Premier League Match 20 - Southampton 0 Aston Villa 1

 

Drone Footage of JWP and Martinez with a Spinless Twat, is Available on Ebay.

Villa at home and the only question today is would we build on our one week of good form or would we sink back into the complete doldrums of looking relegation square in the face? Even though we are bottom of the league, it does feel that the tide is maybe turning but as we all know, it’s very easy for it to become another false dawn. Obviously, we are not going to win every game from here on in, but we do need to preserve this run of decent performances for as long as possible.

Around the time that Saints sacked Ralph Hasenhüttl, Villa sacked Steven Gerrard who proved once again the old adage that a great player doth not necessarily a great manager make. See Frank Lampard for details. Whilst Saints took a punt on a lower league manager with no top-level experience, Villa did the opposite and appointed a virtual guarantee of improvement in Unai Emery with all his European Trophy wins on his CV. Oh look…. Villa have now got approximately double the number of points that we’ve got, having accrued 7 in the four games since the World Cup, compared to our 3.

One thing that’s always irritated me slightly about Villa is the fan base, still living off something that happened in 1982. We will hear a song about it today.  Fair enough though, if we’d won the European Cup I’d be singing about it too.  They are historically a huge club and I love Villa Park for the fact that it’s old and traditional and I hope they never move from it.

With a seemingly never-ending quest to sign a player who can add more goals to the team, we were heavily linked with Villa’s Danny Ings last week and let’s just say we’ve gone from hoping he won’t score against us to hoping that we sign him to acknowledging that he has followed the money yet again and gone to West Ham where you would imagine, once all their strikers are fit, he will find himself in exactly the same boat that he was in at Villa. The occasional start plus appearances from the bench. It’s almost like actually playing regular football is too much effort.

Danny Ings Negotiating West Ham Move 

Villa of course have arch-shithouse and World Cup winner Emiliano Martinez in goal and I absolutely 100% support his antics in the World Cup final. I’ve always liked Tyrone Mings, who has his fair share of haters but he has always played well against us. They also have that little Polish basketball player Matty Cash at right back though he is not in the team at the moment and at left back they usually have Lucas Digne who is a horrible little shit. They also have Calum Chambers of course, still grifting his way through his career as a substitute.

Nathan Jones team selection will be interesting. I suspect he will want to keep it as close to the Everton starting 11 as possible though he has made mention of Mohamed Elyounoussi carrying a knock so I’ll be interesting to see who starts there, hopefully there will be a place for either Mislav Orsic or Charly Alcaraz.  In the event, it’s Adam Armstrong who comes in which I guess means that Sam Edozie is going to spend at least part of the game playing wing-back, which will be interesting.

There is some weirdness straight away as we were in a corner on the right and side and it’s not JWP who takes it but Romeo Lavia and the element of surprise extends to Lyanco heading it down but it’s straight at Martinez.  King Shithouse boots it and then ball is eventually played down our right hand side and it runs through to the penalty area and Bazunu comes out in instalments and by the time he eventually decides to 100% go for it, he dives at Ramsey‘s feet and gets enough on the ball for it to never be a penalty despite the big appeal.

Our first attack of any real note sees Lyanco advance at the right hand side and put in a ball very similar to the one they put in for Mara to score against Manchester City, this time he finds Che Adams in front of Martinez and he takes his eye off it and somehow it hits him and bobbles past the keeper and KWP puts in the rebound but the flag is straight up and no complaints from anybody.  Emphatic finish from Che either way.

The first real bit of danger from Villa comes down or left as Bailey plays it square across the penalty area to Ramsey who shoots straight at Baz but the ball bounces clear to Bailey who shows horrendous technique to lash it high into the Chapel End.

With five minutes to go to half-time, Caleta-Car gets in a wrestling match with Watkins about 25 yards out and the referee gives a free kick. Before it can be taken though the ref spots that some utter fucking prick has flown a drone into the ground and it’s currently hovering up by the scoreboard at the Chapel End.  Having pulled both captains towards him, the referee then takes the players off for the most entertaining thing that’s happened in this first half of zero creativity.  The only sad thing is that the players come back on eventually and the game resumes and it’s still shit and we reach half-time goalless and more or less incident-less.

No changes at half-time with Saints surely trying to create more than the ‘next to fuck all’ they created in the first half.  Villa attack with a long ball down the left which Caleta-Car knocks back to Baz, but as Baz goes to clear it, the ball takes a bit of a bubble and he skids it along the ground and straight to a Villa player 35 yards out. One pass to Bailey and luckily, Bailey just dribbles the ball through to the grateful Baz. This game is utter shit.

