Skip to main content

Emerging goal fest

I've been in a bit of a relegation mire for the last week, watching Villa play well but come out second best, over and over. That creeping doom of relegation is not a good feeling and it definitely impedes the enjoyment of other games. It is in that context that I sit down for tonight's games wanting:

A) a Norwich win over Watford. Sure, that increases the risk of Villa ending rock bottom, but it also keeps us within reach of Watford,.which is now vital, given West Ham's recent crunch results thanks to 'winner' (/golem) Moyes.

B) a resounding Chelsea win over Palace, ideally with suspensions, crushed confidence and enough niggles to hamper Palaces match day squad for their trip to villa in a few days.

These are the scraps I now feed off.

Watford v Norwich promises to be a thriller. So much so that in the time between thinking I'd write this and writing it, there's been 2 goals. It makes sense. Both teams are actually quite threatening going forward. Norwich have nothing to lose, Watford have everything to gain. I think it'll be a kitchen sink affair and wouldn't be surprised to see 6 or so goals.

I've not really looked at the other end of the table, but I gather it is getting interesting. All I hear is that Villa's upcoming opponents (previously Chelsea, now Man Utd and Arsenal) are suddenly hitting great form and scoring freely. Brilliant.

Right. I'm off to perform various superstitious rituals. Come on everyone except Bournemouth, Watford and West Ham and Norwich (except today and if they play those other three).  What have I become?! One thing is for sure, this is a very different beast to watching the Euros, where I just enjoy each game and accept the results.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We go again

In the haze of survival and the hangover that followed, I forgot to do the closing thread to the blog. What an incredible escape my Villa pulled off. Ultimately, despite a minor scare towards the end, we saw out the draw we needed with relatively little fuss. Somehow we have evolved  from being a team that routinely allowed 20+ shots on goal per game, to one that was pretty miserly. Our XG against fell from 2+ per game to sub 1. Our shape was improved, the team press from early season was back. In short, the coaching staff had achieved exactly what us sofa bound fans had been demanding since November. And all via zoom. Kudos to that! The final day played out almost exactly as I expected. Watford were spent and capitulated to a point of no return pretty quickly. No new manager bounce, and presumably the team and fans are all feeling fairly flat and with a very limited sense of togetherness, given the 'knives out' style of the owners. I expect them to have a tough time in the nex...

Fake fan sound

And so we are back. How was it for you? I personally thought it was ok, if somewhat underwhelming. The Villa game was ok, we played alright, created a few chances, but of course the relatively low intensity of the encounter, coupled with the absence of fans probably made it pretty unbearable for the neutral. I couldn't bring myself to even try out the fake-crowd noise option as it just seems utterly wrong. Where does it end - augment the Villa front line so that we can watch them score some fake goals as well as just create a few chances? I'd said that the result would likely shape the season for Villa - and from the moment I'd written what that likely means in win or lose scenarios; I knew this game would be a draw. Villa do this; rarely ever settling their future one way or another, but leaving the fans in a state of perpetual discomfort. The draw tells me that we are neither so bad that we'll bomb, nor good enough to take advantage of our superiority in the game and ...

Who to believe?

 Straight in, hand up - I'm one of those guys who loves reading all the fans posts and threads on various social media platforms without ever really contributing to them too much myself, and recently I've found myself reading even more than usual, especially on various Forest sites & fan pages. It struck me reading through them that never have I seen such a good example of the 'glass half full/glass half empty' divide, and it was actually really amusing. First up the glass half empty brigade: "We can't hold a lead against Luton, struggled to pick up points again newly promoted teams and other teams around us". I can get this, throwing away a 2 goal lead against a team like Luton, who are fighting hard but hardly likely to look much past last day survival as a target, is a bit of a shocker. There are a few similar games this season where we have dropped points we really should have held on to. However compared to last season we are not crumbling badly w...