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Aston Villa 1 - 3 Saints - FT - Reactions and Christmas Cheer!


Heisenberg

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Good performance today enjoyed that. Nice to have a stress free afternoon for once. Well almost until Grealish decided to be MLT for a while. Hell of a player surely worth an England call up.

 

I thought Ings, and Stephens will get the plaudits today but the whole team were on their game. Only weakness was Cedric and occasionally Holberg.

 

Bertie was a bit off in the first half. However a wiser head pointed out that he is an older player now and clearly manages his body during the game. Plays intelligently and we need that.

 

Halfway to 36 points which should be enough. Now kick on.

 

 

 

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One swallow doesn’t make a summer.

 

It would take a major injury crisis of almost plague like proportions for him to ever get within site of the England first eleven.

It is no surprise that our upturn in fortunes has coincided with Stephens and Bendarek forming a solid (ish) partnership.

 

Both have played well in recent games but Stephens's distribution and drive is the difference. A wholehearted club player who is developing. CH's mature later as they draw on experience. An England call up ...... ! Who let his mum on here.

 

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It is no surprise that our upturn in fortunes has coincided with Stephens and Bendarek forming a solid (ish) partnership.

 

Both have played well in recent games but Stephens's distribution and drive is the difference. A wholehearted club player who is developing. CH's mature later as they draw on experience. An England call up ...... ! Who let his mum on here.

 

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We must be watching different players. They looked hopeless in our last game against West Ham.

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It is no surprise that our upturn in fortunes has coincided with Stephens and Bendarek forming a solid (ish) partnership.

 

Both have played well in recent games but Stephens's distribution and drive is the difference. A wholehearted club player who is developing. CH's mature later as they draw on experience. An England call up ...... ! Who let his mum on here.

 

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People go through mad swings on here. After the west ham game people were saying we were relegated for definite, now we get a win and there's talk of an England call-up for Stephens. Can we just have some realism please which is that Stephens has performed alright recently but we still have one of the worst defences in the entire league. He would get absolutely nowhere near the England team and rightly so.
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Good performance today enjoyed that. Nice to have a stress free afternoon for once. Well almost until Grealish decided to be MLT for a while. Hell of a player surely worth an England call up.

 

I thought Ings, and Stephens will get the plaudits today but the whole team were on their game. Only weakness was Cedric and occasionally Holberg.

 

Bertie was a bit off in the first half. However a wiser head pointed out that he is an older player now and clearly manages his body during the game. Plays intelligently and we need that.

 

Halfway to 36 points which should be enough. Now kick on.

 

 

 

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I thought Grealish was rubbish apart from the goal. He's nowhere near the England team for me and probably needs to move in the summer to play with better teams if he wants to play internationals.
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Agreed. Stephens is turning into a very good footballer and the TV pundits are beginning to single him out for their praise. I can see him playing for England one day.

 

Behave, he was good today against a very poor villa attack, but he’s still a long way to go before he’s even premier league standard. He was awful last week and singled out for criticism along with bednarek and hojbjerg by pundits.

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I thought Grealish was rubbish apart from the goal. He's nowhere near the England team for me and probably needs to move in the summer to play with better teams if he wants to play internationals.
He certainly wasn't rubbish and would be a cert for our team. Worked hard, had time on the ball and was a threat. However has Maddison and Ali in front of him. Anyway not a Saints player so who cares.

 

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People go through mad swings on here. After the west ham game people were saying we were relegated for definite, now we get a win and there's talk of an England call-up for Stephens. Can we just have some realism please which is that Stephens has performed alright recently but we still have one of the worst defences in the entire league. He would get absolutely nowhere near the England team and rightly so.
I think that was what I was saying. Developing into a good club player, certainly better than we've had for a while. However England no way.

 

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Agreed. Stephens is turning into a very good footballer and the TV pundits are beginning to single him out for their praise. I can see him playing for England one day.
Get a grip, our Jack played better than their Jack today, but that's about the size of it. Their Jack will get an England cap long before ours.

