First, a brief apology from me for the delay in posting up a follow up post, but as regular readers rare aware, my Mrs is not long out of hospital so I’ve been looking after her. Also, it isn’t going to be a long post as the Mrs isn’t totally 100% so I won’t be online as much.
So now that is out the way, on to the match. The main talking points were the disallowed goal, Villa’s ability to turn the game around, a dubious penalty, and the subsequent let down feeling when seeing the 3 points become 1. In reality, as a team, a point was probably a fair result given that Everton really should have had a second goal given which wasn’t, which made up for the fact that they were given a penalty which was never one in the first place.
Credit has to go to Darren Bent as well for some quick thinking that put Villa 2-1 up when they really should have been 2-1 down and, in a sense, it was this particular moment that gave us some points. If Everton would have scored, and we would have been 2-0 down, then I think the game would have given us nothing.
The next steps
However, I’m not going to dwell on the game really as the fact of the matter is we got a point and, at present, that is better than a loss. What we need to focus on now are the big six pointers coming up. Matches against Wigan, West Ham, & West Brom are definitely games we need to be getting at least 6 points from if we are going to stay up. If we can win all three, then I think we will be safe, although there is no definite guarantee as I think the points required to stay up may be slightly different to the average season, especially if some upsets come from lower teams winning at teams further up the table.
We showed a little on Saturday that we have to look at more than just 4-5-1 variations, and I think that if we start putting out a battling 4-4-2 for the rest of the season, we will be able to stay up. Once that is out the way, we can look at how to play in a more creative style come next season once the manager gets chance to add some more players suited to the style.
All we can do now is support the fans. If you haven’t heard already (and if not, where have you been) the club is recording a copy of “The Bells Are Ringing” tonight. Hopefully this might help galvanise some positive mental attitudes between the fans and the players once we have it playing to sing along to.
See – something good might actually come from this. Sometimes as a fan you have to see the bad, to understand the value of the good.
The Author
