Aston Villa (h) - Instant Reaction - Soul Searching Edition

I respect your positivity but the truth is we’re gonna have a lot of results like this this year and a lot of really bad performances, were gonna finish in the 7th/8th bracket again

Thanks guys, needed that! As the problem is so clearly about quality, I would like to listen to you guys talk about next steps in building a team more. Where to look for talent? What can we learn from other clubs? Do we need our club to setup differently? Yes we can talk about Willock or Eddie having a go but that's the survival bias for me. We need at least 3 world class signings before we can really talk about Arteta's tactics or a specific game. :)

Truth is there technical level is higher than are us! Like many teams in the PL were breasted physically and technically now! Grealish is two levels above all our wide players. McGinn, Barkley and Luiz have way more physicality and technical ability than Elneny and Ceballos it’s really no surprise

Villa were brilliant . Played football like our team used to . What’s offered these days by our lads is mostly stale and boring .

I don’t know if it’s a 2 team strategy to cope with physical demands with europa? But why Willock, Nelson and Pépé don’t get a look in for PL games is the only outrage for me! I can understand Pépé at a push but with William Laca and Auba being awful plus playing elneny it’s not for me Geoff!

To consider this a 'Normal' time to take charge of a new club in disarray - let alone as a new manager - would be ludicrous.

Since Arteta took over - straight into the Heavy Christmas Schedule, then after that we had (aside from the Europa League) a good spell undefeated in 2020 until Lock Down - then another unrelenting series of 2-3 games a week post lock down - a month off - then straight back to 2 games a week.

Jesus this is all so bleak! A few things to remind ourselves of: 1) we know that Arteta doesn’t have all the components to be where we need to be 2) this is a team that put 7 past Liverpool. They’re capable of punishing us, especially when Partey isn’t there (player who defends space) 3) this season is bonkers. The players looked fried. Also, sometimes you have a bad day (today was that) where no players look remotely at the races. I think we need to calm down on the Arteta bashing. We’re a good team, we’re not great. We have a really good manager who will get stuff wrong from time to time. I 100% agree we need to get Auba into the middle and Laca off the pitch. Let’s keep our chins up.

Arteta is sounding more and more like a puppet every game

The worrying thing for me is that the first time we try to attack to get back in the game every strand of defensive solidity collapses

So Arteta parks the bus and plays like Jose Mourinho and we praised him because mustafi didn't concede two goals. Absolutely disgusting today. I still have faith in Arteta but every week he looks more like Emery

Yeah. But it feels too late to be discussing it at this point

I know we don't want to say the word but OZIL? he's still our best offensive player. Period

Sensible Gooner

We also keep crossing the ball to a 3 foot 5 striker who can't head a ball

It has been 4 league games since we scored a "proper goal" (utd was a pen) We have a negative GD We have 4 Ls and 4 Ws, those Ws against Fulham (Shit), Shef (Shit, hadn't scored a goal when we played them), Utd (14th place), West Ham (abhorrent form when we played them) We have won 1 league game convincingly this season The alarm bells are even louder than this stage under Emery.