On the hour mark it’s triple substitution time, which I’m hoping we’re going to use to take a bit of a calculated risk to win the game.  Apparently not though as it’s Che Adams replaced with Mara and Lavia with Elyounoussi, in what amounts to straight swaps.  Romain Perraud has come on for Sam Edozie so there goes our brightest attacking player which means that KWP is moved over to the right hand side.

KWP immediately starts to threaten, once moved to his favourite side and works his way into the box before finding JWP, whose ball across picks out Adam Armstrong on front of the penalty spot and he absolutely has to score but smashes kind of half hits it straight at the goalkeeper.  We pick it up again and get it out to the right hand side again and KWP skins two players before seeing his cross headed back to him.  He puts it back into the mixer and Elyounoussi brings it down and in a crowded penalty area, Adam Armstrong knocks it back to JWP who hits it and it takes a massive deflection before looping over Martinez and going into the net. Fucking get in there.  Celebrate good times, come on!  Meanwhile, Villa are all around the referee and eventually the graphic of doom comes up on the screen that VAR is getting involved.  Luckily, I’m still getting the transcripts.

“Hi there Micky Salisbury, it Hoops at Stockley Park”
“Hoops me old mate, what’s up, I didn’t see anything?”
“Ramsey has hit the deck mate, must have been something?”
“I’m glad you said that mate, cos I’ve just had 10 Villa players in my face and they were very insistent”
“Just having another look…Oh he’s barely touched him Micky and he’s chucked himself on the ground”
“Yeah ok Hoops but they looked very angry”
“Can’t give that mate, it aint clear and obvious error”
“Put it on screen and send me there mate”
“Why, he’s hardly touched him?”
“No one who matters will give a shit if I bin the goal”
“What do you mean?”
“Well Villa are angry and threatening and Saints are Soft Southern Bastards who will just accept it”
“… and?”
“All anyone will remember about today is the fucking drone”
“And you handled that like a fucking boss Mickey”
“Yep, got all the players off for their safety and averted a crisis over Premier League broadcast rights”
“Genius Mickey – will we get a special envelope for that?”
“Yes we will… you with me Hoops?”
“Fuck Yeah!”
“I am the new Big Mikey”
“Steady mate, there’s only one Big Mikey Dean, he’s passed out on the floor in front of the monitor next to me”

Stockley Park is Different Since Mike Dean Went There

And disallowed, apparently for a foul by Elyounoussi. On the first viewing, live and right in front of me, that looks absolutely fucking ridiculously soft.

Villa’s next attack sees Sekou Mara fucking ridiculously barge into the back of a player to give Villa a free kick 40 yards out just to the right of centre. Luiz swings it in and Ollie Watkins gets free to nod past Baz.  Fuck offfffff….. how fucking predictable, a goal from a free kick after a dodgy VAR decision against us. There is a cursory VAR check for offside but of course it isn’t and so 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go.

With five minutes to go we eventually put Adam Armstrong out of his misery and remove the third centre-back, with Caleta-Car going off and we bring on Mislav Orsic and Moussa Djenepo.  Elyounoussi puts Djenepo away down the left-hand side and he cuts in onto his right foot before hitting a shot which was going over anyway but Martinez pushes it wide to make sure.  And that’s your lot.

For now, I’m going to focus on the things that we as a club could affect. Today we played a Villa side who were really not that great, in fact they were pretty shit, with absolutely zero creativity in their team, exactly the same as us. We lost because we cannot defend set pieces and we know this and yet we still give away stupid fucking needless free-kicks and put ourselves under pressure and it’s fucking embarrassing. We also lost because we had absolutely zero creativity and zero attacking threat. We have too many players who have absolutely zero quality on the ball and today we had a manager with absolutely zero bravery. At 0-0 with an hour gone he made a triple substitution which was basically two like-for-likes with Elyounoussi coming on for Lavia and Sekou Mara coming on for Che Adams. I say like-for-like but in fact they are massive fucking downgrades. He also brought on Perraud for Edozie so basically, we went more defensive as he had been our only promising attacking outlets. The change gave us energy and did put KWP over on the correct wing and like last week at Everton, he immediately sets up the goal, which of course, ended up not being a goal, courtesy of the fucking cretin in the middle.  

