Or is it?
This should be dead easy. Ipswich are second bottom in the league and have gained a solitary point from their last 18. Even that was six games ago, meaning they’ve lost the last five games on the trot. Easy and this should be a gift of three points for us.
Except we very rarely do easy, do we? We couldn’t even beat Ipswich last time we played them, after all.
We should give ourselves every chance in this game if we manage to not let them score early, as most other teams manage to do . How nice was it for us to get an early goal against Spurs? Do the same today and it’ll be game over, I would think.
Squad news and foremost is that Ollie Watkins and Tyrone Mings are both in contention. Mings, as much as I’m not his biggest fan, is at least a proper defender and is sorely needed with the injury position we’re in. More good news is that our new loan signing, Axel Disasi is available after being cup-tied against Spurs. He’s only played six games this season, but even so, I’d expect him to come straight into the team. Mind you, we all know Unai isn’t afraid to play square pegs in round holes, so you never know. He may decide that Disasi isn’t ready. Given that Ipswich don’t score many, it wouldn’t surprise me.
On the downside, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres, Matty Cash, Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley are all still out, with no updates on how they’re progressing.
As for Ipswich, Sammie Szmodics will be assessed after he had a setback with an ankle injury last week. Conor Chaplin, Christian Walton, Wes Burns and Chiedozie Ogbene are all out but goalkeeper Alex Palmer, who made his debut last weekend after joining from West Brom, could play his first Premier League game.
For the stattos amongst us, here’s a couple; Ipwich have only beaten us once in our last 14 meetings and they’ve only beaten us twice at Villa park in the last 44 years. Everything seems to be in our favour, doesn’t it? Which, knowing us, makes it scary.
Prediction time then and I simply cannot see us losing this one. Indeed, I think we should get a few goals today. That said, there’s another stat we’re probably vaguely aware of. We’ve only kept one clean sheet in our last 14 games.
So any score is invariably going to end in a -1
And I’m going for 3-1. I could easily see it being a bigger victory if we manage to motivate ourselves, but I see the lads subconciously taking it easy and the tractor boys giving us a tough time.
UTV!
A draw against a shite team with 10 men just not happening in the league not good enough
Exactly as I called it… 1-1.
Pathetic against a 10 man relegation team and after a week without a midweek game. Until we can keep a clean sheet we won’t have a chance of winning anything. Totally agree about the comment on MacPhee. Send him on a one way ticket to Portugal and get someone in who can convert one of the 16 corners we had today.
As Bill P pointed out too tiki taki, they down to ten men FFS!
Speed it up and get at them not play Infront of them and Chesty? Don’t get me started. Can someone explain to me why he was on that pitch and Ramsey wasn’t?
Managers and favourites?
Because Ramsey can’t play 3 big games in a week, RSS. Nobody can. Nor should they.
I’d play Ramsey all day and everyday over Chesty BFR. I except your rational but he protects the ball so much better than Rogers (who doesn’t?) and offers IMO as much going forward.
Yep, our corners were pisspoor today. Probably only Rashford’s bad point, as otherwise, he worked really hard and is obviously up for it.
Jesus H Christ. Yet another team on a terrible run and we give them a point. At home.
DsVilla, “Routine win today. What are you all worried about?”
That’s come back to bite you on the arse 🙂
I nearly give up, I swear. How can we not beat such a crap team, down to 10 men?
I’d swear we’re jinxed.
It runs through Villa fans’ veins now. Almost expecting a crap result.
We’ve blown CL and will be lucky to qualify for Europe at all, imo.
As I continuously say, it doesn’t matter a toss how we do in the CL this year, winning it apart and that isn’t going to happen. Qually is way more imprtant.
Disastrous is the only word and I’m fucking fuming. Again.
I like to take a risk Hitch. Disappointing result but not the first or last time. We haven’t scored enough goals this season. We also struggle to keep a clean sheet. Not a great recipe all round but we are still light years ahead of where we were a couple of years ago.
For every happy football fan there’s an unhappy one. Ipswich fans will be bigging up their team which is good for them in a season with not many positives.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and don’t let Villa spoil it for you
DS – no problem with being positive – sadly I’m the opposite.
The focus has been on defence but, the real problem lies up front. We have scored 16 fewer goals than last season – Luiz, Diaby and Bailey’s contributions all missing.
Today was another instance – despite Parker’s heroics – of a failure to put the ball in the net. We’re too passive.
