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John Clark
John is co-owner of AVL, and has followed the Villa since the '70s. A journalist by trade, he is, by most accounts, a very nice person. You can follow me on Twitter @JClarkKohoutek. It's an astonishing experience. Or a complete waste of time.

Comments 136

  2. r0bb0

    That’s twice in the first 10 minutes I’ve seen Villa players having a quick word with the referee. It’s something we’ve not been doing, but provided its done in the right way, to bring the referee’s attention to what’s going on and what he may have missed, I’m all for it.

  6. Frem

    So many good ball players but we can’t keep the ball

    We then hoof it to a striker who can’t hold a ball up

    Say it again Davis is better suited

  13. r0bb0

    Feeling a bit hard done by there. We should have been given free kick in their half and when it wasn’t given we were left open at the back with Chambers finally making the mistake that gave the free kick.

  21. r0bb0

    JC. . . . . not my place to give advice and I know its tricky when you’re running the site, but I’ve found that the only way to carry on enjoying this site is to ignore Frem

  32. r0bb0

    Mark . . . . .are you saying that nobody is playing well and it’s therefore Steve Gerrard’s fault? I’m surprised that’s what Frem is saying too as I thought he was a strong advocate of Gerrard, but credit to him changing his opinion if that’s the case.

  33. r0bb0

    H&V. I don’t see Mings being to blame at all. He’s usually looking for a short pass, or to dribble it forward unless he sees a creative forward pass (like the excellent long cross field pass to Cash). He’s generally “resorted to hoofing it” when nobody has provided a sensible alternative outlet. the alternative for him on those situations has been a high risk short pass which may well lead to us losing possession.

  34. Plug

    Disappointed with our first half performance. Not done much at all. Looking slow and laboured. The referee is appalling, a real homer.

  36. Mark King

    Robbo I’m saying I haven’t seen us for a couple of weeks due to a house move and no internet but we appear to be worse particularly at defending mate although shit happens with free kicks. Missed the Leeds game but we don’t look much improved and I was assured we would be 😉

  38. r0bb0

    Mark, You missed a cracker of a game against Leeds although it showed both the best and worst of us and ultimately felt like a game thrown away.

    Today we’ve felt lethargic in comparison bit I’d be surprised if SG doesn’t get them properly motivated for the second half and I reckon we’ll be a lot better

  42. jbd656

    Not sure that SG understands that a solid well organised defense provides a platform for the rest of the team to do their brilliant glamorous thing. Mings and Cash are trying to do too much. Is Coutinho playing! Could it be possible that Howe is a better manager than trendy whizzbang SG? Feeling a bit peevish about football snobbery against “old school” step at a time managers.

  51. r0bb0

    Set pieces really poor this game. There won’t have been a big change on eh training ground so it has to be down to execution by the players on the pitch. Mental tiredness from Wednesday playing a part?

  52. James Gill

    Well I guess we need a lot more wheeling and dealing so many poor players,how is Watkins offside has he no eyes to look the line,in fairness I missed the first hour

  57. r0bb0

    JG, I must admit, I’ve not yet seen anything from the little we’ve seen of Sanson to suggest he should be playing regularly. It seems that both Dean Smith and Gerrard feel the same

  73. r0bb0

    it’s curious . . . we have such creative, skilful players in midfield and upfront but they just seem to lacking all self belief today. . . . where’s the sharp passing and interplay gone?

  78. John Clark

    Well, just don’t think you can say much other than we just weren’t at it. Newcastle succeeded in stopping play everywhere to make sure we never found any rhythm.

  79. r0bb0

    JC . . . .yes, SG did look forlorn didn’t he

    gaining one point from those 2 games is ‘disappointing’

    There are still some very winnable games coming up tough. I had a bad feeling about today but I am looking forward to the next one and expect us to bounce back strongly. H&V should be able to relax a bit after the next game!

  81. r0bb0

    Jed. . . I know what you mean but generally Ramsey didn’t have a good game either. The first poor game he’s had for a while though so we’ll forgive him that

  82. Heroes-and-Villans

    Well….it’s as bad as it gets that. Brainless football. Thick. How not to chase a goal with 7 mins left. Give cheap fouls away. Hit hopeful crosses.

    Utterly fuming and dejected. You do not want to be losing to Watford next else your in trouble.

  85. VillaMD

    Nakamba has been a big loss for us. Our only real 6, unless Chambers can do it. Chambers is 6’0” but is not imposing at CB in my view

    R0bb0 – Yeah, despite so much attacking talent we looked poor going forward.

