Match Thread: Aston Villa v Liverpool

[Jenson78]

Also have to say, seeing Nunez laughing and smiling his head off with Martinez at the end was just the last fucking straw for me, it might not matter to him but it fucking matters to us, less fucking laughing and more fucking scoring you useless twat.. :-(

Ironically Slot didn't name him but said there was one player with his head down in the dressing room. Well given the useless imposter of a striker dont give a shite about us only getting one point. Why was his head looking down?.

[Kev0909]

I'd be off if I was salah why stay and play with Nunez?

Why at his age is he carrying the team? why is everyone around him fucking shite currently?

[Jenson78]

Elliot could've easily come on today, grav was gassed... Jones could have took over from Maca.....and diaz could have come on a lot earlier.... too little to late... should have happened a lot earlier, not 81st min

And nunez.. what a sub.

Due to lack of game time. Looks like Slot thinks Elliot is shite.

[teesred]

The midfield rotation will need to change if we want to freshen one or two up.

There are certain games it can't be done of course, but we can't play 3-of-3 of the Mac Allister/Szoboszlai/Gravenberch triumvirate match after match.

Gravenberch has played nearly 3,000 minutes this season. Elliott hasn't played 600 yet and Endo barely has.

We need to (something like) start playing matches where we play 2-of-3 of Mac Allister/Szoboszlai/Gravenberch combo from the start and do a direct swap after 60 minutes.

In games where you're comfortable (won't be many this season) you get one of the starters off.

Jones, Elliott and Endo are there, so use them. If you need to make tweaks to accommodate the lack of pace of one of them, then make the tweaks - more vertically compact, whatever.

Naturally we don't start Endo/Jones/Elliott simultaneously as a "three" or anything wild but I don't buy that we can't be utilising them a bit more intelligently and/or placing a bit more trust in them.

We've got some home games coming up soon where he could do that but I honestly don't think he will.
Maybe if we'd been a couple of goals up he might have but their midfield wasn't letting up and played well.
If we'd scored that Nunez chance I think we'd have won it by a couple,we were on top and going at them.
That miss changed the game for us.

[justme]

2 things that stand out to me.. is Szoboszlai shitting out of any form of contact and Jones dawdling on the ball. seems a common theme in most games..
to be fair to Szoboszlai he was much better in the second half. where as Jones stank the whole 90+ minutes..

[jr81]

The midfield rotation will need to change if we want to freshen one or two up.

There are certain games it can't be done of course, but we can't play 3-of-3 of the Mac Allister/Szoboszlai/Gravenberch triumvirate match after match.

Gravenberch has played nearly 3,000 minutes this season. Elliott hasn't played 600 yet and Endo barely has.

We need to (something like) start playing matches where we play 2-of-3 of Mac Allister/Szoboszlai/Gravenberch combo from the start and do a direct swap after 60 minutes.

In games where you're comfortable (won't be many this season) you get one of the starters off.

Jones, Elliott and Endo are there, so use them. If you need to make tweaks to accommodate the lack of pace of one of them, then make the tweaks - more vertically compact, whatever.

Naturally we don't start Endo/Jones/Elliott simultaneously as a "three" or anything wild but I don't buy that we can't be utilising them a bit more intelligently and/or placing a bit more trust in them.

In fiarness, Jones has been the 4th used. The midfield is always 3 of those 4 (macca / szobo / grav / Jones). His few little injuries havent helped but early on you could see they were the main 4. Slot doesnt seem to want to put Endo or Elliot on as easy as Klopp did. He must not rate them. Its the only logical conclusion.

As some have said, to not get Elliot on for 15mins to rest one of the others. It seems he has the 4 midfielders he is willing to use unless forced into a change. Getting to the League cup final resulted in this game getting brought earlier and giving us this congested fixture list at this time. The price of success. But you need the quality squad to do that. I dont think we have that.

Look at our replacement option for Trent. He cant stay injury free for more than 5 games unfortunately. So now we have no right back option to rotate.

[jr81]

If we had been more clinical today, we could easily have won this by at least 2 clear goals and we all would have been so much happier, it has to be said we are definitely in the middle of our sticky patch right now….

Hopefully Arne and his staff can earn their corn and get them all back on track…. starting this Sunday, here’s hoping eh ����

Regarding being clinical. I remember we said that a lot last year as well. We left games behind us due to lack of finishing. Its like we dont learn as a club with regard squad quality from year to year.

[Insidious]

Due to lack of game time. Looks like Slot thinks Elliot is shite.

The lack of game time is something the Manager has to take some responsibility for in those situations. That's no dig at Slot, it's just a fact - most Managers are guilty of slightly over-relying on certain lads or certain groups of lads and then come crunchy time the depth player isn't entering the fray with sharpened blades. We've seen Arteta use practically the same starting XI for most of a season before and that arguably cost them in the end, hesitant as I am to knock any side competing against the Cheats. I don't expect a key goal in March or April in the Champion's League from (let's say) Chiesa and it isn't a lack of talent - the minutes just won't be in him to come in and do his best work.

Elliott is a tidy player who is unfortunate not to be taller, stronger and faster. I could see a side like Brighton getting great use from him and given his age, talent, career minutes and home-grown status (all of which have value in the market) I wouldn't be surprised if we sold him in the Summer with a view to partially funding the closest thing we can find to a second Szoboszlai or a second Mac Allister.

[teesred]

2 things that stand out to me.. is Szoboszlai shitting out of any form of contact and Jones dawdling on the ball. seems a common theme in most games..
to be fair to Szoboszlai he was much better in the second half. where as Jones stank the whole 90+ minutes..

I wish Szobo would pull the trigger a bit more often.
Few times tonight he could have had a shit and bottled it.

[justme]

I wish Szobo would pull the trigger a bit more often.
Few times tonight he could have had a shit and bottled it.

Probably scared of being kicked so doesn't go fully through with shots