Well, we lost in Warsaw. Defensively in particular, we looked naive. But with so many changes in that area I am not surprised at the misunderstanding showing in Villa's defensive ranks.
Most importantly, it's not the end of the world considering this is a group stage. We have a good chance to put things right and progress further. It was by no means a fluid Villa performance, but to some extent you have to give credit to Legia for that being the case.
Legia managed things better, in addition to some muscle that stopped Villa from getting through on a few occasions. The time Duran was pulled back just when he was about to shoot comes to mind, plus a high kick to stop Bailey getting through. That was a red card incident in my view.
But if you were to read the knee-jerk reactions of some regular Villa supporters and their match assessment reports you'd think that there were some very awful individual performances from Villa players last night. I feel that much of it was lack of understanding; after all, it is a team game and understanding has to be built up. Chambers is rarely used and Lenglet was making his first appearance, so what we saw was, for me, not altogether surprising against a quick team like Legia. Otherwise those players played some good stuff last night in my view.
Yet on the Villa supporters sites I mentioned there were scores of 3 and 4 given for individual performances.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if they're not capable of making reasoned judgments then stay quiet, please. Otherwise all it does is encourage over-expectation for instant success. For goodness sake, Emery has been in the job for less than a year and what he has done in that time is quite remarkable. But on the way there are going to be blips, and this one was surely down to lack of mutual understanding at the back.
Robots have not yet taken over to make football perfect (and every game a 0-0 result!) and long may they stay away.
Let's see what happens on Sunday.
UTV!
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