Steven's

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On the replay Stevens face says it all as the troll cuts inside, panic knowing what was going to happen. I’ve got to say you could see it coming and with our luck it came.
 



Stevens frustrates me. He was brilliant early in the season. Even now he works hard, knows his role in the system, and gets in good positions. But he does nothing with the ball. Even on throw-ins he stands there holding the ball looking a bit gormless. Maybe I’m being harsh but he’s been poor for a while.

Bash was great defensively but total dogshit going forward today. Real Jekyll and Hyde performance. I growned every time he got the Ball’s in their half. I love the guy, he bleeds red and white, but not good enough tonight.
 
Lafferty should be getting Stevens shirt at the moment ,should have for the past 2 months ,O'Connell is also clearly more comfortable when Lafferty plays ,the runs he made have dried up.
 
As has been said. Stevens was left to deal with two player on the attack and we had no one picking up the overlapping player (Fleck?).

We have struggled down that left side since O’Connell stopped bombing forward in support and overlap like earlier in the season.
It has been especially noticeable in the past few games and rather than drive forward it goes sideways and backwards. I do not know why he has stopped his runs but it’s clear he hasn’t been told to refrain from doing them and hold back.

Stevens is in a comfort zone at the minute as there is no danger of Lafferty coming in and shifting him as he simply isn’t good enough at this level. Lafferty came in and did what he needed to do for league one (and even then playing the LWB role he didn’t seem to be very comfortable) but unfortunately he isn’t the answer going forward in challenging Stevens for that position (though as it’s stands he is the only one that can play there at the minute beyond Stevens in any case)
 
Letting Snodgrass shoot on his left from there, in the 90th minute, is suicidal.

And I'll say it again...

If Lafferty can't get a game now then SIGN ANOTHER LEFT WING BACK.
 
Antonb said:
stevens was at to fault for the goal. Letting snodgrass on his left in the box was dumb defending. which he must have been told about!
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No decent professional should need telling about Robert Snodgrass' left foot.

I really hope he didn't need telling. They should all know their key opponents without the management having to tell them everything.
 
Roygbiv said:
Think the left wing back position is the main area to improve next season. A bit of pace down there would make a huge difference.
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We've also got tomorrow as well royston ;)

Agree that someone as good as GB and KF would be awesome.
 
Can't see why another defender wasn't bought in the transfer window and someone with more pace. Could have given it a go having got other targets so quickly.
 
Weasel said:
When the goal came Stevens had been left to deal with two attacking players and I could see the danger coming from a mile off (I actually turned round to my lad and said 'were in trouble here'). He was damned either way. He either went with Snodgrass leaving the other lad to be slipped in on goal or get to the byline at least, or be went with the runner and tried to show Snodgrass inside with the hope that another Utd player would get across to block the shot.

Don't blame Stevens - he was left in the shit by his teammates not doing their jobs and helping him out by covering for him. Somebody clearly wasn' doing their job and that somebody wasn't Stevens.
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Agreed. I think Stevens is a fairly decent player, but we probably need a bit more quality at the level we’re aiming for. However, he was left exposed for the goal. Not entirely his fault. All the midfield should have got behind the ball as soon as villa went on the attack in the last minute. Holmes (with the freshest legs) seemed to be wandering around close to Clarke and Donaldson, and all of them had got sucked over to the right hand side. Blaming Stevens alone is harsh.
 
Stevens should be dropped now for me, needs a wake up call or something to get him going again because he is a good player just right now there is no penetration or vary to his play offensively he just checks back and passes backwards almost all of the time, sometimes he's gotta just whip one in or have a run at someone just need more unpredictability.

Also elmohamady's run created the chance for snodgrass to cut inside and from there he let his quality show. They also used the right footed hutton as left back and he would sometimes run on the inside with his stronger foot and it was sort of working out for him. Does anyone think having Freeman on the left wing-back could work extremely well? he can move inwards on his right o'connell can overlap, and he knows how to drift into the box and score whilst also being comfortable on the left having played at left-back for us before. In the meantime I would like to see Lafferty start but he seems completely unable to get a game even with Stevens out of sorts.
 
I didn't like Freeman at left back previously but I'd try him at LWB now. He'd certainly give us something different there.
 
Ricky said:
I didn't like Freeman at left back previously but I'd try him at LWB now. He'd certainly give us something different there.
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I'd play Lafferty in the next two to give him a chance and then try Freeman there when he's back. Maybe a spell out will do Stevens good.

I also think Basham should be looking over his shoulder somewhat. The two games this season where Wright and Stearman have played together has seen us keep a clean sheet in both. It would put a stop to the overlapping centre backs but that's hardly been a feature in the past few months.
 
I am also wondering why Lafferty is not getting a look in. He looked good when he came on against Preston (at Preston) and was decent against Preston at the weekend in the cup, including having a crack on goal.
 



