Home   |   Archives   |   Calendar   |   Links   |   About

August 25, 2009

Musings on the Villa match

The harsh reality is that this was yet another poor performance for us. Even though we dominated the play, we were wasteful in possession and lacked the creativity required to break down a Villa side who played well.

Obviously the rather unfortunate Lucas and Gerrard incidents proved to be vital turning points in the match. But sometimes these things just happen in football, and I wouldn't want to blame either of them for this loss.

Losing 3-1 sucks, and hurts even more because it's our 2nd defeat in just 3 games. It's not exactly an encouraging start to the season, but it's still very early days, with plenty of time left to turn things around.

12 comments:

Shea McGee said...

I hope that you are right when you say that "days are early and there is time to turn things around". I just feel like our team is fractured and is failing to feel solid. We have big defense issues and you feel the void left by Alonso. I am interested to see what the injured Italian can do for us but as things stand right now I think that it is going to be a long year.

kev oman said...

i actually didn't think Villa played particularly well to be honest. We just couldn't score.Seeing that Friedel got man of the match says alot.
Insua was the weak link though, i cant recall him doing a single thing right all night. I was actually wishing Rafa would haul him off and bring on Dossena.
Why isn't Riera getting a game? have him and Rafa fell out.
Good to see Skrtel back.We desperately need another striker.When Vorinin came on to try and change the game i knew the game was lost. GUTTED

Paul Heron said...

@Shea McGee - think about last year, when it looked like we were running away with the title. After that we went through a bad patch of about a dozen games !?! In fact, every year, every team has bad patches. I'm just hoping this is us getting our bad patch out of the way nice and early ;-)

@kev oman - even though Torres scored, I actually thought Torres was our weakest link, there was too much moaning and poor ball control from him (he's still one of my favourite players though).

As for Friedel, it's shocking how often former keepers have excellent games against us, makes you wonder why they couldn't have been that good when they played for us.

kev oman said...

too true about torres. What is up with him? He is moaning all the time when he should just concentrate on tearing teams apart.
I really thought this was going to be our year but now im not so sure.
Just keeping fingers crossed now.Things can only get better.

Marcus said...

Oh crap that was such a bad performance and we're dropping points like they are going out of fashion.

I'm not writing off our chances yet cos that would be stupid. I do worry when I look at our bench and I see players like Voronin coming on to try and change the game. It really highlights how thin our squad is.

Paul Heron said...

@Marcus - lack of squad depth has long been an issue for us, we still need a couple more players.

Azza said...

Don't worry, when Aquilani gets back from injury he'll come into the sqaud instead of Lucas and will make you all forget about Alonso. Mark my words.

Friedel played well, but we lacked any incisive passing and worst of all made mistakes at the back. Yet again our poor defending from set pieces was shown again and that is clearly an area which still needs work.

We need another striker, Voronin just can't adapt to the Prem, we need someone with genuine pace upfront as we can't always rely on Torres.

I really need to know why Reira isn't playing though? Last season I thought he played really well, scored goals for us and provided a lot of width which left the space in the middle for Gerrard and Torres to work their magic. At the moment that isn't really happening as both Benayoun and Kuyt have a tendancy to drift inwards reducing the amount of space and allowing other teams to play round us.

Paul Heron said...

@Azza - it's not the lack of Alonso which bugs me, it's the lack of effort from most of the players !

Haven't the slightest clue why Riera isn't playing. Like you say he was pretty good for us last season, and I'd like to see more of that from him this season.

Scouserine said...

Time to be realistic. We are not going to do the double over Chelsea and the Scum again this season. We couldnt afford to lose those 2 games already. Best we can hope for is another title challenge. Oh well there is still the Champions League to look forward to.

Paul Heron said...

@Scouserine - it's true that we're unlikely to do the double over both of them, but they will both definitely drop points. Last season Utd only got 4 points from their opening 3 games, plus we did the double over them and yet they won the league. Why can't LFC do something similar this year ?

Idle Wild said...

It's good to get the defeats out of the way early on :-) so shoot me, i'm an optimist

Paul Heron said...

@Idle Wild - keep it up, that's the best side of you ;-)