[Archived] Rovers Vs Villa Preview 7th Feb K.o 3pm

[T4E]

He's on T-mobile so it wasn't great

I believe there's a T-Mobile BTS on the roof of Ewood Park so that shows what you know

[CAPT KAYOS]

After reflecting and reading this thread all I can say some points are valid and some are not.

1. Villa are a well organised outfit who play a certain brand of football which is effective. Rovers are usually a well organised team under Sam but are not as effective. Both teams tried to get the ball to the front players and play from there. The only difference is they do it with pace which is hard to defend, we do it as snail's pace. which to a well organised team is easy to defend.

3. Rovers midfield is slow and Andrews should not be in the team- Rovers midfield is slow, but has been for years.

4. The wide players were on the wrong sides. Can't argue they were but I suspect the reason for this was that MGP would give additional cover on Young better than Dunny would. To me that is giving the oppostion too much respect in terms of sacrificing your own teams attacking instincts over defending the oppostions. We should be giviing oppostion something to think about.

5. Forwards - Benni and Roberts are Rovers's best combination whilst RSC is Rovers best striker. It is something that Sam is going to have to work out what to do with. Does he stick with 4-4-2 then its Benni and Roberts or like Hughsie did a lot last season go 4-5-1 with RSC although obviously no Bentley. Problem with either is that for option 1 the forwards need better service than recievd on Saturday. If not Rovers' forwards look poor. Option 2 would require a midfielder like Carlos playing which I doubt Sam wants to do.

Finally Rovers still look like the only team that do not pass and move. We pass and stand still. Easy to defend against. We won't play against as well organised sides as Villa every week and Sam will have learnt more about his team than is the previous time at the club.

It is going to be close.... very close but I suspect my beloved Rovers will survive. By the fact there is worse teams in this division rather than Rovers own ability.

dsd4e - some good points here and just want to add as I have touched on these many times before and its not just this season and reflects on the issues within the set of players we have

1. we do it as snail's pace - exactly, I have termed it as laborious on many an occasion and its not just a well organised team that finds it easy to defend - we are very predictable which opposition teams find so easy to counteract on ( something us the fans see but somehow management and the players don't)

3. Slow - see above - not necessarily slow and not just the midfield but more the team laborious (see point above) and not on the same wavelength most of the time. Can't seem to impose ourself on a game and kill it off on most occassions or have the determination to.

4. Totally agree and something I hate and have yet to see the advantage - can understand doing it during a game for a while -but not starting like that (forget the UTD comparison- look at the players and the position they are in) we can't afford to do it never mind not having the quality of player. By doing this IMO you give up the game before its even started and negate your chance even more - we should be making home games count even moreso at the moment regardless of who we are playing

5. Without the service - none of our forwards are going to prosper see points above.

Pass and move - again see above about being laborius

Add these to the 50/50's we are so poor to respond to and as I have mentioned before and still think we need a more commanding centreback in our midst (Hendry/Moran style)

Hopefully as you say SAM will have learnt - the question is have the players and do we have enough games in which we can justfiably claim we will get the points.

Sadly I doubt it very much unless we somehow can take point of the four biggy away games at Utd , Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelski - even though Chelski may be a possibility given the way they are playing - it will more than likely be too late

[JohnS]

Lets get something straight here, before a ball was kicked! Did we expect Villa to play outstanding football? In my opinion No, but what they do is really effective and credit to them. You also need to give them credit for workrate, not allowing us to play and making us resort to long ball.We knew what they were going to do. What worries me is we never bloody looked like scoring. Did we look like the home side? Friedel, Did he actually make a save? While as we weren't outclassed, we beaten by a better team.

[gumboots]

Lets get something straight here, before a ball was kicked! Did we expect Villa to play outstanding football? In my opinion No, but what they do is really effective and credit to them. You also need to give them credit for workrate, not allowing us to play and making us resort to long ball.We knew what they were going to do. What worries me is we never bloody looked like scoring. Did we look like the home side? Friedel, Did he actually make a save? While as we weren't outclassed, we beaten by a better team.

and I'm glad i don't pay to watch them week in week out. Results would be great, yes, but when did you last watch Villa and feel any sort of wow about the football they play. They were better than us, don't get me wrong and are very good at what they do. You just have to wonder why nobody yet has stopped them doing it.

[CAPT KAYOS]

You just have to wonder why nobody yet has stopped them doing it.

Probably because they do exactly what we did on Saturday and give up the game before it has even started by trying to negate them instead of concentrating on your own strengths.

