Tales of the Unexpected

It's a bit of a short rant this time because I don't want to keep going over the same ground.

But..

I'm not sure what surprised me most on Saturday. Was it Britain's World Heavyweight hopeful David Price lying in a crumpled heap while serial loser Audley Harrison was launching yet another comeback? Or was it the stunning realisation that the Arsenal game had left me happier with Joe Bennett's performance than the one that Christian Benteke had seen fit to put in?

Can't say I was expecting either event, but having spent much of the week in startled disbelief at the way the South African legal system works, and with the way their police deal with crime scenes, nothing should surprise me.

I suppose the least said about the Pistorius situation the better at this stage, but if they ever make CSI: Pretoria, they'll surely cast The Chuckle Brothers as the lead detectives.

Back to the Benteke question though. Quite why he didn't put in his usual shift is open the question. Fair play, every player can have an off day, however this particular one came after a week of fevered press speculation over the young Belgian's future and against a team that is rumoured to be his childhood favourite. Maybe I should have seen it coming after all.

That said, even a below par Benteke offers more to the team than Darren Bent would have done, had he been fit. He's crocked yet again though, rapidly becoming the modern day equivalent of Dalian Atkinson.

So why am I praising Joe Bennett? Well I'm not really, but you have to give credit where it's due and he certainly seems to be trying harder, putting a foot in and bearing in mind I'd started the game thinking he'd get a complete roasting, I thought he stood up rather well. Indeed, the defensive efforts of our youthful back four even brought praise from John Motson's commentary on Match of The Day. Motty was in admiration of our “stout defending”. Usually when someone mentions stout in connection with our defenders, it's because Dunne's been at the Guinness again.

Arsenal are no great shakes at the moment though. In our situation, plucky displays that garner no points are as much use as a chocolate fire guard. That game was there for the taking yesterday. Yes, Cazorla impressed and Wilshire was good in patches, but The Gunners were tentative at the back and ragged in midfield while Giroud was firing blanks. We should have taken something and we didn't. It was the sort of game that some our fellow relegation strugglers would have taken by the scruff of the neck and wrestled something out of.

And we didn't.

We played some nice stuff going forward again, but we need to start scrapping now too. Fighting tooth and nail for everything.

And we can't.

We don't have the personnel.

When the going got tough, we went into retreat, invited Arsenal on and it cost us big style.

It would be easy too to point the fickle finger of blame at Andi Weimann for losing his man for the Arsenal winner. Except the plucky Austrian had spent fair chunks of the afternoon shredding them down the other end. Plus, in my view, our right back Matt Lowton was getting back with all the urgency of a small child who is being forced to kiss his maiden aunt, the one with the facial hair problem.

So are we doomed? It's going to be a close run thing and I can see the likes of Sunderland getting sucked into the mix but it may actually come down to the last away at Wigan.

And they do know to scrap.

Stop I Don't Love You Anymore

On Texas songstress Sharleen Spiteri's 2008 solo album Melody there's a track I was particularly fond of entitled Stop I Don't Love You Anymore, the title of which pretty much sums up how I'm feeling about Paul Lambert at the moment.

So what has led to this sudden epiphany? What has caused me to stop seeing the man who rode into town to save us from the misery of McLeish through eyes misted by hope and optimism?

Is it our continuing defensive failings? No.

Is it our habit of constantly capitulating from winning positions? No.

Is it our slide to inevitable relegation humiliation because we've been incapable of conjuring a win for a month and half? No.

Is it his inability to strengthen his defensive squad during the window? No.

Is it the fact that he seems to have forgotten how to shave properly? No (but it does seem indicative of a lack of discipline that leads to players slipping out of formation or getting needlessly booked for dissent).

Is it Rosemary, the telephone operator? No

No gentle reader, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was a throwaway comment in the post match presser, when our "leader" was asked inevitable questions about our ability to defend from set plays.

Lambert was quoted as saying 'I am sick of talking about conceding goals from corners'.

Are you Paul?

Are you really?

Well I tell you what sunshine, you're not half as sick of talking about them as we are at having to watch them go in!

