West Ham United 1 Aston Villa 1 (10/09/06)

Relive every moment of every first team game since the beginning of the 2005/06 season. Our archive of matchday threads originally posted in the General Discussion Forum.

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sendô
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Post by sendô »

Ok no need to go on mate :wink:

You've said yourself he was exposed playing against 2 players, but I still didn't think he did bad. Maybe the 7 was a little generous, but he looked ok going forward, just needed to perfect his crossing. Hit a good looking shot at one point - the best we had all match - that was charged down.

I think you're being a little harsh saying he's a championship player in the Prem. He looks good and will improve, give the lad time. Pards has clearly bought him in the be 2nd to Pa(i)ntsil
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Post by Welling »

sendô wrote:Ok no need to go on mate :wink:

You've said yourself he was exposed playing against 2 players, but I still didn't think he did bad. Maybe the 7 was a little generous, but he looked ok going forward, just needed to perfect his crossing. Hit a good looking shot at one point - the best we had all match - that was charged down.

I think you're being a little harsh saying he's a championship player in the Prem. He looks good and will improve, give the lad time. Pards has clearly bought him in the be 2nd to Pa(i)ntsil
Whereabouts do you sit/ The reason I ask is that sitting in different areas of the ground can give a different perspective on a players performance, particularly if you're a long way from the action.

For example, in the 1st half, I believe us in the Chicken run got a much better insight into the performances and weaknesses of the right hand side of the team, better than Pardew in fact and almost everyone in the West Stand. In the second half however, I couldn't really take issue with a West Standers comments on how good the right hand side looked. Do you get my point?
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Post by Alf Garnett's (Ex) Missus »

sendô wrote:Ok no need to go on mate :wink:

You've said yourself he was exposed playing against 2 players, but I still didn't think he did bad. Maybe the 7 was a little generous, but he looked ok going forward, just needed to perfect his crossing. Hit a good looking shot at one point - the best we had all match - that was charged down.

I think you're being a little harsh saying he's a championship player in the Prem. He looks good and will improve, give the lad time. Pards has clearly bought him in the be 2nd to Pa(i)ntsil
****ing hell that shot was aiming nearer the corner flag than the goal :lol:

My main concern is Mears' positional play - he comes forward and then forgets to track back. He lost the ball a couple of times in the 2nd half and just stood there watching the retreating backs of the Villa players aim towards our goal. To have one full-back do this is scary..........to have both :shock:
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Post by carnage »

Tevez was asked to play deep by Pardew, to pick up on one point made in this thread.
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Post by sendô »

I watch it on the box. Fair do's you may have had a better view of Mears than me. Let's hope he gets better.

As for his shot going for the corner flag, again it looked ok to me, but I havent watched it again so I may (just may) be wrong. :wink:
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Post by PaulTheHammer »

Has anyone given any consideration to who we were playing against out of interest? People said before the game that the O'Neill factor was being overrated which I disagreed with and still do. Last season, Aston Villa were disorganised and confdience was at an all time low. Players didn't want to play for the club and the fans were revolting against Doug Ellis as usual. They were led by a manager who had succeeded in destroying one club and looked destined to try for a second time. it was no wonder we did the double over them.

O'Neill worked wonders with Wycombe and Leicester, then resurrected a Celtic side that was drifting along. After having led them to glory upon glory, he turned his hand to Villa and what a massive difference he has made already. They are the same side but almost unrecognisable in spirit and performance. We were not playing Charlton, Fulham, Sheffield United or anyone like that, we were playing a born again Villa side. O'Neill is an inspiration and I wouldn't be surprised to see them win a trophy this season.