    Not sure why Chambers started over Hause. StevieG new manager effect has gone. Now we’ll see if he’s good. I would have taken Lampard ahead of him

  87. James Gill

    7 min injury in our last 2 games, how today it was that I llnever know,3 mins for var,countless subs,stoppage for incident in stand,not saying it would have changed result but consistently would help

  88. r0bb0

    JC, yes Leeds possibly suffered the after effects of Wednesday’s game even more than we did. It exposes the flaw in Bielsa’s management style. Maybe if they had a large squad they would be able to play the intensity they showed against us, week in and week out but Bielsa likes to play with a tight, well drilled group of players. The two things may be incompatible. Could that intensity also be a partial explanation for their high number of injuries? In fairness we’ve had our own fair share of injuries this season and we can’t accuse our team of playing with too high an intensity (Wednesday excepted)

  91. Frem

    3 huge problems.

    Watkins. Cash. Luiz.

    Cash. Our full backs provide the width and get forward a lot, but cash can’t cross or shoot or pass. He kills every attack.

    Luiz. The DM has a big role in this system to cover a lot of ground. Luiz can’t run, tackle, pass or track runners. He offers nothing.

    Watkins. Useless. Can’t hold the ball up. Can’t pass. Misses most of the few chances he gets. And always good chances.

    It’s time they get replaced. Stick young at RB. Stick Ingoram at DM or Sanson. Or chambers. Anyone.

    Stick Ings up front. Give him a run

  93. VillaMD

    Frem,

    Yeah, agree. I was also thinking the same – play Young RB ahead of Cash. Or better yet, recall Gilbert.

    Targett is a decent LB. Cash, not going to comment anymore on how poor he is. Stevie G f’ed up with full backs.

  95. Plug

    Can’t add any more to what has already been said. As 656 mentions, we finally got a 90 minute performance. Mugged by VAR yet again. Pawson was relentless in ignoring home team fouls and stinging the away team at any opportunity.

    The short break for the “emergency in the crowd” should be investigated. It came when Villa were on top and seemed to me like another wheeze to break our play up. Have clubs found yet another way of cheating? I think so.

    Maybe we really are missing Naka after all? Or maybe the Leeds game did for us?

  96. Plug

    Gutted by the result. Even more gutted for our travelling fans. A long way to go to witness a poor showing.

    But seething most of all will be the other 3 teams scrapping it out down the bottom. Bet they smell a rat with the officiating.

  98. James Gill

    The owners will be taking a good look at what’s going on at club and elsewhere, lange position must be under threat, last summer and especially sanson signings have not clicked yet all look very poor value,

  99. runtings

    SG was not amused today there will be big movement in this squad next season
    It was the worst showing since SG came in we have a way to go to reach the likes of west ham and arsenals level consistently , SG wants lots of passes and brave transitions and we did it for about 5 minutes today , the players need to be braver and stick to the game plan and philosophy and the rest will take care of itself

  101. r0bb0

    JG, I agree that Mings was our best player yesterday. He was often covering 2 positions, but he covered them well and made two excellent last ditch tackles too.
    I saw their goal differently from you though and put the blame mostly with Martinez. How did he think that a right footed player was going to curl a free kick from just outside the area, 1.5m round the left hand side of the wall? He was then indecisive about where Buendia should go but finally placed him where he wanted. Buendia was then partly to blame, because he moved ‘towards’ the ball instead of staying where Martinez had put him. I don’t know if Martinez would have saved it without the deflection, but he would at least have had a chance. Buendia wouldn’t have felt the urge to move though if the wall had been 1m to the left and been in a position to do its job.

  102. r0bb0

    I’ve been really surprised to see so much criticism of Cash, from fans both on here and on twitter. I guess it depends on what you’re looking for from a full back. His crossing was not great yesterday, although to my mind marginally better than Digne’s (not a lot in it. . .they were both poor yesterday). I see his main role as being a defender though and yesterday he was up against one of the trickiest attackers in the league right now in Saint-Maximin. He kept him pretty quiet all game, despite being also asked to make forward runs in the way that Gerrard wants. Cash didn’t have the benefit of Mings behind to cover for him either which makes his performance even more impressive.

