Ignominy

Three games in seven days that would shape our season. We always knew it would be a big ask for it all to come out okay. As it turns out, pretty much none of it did.

Just like the Albion game, the Bradford showdown turned out to be a game of two halves, with Villa in rampant attacking mood in the first half. It's a really pity that we couldn't have converted this into more goals, because things could have been so different if we had. The problem was that all heart left our side once Bradford scored. The lack of leadership on the pitch is reaching crisis point and anyone who thought that Ron Vlaar was going to be the talisman to take us out of the mire got a swift reality check.

The ignominy of being knocked out by a League Two team when Wembley was in touching distance was hard to take, but at least we'd had two weeks to get used to the idea. The tepid, uncreative (aside from N'Zogbia) and defensively inept excuse for a performance against Millwall was the real slap in the face.

You don't have to be a skilled tactician with all your UEFA coaching badges to work out how to beat Paul Lambert's Aston Villa. Schoolboys have sussed it out. If it's so obvious to everyone watching what the defensive frailties are, why is it taking so long to sort them out? I'm really sorry to say this, I am, but the answer has to be that Lambert doesn't know how to. We've had over a month now in which the defence has been truly woeful and nothing, NOTHING, seems to be being done to address it. Well, nothing that actually bloody works.

I may not have been Stephen Warnock's greatest fan, but I can't recall him being as positionally naïve as Enda Stevens, as clumsy as Eric Lichaj or as shit as Joe Bennett. Yet, he's forced to train with the academy while this defensive mayhem continues. By all means exile him if he's not good enough, but at least replace him with someone better, not worse.

Don't worry though, say some, Richard Dunne is coming back! Some people have got really short memories.

Some players are rallying to the cause. Weimann, N'Zogbia and Delph are all showing signs that they realise how serious this is and are playing some exciting and creative stuff, but we've such a lack of depth that when these players have to be withdrawn, their replacements just can't hack it. Barry Bannan and Stephen Ireland get chance after chance and have proved that they are incapable of consistent performances . However, sorting out the midfield can wait until the summer. We have to build from the back.

It looks as though we are not going to bring in any fresh blood as the transfer window clocks counts down. This is a desperate state of affairs because the current incumbents of our back line have relentlessly shown that they are not good enough for either Premier League football or indeed, in my opinion, the Championship. Unless we buy at least two quality players to steady the ship then we are going to be relegated, no question about it.

And we're not going to.

Someone at the Bradford game, obviously fuming with anger suggested “I'd rather have McLeish back”. I couldn't agree with that but Paul Lambert needed to answer the big question as to whether or not he was good enough to manage Aston Villa and not with words but by the way his team performed on the pitch this week.

I fear we have our answer.  

Help! We need somebody!

Game of two halves wasn't it? Over the moon in the first half, sick as a parrot in the second.

Expect plenty more clichés like that on this site.

Oh what to rant about this week? What went so spectacularly right, or what went spectacularly wrong? In fact the two are completely interlinked. We have exciting - hairs-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck exciting – forward players but they are also forward players who haven't got a flaming clue defensively. That's not to say they are being lazy. When ordered to, they do try to do their bit. They are just spectacularly bad at it.

Three “spectacularlys” in one paragraph. I'm on fire today!

N'Zogbia's resurgence since being placed in the hole has been encouraging and for those of us who had written him off as a lazy winger happy to sit on the bench and take the salary, it has been a revelation. Yet Charlie's loud proclamation that attack is the best form of defence will only take you so far. The opposition will attack sometimes, quite a lot if we've got Barry Bannan on the pitch to give them loads of possession.

There is our issue, we can afford one striker that is useless at defending, just leave that one up-field, but more than one and you've got a serious conundrum. This is the main reason why Lambert is so loathe to have Bent and Benteke on the pitch at the same time and the reason why playing The Beast and N'Zog in the same team is also problematic.

As Albion came out for the second half playing like demons and we were forced onto the back foot (has the art of shouting “defence out” completely disappeared, how deep did we get?), Lambert may well have thought his hand was forced. The swapping of N'Zog for Holman was sort of understandable. There's a “but” though. I still thought our best chance of keeping the three points was more goals. I'd resigned myself to the inevitability that we'd leak at the back but I still wanted Charlie on that pitch, providing the bullets for Gabby and the Belgian to fire.

So as the match continued, I found myself getting angry at Brett Holman, not for anything he was doing wrong but purely for not being N'Zogbia. This is hardly fair, but it's hard to get angry with Lambert's tactics when you sort of know what he's trying to do (I still managed this feat though).

The free header which assisted the equaliser was entirely Benteke's fault and maybe the answer is just to try and teach our flair players a bit more defensive technique, mind you our defenders could do with a spot of that. Towards the end of the game, I received a text from a mate saying “How shit is Lowton”. Shit or out of position? Rubbish or losing self confidence? I think he'll develop into a fine right back, but he is still developing and in the dire straits in which we remain, every little mistake is put under the microscope.

The biggest disappointment about Saturday to me was losing Fabian Delph when he was having one of his best games in a Villa shirt. If no new signings are coming then we need players like him to rise to the occasion and he certainly did, about time but credit where credit is due. Can't say the same about Barry Bannan unfortunately, but Westwood played some lovely stuff at times.

