Put it There Partner

It’s another one of those six-pointer things as we travel to
Villa Park to play Aston Villa. This is a trip to one of the great old football
stadiums, one of the traditional ones and one of the cool things about it is
that you know that Villa are never ever going to move ground.

Villa got promoted last season and splashed a lot of money at the start of the
year including taking Matt Targett from ourselves for a fee of anything between
£14 and £17 million depending on what you read. His departure and what has
happened subsequently illustrates a major flaw in our sell to buy policy. We
needed money to sign Djenepo, Even though we already had two left-wingers and
so we funded that by selling a left-back and leaving ourselves short there with
Jake Vokins not being ready for first-team action yet.

Villa also spent big on Tyrone Mings as he was the number one target from the
promotion season and despite Villa’s struggles near the bottom of the league,
Mings has become an England player, with a more the decent chance of being
first choice by the time the European Championships come around in the summer.
Mings is another example of Saints doing something slightly questionable with
regarding getting rid of players as we apparently released him for being too
small and he now stands at 6’5.

Villa manager Dean Smith has got the club playing and okay-ish brand of
football but they haven’t at the results to go with it with just one league win
since October. They do have some good players though, notably Jack Grealish
when he decides to stand up, Conor Hourihane and John McGinn.  Grealish will be in the conversation for the
England squad in the summer, competing against the likes of Dele Alli, James Maddison,
Mason Mount and Ross Barkley for a place… oh… and Jesse Lingard.

Like ourselves with Che Adams, Villa were really hoping the
new striker, in their case, Wesley, was going to hit the ground running but that
hasn’t been the case.  It should be
obvious by now that there are no good footballers called Wesley.

The first noises are starting to made about the upcoming transfer window and
it’s a bit of a case of Groundhog Day as we hear phrases like the ubiquitous
“sell to buy“ and we are linked with a few players who we were linked with in
the last couple of transfer windows like to write back Joakim Mahler. It’s not
surprising we are all linked with players who we were linked with before because
basically, we haven’t got anyone in the recruitment role to add any new names to
it so we will probably be working from an old list. Will we pay the money in January
to sign anyone who will make a difference? Somehow I’d be surprised unless Chairman
Gao is seriously concerned about his investment going down the shitter.

Today we are coming up against a team in Villa who are not the best at the back
so with it being Villa and us having an ex Birmingham striker who desperately
needs a goal in our ranks, I’d like to see Che Adams given a half-decent amount
of minutes today. The media are suggesting that we are about to let him go out
on-loan to a Championship club which I really can’t see. The only way I could
really see him leaving is if he is homesick for North/Midlands and the club is
willing to pay us what we signed him for. 
Even if this was the case, the chances of us signing a striker in
January for around £15 million mark who would make a difference to our season
is practically zero.

Decent football from Saints from the start as we try and
impose themselves and Shane Long wins a free kick when Douglas Luiz clipped his
ankles accidentally on purpose. The free-kick is delivered and cleared and a
Villa defender decides to handball it rather than head it’s given us a free
kick in JWP territory. Over the wall but straight into the midriff of the
goalkeeper.  Villa break and McGinn gets
binned fairly by Bednarek and the ball eventually finds its way out to Cedric
and McGinn is running around like a twat and throws himself into a challenge
and comes off worse and turns his ankle.  Dean Smith brings on the ridiculously named Marvelous
Makamba. Marvelous is a great name until you have a shit game.  Rumour has it he has a brother who is a shit
footballer.  His parents called him
Cedric Makamba.

A bit of danger as Targett puts in a low cross from the left which is a bit of
a scuffer behind everybody but El Ghazi retrieves it turns and blast it against
McCarthy has made himself big. It’s the first time Villa I’ve got anywhere near
our goal and to be honest they don’t look particularly good.

When are playing some decent stuff on the left-hand side with Bertrand whipping
in a couple of really dangerous crosses the second of which is marginally too
high for Shane Long who heads over the bar from virtually in front of the goal.  It certainly should have been a goal but we
are finding encouraging space behind their full-backs.

Villa are trying to go long to Wesley but there is no point as there are no good
footballers called Wesley.  Bednarek
heads down one suck long ball and Redmond hooks on first time over the defender
at right-back and Shane Long is in. A typical Shane touch off his knee and he’s
through, cutting across towards Heaton who saves his effort but who’s there to
knock in the rebound, yep Danny Ings, King of the Scummers, 1-0.