With Ipswich down to 10 men we should just have overloaded the box. All this tippy, tappy football a La Citeh is OK but we should have just loaded balks into their box and created panic and havoc. The more we played in front of their defence, the more comfortable they were.
Last point, time for our set piece coach to move on.
I thought we were pretty good overall but failed to stretch them to create space. Infuriatingly their goalie played an effing blinder.
We brought players in to help us get past the ‘low block’/’parking the bus’. Again it just didn’t happen. I’m at a loss.
Don’t know what to suggest with most of our preferred back 4 out of action.
Tony Cascarino, Cascarino in the air, makes a good point about injuries and that it’s simply down to high level sportsmen playing too many games at breakneck speed. And FIFA just invent more and bigger competitions…£££££££££££$££££££…
How you have to pity those multimillionaire yet grossly overworked professional athletes?
It must be hell.
It’s zero to do with what they’re paid. They are so toned they are much more physically vulnerable than players of old.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in a f£&*ing foul mood over this result…
Mate, as s a young man I’d have given my right arm to play 3 matches a week and train every day instead of working 80 hours a week.
They’ll get no sympathy from me. As far as I’m concerned they’re blessed.
And yea we played great against a team third from bottom with a goal difference of minus 27 and down to ten men.
A Stirling performance.
Their keeper was MoM and Villa can’t find a way past a parked bus. Again! The standard VP outcome since Unai came. The last save summed it up, keeper sticks out the wrong hand, ball hits him on wrist, goes up and over the bar in the opposite direction to what the keeper intended.
However, 25 shots with only 6 on target tells its own story of our shortcomings.
Not very good was it but after 5 straight losses (Ipswich) very likely!
Villa and 10 men not a good story.
But it’s a typical Villa story isn’t it – I truly doubt it will ever change.
UTV
I don’t believe for one minute that we have an issue with setpiece coaching.
Our biggest problem is we can’t shoot straight, as OLL says and we can’t cross the sodding ball.
Some of our crosses were a joke today.
Rashford was a major culprit in this area, but he might at least have an excuse in being rusty and needing to get his eye in.
We are downright crap at the basics!
I’ve also just watched a nice, half dinked finish by some Everton player and thought to myself “No way would Ollie have scored that, he’d have blasted it straight at the keeper”. Hmm.
Going to be an interesting chat tomorrow Badger – looking forward to it.
Badger come on mate, name the last free kick on the edge of the box we scored from?
Today Rashford smashes the ball over the wall, beats the keeper but clatters the bar, no trying to over think things.
And these short corners are doing my nut in.
That’s nothing to do with coaching. It’s implementation. Or rather, how we don’t implement it.
Here’s a stat. 25 shots. Only 6 on target.
Are you suggesting that the shooting instruction is bad too?
Of course, it isn’t. We are just poor at it.
I agree though. Short corners are rubbish, as is having 3 players stood over the bloody ball for a free kick.
That’s two players who ought to be in the box instead of watching.
There should be a left footer and a right footer at most, if you want to somehow try and make thick footy players think a bit.
Badger you go to work every day are expected to come up with something new and innovative?
It’s not possible, there’s only so many ways to take a set piece?
You need to mix and match, a direct shot (given the angles and distance are right) or now and again something different?
Otherwise it becomes over complicated and farcical.
Couldn’t agree more, don’t over do it. Have 1/2 players (ideally left and right footed as mentioned) who can take a quality free kick and more often than not, at the very least, test the keeper. Then 2/3 “bright ideas” and get good at them! Practice makes perfect surely?
If within range, shoot. Every time. Anything else is stupidity. Ask David Beckham. Practise shooting.
No charge.
Oh, another totally ineffective performance by Tielemans, I felt too.
Was Rogers worse? I don’t think so, personally.
Agree 💯 his distribution was terrible but McGinn’s wasn’t brilliant either and all too slow, needs to be pinged around at pace not this pedestrian pace.
Chesty, he has his moments but deary me he needs to protect the ball better.
Rashford? Well yes, the corner wasn’t the best but with some of the things he did you can see he’s light years ahead of what we have.
Well I said in past blogs about Chesty I asked people to closely watch him as he blows hot and cold in a games. Yes he’s a classic at losing a ball and brilliant sometimes going forward. I said we have to play that ball forwards not backwards and wide , teams with better coaches know our play and yes get rid of that Scottish twat of a set play on free kicks and corners. We will go nowhere from today top ten only .