  103. r0bb0

    Fans are inevitably more caught up in the game than journalists, so I guess it’s to be expected that our comments are often going to be more emotionally driven than theirs. There is a tendency amongst some fans to only see (or only look for) the negative aspects of a player’s performance whilst ignoring the good stuff. Let’s face it, it’s much easier to spot mistakes than good play so it’s probably not surprising.
    Fans also love a bandwagon. Let’s face it, it’s easier to jump on a cart that’s already moving than start to push one arm a standing start, so once one fan piles in on a player (Cash in this instance) then others are likely to follow.
    I’ve just checked out 3 journalist’s player ratings and Cash has come out equal best in 2 of them and Villa’s Man of the Match in the third.
    Ok, journalists won’t always be right either but at least it reassures me that I’m not alone in the view that Cash did ok yesterday, whilst recognising that it’s all relative and he was only one of the best of a bad bunch on the day.

  104. r0bb0

    Having just taken another look, I exaggerated how much the wall could have been moved for Tripper’s free kick. . . . maybe it could only have moved half a metre not a whole metre. . . .but it would still have been enough to stop the goal

  105. Heroes-and-Villans

    well still utterly fuming. half of em can go and will go. runtings, agree it was cowards footy. Hoof ball when they have 7ft dunk at the back. sg was screaming at luiz for passing it square and backwards. he will be regretting not going all out for bissouma.

  106. Heroes-and-Villans

    since 2021 we have lost 27 matches.

    purslow spoke about the plan when promoted. build a team to stay up then after 3 years you can call yourslelf a prem team (money) and pay the bigger wages. then build a team to push.

    if we stay up next season will be our 4th expect phase 2 to be carried out

  108. Plug

    On the subject of Cash. Thought he did reasonably OK yesterday. His crossing was sub standard, and has been since joining. It’s something he needs to work very hard on. The exception that proves the rule was his cross for Couts goal against Leeds. That was sublime.

    Maxi on the other hand had a tough day at the office. Cash kept him quiet all game. I also noticed that Maxi would run like a gazelle when attacking but once Cash stopped him, he never chased back after Cash then moved forward.

  112. Heroes-and-Villans

    plug

    yep i wouldnt even say mid table 13th to 14th is prob us.

    have to be ruthless and change it up. and going buy purslows plan it will happen.

    and the image of sg slumped in his chair spoke a thousand words. surly 3 or 4 changes for sat

  114. Heroes-and-Villans

    sg ball with nakamba we looked solid. a proper team with shape and they moved about the pitch as a unit, lovely.

    but its not been the same since. should sg change the formation until we get our 6? go 4231?

  116. r0bb0

    I see there’s a lots of talk now about big changes in the squad in the summer. I do hope not. It’s only a few weeks ago when we were all dreaming of a push for Europe. Ok it was a long shot bearing in mind the points gap to the top 7 but it didn’t feel impossible. We’re now in a run of games where we ‘should’ be picking up significant points. At the end of this mini run of games it felt perfectly possible for us to have significantly narrowed the gap with the top teams and then we’d have hopefully learned enough to be able to pick up some points from a tougher run of games to stay in contention for a final push.
    In other words, (maybe with the exception of a back up defensive midfielder) we were all feeling optimistic and felt we had a good squad. I distinctly remember a number of postings showing that we had decent options and back ups for every position (apart from Nakamba’s)
    It would be a total cop out to now feel we needed wholesale changes because the last two results have gone against us.

  117. r0bb0

    In our last game we should have found a way to tighten things up (as Newcastle did yesterday) and we’d have come away with 3 points. That may well have sent us into yesterday’s game in a different frame of mind.

    SG has said that there were no indications during training that we’d put in the sort of performance that we did yesterday so he was expecting much better. . . . from the players he ‘already has’ at his disposal.

    We have a good enough squad for the top half of the table. It’s how they are managed and how they respond that will determine whether we achieve what we should do.

  118. r0bb0

    In our first season in the premiership we played some exciting football in our opening games but struggled to get results. Dean Smith then realised that he had to become more pragmatic in order to grind out some results.
    Steven Gerrard has said that he wants us to play exciting football.
    I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard the owners quoted as saying that the they wants the fans to be excited with the football we’re playing. You could understand that from a commercial perspective, as exciting football would be expected to put bums on seats and clicks on social media. At some point though you have to realise that what fans want most of all is to win.
    Has the time come for SG to take stock and tell his full backs to play less expansive football, make sure the ball gets into the midfielders and then rely on their skills to find a way through the opposition?

