Can I intepret your thoughts as follow :-
Villa won only 1-game away so far and we've absolute rights to win this game against them since we're the host and no two ways about it. In recent times there were many winnable games against lower teams, but we ended up drawing with them. Will there be a possibility that Villa for whatever reason played brilliantly and not us., we've heard of upsets so often before.
I'm expressing "fear" that the game has gone into the players' head and you've interpreted it as it has "already" gone into their heads. Going by your belief that the game is already won before the ball is even kicked, there's an air of arrogance here while being over confident breeds complacency, don't you think so?
I thought we played brialliantly against the Hammers without Suarez and Enrique went off at the 1/2 hour mark did not help things while Diame stretchered off even things out while Hammers is in great form at the moment. To say that we played s**t, I think we have to be appreciative of the team when the right results came along and not only look at the negatives. How nice if we can play like Barca every week, but we're not there yet, but oneday oneday we will.
I would agree with you that it's good to have an air of confidence going into the game against Villa, but I'm just throwing in a caution we should not be over confident and let's not under estimate the opponent, play with the same spirit an determination like the last game to get the result, that's all I'm asking, isn't that acceptable?
Fair enough mate, I don't think that because Villa only have one away win we have a right to win. That would be plain stupidy on my part, What I'm saying is that they have struggled away, no doubt we have noticed it and we should take advantage of that. It's going to be in the back of their heads and we need to put the shits up them and keep them under pressure.
Apologies for misinterpreting your "fear". I don't mean to suggest that we go out believing the game is won, I want us to walk out as if we have it won but play like it's a final. When the Villa players look across the tunnel at us I want them to feel like they're going out 1-0 down. I completely agree that over confidence breeds complacency and I think that is Brendans job to manage that, but I still think we need to be more confident at home especially, and I think a home game against Villa coming off 3 good results would be a good place to start.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree about how we played against West Ham. I agree that missing Suarez and losing Enrique early on did affect us. But I still think we had the quality to control the game but we didn't. I thought we were sloppy in possession and our movement up front was poor until late on. I don't expect us to play like Barca every week so it's not something I am going to lose sleep on. To be honest I think that winning the way we did helped us gain more from the game.
What you're saying is perfectly acceptable mate. I agree but I just think we need to have more confidence and belief in what we can do. Someone mentioned earlier how strange it is that we're all so happy about back-to-back league wins. It wasn't that long ago it was minimum requirement with a squad that wasn't
that much better than our current squad and I think that confidence had a big part to play in that.
Logged
