Struijk was playing really well Jock. Really well. I rate him highly and fully expect him to play alot of games for this club. However, as you say, Villa knew to target that player. Struijk was naive to dive in on the first tackle which gave Grealish the opportunity to throw himself to the floor and get the booking. That's not too bad, mistakes happen. The reason he was marked down was that he did it again 2 minutes later (was it on McGinn?) and was lucky the ref didn't dish out another yellow. That was stupid. One more foul and he was off. Bielsa agreed and subbed him. In an ideal world you don't want to be using subs after 20 minutes due to a couple of rash decisions. It's fine. He's young. He is eager to impress. If anything it is a positive as he can learn from it and it didn't impact the team as he didn't actually get sent off. There is huge potential in Pascal.
Not hating @foolee. The only good thing about Bamfords first half performance was that at least he was getting chances. His finishing and build up play were poor. Probably a steady 6 as he worked hard on the press and as I said kept going despite his misses. 2nd half I could have easily scored him a 10 out of 10. Everything he did pretty much came off. Average performance over full game = 8.
Morning all. I think last night we saw the genius of Marcelo Bielsa and why he is regarded as the worlds best coach. He took his weakened team and mauled a well coached team who had been playing at the top of their game. Marcelo's team did him proud, well played lads
Wouldn’t call Villa a well coached team!! Don’t forget Smith and Terry are coaching them A good friend of the family is a Villa fan and to show there are no bad feelings I text him this morning to see how he is after being on suicide watch last night soft cnut!!
For all the deserved plaudits given to each player, Mesliers seems to have slipped under the radar. He’s a superb keeper in every aspect of his game. Best we’ve had in two decades and pulled off a couple of crucial saves again. Had he been in goal all of last season, we’d have won the championship before lock down
This week i have been rattling on about our u23s. Shakleton being one in particular who i wanted to see more of. I have only just found out he came on early for struijk and rightly so. Did he play the phillips role? Can't seem to find any info. Struijk is no midfielder but jamie is so please mr bielsa no more square pegs.
Yes I thought that too. Also, although he gets praise, I noticed again that Koch is good (please, don't.....). I noticed when Grealish got past Ayling and then Koch, that Koch had after burners he could turn on to get back - Grealish still came close to scoring but I've seen other CB's get left for dead in similar situations.
What Eire said, plus I wanted to say I liked the way Shackleton linked up with the attack, he was there with Costa and Bamford for the (third?) goal. Right decision to sub Struijk but thought the lad made some good tackles early on. Needs to learn some maturity and not give away bookings, there's a lot of teams who take the piss with referees in the Prem.
Shack looked a bit lost first half but did carry nuisance value in that he just kept rattling about hunting mistakes. Didn't really get on the ball too much. As the second half wore on he became more prominent. Looked like he had gained some confidence and the last 10 minutes looked a class act. He was literally bossing the midfield and looked to be enjoying himself. Got himself on the ball, did the easy thing, lots of give and goes and made the "Klich" runs out wide to create the overload and defended aggressively. Only criticism is that he got knocked off the ball a bit too easily a couple of times.