I saw plenty to build on in this match, it really isn't all doom and gloom, but the fact remains that this squad needs help and it needs it now. Two more solid pros would make all the difference at the minute. Even if we have to pay a tad over the odds to get them, it's got to be cheaper than relegation.

Stay Away from that Trap Door...

If I said that the latest debacle was a disappointment, that wouldn't be quite true. I was expecting it. If we're honest with ourselves, the vast majority of us were.

There's no joy in visiting Villa Park any more (unless you're an away fan). Goals (for) are becoming as rare as hen's teeth and wins even rarer.

Yes, we could bleat about the penalty that wasn't but I am not gonna put Halsey on the rack over that one. He doesn't get multiple replays from fifteen angles, he has to make a decision live and on the spot. From my angle on the Holte, seeing it live, it had looked like a stonewall pen. Mistakes happen. I'm not going to castigate a referee for making a mistake that I would have made even while looking out of one eye through my claret and blue sunglasses.

The lack of on-pitch discipline is not only apparent in the positional sense of our defenders and midfield but also in the petulant behaviour of one Andreas Weimann, who spent so much of Saturday's match ranting and railing at the officials that I did wonder whether he'd had a bet on himself to get sent off. It's not the first time this season he has failed to keep his emotions in check. Pick up bookings for committed challenges by all means but please don't end up suspended for being an irresponsible gobshite.

What is clear is this, it's really hard to shout “we was robbed” when faced with yet another inept display against a one of the poorest teams in the division. Benteke missing an open goal at the end was a blow but a bigger one was the entire performance, an inability to pull out of a tailspin that is as crushing to the spirits of the claret and blue faithful as it is to the reputations of the so-called “professionals” involved.

We can all scream at Randy for more funds but it's not difficult to understand his reticence. We were among the bigger spenders in the summer but because the balance between building for the future and shoring up for the present was skewed in the wrong direction, this imbalance has to be addressed without delay. It may stick in Randy's craw and he may see it as good money after bad but the fact is, if he doesn't spend now, if he doesn't back the manager before the window slams shut, the value of the investment already made will diminish even quicker than our goal difference did over Christmas.

Money isn't the only issue though. Does Paul Lambert have the right players in his cross-hairs if the money is forthcoming? We have no choice than to trust that he does. After all, I still think that Vlaar and Benteke were great signings, I'm still perplexed as to why El Ahmadi has struggled to find his feet at Prem level, I believe Westwood can make the grade – if this season doesn't traumatise him too much – and we can always blame Holman on McLeish. (I've not given up on Holman yet, I'm just not sure that he hasn't given up on himself).

Some people seem to think that bringing back Ron Vlaar to our crumbling back line is the answer to all our prayers, blissfully ignoring the fact that we were still vulnerable at the back even while benefiting from his heroics. Some say Dunne could also be our knight in shining armour, but he was starting to look ring rusty even before this incredibly lengthy lay off and it would be a big ask to expect him to be our season's saviour.

I genuinely thought that Saturday was our last chance. We now face three games in just seven days, a schedule our creaking squad is hardly in a condition to cope with. Albion's stunning late capitulation to Reading will only make them all the keener to put us to the sword and I fear it will prove painful to watch. I can't see us doing enough to overturn the deficit against Bradford and we'll presumably be struggling for fit and unsuspended players by the time the trip to Millwall comes around. Then we face Newcastle in another must win home league game.

Confident?

Me neither.

All I hear is doom and gloom

Ten to three in the morning.

I should be sleeping.

I'm not.

I'm blogging.

Because it might not seem so bad in the cold light of day.

But it is bad.

It's very bad indeed.

We've just lost to what us old skool would refer to as a Fourth Division team. A team from the bottom tear of English football. Not even one of the better ones. An average one.

It's not as if Bradford had got this far by turning teams over. They hadn't. They haven't actually won a League Cup tie all season (until now). A string of draws followed by getting lucky in the shoot-outs is what propelled them to the semi-finals.

We can't say we were robbed. Yes, Benteke might have scored a couple on another day and Bent missed a couple of sitters but then Bradford had loads of squandered chances too and hit the crossbar. It could have been better but it could have been much worse.

Defensive naivety? Well that excuse will only take you so far, but are they learning no lessons from crushing defeat after crushing defeat? Is no work being done on the training ground? Are they not putting extra hours in to sort out what has leapt from embarrassment to abject humiliation?

Even if they are not good enough, they should at least be better than this.

It also seems that the ineptitude is catching. Even Lowton is starting to look like a bumbling incompetent whereas he was starting to look the business before the bad run started. Clark, Baker and most worryingly the Lambert-signed Bennett all look at times as though the basic fundamentals of defensive play are beyond them, while Bannan and Delph showed once again that they are ineffective against grown men. How many more chances are they going to get?

Oddly Charles N'Zogbia put a decent shift in, though this may be because he saw a semi-final as a shop window to get another lucrative move, while Andi Weimann always looked a threat, but with an inept midfield and a defence that can't get the basics right, we'll be doomed no matter what level the opposition are from.

