I can’t help thinking everyone’s getting a little bit carried away with all the doom and gloom after yesterday’s defeat.  Ok, so it’s our second of the season – and it was another defeat on our travels – but it’s hardly what you could call a ‘trend’.  Besides, giving the opposition some credit, it was Villa away and that’s never going to be a walk in the park anyway.

I don’t think they were any better than us, in fact a draw would’ve been a fairer result and the only real difference between the two sides on the day was the ability to defend set-pieces.  So whilst defeat is always hard to stomach, this wasn’t a Wigan-style defeat where we were nothing short of a complete shower of shite, we just let ourselves down defensively and once you do that against a Villa side who are never easy to break down, the points will always be harder to come by.

Don’t get me wrong, set-pieces have already seen us concede six out of eight goals so far this season, so it is a problem – but that doesn’t make it a total disaster and it certainly doesn’t have to signal a return to another Scolari-type era.  Ancelotti, not to mention the Chelsea captain – whose tantrum after Villa’s second brought back memories of many a supermarket trip when my lads were toddlers – will certainly make this a training ground priority, so at least it’s a fault we can correct (if I remember correctly, a slap round the legs works in supermarkets).

After the set-piece disaster, I thought we looked pretty good and we certainly played some good attacking football. And whilst there’ll be plenty of ‘didn’t take our chances’ comments, you have to give Friedel some credit for the part he played in that.

So whilst it’s another 3 points dropped and the second time we’ve allowed United to go above us, I for one won’t be buying into all the disaster theories just yet.

KTBFFH

Filed under: Rants