The bost it gives us is huge. Out of nowhere Jack Stephens turns into Cafu and
starts playing 1-2’s down the line before bursting past the last defender in the
penalty area and pulling it back for Shane Long to try some sort of wanky flick
and we win a corner from it.  Imagine for
a second that we’d scored from a Stephens mazy run down the wing and a Shane
Long freestyle move….. and we’re back in the room.  We do try a flashy set piece move which
involves Bertrand trying to find Ings on the edge of the box with a low pass
after a short corner of been returned to him but unfortunately, it’s back to
the Dave Watson set-piece masterclass drawing board on Monday at training.

Our delivery from wide has stepped up a notch with Bertrand
from the left, then Redmond from the right and then Bertrand again from the left
firing over crosses which would have had a Rickie Lambert hat-trick in 30
seconds.  Long meets the last one of
these crosses but the header doesn’t have enough on it and Heaton gratefully
falls on it.

Half an hour gone and we win another corner after another brute of a cross from
Bertrand, this time on the left-hand side and this time thankfully we just go
for the basics which is JWP whipping it across and Jack Cafu Stephens getting
in front of his marker and flicking a header superbly past Heaton to make it 2-0.
Fucking hell, what is going on here?

Grealish is the main threat for Villa as he manages to pick up the ball virtually
every time they go forward. He is a little twat of course and it is very easy
to see why he is the most fouled player in the league. His style of play
contributes to that but also the fact that he looks and acts like a little
twat. Dropping ever deeper, Grealish picks up the ball in the left-back
position and Shane Long clatters him which causes a particular petulant
reaction by the shit haircutted one.  It’s
in keeping with our recent policy change of how to deal with the opposition’s
best player.

Villa do manage to get forward down the right-hand side and El Ghazi gets over
a great cross on the run and it’s heading straight for the massive unit that is
Wesley but there are no good Wesley’s but there is Jack Stephens to get in
front of him and do enough to put the big man off. This is a very un-Stephens
thing to do but following last weeks blip, he does seem to be getting back to
the recently improved form.

The rest of the first half is relatively comfortable with just a Guilbert
potshot to cause any concern but McCarthy was stood in exactly the right place
to shovel it over the bar. Half time and I can’t believe it but comfortably
winning two-nil.  The next goal is crucial
though and you have to expect an improved Villa in the second half so we have
to start it well and not give them a sniff.

Cedric didn’t get the memo though because the first thing he does is put us
under pressure by ducking under a header and then he compounds at the next time
the ball goes near him by instead of clearing it for a throw-in, he falls over
the fucking ball and gives away a corner that we get away with.

Scare over and we start playing the ball around very nicely on the right and Hojbjerg
drills a flat one to the left to Redmond and his pass into the middle goes
straight to Marvelous Makamba who plays a marvellous through ball off his shin
and the marvellous Danny Ings spins marvellously before marvellously smashing
the ball marvellously into the top corner of the net past Heaton. Absolutely
marvellous.

Increasingly desperate Villa see another change disappear as the game stops for
a VAR check as it hit Stephens on the arm in the penalty area but the referee
has not given it and therefore we get away with it because it is not deemed as
a howler. Villa make their next change with Jonathan Kodjia coming on in place
of Hourihane.

Villa get possession and a decent area when Cedric gives us the shittiest of
shit passes straight to them. We survive and talking of ropey full-backs, Matt Targett
is going on a fouling spree with two in quick succession against Armstrong – one
off the ball the referee really should’ve booked in for and then a second one
in plain sight which the referee didn’t book him for either.

We get a free kick in the midfield after Grealish takes out JWP in the
air. Stephens drills the free-kick diagonally and Shane gets up and flicks it
onto Redmond who takes on the full-back and then rips it into the side netting.
Disappointing finish from the man who just needs to get his head up a bit
sooner.

Villa really haven’t got much going forward. They win the odd corner and from
one of them the giant Wesley gets up and …. Once again proves that there are no
good footballers called Wesley by heading over the bar in really shit fashion.

We are causing so many problems on the break with Shane Long brilliantly
working to win the ball back and find Armstrong who sends Ings away down the
left and the King of the Scummers heads straight for the goal before running
across El Ghazi and clattering to the deck to give us another free-kick in
prime JWP territory. This time though, similar to last time, it doesn’t get it
high enough and it goes straight into Heaton’s midriff.

Jack Grealish is being a massive cock taking out players off the ball with his
latest victim being Ryan Bertrand who he grabs around the neck. The fucking
little haircut really needs a good slap.  He’s such a good player though.  Villa win a corner on the right-hand side
which gets cleared to the edge of the box and then Grealish demonstrates the
other side of his game by scoring a goal reminiscent of the one Joe Cole scored
for England against Sweden by taking the ball down on the edge of the box and
then creaming it over everybody into the far corner giving McCarthy absolutely
no chance. Fucking little wanker. There is a pointless VAR check going on and
while this is happening, Romeu comes on for the excellent Armstrong.

