Ange Postecoglou should learn from Unai Emery on injury ‘moans’

Aston Villa have a whole list of injury problems and yet they don’t moan like Spurs; just how good is Unai Emery?

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Arne Slot did the right thing
Dave Tickner’s article was generally balanced. In fact, looking at this fixture list…

Lfc’s 5 games:
Wed nite 12 feb Everton away
Sun 16 feb wolves home
Wed 19 feb villa away
Sun 23 feb city away
Wed 26 feb newc home

Truly a murderer’s row. A slate may not win us the title, but could certainly torpedo our chances.

I’m glad Slot de-prioritized the FA cup … I may even have played the youth team had I been the manager lol.

If anyone wants to criticize Slot’s selection, maybe I’d like to point them to the fixture list.

In fact, the only valid criticism I can think of is, lfc’s second teamers arent too strong (inability to beat Plymouth in relegation places in champo?!!?). Which further justifies Slot’s resting the first teamers any way he can.

Hopefully we’ll have enuf in reserve to emerge from the next 5 games with a healthy lead 😊
Gab YNWA

Aston Villa chat innit
A few thoughts on Sunday’s Villa vs Spurs game:

Injuries. We have them. We had one fit first-team defender (Digne) and another in his second start after a move from the Spanish second division (Garcia). With Konsa’s early injury our only fit centre half is that ‘disaster’ lad from Chelsea. We have 2 important midfielders missing (Barkley and Onana) which is a bit of a blow as our best midfielder is now stuck at centre back. I have not heard Emery moan about it once. Ever. I can understand Ange’s frustration, even empathise with their fans but I feel the mentality of Emery rubs off on the players.

No VAR. Absolute bliss celebrating a goal knowing it wasn’t going to be disallowed once a bunch of weird rules ghouls have decided we can have fun or not. Technology should not be used unless it cancels or OK’s the goal within 2 or 3 seconds. Like the goal line one. Genius. Until we get full AI analysing every frame and buzzing the referee within seconds, bin it.

Some of the football we play at times is still genuinely astonishing to me. Morgan Rogers (8M!) is unstoppable in full flow, he was getting marked out of games recently as teams clocked on to the fact we would look to him in the middle of the field every time, he is now swapping with Ramsey making him harder to track and difficult to man mark.

These new signings Rishfurd and Asesionio look good! I’d not heard of them but could be useful.

Lastly on Villa, Emery has been brilliant in adapting to challenges and innovating. We weaponised VAR (I still hate it) by playing an almost perfect high line offside trap and caught a million players offside, when teams adapted we started dropping a little deeper and filling the centre instead. Not everything has worked obviously but he gets more right than wrong and is not stuck to one ideology or way of playing. He’s absolutely brilliant and we are lucky to have him.

I could go on for pages but we are going to lose at home to Ipswich next week and I will look silly.

Just to finish with some truths:

Arsenal fans: Look, you can analyse it all you like but sometimes you just don’t like someone ok? I think the kids call it the ‘ick’. You know, vibes. You give off bad vibes, your manager does, your players do (not Saka though, that boy is an angel) and your fans do. You just need a makeover, that’s all. The more you tell people why we should like you the more we think… not marriage material.

Arsenal fans and refereeing conspiracies: Let me tell you about the Wolves v Villa game last week. A goal disallowed for…. Something… offside… standing… somewhere. Who knows. Questionable fouls, astonishing bookings. I decided to do some Research on this so called referee David, Peter.. something. Did you know he drove through Wolverhampton as a kid? UNCONSCIOUS BIAS. His favourite cuddly toy as a boy was a wolf called ‘Wolfie’! BIAS. Also he has ORANGE/GOLD wallpaper in his second bedroom. BIAS. Lastly, and most damning, he was caught on camera LAUGHING at a joke about Unai Emery looking like a vampire. DISGRACEFUL ANTI VILLA BIAS. On a serious note, grow up. Emotionally I mean.

Birmingham City: You did play well. Against Newcastle reserves. Calm down and drink the Tom Brady Kool Aid. We all know we have the best American Fan named Tom anyway.

Manchester clubs: Stop it. It’s pathetic. You had a real chance this weekend to give us all a bit of a laugh in these dark days in February but no. Couldn’t even meekly surrender to Leyton Orient or Leicester but had to pretend you were good instead. BORING!

Have lovely week everyone,
Funstar Andy

READ: The FA Cup ‘give a f***’ ranking has a new leader…

…A note about Villa, wasn’t sure how to pitch it as Spurs are in such a state at the minute. But was surprised to see such a strong XI from Emery; because we always concede, we basically start on -1, so a first minute goal is useful to get us back to 0-0.

Some shouts: Rogers obviously fantastic again, Ramsey too – if he’d repeated the trick of aiming for Kinsky’s hands with his shots, he’d have had a hat trick. If Grealish gets into the next England squad ahead of either of them, I might just give up and support Italy or something. McGinn ran the game and did all the dirty work without Kamara, Bogarde, Onana or Barkley alongside him.

Lucas Digne is literally our only (proper) defender left standing; and he saw off the combined mixture of Porro, Kulusevski and Mickey Mouse or whatever his name is. Already on the same wavelength as Rashford and Asensio going forward too. Malen was great – could have been angry at not being drafted for the Champions League, but after this game and the Wolves ‘goal’, the shirt will be his even when Watkins is back; Emery doesn’t drop players who are playing well, hence Duran getting out the pram so often. Similarly, Bailey has unsurprisingly got his act together now he’s got competition for his place.

