Aston Village vs WHUFC -- Sept 16th, 2019

well... to say we live in interesting times would be somewhat of an understatement... save a player picking up an unlikely 20+ points, I could be on my way to wining two back-to-back games in fantasy football for probably the first time ever...

and despite our opening game drubbing at Man City... three points against the Villans would loft us all the way up to third in the premiership...

I mean... who'd-a-thunk-it?

Players are in the tunnel...

unchanged line-up from last time out, which is nice.

1 Fabianski
24 Fredericks
23 Diop
21 Ogbonna
26 Masuaku
16 Noble
41 Rice
7 Yarmolenko
10 Lanzini
8 Felipe Anderson
22 Haller

Subs:

4 Balbuena
5 Zabaleta
11 Snodgrass
13 Jiménez
18 Fornals
19 Wilshere
27 Ajeti

out onto the pitch to a sea of claret and blue... which is always nice to see...

15 losses in their last 17 games or something... in other words typical opportunity for the Hammers to off things up... but hopefully they'll all want to do one for us and give the Manager a nice birthday present...

I quite like this away strip (sponsor badges notwithstanding) - not quite as much as the black one... but it's still pretty cool.

West Ham kick off...

wow... we've only won 9 of 41 premiership meetings against this bunch...

blimey... Anderson back defending... we'll see if that lasts 90 minutes.

Villa are understandably up for it and pushing forward as much as they can.

horrible over hit cross field pass from Noble, he's all given away a free kick... we're a little off the pace and a long way off accurate passing...

but a series of misplaced passes and ricochets results in our first corner...

the "as it stands" table has us in 8th position having leapfrogged Bourenmouth (who did us a huge favor by beating Everton)

those two additional points if we get the win will take us to 3rd...

but not if we play like this...

Villa have the ball in the back of the net but the ref blows for offside...

Villa are still on the front foot... we're still not quite at the races yet.

noble will be getting a card pretty soon if this keeps up.

Defensive mistake allows villa in behind us but Ogbonna or diop defends well to save the day

19 minutes gone and we're barely out of our half... maybe villa will get tired

good work from Lanzini, Anderson and then the Haller header is just wide..

and Noble goes in the book...

only person surprised is... Noble...

a little infighting in the Villa ranks... you'd get sent off for touching heads if it were an opposition player... but all they get is a bit of a talking to by the ref...

gonna be a hard won point at this rate... no sign of a victory...

would be so nice to beat any team that employs John Terry...

we go close... although there's some talk among the comms of Noble 'simulating' especially as he gets up even quicker than he went down...

great save by Fab... floors the Villa player

on the cusp of half time, Villa almost get in there but are offside...

possession is 61-39 and not in our favor... gotta step things up in the second half... so long as we can see out these last couple of minutes (and we need a diving save from Fab to help there)

and there you have it... 47 minutes of kinda frantic Villa play and kinda determined Hammers play...

possession stats tell the whole story...

Man Utd in our next game... we really could do with having the three points in the bag today...

Second Half underway... all Villa for the first couple minutes so far...

Anderson down in a bit of pain after a slight knee in the back... but he's up

the next two minutes have a bit of west ham pressure but we're not really doing anything with it... this certainly isn't the performance we put in last time out... which is the source of so much armchair frustration - the lack of consistency.

The Guardian saw it thusly...

"51 min: Heaton has to dive to save a header from his own player, Taylor, after some messy Villa defending – and pretty messy West Ham attacking, in fairness."

then Villa come at us and squeak inches wide of the post...

here's me thoughts thus far...

1 Fabianski -- keeping us in the game
24 Fredericks -- not done much
23 Diop -- solid defensively
21 Ogbonna -- more solid than you'd expect
26 Masuaku -- starting to run but no end product
16 Noble -- bit of a liability but he does care a lot
41 Rice -- seems tired after england duty
7 Yarmolenko -- pointless and has just been subbed as I'm typing this
10 Lanzini -- trying but no end product
8 Felipe Anderson -- trying but still needs to try harder
22 Haller -- not much service, not much support

but there's still half an hour to go to change everything...

Fornals is on for the pointless Yarmolenko... let's see if he can do better.

villa make a sub as well...

and that's probably game over... Masuaku gets a yellow card... but the thing is, he'd already got one in the first half and so he has to go take an early bath...

wasn't even a bad foul, if it were even a foul...

anyway... that means nothing... we're gonna bring on a defender, which means we're conceding any desire to score for the victory...

so... Villa bring on an attacker... the attacker draws the challenge from Masuaku that gets gim sent off and we have to take off an attacker (Anderson) to bring on Zabaleta to bolster the defense...

ugh... whenever we get the chance to go places or do something... we just piss it away...

we could have spent the week in third place.

Here's the Guardian's train of thought...


"69 min: Anderson is sacrificed for Zabaleta, unsurprisingly, and a goalless draw is starting to look exceptionally likely unless Villa really crank it up.


Red card! Arthur Masuaku (West Ham)

Now then! Masuaku, already booked, clips Elmohamady with his knee as the sub looks to go past him, and Mike Dean is in no doubt – two yellows make a red! I really do wonder if a final warning might have been more appropriate there, it wasn’t a bad one. Instant impact from Elmohamady, in a way, and what will this do to the game?


66 min: Now a Villa change, Elmohamady replacing Jota. Not one that’ll set the pulses racing, with all due respect."