Dusan Congratulates Champions League Bacuna on his Assist.
Aston
Villa are shit.
There
really is no dancing around this subject.
They have had the season from hell and this has been coming for about
the last 5 years. It must be bloody
awful to be a Villa fan right now. Ever
since Martin O’Neill left in 2010, their roll call of managers reads like a
horror story. What could possibly go
wrong with Gerard Houllier, Alex McLeish, Paul Lambert, Tim Sherwood and Remi
Garde. That’s an absolutely horrible
list whatever way you look at it. Villa
have been an imploding club for a while but always had a couple of players that
raised them above the level of the clubs that ended up getting relegated. Last year they had Benteke and Delph who just
about dragged the team safe and somehow got them to an FA Cup Final. Having flogged off both of those in the
summer and replaced them with Gestede from the Championship and a whole load of
disinterested mercenary shit in midfield, they’ve died on their arse since
about match 2 of the current season. Tim
Sherwood was in charge then and was a massive bell end but at least he looked
like he cared. His replacement Remi
Garde clearly had zero fucks to give about anything.
The
players have been a disgrace too though with Joleon Lescott being complete shit
and then responding to twitter abuse for one shit performance by tweeting a
picture of his flash car as if to say, “I drive this so I must be great”. No you’re not Joleon, you were passable about
8 years ago but now you’re shite. One
player they signed this year was the once good Micah Richards who was a right
back and a very good one but wanted to be a centre back and now he is – a shit
centre back. He’s too small to be a
centre back and it’s obvious. Then
there’s Agbonlahor. He’d put on so much
weight even his head looked fat and he couldn’t run which was 90% of what he
could do when he was fit. He’s been
pictured in the papers, out on the piss and toking on shisha pipes and
basically looking like a fat, pissed up stereotypical Club 18-30 Englishman
abroad. You’re supposed to be an athlete
you fucking idiot. Banned twice by his
club, once for the shisha incident and once for being a fat twat. Then there’s Jack Grealish who has hardly
played this year. Hyped to the heavens
last year for reasons unknown, pissed up and passed out on the pavements in
Ibiza or somewhere and declared he wanted to play for England rather that
Ireland. That’s a bit like me declaring
that I want to play for England instead of France (my great great (times seven)
grandfather was French). I’m 47 and 16
stone but if both countries come knocking, it’s England for me or no one. Another player (Okore) is refusing to play,
another (Traore) has slagged the club off in public and funniest of all,
Leandro Bacuna has played shite all year and has said he wants to play
Champions League football next season.
Better check out if Andorra have got a club in it you twat.
We
laugh at them but only because they don’t play for us but as Saints fans, we’ve
been there in the not too distant past.
These players are a complete disgrace and they’re not alone as the
management of Villa from top to bottom has been a complete shambles for a
number of years. It's almost as if they've been trying to get relegated for a while and have finally succeeded. I can empathise with
the Villa fans though. The players
clearly don’t give a shit about playing for a huge club with a proud tradition
and I just hope that these joke players end up with a massive wage cut and no
route back to the Premier league unless they earn it through performances for Villa in the Championship, rather than moving to a desperate newly promoted club based on their decent
reputation from days gone by.
Ronald
has decided to ring the changes for this game with J-Rod starting which is
really good news. He’s in along with
Cédric, Romeu and Davis and out go Pellè, Mané, Clasie and Martina. It looks a strong starting line up to take on
a Villa side which looks pretty desperate aside from Jordan Ayew up front who
has actually managed to look half decent this season amongst the car crash.
Away
we go and we quickly set about proving how bad they are as long ball forward is
missed by J-Rod and Richards and suddenly Long is past Lescott with just Guzan
to beat. It’s an easy chance but he lobs
the keeper and sees it bounce down off the bar and away. Bollocks – that’s a sitter. Should be 1-0 but
isn’t.
They
are truly terrible though and it’s not long before another chance comes
along. Bertrand takes a throw in and it’s
a simple nod back from Tadic and one touch later, Bertrand has whipped in a
cross around Hutton who can’t be arsed to get in the way and there’s Shane all
on his own to head past Guzan to make it 1-0.
Lescott was marking him but his mind was elsewhere, probably wondering
who was going to key his car.
Villa
do mount a couple of attacks and Champions League Bacuna is involved, first
firing a free kick from a very good position straight into the wall and then
getting his head on a Hutton cross and nodding it well wide. We look purposeful in attack but ragged in
defence and the next chance falls to us as Bertrand crossed following a short
corner, Big Vic saw his shot blocked and then Virgil took his time before
thumping it against the base of the near post.
Villa
are attempting to pop it about in midfield and then it goes to Champions League
Bacuna who tries to just knock it back to where it came from and he ends up ballooning a ball over his own defence to give Shane a chase for the loose ball
with Lescott. Perhaps instead of
tweeting a picture of a sports car, Lescott should have tweeted a picture of a
caravan as he was clearly carrying one as he got burnt up completely. Long tried to skip round Guzan but the keeper
got a hand to it but Shane had the presence of mind to turn and roll a pass to
Dusan Tadic to knock into the empty net to make it 2-0. I expect that Bacuna and Lescott will be
checking their pay packets this week to see if they got their bonus for an
assist.
There’s
just a few minutes to half time and a professional performance would see us
playing the half out and making sure that we go in 2-0 to the good but we fuck
that right up as Ayew gets down the left and is allowed to get a cross in which
everybody misses, including two Villa strikers who run into eachother and it
breaks somewhat fortuitously to Westwood who scores easily. Bloody hell that was crap defending from both
full backs. Cédric getting done by Ayew
and Bertrand turning his back on it.
