Steve Bruce tasted his first defeat as Aston Villa manager as his side deservedly went down 2-0 to Leeds at Elland Road.
It, if we are to be perfectly honest, was a very poor performance from Bruce’s men. They were sloppy from the first minute, right up until the last, with Jedinak’s poor pass (to no one in particular), which helped set up Leed’s second, exemplifying this. Make no mistake about it, Villa deserved nothing from this game.
Bruce has been a magnificent manager for Villa so far, but, it is safe to say that he is partly to blame for this defeat today. I think he got the team selection wrong, and left it far too late before making any substitutions. For example, Gestede should not be starting, and with the performance he put in today, he should definitely not have stayed on the pitch for as long as he did. Bruce obviously had a specific game plan for today’s game, but it did not work, and Bruce will probably be the first person to hold his hands up and admit this.
Next up for Villa is a home game against Wigan next Saturday, and it is imperative that we get all 3 points from that game.
Anyway, without further ado, here are my player ratings for today’s game – they do not make for pretty reading.
GK: Pierluigi Gollini - 3.5
Arguably, could have a done a lot better with both goals. Looked more like the keeper prone to errors that we saw under RDM than the confident one we has seen so far under Bruce.
RB: Alan Hutton - 5
Just another typical Hutton performance to be honest.
CB: James Chester - 5.5
Put in a solid enough performance and was powerless to stop the 2 goals that Leeds scored. Gets an extra half a point for clearly not caring if he gets another whack to his broken nose.
CB: Tommy Elphick - 5
Like Chester, a solid enough performance. One could argue that he could have done better for the first goal, but maybe he got a shout to leave it from the onrushing Gollini.
LB: Jordan Amavi - 4.5
A pretty average performance from the left back today. Gave the ball away quite a few times and was caught out of position quite often too. Had trouble dealing with Sacko’s pace.
CM: Ashley Westwood - 5.5
You know your team has been pretty poor if Westwood is being rated as one of your better players. He gave his all today (although, as we all know, that is nothing spectacular) and had one of Villa’s 3 shots on target.
CM: Mile Jedinak - 3.5
Very poor game for Jedinak, to be honest. Was slow around the field and was wasteful with possession. His overall performance was summed up when decided he wanted to set up Leed’s second goal with one of the worst passes of the match.
CM: Gary Gardner - 4
Pretty innocuous performance from Gardner today. Gets a higher rating than Jedinak though as at least he didn’t decide to help set up a Leed’s goal.
RF: Albert Adomah - 4
Just wasn’t at the races today, I’m afraid.
CF: Rudy Gestede - 3
He’s well over 6 foot tall, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that he wasn’t playing today. Should have gone off a lot earlier than he did. In fact, I’d argue that he shouldn’t have started in the first place.
LF: Jonathan Kodjia - 4
Didn’t get involved in the game as much as we would have liked. When he did occasionally get the ball, you could tell that he was trying to make something happen, but he just had no support from his teammates today.