Pretty important for us to get all three today, Villa have lost their first two and are rooted to the bottom of the league. Our home record is going to be crucial to us this year I think.
XI: Krul - Simpson, Steven Taylor, Coloccini (c), Santon - Ben Arfa, Anita, Cabaye, Gutierrez - Ba, Cisse. Bench: Harper, Williamson, Gosling, Bigirimana, Marveaux, Amalfitano, Obertan. AVXI: Guzan, Lowton, Vlaar, Clark, Lichaj, Holman, KEA, Ireland, Bannan, Weimann, Bent Bench: GIVEN!, ZOGGY, Gabby, Baker, Burke, Williams, Bowery.
The lads came out in training jacket tops over their shirts. The message? 'Ryan Taylor over the wall'.
For the first 20 and last 5 minutes of play, we dictated pace and had some half-chances. In the middle, Villa came to life and bossed it. What's different than last year? We seemed to stroke it around and score at will at times. AP needs his positive halftime influence to set the ship right.
Makes the one he missed at the beginning of the half forgivable. He can do that all season, as long as some go in that is.
I can feel another goal in this one. As to whether its going to be ours or Villa's is anyone's guess.
Draw. Needed to do better. Couple of weeks for the lads to work on finishing and set pieces. Thx, Jay!
The last four games, the crossing and set piece delivery have been horrible. I think 3 out of every 4 corners taken over that span fail to clear the first defender. If they can't fix these two areas they will put a lot of pressure on themselves to score in the run of play.
I agree that the set pieces have been terrible, but I don't think that's just this season. The last ones I remember us scoring were Saylor's headers against Birmingham and Chelsea in consecutive weeks at the end of the 2010-11 season. Hatem was playing quite badly I thought, his touch was terrible compared to what it usually is, there were a few occasions where he lost the ball on his first touch which doesn't happen often to him. But he's the kind of player who can appear to be playing badly then drop one of these on the opposition: Cabaye has started poorly too, the midfield in general has been poor. Unfortunately other teams are trying to mark HBA out of the game, which means one of the others have to step up and make more of the inevitable space that brings up. Still a week or two to get Tiote back and try and sort our shit out. Not too down-hearted. Comparing our first three games to the corresponding games last year though (Spurs H, Chelsea A, Villa H), we got four points this time, last year it was seven.