. We had tons of possession, but did very little with it. Morgan Rogers apart, practically every player was noticeable by their absence in my opinion. If I had to highlight another player, I’d say it was Tielemens, who rarely fails to impress me.
But after a poor penalty miss from Asensio, Villa got the breakthrough goal after a great ball from Youri, leading to a great first time effort from Watkins. Southampton threw in the towel even more (if that’s possible) and our total domination finally shone through.
Malen got the second with another well worked goal, with a pass from Rogers (I think) and we finally went on to get a third after Asensio fluffed his lines again on a second penalty, but McGinn managed to get to the rebound first. Asensio won’t be talking pens for a while, I hope as they were both frankly poor, I thought and I was wondering why Watkins wasn’t taking them. Or is that just an admission that Ollie doesn’t do straightforward shots and trickier chances are better for him?
So while it was a bit of a letdown for the most part, the result was great in the end and it keeps us on course for a possible CL qualification. That +3 will massively help with our goal difference too, which might prove very important at the end of the season.
We have a massive game against Newcastle at home up next in the Prem and that could prove somewhat decisive, followed by Man City away, just 3 days later. Let’s hope it doesn’t prove to be a disappointing week and a half.
From what I’ve just seen, the sports channels think we’re at a very important stage. Our next 4 games will be televised on either Sky or TNT.
The happy days continue.
UTV!
The barcodes are definitely one of those teams that ‘get in your face’ and Joelinton especially is a thug IMO. Some of the ‘tackles’ he makes and gets away with are shocking. They do have some quality forward players in Isak, Gordon, Barnes and Murphy plus the betting cheat, Tonoli. They do successfully play a high line which we have struggled against. They do go forward with pace and we will have to be at our best to win on Saturday. They play on Wednesday so they will have 24 hours less to prepare which hopefully will benefit us. Palace won’t be an easy game either. They could and should have been 3-0 up against Citeh if Eze had timed is run better.
If the Barcodes beat Palace and win against us, then the best we probably can hope for is 5th as Citeh won’t drop many points after looking at their run in.
We should be 2nd with the points dropped against Ipswich (x4), Bournemouth (x2), Brighton (x2), and Forest (x1). Just saying.
Funny rhing. If Slabhead would have noticed where the target was Forest would be in danger of losing their CL spot. Likewise if we’d have beaten 10 man Ipswich at home.
You can’t plan a bloody thing can you?
I don’t think anynof us are expecting success this time tomorrow night, but if we do…If we do…If we do…