And as for the competition… blimey. Asensio drifting around the pitch seemed to have that gift of never being picked up by defenders, he was making runs throughout his half an hour that were causing trouble everywhere. Even if he ends up being a 2025 Beni Carbone, I’ll take it all day. And then, He Who Must Always Be Named: I thought he was really good when he came on, I don’t know what all the fuss is about? Couple of attacking situations arose where an extra pass would have given him a tap-in and he pleasingly tied Porro in a knot a couple of times.

Downside: the day we all dreaded, Lord Konsa is finally injured. I hope Disasi is better at defending than his detractors say, and his multitasking needs to be pretty good. Boubs Kamara is a really good stand-in but there is only one of him and we need him in midfield, similar to the Konsa at RB problem.

And lastly, Tottenham. Yes they’ve got injuries, but if ’11 first team players missing’ implies Werner and Dragusin should be starting while Kulusevski shouldn’t, the injuries are doing them a favour if anything. If Ange stays, do we expect them to have a fully fit squad this time next year, or just a different flavour injury crisis? They’re just Elizabeth Duke to the Claire’s Accessories of Bielsa’s Leeds: the manager’s shortcomings are causing the injuries, not vice versa.
Neil Raines (0-1 is a very English cricket score)

…All I keep hearing is that Spurs have an injury crisis.

Villa had no recognised central defenders on the pitch for the majority of the match. They had 2 midfielders who just, you know defended.

Sick of Ange at this stage. Spurs are not being coached.
Paul

Man obsessed with Tickers’ obsession writes…
Another 2,000 words from Tickner about how THIS must be the last week for their manager. That’s about 6 or 7 such massive articles, all saying the same thing. Please stop. We wanted Moyes to get fired every week for a year, but we are not in charge, and we didn’t write dissertations every single week saying exactly the same thing. Surely you can see how tedious that is?? Please stop.

As to the injury crisis hand-wringing, their starting 11 in both highly amusing trophy losing games this week have included almost solely players bought for £20-30m plus. Get over it. You’re just sh!t. Same as a lot of our teams.

Dave mate, show that you have the talent to write about something else. This is surely a perfect opportunity for you to do that. There are so many exciting things in football you can choose from.. Your team is not one of them.
Mike WHU (1 year since last trophy)

(There are clues in the headlines/bylines that help you decide what you want to read; hope this is helpful – Ed)

The 427th mail on Arsenal hate
Haven’t read the mailbox in full in awhile but based on the headlines it seems it’s the same stuff you see from rival fans on Twitter and whatnot. People are going to need to pick a lane and stop shifting the goalposts.

Either Arsenal and their fans exhibit small club mentality or they’re a club that has literally dominated the Mailbox the last two months for… *checks notes*…not having won the PL or CL in 20 years?

But wait – if that’s the standard wouldn’t that be the standard of a “big” club? Which is exactly what the Arsenal fan base is patiently waiting for – for us to achieve the standards as a club we’ve generally had. Meanwhile, Man U fans are bending over backwards to convince the world they’d rather be languishing in mid-table with contention for the real trophies nowhere in sight for the foreseeable future because they won the Carabao and FA Cup in recent seasons.

Or is the hate (don’t call it not hate and act like people are indifferent to Arsenal after writing an email directed towards an audience of totally random people on the internet) because we haven’t even won a domestic cup since Arteta’s first season? If that’s the standard – wouldn’t that be the standard of a “small” club? Will one of these trophies justify the work he’s done? Did it justify Ten Hag’s or Wenger in his penultimate season? Also, are Newcastle fans – who support a club that has won literally nothing in going on three generations now – not allowed to celebrate for beating us in the semi-final cause “they haven’t won anything” yet?

Or is the issue the fact that the real fans back the club, players and manager despite all of the outside noise of not having won a trophy since 2020? How are we going to get anywhere by firing Arteta? Who is this mythical manager that’s going to complete the job Arteta started? Where is this mythical striker that was available that we could have signed that would have given us the league by now? What are their names, where are they currently and how much are they available for?

Lastly, what does it say about you and your club that you care so much the general air of positivity around the Emirates?
MAW, LA Gooner (Our fans blow everything out of proportion but so do our rival fans. Then blame us for being overly emotional when it’s a byproduct of supporting our own club…what’s your reason for being so passionate about our passion? Isn’t that infinitely less justifiable?)

And then the 428th
Good to see on a weekend where Arsenal are uninvolved in the FA Cup we can just fly under the radar. No need to mention us at all really.

What’s this? Bitter broken record Johnny wants to get an Arteta drive-by in when going after a completely different target?

Of all the topics to shoehorn Arteta into (and that paragraph as a whole feels out of place/redundant in the article), this ain’t it. He has often spoke about how much the FA Cup means to him as a player and a manager. We reliably field competitive teams unlike some of our contemporaries (which hasn’t stopped us going out tbf, but not through lack of trying). We also use the Cup profile to raise awareness of knife violence with the limited edition kits (which feel cursed at this point but c’est la vie).

Just give it a rest for one week eh? Keeping this level of resentment up can’t be good for you man.
Tom, Leyton