Villa 2-2 Frankfurt

So, a quick one because I’m really sort of annoyed and I’ve only come away from this game with a couple very non-performance-related complaints. Well, maybe one tactical complaint.

1) Yes, it’s useful to practice against high-pressing sides. And we still don’t look terribly comfortable.

But. It’s preseason. You can see Villa are playing at 75-80%, and hardly anyone is going in for hard challenges. First minutes for basically all the non-defensive starters. Meanwhile, the high-pressing teams are really trying to vindicate themselves. Which inevitably involves a lot of fouling. Which in turn risks players.

I know it’s the game and all that, but I’m seriously annoyed that at least one Frankfurt player wasn’t sent off.

2) Officiating. Naturally you expect it to be different. But there’s this weird mix of “it’s a preseason friendly, I don’t want to send people off” and the fouling this allows, which could injure players as a result.

I hereby propose that in preseason friendlies, three fouls no matter what, automatic yellow. Next? Red.

Go, play, mark your man, win the ball when it’s there, but don’t act like this is a run-in match. I don’t care who you’re trying to impress, how tenuous your place. There were two players whose names I really can’t be arsed to remember (Dills, Beskir whatever?) who were just over the top. I can’t count the number of times I yelled fuck off. I’d have swatted away all the handshakes and just taken the punk out first chance I got.

It makes me think of hockey, and Villa needing to just put on a destroyer to hurt people. And if a lot of fouling is your tactical DNA? Fuck right off.

Yeah, be competitive, do the running, do the work, show that you’re in. But stop with the cheap and dangerous fouls in meaningless matches where everyone is just trying to get back the sharpness and load into a very long season following a very long season.

That said.

Both goals Villa conceded came from mistakes playing out. Just chuck it up the pitch when in doubt, FFS.

And I would say this to Emery: We need to find new combinations and ways of playing out. Being the obsessive he is, I’m sure he knows this. Which, to me, points to decision-making and players’ quality on the ball. Opponents know that neither Cash nor Digne are going to skin you out wide. Mings isn’t the greatest passer, Konsa even less so. (And I know these were his first minutes, but man Konsa struggled. Never mind Mings’ gift.) These are limitations.

You have to be able to make teams pay for committing so heavily. Villa so far haven’t shown they can, consistently. That has to change. And no small part of that is speed from the guys running onto things. You show lightning pace and the ability to just hit a ball for someone you can’t catch to run onto? Teams back off.

Over to you.

Oh, PS: The switchover date is now “August”. I don’t know what that really means. Plug got on and registered on the new site no problem, so the basics seem to be working.

If anyone wants to go ahead and get set up, let me know and I’ll DM you the link. Otherwise, I suppose one day things might not click for a day or two, and then you suddenly arrive in a new place when you click the regular address.

The internet. It’s a strange, wonderful, horrible place.