 

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Watched the first half and thought we were generally very good, although made to look good maybe by a very poor Villa display. Noticeable improvement from the full backs, but PEH maybe trying too hard again though?

 

Missed a bit of the second half (after about 60 mins), but switched back on around 10 mins to go and one thing I noticed a few times was Obafemi (brought on before Adams?) was just letting players run past him and not making any effort to close anyone down. Isnt his main attribute his pace? Did he take a knock I missed? I was wondering why he wasnt trying to close anyone down when the whole rest of the team are trying to... Maybe he's just not the brightest spark...

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Improvement from us but Villa were absolutely appalling.

 

The same old story, sorry. When we win then "the other side was awful".

 

No. We did not allow them to play better, that's all. When we play RH's style well and win, the other side will always look awful!

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Our home support is horrendous. We do have some right idiots as fans, who like to have ago at the team at any opportunity. I would rather they went and supported another team. No wonder the team plays with so much fear at home.

 

Villa fans booed their team at half and full time, and they're a newly promoted side!

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He certainly wasn't rubbish and would be a cert for our team. Worked hard, had time on the ball and was a threat. However has Maddison and Ali in front of him. Anyway not a Saints player so who cares.

 

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I had a gander on a villa forum and they were all saying that whilst he scored a good goal, otherwise he generally wasn't great and they gave him a pretty low ranking. Overall I'd have to agree, whilst he's clearly a decent player, Saturday was not his best game.
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I think that was what I was saying. Developing into a good club player, certainly better than we've had for a while. However England no way.

 

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I'm not sure even that's true. If he starts performing solidly every week then maybe but he's had maybe two or three fairly good performances so far? Certainly not enough to definitively say that he's anywhere near good enough for our team.
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The same old story, sorry. When we win then "the other side was awful".

 

No. We did not allow them to play better, that's all. When we play RH's style well and win, the other side will always look awful!

Nope. I thought we played alright but it's undeniable that villa were a load of rubbish and played totally into our hands.
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Just watched the MOTD highlights and Shearer was rightly scathing in his criticisms of Villa. As bad as we have been at times this season, we have never been anywhere near as open as they were.

 

I'm starting to finally believe that there actually are three worse teams than us after all.

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Just watched the MOTD highlights and Shearer was rightly scathing in his criticisms of Villa. As bad as we have been at times this season, we have never been anywhere near as open as they were.

 

I'm starting to finally believe that there actually are three worse teams than us after all.

 

You could argue we were even more open in our 9-0 loss at home to Leicester.

 

Great to be out of the bottom 3 but unfortunately it’s unlikely we’ll stay there for long, Villa’s next games against Norwich and Watford, hopefully draws in those games.

 

Our next few games are really tough can’t see us getting many points from Chelsea, Palace, Spurs, Leicester in the next 4.

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Fortunately, Ralph is a much better judge of a footballer than you are, which is why he has kept faith with him.

 

https://www.footballfancast.com/premier-league/southampton/jack-stephens-villa-hasenhuttl-saints

Sorry mate but you're deluded. There's a massive scale between Stephens improving and having a couple of pretty good games for us and Stephens playing for England or even being a regular starter for saints and performing well regularly.
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Sorry mate but you're deluded. There's a massive scale between Stephens improving and having a couple of pretty good games for us and Stephens playing for England or even being a regular starter for saints and performing well regularly.

 

I've seen players much derided on here, like Chambers and Ward-Prowse, play for England and if I were to plough through the list of central defenders who've won England caps, I'm sure I could find many worse, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility. I'm not saying it's nailed on that he will win a cap but the potential is there and he's already won England caps at U18, U19, U20 & U21 levels so England selectors have obviously seen that potential too.

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I've seen players much derided on here, like Chambers and Ward-Prowse, play for England and if I were to plough through the list of central defenders who've won England caps, I'm sure I could find many worse, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility. I'm not saying it's nailed on that he will win a cap but the potential is there and he's already won England caps at U18, U19, U20 & U21 levels so England selectors have obviously seen that potential too.