We can get through the second leg, but if all it leads to is another humiliation at the hands of Chelsea in the Capital, do we really want to?

At the moment, I'm more concerned about the imminent visit of Southampton.

Looking forward to it?

I'm not.

Oh, and we're out of the FA Youth Cup too and at the first hurdle. Bright future and all that...

FA Cup Fever? Just me then...

As I quaff the last of the Christmas Weissbiers and shove the tinsel on top of the wardrobe for another year, it can mean only one thing, FA Cup Third Round Weekend! Not that anyone else gets that excited about that any more.

When I was a kid, the Cup was king. We didn't run round the playground dreaming of scraping into fourth place in the league in them days. No, we dreamt of the twin towers, Wembley, scoring the winning goal at the tunnel end and wiping the mud off our mitts to shake hands with The Queen.

If dreams were romantic, the actual football was blood and guts, do-or-die stuff and as penalty shoot-outs hadn't come in, sometimes epic in proportion, with third and even fourth relays sometimes necessary. The Cup WAS football.

Apart from anything else, if it wasn't a World Cup year, The FA Cup Final was pretty much the only live football screened on the telly, other than England V Scotland and it was so important it was on both channels, so the choice of viewing was football with David Coleman, football with Brian Moore or over on BBC2, the Open University and Play Away repeats with Brian Cant and Toni Arthur. Most people opted for the cup!

“Seven times we've won it, no-one else can catch us up” we used to sing with glee. One small problem though. We hadn't won it. Not in my lifetime and the thought of going to a Wembley FA Cup Final in the flesh became an obsession and the Cup itself the Holy Grail as far as I was concerned. Winning the league when I was fifteen, Champions of Europe when I was sixteen were both bloody marvellous, but it would be the year 2000 and at the very last available opportunity before they knocked the old stadium down that I would get that afternoon of my dreams. Okay, the dream turned into a bit of a nightmare on the day, but I'm still so glad I got to go.

So to the modern day and with riches of the Premier League and the allure of the Champions League taking the time and attention of the big clubs, the FA Cup is now the poor relation, no longer the pinnacle of the football season but to many just an annoying sideshow. Empty seats will abound at most of the third round ties, where once grounds were packed to the rafters.

Winning now provides a route into the equally unloved and unsupported Europa League and with TV coverage now languishing on an ITV that would rather promote Ice Skating “Celebrities” and ESPN, we don't get the satellite shows around the live matches that build up the excitement by trading on the competitions illustrious past.

I'm looking forward to FA Cup Third Round day but many, nay most of my Villa supporting buddies aren't even bothering to attend.

I'll be there and I suppose that makes me a dinosaur, but I'm hoping against hope that I'm not still around to see the FA Cup become extinct.

Respite

As Ciaran Clark lay on the ground receiving treatment yesterday, two things crossed my mind: a) would Shay Given be pressed into service as an emergency centre half, so short are we of fit defenders at the minute and b) would this make a vast amount of difference anyway, bearing in mind how desperate our defending has been.

Fact is, we got totally battered again in the opening salvoes at Swansea, this despite Lambert shuffling his midfield pack once gain in a bid to find a winning combination. Once more they failed to do anything but stand back and watch the opposition and this time was, in a way, even more frightening as Swansea's strike-force consistently strolled past our back line as if it wasn't there.

Somehow though, the finishing just wasn't there from the Welsh outfit and they displayed a Liverpoolesque talent for squandering goal opportunities. Slowly, ever so slowly we began to inch our way back into proceedings. Benteke showed signs of stirring, Weimann never stopped at least trying and Albrighton was at times industrious (in a Holman kind of way) if not that effective.

Then the magic happened. Weimann scored. Since our last entry in the goals for column, there had been seventeen against, so this was a moment of significance, a glimmer of hope. As the second half wore on and a still dominant Swansea's frustration at not converting this into goals grew, the unthinkable happened. We got a penalty, and with no-one brave enough to even attempt to wrest the ball from Benteke grasp, he took it with aplomb. There's your new penalty taker right there.

Has we won this match though, it would have been a mugging and frustrating though it was to succumb to a late equaliser when most other games had already finished, we couldn't feel too hard done by. The fact that we were a gnat's whisker from going above Newcastle was a sign that we're not dead and buried just yet.

The biggest concern though was the fate of Ashley Westwood - before the nightmare run, he was emerging as one of the season's glimmers of light - we can only hope his absence will be brief.

Two matches ahead now in which to put the traumas of the League behind us. Ipswich will see our terrible form as an opportunity to cause an upset and surely the telly bosses would have done too had our cataclysmic run began before the TV games were chosen. As it is, we get another Saturday 3 o'clock-er and in what sadly will be a half empty Villa Park. Recent form, a pile-up of home fixtures and the somewhat tarnished allure of the FA Cup have conspired to make this the least attractive of our January games.

January is jam-packed full of matches and we can only hope that while Lambert is dealing with things on the pitch, he was an army of lieutenants out trying to bring in some level headed pros to steady the ship, preferably before they all end up getting cup-tied on Saturday.

Not holding my breath though...