I'm going to do my best to write about the game against Villa and not blame Chris Foy for the disappointing result. Granted every good football fan "tries" to not complain about the referee but sometimes it's just too hard not too. However I will save those comments for the end of this post.
I thought our match against Villa wasn't terrible, but yet again we lacked the consistent final touch to get ahead and kill the game off while we were playing well. I don't know if this is just a matter of needing a more prolific striker (I am a fan of all three of our strikers and still have some founded and some blind faith that they will prove reliable yet), or our style of play just doesn't lend itself to many goals, or maybe we just haven't gotten into a scoring groove like City or Liverpool have. As far as strikers go, like I said before I still have faith in our frontmen. Yes, they may not be the most prolific scorers, but they do still chip in with important goals (Eto'o vs United, Torres vs the rest of Europe) and I think we could still see some consistency yet. I also don't think that our lack of goals including in the Villa game is due to our playing style. We have had plenty of games where we've had a handful of good chances that just weren't taken as well as they should have. So I think what it comes down to is just too much inconsistency when it comes to finishing from all of our attacking players. If we could get that down, I think we could see goal hauls like the ones City have been seeing.
It's hard to pick a stand out player now that the game has passed, but I think that Matic and Azpi had characteristically good games. I feel like these two are often singled out for playing well, and while the result wasn't great both Matic and Azpi played with their standard level of effort and skill. Matic did a great job of both breaking up play and converting defensive plays into attacks and was very close to scoring a long deserved goal. Azpi showed once again that he will become one of the best fullbacks in the game as he showed his never ending hustle to get up and down the pitch and his flawless skills as a left back.
Despite our halfway decent performance, Chris Foy showed yet again just how incompetent he is. Firstly, the Willian red card was an absolute joke. Yes Willian did commit a foul (albeit a soft one) but was that challenge in anyway aggressive, dangerous, reckless, or stop a clear scoring opportunity? Not even in the slightest and thus a horrible call. As far Ramires, I only saw the challenge a couple of times because my stream was a bit jumpy, but it did seem a bit reckless and no one else seems to have a problem with it so I am assuming it was a fair call. Sending Mourinho off was another mistake by Foy. He was by far not the only one on the pitch that shouldn't have been nor was he the only one confronting the refs. Maybe we didn't absolutely deserve to win that game, but we did deserve better than two reds and a sent off manager.
Thankfully however, that game is done and in the past and now we have to look forward to Gala and Didier coming to the Bridge. Here's to hoping that we can get a good result and a good performance.
-Gage
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