 

Jack S. played well yesterday but he is a long way off England cap quality - as are the other two you mention. Grealish, in a poor Villa side stood out as International quality - the Club could do with a midfielder like him.

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Jack S. played well yesterday but he is a long way off England cap quality - as are the other two you mention. Grealish, in a poor Villa side stood out as International quality - the Club could do with a midfielder like him.

 

Grealish is loyal to Villa but would do well at City or Liverpool but more likely Spurs if he moves.

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I've seen players much derided on here, like Chambers and Ward-Prowse, play for England and if I were to plough through the list of central defenders who've won England caps, I'm sure I could find many worse, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility. I'm not saying it's nailed on that he will win a cap but the potential is there and he's already won England caps at U18, U19, U20 & U21 levels so England selectors have obviously seen that potential too.

 

Stephens is too prone to lapses in concentration. He is not disciplined enough to be a top class defender in the Premier League, let alone internationals.

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Really good performance yesterday. Nobody was off colour.

 

Stephens & Ward-Prowse had their best games for a long time, Redmond was better than of late. Ings & Long look a decent partnership & the full backs seemed more committed than last week.

 

Yes, they were poor, but we’ve played poor sides before & missed the opportunity to put them to bed. I don’t understand criticism of Jack Grealish on here he worked hard, tried stuff and worried me every time he received the ball. He’d fit in a Chelsea or Spurs no bother.

 

Ings is a class above the rest of the side. If we could get Adams firing, buy a proper centre half and a midfielder who creates stuff, we’d be pretty decent.

 

 

 

 

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Agree with all your points. Having just watched the whole 90 mins on Sky Game of the Day I’m struggling with the Stephens love-in as well. I wonder if his admirers today actually saw the game. Whilst he played better than normal that’s a really low bar and plenty of mistakes that really kill his game and would have gone punished by pretty much every team other than the hapless Villans who were shocking.
I was at the game and, although he made a couple of mistakes, Stephens was very good: pretty solid defensively, scored and almost had an assist with a great burst to the by-line. Ralph has persisted with the Stephens/Bednarek partnership and the confidence is growing.

 

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I think that was what I was saying. Developing into a good club player, certainly better than we've had for a while. However England no way.

 

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That's a fair assessment. Still needs to concentrate for 90 minutes and hopefully cut out the mistakes - usually weak clearances.

 

He is a decent ball player who can get forward and I'd be interested to see him at DM.

 

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Thoroughly enjoyed that, as I always do on a day out at Villa Park. Our record there is very good over the last decade. Ralph got formation and approach here spot on. Long yesterday was classic Long, failing to score bless him but my god did he run that Villa back line ragged. Think we look a better side with a third proper midfielder in the team in Armstrong as part of a 4222 or 442 however you look at it. Redmond and Djenepo together I don’t think works.

 

Lots of excellent performances today, but main difference in the teams was the work rate and desire from Saints. Good to see our passing game back on track too, mixing moving the ball quickly through the thirds as well as the early long ball behind their lines.

 

That is everyone bar Palace played now, and while this season there is an anomaly because we play Chelsea for the second time in game 19 the table now is more representative of where we are. So while we are not out of the woods yet by a long way, it is equally true that we are only one win away from several teams above us with 20 games left. So I think Ralph can legitimately claim that is is credible to think we could finish four or five points and four or five places higher than last season which I think would be solid progress after two relegation battles.

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The same old story, sorry. When we win then "the other side was awful".

 

No. We did not allow them to play better, that's all. When we play RH's style well and win, the other side will always look awful!

Reinhart, you have to understand that our fans always have to think that if we win the other side are rubbish. It seems to be the rules on here!!

Anyway I agree with you, Ive watched the whole game and we ran and shut them down and made our own luck. Well done saints

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