It lived up to the preview, we got what we expected at the Britannia Stadium. When Stoke had the ball, they were direct and made effective use of possession. When they didn’t, they dropped deep into two well organised banks of four, the midfield almost on top of the back line. Very tough to break down.
During the opening spell, 15 to 20 minutes say, Gabby & Ash were struggling to get into the game, both occupying fairly
Look, no excuses here, we need to take our medicine, we brought this defeat on ourselves by not pressing for a win or sufficiently holding what we had, but I want to quickly highlight an issue that we all know needs fixing.
I’m not advocating that we should do this kind of review during the game, obviously that would be a ridiculous disruption. I’m not advocating that every decision be reviewed either. However, contentious issues that had an effect
A late equaliser from Kenwyne Jones and an injury time winner from Robert Huth cast Stewart Downing’s fine first half header and all the good work Villa had put in during this game to distant memory. It was a lesson in how to lose all sense of conviction in the latter stages of a game, having failed to capitalize on some excellent work earlier on, to lose a match that should have been in the bag.
More importantly, once again,
People are fond of claiming that Stoke is a tough place to go, but the truth is that they lost six games at the Britannia last season and their overall home record ranked 13th in the league. Villa were 12th if you’re interested.
We haven’t beaten Stoke at the Britannia yet, the last league win on their own turf being a 3-1 win at the old Victoria Ground in 1984.
So far this season, their home record is played one, lost
I only knock these Statshacks up for Premiership games, can you believe that it’s almost 3 weeks since the last one? No wonder we have all these games to make up this month!
This one shows more domination from Villa than I was expecting with 60% of possession and a CPS of 65%, which pretty much means we outpassed them 2:1. Someone let me know when they start awarding points for that though!
I watched the headlines flowing through Twitter after
A frustrating game that never really got going ended in a far from unpredictable goalless draw. Not one for fans of sexy, total football this one that’s for sure. A point is a point and we’re unbeaten, but I was expecting a burst of energy and quality that would expose Stoke and in the final analysis it never really arrived.
There’s an important distinction between tiredness, at least in the physical sense, and fatigue. I think we’re seeing a team struggling
I apologise for the lack of posts the last couple of days, I’ve been furiously coding and I’m reasonably optimistic that I can start shipping components of the new site live today. If all goes to plan (and I use the word ‘plan’ in the absolute loosest sense of the word) I could well be in a position to switch over completely late tonight. If that’s the case then there will be an hour or two of downtime,