Don’t get all this stick of Stevens think he has performed pretty consistantly well all season . Just don’t think he has as much quality as a Baldock , suprised lafferty hasn’t at least had a run of a few games as if I really don’t see much difference between the two.
 
Weasel said:
As soon as i saw the break i knew we were in the shit. We started leaving big holes in the middle of the park, and villa were overloading us on the wings.

When the goal came Stevens had been left to deal with two attacking players and I could see the danger coming from a mile off (I actually turned round to my lad and said 'were in trouble here'). He was damned either way. He either went with Snodgrass leaving the other lad to be slipped in on goal or get to the byline at least, or be went with the runner and tried to show Snodgrass inside with the hope that another Utd player would get across to block the shot.

Don't blame Stevens - he was left in the shit by his teammates not doing their jobs and helping him out by covering for him. Somebody clearly wasn' doing their job and that somebody wasn't Stevens. In fact if u watch the highlights you will see that it almost happened a couple of other times down our left hand side but on those occasions we got away with it either by luck or villas shit final ball.

My gripe with Stevens at the moment is his lack of running at defenders and his shocking balls/crosses in the attacking third. I'd prefer Lafferty at the moment. Bashams ball in the attacking third is also bloody awful more often than not.
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The thing is, they were 2 on 1 because they caught us on the break. When pushing for a goal, I wouldn't expect a central midfielder to be able to cover deep LB after 90 minutes.

Where Stevens is being criticised is for making a poor decision, but granted his options weren't great. If he'd showed Snodgrass down the line, the only option was either pass to the overlapping runner or cross with his weaker foot. Showing a left footed, rightsided player of Snodgrass' talent inside was suicidal because it put everyone on panic stations. It opened up so many more dangerous options for them. Stevens has ability but both his attacking and defensive decision making has been notably poor for some time.
 
I don't buy all this about Stevens being caught in two minds .He was slow and on the back foot ,he made the decision to show him inside but then gave him acres of space to have a shot

Grealish and Snodgrass had done him like this over and over on the night
 
Ricky said:
Letting Snodgrass shoot on his left from there, in the 90th minute, is suicidal.

And I'll say it again...

If Lafferty can't get a game now then SIGN ANOTHER LEFT WING BACK.
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This ^^^^

For me, Stevens has been off par for a while now & needs dropping.
If Lafferty’s not convinced Wilder that he’s capable of replacing a weak link, things like last night will keep happening as Stevens is bang out of form imo.
 
melreesrip said:
Not cutting it at this level? thoughts?
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My thoughts are that "not cutting it" is, yet more, over dramatic tripe.

Stevens wasn't great last night, and probably lacks that little bit of quality needed when going forward, but he has defended well so far this season: you're being far too harsh.
 
Reassured to read the posts in this thread acknowledging that Stevens was in a difficult position due to Villa having an overload against him. Some of the posts on here and on Twitter were miles over the top last night.

Yes, he made a mistake but you could see why he made it - there was a split second where he didn't know whether Snodgrass was going to slip it to the unmarked full back and it that moment, Snodgrass went away from him.
 
alcoblade said:
We didn’t take our chances, other than that, how were poor?
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Basham giving the ball away because his ball skills are woeful. Leonard was absent. Stevens arguably at fault for the goal. Lack of creativity from midfielders. Didn't 'go for it' second half.
 
I felt he was solid last night, the goal was his only mistake and what a mistake. We got caught upfield and he was left 2 on 1 overloaded, which allowed snodgrass to cut in and score. Villa were ordinary but confident due to their current run, (just like Bristol City when they turned up) . But it took them 90 mins and a worldy from a 10 million pound player. They were outplayed for most of the game
 
thehet said:
Basham giving the ball away because his ball skills are woeful. Leonard was absent. Stevens arguably at fault for the goal. Lack of creativity from midfielders. Didn't 'go for it' second half.
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Glad i’ve recorded the match because I have to look at Leonard’s contribution. I’m getting too old to stand right at the back of the kop, glasses an all, and pick out individual players. He seemed relatively anonymous ?
 
I agree Stevens was left two on one, but his number one priority had to be stopping Snodgrass from shooting.

The fact that no one was picking up Elmohamady, does not, in any way, absolve him from blame for the goal. I just do not know what he was thinking :(
 
Stevens has been below his early season levels, but he played L2 last season and it is a major step up. He also suffers (as did Lafferty) that our RWB are both far better. Both Baldock & Freeman are superior to either LWB.

Our budget dictates we have to find gems, sometimes it takes time for them to shine.
 



10-0 win said:
Think Bash is the player who struggles the most, our weakest link...
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Controversial, but I do agree based on last night - bags of heart but if we want a team of ball players then unfortunately he doesn't quite cut it.
 
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