It’s not just me: Yesterday evening, the experts in TV-land spelled out repeatedly—and with diagrams, even—what I’ve been saying for a very long time about Villa’s fundamental flaws. The question is what can be done about them (and the sad answer, I’m afraid, is “not much”).
If you were unlucky enough to have watched the Spurs game, you had a sense of it being virtually every other poor game you’ve watched Villa play for the last year-and-a-half at least (longer really, but better players papered over the same cracks): desperate, incoherent, passive, nervous, and even submissive.
I’m sick of it. Where are the cojones? Are you not men?
Whether it was the color man on Sky (didn’t catch the intros), or Gary Neville during halftime, they both made the same point repeatedly. Villa sit deep, shadow, and fail to “get in their faces”, “pressurize”, or “tackle”…They give “too much time and space”, or, more politely, showed Tottenham “too much respect” and “didn’t disturb them”. We played liked…Well, we certainly didn’t play like men.
Emanuel Adebayor must’ve covered two to three times as much ground as Darren Bent, and still managed to score twice. Bent did sweet FA, again. Okay, not fair. He did pretend like he might run at a couple of Spurs players once or twice. Darren, I know this is who you are. But who you are is lazy. Tragically, criminally lazy. Have you no pride? Are you not an athlete? Go on a tear and prove me wrong, but at White Hart Lane you were useless. Abysmally disinterested, precious, and useless.
It was hardly just Bent, though. Employing for the first time what I would call a truly defensive set-up with Cuellar, Hutton, and Warnock all in the side along with Laurel and Hardy, sorry, Dunne and Collins, and Heskey, Alex McLeish’s men were passive: gutless wonders conceding space, time, and initiative to a side that’s already more talented. Hardly a recipe for success.
If we weren’t scared, we certainly looked it. Gabby worked hard to not much effect, and Chris Herd was about the only player you could say really earned his place, if only for sheer effort. He wasn’t perfect and looked young at times, but he certainly didn’t look out of place amongst so many “seasoned professionals” who did a whole lot more sightseeing on their night out in London.
And Herd certainly seemed like the only player who can tackle. My god, we’re anemic in the challenge.
Cuellar was game, just coming back from a long layoff, but not up to covering Bale or distributing the ball. Hutton looked lost employed further up the pitch, positionally at sea much of the match. It was painful seeing Carlos “flying” forward to “find” Hutton wide right, meaning nothing came off and Hutton then jogged around like Darren Bent, avoiding the game.
Heskey…well, Heskey. Petrov…well, Petrov. Bent was Bent. Dunne was Dunne and Collins was Collins, and…Well, you see the problem, don’t you?
Gutless is as gutless does
Like I said a couple or four weeks ago, if you can’t do anything else, you can get stuck in. But we can’t seem to do much, and to make matters worse, we can’t even get stuck in. Backing off, panic clearances, aimless punts upfield, acres of space. Spurs could’ve asked for more of a game from their reserves.
We don’t have all that much athleticism. But we seem to have even less heart.
Spurs were quicker, harder working, more skillful, composed, and more athletic…Does this sound familiar? If they were the better team, so be it. But the harder-working team, too?
Villa players, let me ask you a question: Are these things McLeish is supposed to fix? Does he need to tell you what every schoolboy knows, and focus training around that? Are you that remedial a group?
Or are you just not good enough? And if you’re not good enough, are you at least trying hard enough? Do any of you really belong at this level? Do you even care? Do you really think you deserve your pay packets?
I don’t care what anyone says, the cornerstone of any performance is effort and passion. You have to be pretty damn good to go out and win and look good without putting in much effort. We’re not pretty damned good—and we don’t even have the effort.
Good lord…If you’re going to go down, go down swinging. Don’t go down looking like orange cones. Scuffed and dented orange cones at that.
Consistently beaten to the ball, consistently watching Spurs play around us, consistently avoiding tackles and interceptions and close encounters with anyone in white…it was poor. Abject. Embarrassing, actually.
Not because of the score, but because of how frozen and timid we looked. Yes, Spurs could’ve had more. But the first two were so poor from the Villa perspective (even if they were prototypical), it just about worked out on balance if Spurs subsequently missed the better chances that were carved out of open play when Villa were “chasing” a two-goal deficit.
(James Collins, put your hand up. You might well have been Spurs’ MOTM in the first half.)
I don’t know how you fix gutless or headless. You can yell and scream and bench people and send them to League Two on loan. You can make them run until they puke in training. I’ve never managed a Premier League team. I would’ve done all this, and I’m sure it would’ve gotten me nowhere, because these footballing legends all seem to know much better than me that effort or talent aren’t everything, never mind the fact that they couldn’t get there even if they did actually try.
But I can tell you this: I never played a game in my life where I looked as timid and passive as the so-called professionals wearing the claret and blue yesterday. I may have played terribly, but I never played that cowardly.
New memo to Lerner
Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Heskey, Petrov (who tries and knows the game well, but just isn’t up to it anymore, at least not in such an underwhelming side), Hutton…and probably Darren Bent, too: Ship them out. However it gets done, whatever it costs. They’re not up to it, any of them. Right now, Given, Gabby, Herd, Clark, likely N’Zogbia and maybe Bannan. That’s all you’ve got that’s worth a damn. Give Albrighton the benefit of the doubt. And I hear Gary Gardner will save us all.
But I don’t care who the manager is, that’s not a lot to work with. No Modric, Bale, Van der Vaart, Adebayor, or Parker? I really don’t think there’s a Villa player who would supplant a Spurs starter.
Memo to the players
If you’re still behind McLeish and this is the best you’ve got, then god help us. I’d rather you get drunk and embarrass us by ruining a team bonding session than play like you did and embarrass us on live TV. You can’t play for Houllier. You can’t play for McLeish…maybe neither man is the Messiah, but you’re certainly not Apostles worth remembering. Who can you play for? O’Neill and Leicester?
I’d like to have a prescription. But apart from electric cattle prods in training, public floggings, crippling fines, or humiliating finger pointing/loan deals (whether they come off or not), I really don’t know what you do with supposedly grown men who lack pride and fight.
Besides get rid of them as soon as you can. And make life hell for them in the meantime.
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