[LeftWinger]

I thought it was quite refreshing to hear Sams reaction to the defeat - holding his hands up and saying Villa were the better team. Under our previous managers we'd have heard:

Hughes: "We deserved to win, should have had a few penalties, ref was terrible, we were the better side etc etc"

Ince: "Everyone expects us to lose every game, poor me etc etc"

Hughes in particular got a bit tiresome with his pre-match interviews. They might as well have just replayed the same one after every defeat.

[roversmum]

Went to the match with a Villa fan who embarrassed by his team's diving. They only start it when they get within scoring range and i think it's the fact that refs don't seem to have noticed this or if they have feel they don't have to do anything about it that annoys me most. we were beaten on saturday by a better team so why did they feel the need to go down every time one of our players breathed on them.

picture no 2 in the match gallery - someone's been practicing for the olympics - blatant dive

[Paul]

and I'm glad i don't pay to watch them week in week out. Results would be great, yes, but when did you last watch Villa and feel any sort of wow about the football they play. They were better than us, don't get me wrong and are very good at what they do. You just have to wonder why nobody yet has stopped them doing it.

.........but when did you last watch Rovers and feel any sort of wow about the football we play?

[JohnS]

and I'm glad i don't pay to watch them week in week out. Results would be great, yes, but when did you last watch Villa and feel any sort of wow about the football they play. They were better than us, don't get me wrong and are very good at what they do. You just have to wonder why nobody yet has stopped them doing it.

We need to take our Rovers specs off for once! Plus if we were 3rd in the league we would pay to watch that. Its their desire all over the pitch that beat us, we need players like that who give 150%! Im afraid we have some who don't.

[chocky]

picture no 2 in the match gallery - someone's been practicing for the olympics - blatant dive

Brilliant, he must have practised that in Birmingham Lido...

[gumboots]

.........but when did you last watch Rovers and feel any sort of wow about the football we play?

Not often I agree and I did say I'd love their results. Unfortunately fans are greedy. They want to win first, yes but they are also expecting to be entertained. I don't think Villa would play any differently if they were clear at the top of the league and capable of taking teams apart for fun. I think there are other teams around that would if they were in a position to.

[LeChuck]

The only other team that has consistently looked like they could threaten the monopoly of the big four is Everton, and they play horrible football. Like Villa, they keep it tight at the back and have a couple of attacking players who consistently produce to goods at the other end (Arteta and Cahill).

That seems to be the most effective way to play in the league if you're not one of the big four. Thankfully I think we have a manger who understands that because Bolton are probably the only other team in the last 5 years who have been near the level Villa and Everton have reached.

[John]

Hughes in particular got a bit tiresome with his pre-match interviews. They might as well have just replayed the same one after every defeat.

Hughes just defends his team to the hilt and trys to take postives out of every situation. Worked ok for us.

IMO, Sam has come across a bit negative recently. The situation we are in requires bottle and not nerves so I hope he has not put too much pressure on the players with his recent redundancies quotes. I noticed Warnock said similar things after the match on Saturday.

I know he is relfecting on missed opportunities in certain matches, but the time for reflection should be the end of the season - of course we need to learn from our mistakes, but he is just heaping more pressure on our situation.

[Ronin]

I was thinking the same thing. His interviews do come across negative, kind of Souness-like perhaps? Next thing you know, he'll be talking about Lady Luck and weeing with the willy we've got and all that.

[tonyoz]

I think Sam tells it like it is. A refreshing change in my opinion.

[Fife Rover]

I can't see anything that Sam says that would give any of the players cause to lose confidence. The players all know full well that in the event of Rovers being relegated, most of them would be looking to move on to other clubs, and their careers would certainly not be in jeopardy.

[DeadlyDirk]

I think Sam tells it like it is. A refreshing change in my opinion.

Exactly, if he had made out we were better than Villa then he would have lost credibility anyway, we were beaten by a better side and the sooner people own up to the fact the quicker they can move on and learn from their mistakes.

There is no point filling players heads with rubbish by saying, 'Oh we were unlucky, we were as good as them, if we got one of the penalty decisions it would have been a different game, I couldn't have asked for more from the players.'

With that being said though I'm sure the comments a manager makes to the press are often very different than the comments he makes in the dressing room at full time, a lot of managers don't like to criticse their players publicly and prefer to do it behind closed doors, works for some and not for others I guess. I would agree that it's probably not great to humiliate your players publicly if they have played poorly but there is no point trying to sweep everything under the carpet.

This isn't really referring to the Villa game by the way, all in all I thought we did okay, there is no shame in losing to Aston Villa at the moment, much as I hate to admit it.

[Harrier7]

Brilliant, he must have practised that in Birmingham Lido...