Ye tielmens has gone backwards the last few weeks and our finishing is woeful bordering on embarrassing imagine dalian,deano,shawsie,tommy j,andy gray I could go on in our team now we would finish champions league easy
Even Savo could do better.
Fuck where have all the great strikers gone not just from villa but in the game overall
I was thinking the same thing recently, Little. I grew up with:
Shearer
Sheringham
Fowler
Collymore
Ferdinand
Cole
Wright
LeTissier
Beardsley
Owen, Rooney and Defoe a bit later.
And that’s just what the England bosses had to choose from. Never mind everyone else. Compare that to now and it’s a pitiful state of affairs.
I really don’t get you guys.
In your eyes do we have any decent players?
Let’s just find something to criticise every single player in the team.
OK they’re all cr*p as is our manager who’se lost his way.
Maybe I’m too easily pleased but I think I’ll take a break.
I’m amazed at the quality we have. And the quality of our Manager. I’m just flummoxed as to why were not getting the rub of the green. Yes, Ollie’s stats are great but he does miss far too many sitters. The late save against Chesty was mythical! Why does it always happen to us? I just don’t get it.
I could cry with frustration!
And yes, I could see us beating Pool and Chelsea, but we can’t see off this lot with 10 men. Foxing. Enough to drive you to drink.
We will lose to Pool and Chelsea.
Decent but certainly not top draw, our midfield is a little wanting IMO.
McGinn, Tielemans, Onana and Barkley are all bang average, again IMO.
As Shanks said “A good player having a great game? Or a great player having a good game?”
I’d say most ours fall into the former, we are a little light on the latter.
*drawer*
The truth is 25 shots suggest we battered them. 6 on target is not good enough. And their keeper was unbelievable.
Minor details are the issue. If we conceded one less goal in every match this season OR scored one more goal in every match, we’d probably be top of the league (without doing the sums). It’s extremely frustrating as they’re so close yet so so far.
Changing the topic slightly to the goal we conceded. Very similar to Spurs game. The ball is crossed from our opponents’ right wing position. Again Digne is off and Maatsen is our LB. Again Maatsen fails to prevent or block the cross.
Ipswich have only one striker to mark, but Mings and Desasi cannot do it, but plaudits to Delap for the move and finish.
Hitch. your obviously a Trump fan (jokin) but your post is “Common Sense”, Total agreement from me.
Not a Trump fan – but I get the analogy!
It’s easy to find fault without justification!
Hitch, I can see fan’s frustrations following a 1-1 draw, at home, to a team in the relegation zone with ten men. If this was an away game we’d all have probably come to terms with it, but it’s home games like that where you just have to be winning unfortunately and it’s going to be a thorn come the end of the season. 1 month without a PL win now!
Every goals of late we have conceded have been from cross balls, that in its self spell defence issues, our wing backs going up high in games get caught out with long balls from the opposing side, my argument is us playing midfield tiptap passing trying to find gaps instead of proper wing play drawing there defences and paying the consequences. To me that’s football , Sala wing , Grealish wing , all drawing players away from the defence position. It makes sense to me, why don’t we look at teams play before we play them and know how they play .
Saw a comment that said something like “don’t know what you’re all worried about, routine win.”
Interestingly I predicted 1-1 and did all week.
Watching the bin dippers and you have to wonder about bias reffing, Van Sulky face just blocked a wolves player, ref plays the advantage but it’s a yellow all day but no.
Wonder if the decision would have been the same the other way?
Somehow I think not.
Oh surprise surprise the bin dippers have been awarded a pen
(Knew I should have put a bet on on it, it’s as guaranteed as the sun rising or the tide coming in 🤦♂️)
What does that tell you Alfie? 10 men bottom side out of the play off out of the CL I’d be inclined to think something wrong . I would be worried.
Looking at our next 4 games we have Pool and Chelsea at home followed by Palace and Brentford away. We could easily end up with 1-2 points out of 12. The negative part of me thinks we will finish somewhere between 9th and 13th.
With our back four changing every game due to injuries, we are never going to achieve clean sheets. At the other end we are terrible at converting good chances. Watkins is the main culprit but even Asensio was guilty of missing a great opportunity.
I’m almost pinning all my hopes on us winning the FA Cup this season as the most realistic option of silverware.
Look up ‘sitter’ in the dictionary and you might find Asensio in the area a few yards from a gaping goal directly in front of him and the ball at his feet.