You (swear word redacted but it began with “c”)!

Fair play, a lot of us would have taken a draw at the start of the game, but we are not in a position to enjoy that luxury any more. We have to scrap for every single point on offer because with our frightening goal deficit, it could well be that factor that leads to our Premier League demise. We have to scrap and fight from the very first second to the very end of the ninety-sixth minute if that's what it takes.

There were some lovely moments in the match as we counter attacked with aplomb. Matt Lowton seems to have recaptured his joie de vivre, tearing down the right; our Gabby seems to have remembered how to be a striker after a couple of lacklustre seasons under Houllier and McLeish (I suppose we should give Lambo some credit for that); the Beast of B6 struck such fear into the heart of the Everton defence that a clearly traumatised John Heitinga seemed to be a quivering wreck by the time he was withdrawn.

But we know all about quivering wreck defenders don't we?

David Moyes master-stroke was including Anichebe in his front line. Oh, how I wished he'd picked Jelavic. Ciaran Clark was bossed by the big man all afternoon. It would have been a situation that would have been quite easy to rectify. Was there no-one on the pitch to tell Ciaran where he was going wrong? Two words would have been suffice.

“Too tight!”

I was shouting them, if you're astute enough to be reading this blog then you were shouting them, half the pundits in the country were shouting them. Did Ron Vlaar, Villa's captain and Clark's defensive partner shout them? He bloody well should have done! Perhaps he did and Clark thought he was complaining about the size of his jock strap.

I doubt we'll ever find out.

Ciaran's inability to deal with the big man and the constant threat of Fellaini meant that we were on tenterhooks all afternoon. Even with a two goal lead, only the most optimistic Villa fan – or one who hasn't seen us play much this season – would have been confident that we'd close the match out. They don't seem to know how.

When Everton pulled it back to 2-3, the alarm bells should have rung. Keep possession, run it into the opposition corners, make it awkward for the home team and let the clock run down. Simple. Not Lambert's Villa. We seemed intent on bagging a fourth of our own, no matter how reckless the attempt and ignoring the fact that each failure would lead to yet another menacing Everton attack. Ironically, I'd have applauded this cavalier behaviour if we were happily ensconced in mid-table. We're not. We're deep in the sweet and sticky.

Having seen Fellaini's equaliser several times, I wonder if I've been a tad harsh on Ron Vlaar for losing his man. My initial fury that yet another victory had been snatched from our grasp by a late leveller – and from a set piece at that – fogged me to the fact that it had been a bit of deft play from the talented Belgian that enabled him to give Concrete the slip. Credit to the opposition sometimes but it really hurt.

It would have hurt even more if Everton had pulled off a winner and yet again, Villa heads dropped and we looked like rabbits in the headlights as the Toffeemen came a gnat's breath away from nicking all the points.

So where are we now?

Well whatever the deficiencies of Paul Faulkner and Randy Lerner during January, we are where we are. There's nothing an emergency cheque book can do to resolve the situation now. They could get rid of Paul Lambert of course, but anyone coming in would have to work with the same squad of players and admitting they'd got yet another managerial appointment so terribly wrong would be tough to do.

What they could do is bring in someone with a bit more football nous at boardroom level to make these ongoing rickets a bit less likely, pick up some of the slack between the board and the manager and take some of the pressure off a visibly greying Lambert. Not necessarily an ex-footballer but at the very least an administrator steeped in the game. A Steve Stride like figure if you will. Someone like, well, Steve Stride.

Realistically though, Mister Lerner needs to decide whether he really wants to continue with Project Aston Villa. If he does, then he needs a new strategy because the current one doesn't work and is diminishing the value of his investment. If he doesn't, he should be actively seeking a buyer.

As for the on the pitch side of things, even if our trust in Mister Lambert has been tested to the extreme, I think we have to persist in the short term. What even he must see though is that something has to change and the future of his coaching staff must be under review. The problems at the back can't be that hard to fix.

I can sum it up no better than Richard Jolly in The Observer: “Until they can defend a corner, they are unlikely to turn one”.

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.