Everyone is quick to blame individuals at our club then claim we are playing poorly. However, we fought damn hard against Liverpool, got a good win against Charlton and perhaps Watford is the only one we can really question. We played against what was put in front of us and that was a very strong Villa side. Can we not give credit to the opposition or is it easier to slag off our own?
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Post by Marky »

Paul, we we wire dire against Watford and we were dire aginst Villa. I even thought we gave 2 poor first half performances against Charlton and liverpool.
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Post by SAS »

soporific wrote:Yeah, can everyone lay off the "drop him!" solution to our performance yesterday? Rather than can the man, why not offer some insight to WHY some of our players should be dropped other than they were SH*TE. We don't have any players of this sort on our books, so HAVE SOME RESPECT!! What we do have are players lacking in some areas of their play and that's the comments i'd like to read, thank you very much.

The game i watched on the net: Well, after the first 10 minutes I was gobsmacked ... we were already behind, but not by a soft goal - it was by one of those lucky goal mouth ones, but then Marlon misses an absolute sitter. He nearly fell as he tried his shot. He has much more balance than that so what happened? Not comfortable on the ball. Some have said he doesn't have the talent but ANYONE who has played 350 career games COULD have EASILY scored. I think the whole team wasn't comfortable (with the exception of Gabbers, and also Anton who knows nothing else) --- and we also kept giving these hospital passes to team mates, especially in midfield, that everytime meant the villans had the ball back within two seconds. The Konch does this too often, and Benayoun too. It smacked of a lack of urgency and not of a team already one goal down.

We weren't comfortable on the ball at all, whereas Villa were. Maybe I'm singling Marlon out but Villa in comparison were composed, composed, composed. Why? I think the biggest reason is the acres of space each Villa player gave his team mate. I remember being impressed with their passing because each time they had an eternity on the ball because the pass they received was very good. In contrast, West Ham's hospital passing meant that our attacks 'spluttered' -- in rugby union, a team with good control will put many many phases together. Normally West Ham ARE quick on the ball, ie able to move the ball around quickly with crisp passing -- we have a reputation for this -- but Villa showed us exactly how to do it in the first half. We can't afford to take 60 minutes to start playing good 'phase' football.

Then the reason I love this club comes into play. By the last 15 minutes it is the Irons who look more likely to score because we finally wake up to the fact we have to really really think hard about trying to get the ball into the oppositions net. Everything picked up -- we weren't giving the ball away so often, our attacks had purpose, and so Villa's goal was under constant threat.

But it was Tevez who showed up some of the problems we have. His best move of the match had him deliver his final ball into acres of space 3 yards out from goal, but Bobby was heading towards the near post (albiet with a defender hanging off him) where, even if Tevez had managed to get it to him, he would have had a hell of a time scoring. The commentator made the point that a hungrier team would have scored, but I disagree, the players have to put each other into SPACE, they have to THINK like this and also have to LOOK up every once in a while (hello Marlon).

We've only had 30 mins of Argentinian influence to see so far but I think Tevez has given us an indication that he knows this in his bones. Let's hope so. One of my favourite jokes of all time is:

Q: What do you do when you see a spaceman?
A: You park your car, man.

(hilarious, isn't it?)

In my dreams, all the players have adopted the mantra:

Q: What do you do when you see a spaceman?
A: You put an inch-perfect pass for your team mate into it, man.
Haven't read all this thread, but read this post and must say I agree. So many times we put ourselves under too much pressure by poor passing, but their game lifted.

Let's not kid ourselves we were that **** either 'cos Villa will do alright this season under
O'Neill. They are a reasonable side and are above us in the league (remember the stat from last year on that).
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Post by alf git »

So. To summarise the whole team (pretty much ) were/are **** and need replacing , apart from Tevez who is obviously GOD.

For what it's worth we came up against a very good manager who gets his teams playing to a specific style and giving 100%.

Lets face it, after the goings on of the last couple of weeks, we were never going to win the match.

This season was always going to be harder than last. We are not an unknown quantity anymore.

We have had an ordinary start to the season but are still picking up points.

Anybody who is expecting a UEFA Cup final and a top four finish needs to go get a large slice of reality. A top 10 finish is another good season in my eyes. Anything over and above that is a bonus as far as i'm concerened.





desperately searching for head in the clouds emoticon
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