  119. r0bb0

    One quick comment on Watkin’s disallowed goal.
    I’m a big advocate of VAR, but that decision was a nonsense and against at least the spirit of how VAR is supposed to be used.
    The first time they looked at it, Watkins was slightly onside. They then moved back a frame, readjusted the lines and found he was slightly offside. It all hinged on the exact point where the backroom adjudicator decided the ball had been kicked. The back room adjudicator wasn’t even sure and changed his mind half way through.
    That process took 3 minutes.
    The Premier League’s own website states: “VAR can be used to overturn a subjective decision if a ‘clear and obvious error’ has been identified”.
    Taking 3 minutes and being undecided on the exact point at which the ball was kicked shows that it absolutely was not a’clear and obvious error’ by the referee.
    Not for the first time, we’ve been the wrong side of a wrong decision.
    Should we now hope for things to be evened up by 2 wrong decisions going in our favour, or should we actually just hope for the officials to learn how to apply their own rules correctly?

  120. James Gill

    Robbo
    Watkins goal and var,sorry absolutely no way Watkins should be offside he was looking directly across the line a major flaw in his game,only 2 matches ago v Everton he did same thing,nothing is going for him so I expect Gérard to give him a rest,as for things looking all rosy a few weeks ago all our shortcomings have rise to the top inside 2 games over 4 days
    Martinez looks ropy after every international break,cash crossing passing really poor ,I would have preferred if Gérard had replaced him over target,centre half’s no protection from midfield being dragged out of position to cover attacking full backs
    Midfield Luis likes to go deep to receive ball but instead of passing it forward goes back to usually mings who has no choice but to hit long blindly,Luis gives no natural strength in tackle usually dangling a leg or like utd match pointing at someone else after sanson mistake,mcginn fans favourite but not mine ,can’t explain what he is good at apart from using his arsenal,Ramsay having great goal scoring season learning on the go impressed me the most this season,coutinho great start goals and assists but why is Luis hitting set pieces,beundi another fans favourite but again I don’t get it,petulant shoots when no chance his choice of passes awful,and then yesterday why was he standing there for the free and then half hearted jumped,jumped into mings for Leeds 2nd goal again is he just trying to hard or just on wrong wave length as every one else, managers Smith paid for his shortcomings, purslow will be slightly nervous after last few matches,Gérard team choices,his slow making of subs are all things we critized Smith for,lange has to come under same pressure sanson his big buy not getting a look in,and wolves flying with little spend and bargain buys

  121. runtings

    great points robbo

    just on squad changes I think its up to the players themselves were they will be next season the last performance was hopefully as bad as it gets , we know this group can play much better

  122. Heroes-and-Villans

    robbo

    great points. but this lot arent good enough to challenge top 8. which is our next phase.

    purslow said it when we came up.

    if we can get more money for most of them then we bouht them then sell. im done with most of them. just not good enough.

  124. Heroes-and-Villans

    runtings

    i dont think this lot are capable. 27 defeats since 2021 is insanely bad.

    its there 3rd season in the prem. should be smarter now and most def the basics should be being done.

    thanks for keeping us in the prem but goodbye to most.

  126. John Clark

    r0bb0,

    Yeah, another farcical VAR display. I know SG downplayed it, which is fine as we had been woeful and he wasn’t looking for excuses.

    But, had it stood, I’m guessing we’d have seen a very different game after, and it could only have been for the better.

  127. John Clark

    JG, interesting thoughts.

    On Watkins and offside…Those are so so tight, defenders and attackers moving opposite directions. He was breaking to perfect spot, that’s one where I don’t think you can be anticipating and playing the flight of the ball and looking down the line, not moving your feet. You’re on/off based on one frame of video.

    Me, I can’t blame him for that like I would being offside 2-3 times from making runs further out where there isn’t all the goal-mouth confusion and you’re choosing your moment based on alignment.

  130. runtings

    Heroes that stat tells us that we simply are not good enough .. one of my besties said at the start of the season Villa will be 10 th as best and I thought he was being bitter its only recently dawned on me that he is closer to gauging were the club is than I am

  132. Plug

    Heroes, the worst part of it was that Newcastle were bang average and there for the taking but we fell short. Last season was our consolidation year, this season we were meant to push on but as Runts says, we’ll do well to make 10th come May.

  133. Heroes-and-Villans

    plug

    yeah thats true. we were awful but toon didnt do anything apart from that scabby free kick. should of been 1-1 too with watkins goal. joke of a decision.

    but nothing gets my goat more than not doing the passing side of the game. i mean man cloghie would of ripped there heads off. keep it on the deck and pass like youd want to recieve it. its all i ask

  134. John Clark

    H&V,

    Interesting, “pass as you’d like to receive it.” Crouch was talking about just that when Gerrard was playing. Fire it in, see how they receive it. Would dismiss players based on a single session.

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