Nearly as good as Jo's dying swan act for Everton's penalty - horrible, nauseating, etc.

[Denis_B]

Having read most of this thread there are some very interesting comments and some rather silly ones. Remember before O'Neill arrived Villa only avoided relegation by three point under O'Leary. Some change in two and half years.

Surely any football team to progress in this league needs to make it tight at the back, work hard throughout the team and then win games. Villa are doing exactly that.

I don't think Villa fans or O'Neill particularly care about what other fans/managers think of their football as it is a RESULTS business, and they are getting results. I wouldn't expect Rovers fans to want to watch them but if Rovers played exactly the same, and got the same results what a happy little bunch of bunnies would be on here -yes?

All this childish talk of diving is rather cheap for a team managed by someone who loves to have 'spit the dog' in his side and have had a few in the past

[doctorryan]

QUOTE (Denis_B @ Feb 10 2009, 12:42 ) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Having read most of this thread there are some very interesting comments and some rather silly ones. Remember before O'Neill arrived Villa only avoided relegation by three point under O'Leary. Some change in two and half years.

Surely any football team to progress in this league needs to make it tight at the back, work hard throughout the team and then win games. Villa are doing exactly that.

I don't think Villa fans or O'Neill particularly care about what other fans/managers think of their football as it is a RESULTS business, and they are getting results. I wouldn't expect Rovers fans to want to watch them but if Rovers played exactly the same, and got the same results what a happy little bunch of bunnies would be on here -yes?

All this childish talk of diving is rather cheap for a team managed by someone who loves to have 'spit the dog' in his side and have had a few in the past

Pound sand jagoff. Regardless of the quality of Villa's play, the prat with the whistle missed AT LEAST 2 penalties that should have resulted in spot kicks for Rovers. So you and the rest of the godd#*n Villa supporters who come here to read Nicko in some vain effort to look like an insider to those morons who would believe it can take their condescending horses*%t someplace else.

And don't go counting the star-ball badges on your shoulders before they're ironed on.

[Denis_B]

Pound sand jagoff. Regardless of the quality of Villa's play, the prat with the whistle missed AT LEAST 2 penalties that should have resulted in spot kicks for Rovers. So you and the rest of the godd#*n Villa supporters who come here to read Nicko in some vain effort to look like an insider to those morons who would believe it can take their condescending horses*%t someplace else.

And don't go counting the star-ball badges on your shoulders before they're ironed on.

Thanks for your intelligent response and contribution towards in otherwise intelligent thread!

The pens v a goal disallowed that shoudn't have been?

It is a thread involving two teams Rovers and Villa so is it wrong to express a view?

I tried to make consructive comments and I am sure most contributors on here hold a more charitable view than you so thanks and shove it!

And by the way I hope against all other things that Rovers can retain their position in the Premiership, the club, manager and supporters deserve it... or is that deemed condescending horseshit too?

[jonman105]

QUOTE (Denis_B @ Feb 10 2009, 20:09 ) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for your intelligent response and contribution towards in otherwise intelligent thread!

What a very intelligent comment!

[stuwilky]

QUOTE (Denis_B @ Feb 10 2009, 17:42 ) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All this childish talk of diving is rather cheap for a team managed by someone who loves to have 'spit the dog' in his side and have had a few in the past

Fortunately Denis, most Villa fans I know have admitted frustration at the behaviour of certain Villa players when challenged for the ball. Just as many Rovers fans admit frustration when certain Rovers players do the same thing.

Regardless of who plays for us, it surely does not render our opinions worthless en masse due to the behaviour of a football player who happens to play for us?

[doctorryan]

Damn it, forgot about this rant. Well put Stu, thank you. AND I SAID AT LEAST 2 penalties. IMO Agbonlahor's goal should have counted, but the "clear daylight" idea isn't the way linesmen tend to enforce things nowadays, so sorry, no goal. Heskey was using Samba as a ladder. In other words; I stand by my statement & go the *&%^ away Villa supporters. Enjoy the few years of rental you get from our sell-out goalkeeper.

[Ray-Von]

Damn it, forgot about this rant. Well put Stu, thank you. AND I SAID AT LEAST 2 penalties. IMO Agbonlahor's goal should have counted, but the "clear daylight" idea isn't the way linesmen tend to enforce things nowadays, so sorry, no goal. Heskey was using Samba as a ladder. In other words; I stand by my statement & go the *&%^ away Villa supporters. Enjoy the few years of rental you get from our sell-out goalkeeper.

That's a bit harsh. There have been some very decent Villa Supporters on the board in the last six months or so.