And here they come again to give us heart attacks for the next 10 minutes as
they win a free-kick on the edge of the box when Wesley, who is very similar in
the way he plays to a fucking great oak tree goes full ‘timberrrrrrrrr’ on the
edge of the box under the slightest touch from Bednarek.  After the haircut has tapped the ball to Trezeguet,
Romeo is out of the wall like a lunatic and throwing himself in front of the
ball. I’m not worried about throwing this away though because we are not
panicking and we are still playing some composed decent football when we get on
the ball.

Villa do win another free-kick as Romeu takes offence at Grealish’s hair and
this time Trezeguet smashes it straight to McCarthy who saves with no fuss and
then another corner which McCarthy catches easily. Long is off for Obafemi as we approach the last five minutes.  It is all Villa but they lose the ball when
Grealish has a dive and doesn’t get the freekick.  Hojbjerg advances finding Ings and he should
have his hat-trick but Heaton saves and the rebound falls to Hojbjerg with an
open goal but he’s clearly knackered and he sticks over the bar in pathetic
fashion.  Ings replaced by Adams as Ralph trolls the Holte End for 3 minutes.

Nothing much happens until the 93rd minute when Grealish decides to take
another pot shot which to be fair is another brilliant effort but McCarthy
reacts well to put it over the bar.

Best performance of the season without a shadow of a doubt.
We were on it from the first whistle and aside from Grealish’s brilliant goal,
we really kept going for the whole 95 minutes for probably the first time this
season, we looked like a proper solid team which carried a threat going forward
as well as being tight at the back and this is such a huge improvement from
what we have seen in relatively recent weeks. If only we could do this at home.

For me, one of the main objectives today was to discover if there was a third
team who I felt that we could genuinely finish above this season and we
certainly found that. Villa were incredibly average and played with a
ridiculous naïveté whereby one pass out of our defence would take out about
five of their players and we really should’ve scored more than we did.

There are so many positives to talk about that I don’t know where to start but
I will start with the main man Danny Ings, the King of the Scummers who has
just rattled in his 10th and 11th Premier League goal of the season.  The man is magnificent at the moment being
Johnny on the spot for the first goal and finishing his second goal absolutely
brilliantly. His partner in crime is of course Shane Long whose finishing is a
crime but other than that he again was absolutely superb.

The startling difference from last week was in the defence.
Whereas last week, Bednarek and Stephens were terrified every time the big guy up front got the ball, this week they were all over Wesley and were undoubtedly
helped by the fact that Wesley has the mobility of an oak tree and the first
touch of a trampoline. Again, I’m struggling to think of any decent footballer
called Wesley. Our two guys got stuck right in though with Stephens in
particular, being much better in the physical exchanges and not being afraid to
stick his head in where he could’ve got hurt. The highlight of the game for me
was when Stephens was possessed by the spirit of Cafu down the right-wing but
also his reaction to when he did make a couple of small mistakes. He was
visibly beating himself up over it as if willing himself to concentrate more.
That my friends, is taking ownership of your failings and until you do that,
you can never improve.

On the left we had England international standard Ryan Bertrand rather than the
slightly half-arsed journeyman which we have seen on occasions this season.
Going forward he was absolutely brilliant with three or four absolutely superb
crosses into dangerous areas that we should have made more of.

Stuart Armstrong certainly adds something to the midfield. There was a really
good balance with him in there alongside JWP and Hojbjerg who were both
magnificent (if we forget about Pierre’s finishing for a second) and Redmond
showed signs of life, having a major hand in the first goal. Hopefully this guy
will help him find his way back to full confidence that there are still times
when he still held onto the ball too long.

We still had one weak link of course but the January transfer window is nearly
upon us and hopefully someone somewhere has a huge list of right-backs.

It was a big win for Ralph which justified his original selection and method of
playing. We were more or less at full throttle for the whole game and our
energy and desire to get on the front foot was the main reason why we won this
game. We did to Villa what West Ham did to us last week.

So, out of the bottom three we go to be replaced by Aston Villa and now we know
that there are three teams that we have a very decent shout of finishing above
this season. We now head into Christmas and two games in three days against
Chelsea away and Palace at home. Personally I expect a bit of a mix and match
team against Chelsea and today’s line-up against Palace. In my opinion it would
be unwise to play Danny Ings in both of these games regardless of his red-hot
form at the moment so there should be a chance for the likes of Adams, Boufal
and Romeu to come in and hopefully enable us to get some points out of these
two games. It’s remarkable how quickly the mood of a fan base can change but
this win today is fucking huge and since everyone into Christmas with a feeling
of positivity. Just try not to think about Cedric too much.

Wesley Sneijder is a good player called Wesley. But he’s retired now.