Half
time and the Villa fans contented themselves with lobbing cardboard aeroplanes
on the pitch whilst Ronal Koeman no doubt was going mental at the players for
allowing such a shite side to get a goal and give themselves hope, just before
the half time whistle. When the teams
re-emerged, Ronald had replaced Big Vic with Clasie and Villa had decided that
Micah Richards is that bad that an 18 year old debut centre back is a better
bet.
We
set out to pass them to death at the start of the second half and we quickly
reassert our authority. J-Rod is denied
a certain goal as his acrobatic volley hits Lescott and goes wide following
good work by Cédric and Virgil to set him up.
Villa are being managed by Eric Black for today and he makes himself
popular by at 2-1 down, making a like for like swap up front but the player
coming off is the decent Ayew and the man coming on is Donkey Gestede. “You Don’t Know What You’re Doing” rings out.
Another
great opening goes to shit as Tadic pushes a lovely ball through to Long but
his attempted poked finish is smothered by Guzan who is again equal to a Davis
free kick from the left hand edge of the penalty area and once more as J-Rod
takes aim from 20 yards and smashes it straight at him. It’s so easy to create all these chances and
we’re finding it easy to miss them all.
Mané
is on for J-Rod for us and horrible little Ibiza Party Boy Grealish is on for
them and we put some deserved daylight betweent he team again as Long breaks
forward and rather than burn past Lescott, he gets his head up and rolls it in
for Tadic who via a slight deflection, rattles it first time into the net. The confidence
in Tadic as opposed to the ‘half an hour to shoot’ version of a few weeks ago
is massive.
Shane
misses another gilt-edged chance as Guzan droops a routine cross at his feet
and he pokes it over and then Hutton picked up a deserved injury in a clash of
heads with Mané. I say deserved because
Hutton is a non-footballer who belongs in League 1 and all he tries to do is
foul people. How the fuck has he stolen
a career? He’s not the most unpopular
Villa player in the ground through with the loudest boos being reserved for
every touch by Lescott and Champions League Bacuna.
As
we approach the end, Hutton gets forward and has a lash at the near post which Fraser
juggles over the bar in completely unconvincing fashion. The corner comes over and like the first
Villa goal, everyone misses it including two Villa players who have a swing and
Westwood arrives to steer it into the net.
How
the fuck are we only winning by one goal against this lot? A brilliant combination of wasteful finishing,
lack of care over the final ball and sloppy defending have left us potentially
hanging on against the worst premier league team I’ve ever seen. I was limbering up for a good old vein
popping sweary rant of epic proportions, especially after Shane hit the side
netting with another glorious chance which should have gone across the
keeper. Then Guzan threw it straight to
Davis who again teed up Shane who took too long to get the shot away. Swearing stopped when some neat interplay
between Davis, Tadic and Cédric whilst Grealish stood and watched (whilst drinking an alcopop) gave the full back space to chip in a cross and
Sadio Mané got away from Lescott and powered a header down past Guzan and into
the corner to make it 4-2.
Well
that was a very odd game. Villa were so
shite that we should have at least matched the 6 goals we put past them at this
stage last season. We butchered so many
chances with sloppy passes or wasteful finishes and I don’t think our players
could really get up for it because it was so easy. Go on lads – we’ll even throw you a couple of
goals with shit defending to make it slightly interesting. Shane Long had scored one and set up two but
he was doing my head in. He was the
reason we were in front and also the reason we weren’t out of sight with some
horrible finishing. Quite rightly though,
he should be applauded for the positive things he did achieve in this game and
the fact that he made Lescott look the complete mug that he is. It was of course, a positive that J-Rod
managed to play nearly 70 minutes. He
certainly seems to have bulked up and hopefully this will help him stay injury
free in the future. It was a perfect
game for him to play in and the right decision by the manager who I’m sure knew
that Villa’s defence would be appalling.
Man of the match for me was Oriol Romeu who was everywhere. This guy needs to play more often and next
year of course he will as Big Vic will almost certainly not be with us. A final word for Dusan Tadic who is always
going to be the kind of player to drift in and out of games but today he was
pretty much on it for 90 minutes and the goals and chances he created will only
boost the confidence of a player who has a massive difference between him at
his best and him at his worst.
As
it stands, 6th place is the lowest to get a Europa League spot and
in order to get that, we have to finish ahead of one of Liverpool, West Ham or
Manchester United. In order for the
qualification to go any lower than 6th, we want Manchester United to
win the FA Cup and we want Liverpool to win the Europa League. Cheering for those two sides is not going to
be easy. Can you imagine watching the
Europa League Final and it’s a penalty shootout and up steps Lallana or Lovren and we need them to score.
There
was some good news today as Liverpool tossed a 2-0 lead at home to Newcastle
and drew 2-2. We can’t really worry
about others though and have to concentrate on winning our remaining games
which are at home to Manchester City, away to Spurs and home to Palace. The City game is sandwiched in between the
two legs of their Champions League Semi-Final with Real Madrid so that gives us
a chance and for Palace, it will be their last game before the FA Cup Final so
that helps as well. With any luck,
Leicester will have won the league by the time we play Spurs so they’ll have
nothing to play for either, though it would be delicious beyond belief to screw
them up. I always had a problem with
Spurs and Pochettino, Alderweireld and Mitchell have made it worse…. So it was
with great delight that I watched them fuck up against West Brom on Monday night
and leave Leicester only needing three more points from three games to win the
league. The two snakes looked close to
tears at the end. Good.
Next
up is Manchester City at home. If we
found it hard to play with intensity today because of the appalling opposition,
then we should have no such problem next Sunday (unless they move the fucking
day and time for the 4th time before then).
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