Of the subs, Elyounoussi’s contribution was to commit the fateful very soft foul to chalk off our goal and Mara did the Anthony Gordon and brainlessly gave away a free-kick which led directly to the winning goal.  If Jones had wanted to go for the win then Orsic and Alcaraz would have come on with half an hour to go but in the end, Orsic got 5 minutes and Alcaraz got zero.  Adam Armstrong, who had been completely useless with the ball, stayed on the pitch until the 85th minute when Jones thought it was time to give the Croatian international Orsic, who we bought because he scores goals, a go.  At least he got 5 minutes because Alcaraz, who may have provided some creativity and thrust, didn’t even get off the bench. Before he started making the substitutions which didn’t work, Jones changed the shape at half-time so JWP moved back from his number 10 role into midfield, thus neutering our creativity even more. It was not a great day for the manager who now has five defeats out of six in the Premier League and I don’t give a shit if Nathan counts the Liverpool game or not.

Michael Salisbury… Having given the goal, it has to be a clear and obvious error to overturn it and if that’s a clear and obvious error then we may as well fucking give up and go home. Elyounoussi makes the slightest contact with his heel and Ramsey collapses like he has been fucking shot. The referee then gets surrounded by Villa players and shites his pants.  How a professional referee can go to a monitor, look at that and decide that it’s definitely clearly and obviously a foul is absolutely fucking beyond me, especially when you consider that the guidelines this season are that if at all possible you go with the on-field decision.  As soon as he went to the monitor, we all knew it was going to happen though didn’t we? And we all knew that we would end up losing 1-0. Jacob Ramsey’s Match of the Day interview was interesting in that he basically questioned whether it was enough contact to go down but then said that he thought it was enough, so he went down. What this means is that he basically decided to put himself on the deck which in my book means it’s not a foul. If an opposition player puts you on the deck then it’s a foul but if you put yourself there, then it’s one of those dive things. The VAR referee Simon Hooper should’ve had the strength to say no this isn’t a foul but he bottled it and gave it to the referee and the referee had been surrounded by angry Villa players and jogged over to the monitor with the smell of his own shite in his nostrils and a cloud of flies around him.

So, the manager was shit and the referee was shit.  Now for the rest of the players.

Baz had a difficult game in goal, no doubt hindered by the injury he seemed to be carrying which prevented him kicking the ball properly.   He hardly had anything to do in fairness but still managed to look very shaky.  Of the defenders, I thought Lyanco was our man of the match by a long way but then he lost his man for the winner.  Caleta-Car and Salisu were solid enough.  KWP was average on the left but was a different player when moved to the correct side.  Edozie made a decent fist of it when he ended up playing at wing-back but playing him there negates what he’s good at and lessens the minimal attacking threat we have anyway.

JWP struggle to get into the game further forward and our midfield basically died when Lavia went off. Diallo is one of those who works hard and he did a lot of good defensive work today but when he’s got the ball it’s an absolute fucking lottery as to what he’s gonna do with it.  He can’t hit long passes out to the full backs and too many of the 10-yard balls go astray as well. Basically, he isn’t good enough.  Today the same could almost be said for Che Adams who held the ball up well but again provided nothing where it actually mattered.  The one chance he had, he managed to fall over the ball and it was offside anyway.

Where's the creativity? Where are the goals going to come from in that line up?  Ok you have 3 centre backs so not them unless it's from a set-piece.  Out wide you have KWP on the wrong side which inhibits him and Edozie on the other but he's having to keep his eye on playing wing-back as opposed to being a winger so that inhibits him.  Two defensive midfielders in Diallo and Lavia, one who gets a nosebleed when he tries to attempt a forward pass and one who is not going to get into the opposition box.  Then you have JWP who got moved deeper at half time.  That leaves us with Che Adams and Adam Armstrong.  Then you have the subs - Elyounoussi, selected because he can defend spaces but offers very little in attack and Sekou Mara, who is substitute for a reason.

After the optimism brought by three wins in a row, this game comes and brings with it a major downer and a realisation once again that we are really up against it. The balloon has been punctured somewhat today with what is basically another pretty poor performance, again with no goals and not much prospect of any. We weren’t just aimlessly kicking the ball away like in the Nottingham Forest game but we were giving the ball away the hell of a lot, looking like we didn’t have much idea.  Ten-ish days left of the transfer window – get some more goals in this side or we are going down.  It’s that simple.

Back to the cups now with the Carabao Cup Semi-Final first leg against Newcastle, where if we turn up and play like we did today, we might as well not bother going for the second leg at all.