The Look Of Litex Lovech
Jonathan Capps - September 18, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
Christ, that had me worried. Remember the last time we qualified to the UEFA cup through the Intertoto in 2001? Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ll remember what happened next: a dismal exit in the first round against NK Cocking Varteks! For a lot of tonight’s game, you’d be forgiven for worrying that all that Intertoto effort will wind up being wasted.
For almost the entire first half Litex were gutsy and well organised and Villa were lazy, complacent and all over the place. 10 minutes in the least surprising thing in the world happened: A sloppy tackle from Coker gave away a free kick on the edge of the box and an incredibly soft goal ensued. The blame has to lie squarely with Friedel as this should’ve been a routine catch. Still, it just wouldn’t be Villa if we didn’t let at least *one* goal in each game.
Eventually, the laziness and complacency did wane enough for us to force an equaliser just before the break, but that was after 45 minutes of Litex seamlessly morphing from smooth movements going forward to an intensely defensive cluster that lone striker Agbonlahor just couldn’t punch through. It was telling that our first goal only came when we finally made use of a counter attack (from a situation that almost saw us go 2 down, for fuck’s sake!) and catching their defensive block at the wrong end of the pitch. Even then, it took a mix-up between goalkeeper and defender for Reo-Coker to get through.
The second half was much more even, that was until Litex went and got two players sent off. Oops. Then, and only then, did Villa look like they were on the verge of winning the game, and an emphatic Barry penalty pretty much assured that. There followed a string of half arsed chances with Petrov finally putting one away after another penalty area scuffle. His muted response to the goal (although clearly coming from a different place than myself) pretty much sums up my feeling to the whole game. “Yay” we won but “eh” we needed stupid mistakes and two Litex sendings off to actually get it done.
I’m concious (perhaps a little too late) that I’m probably being overly negative towards the game. We did, after all, pretty much wrap up the whole tie tonight despite the problems, which did include the lack of Carew and Ashley Young, the former of which we missed intensely as a clearly isolated and over worked Agbonlahor failed to make any real impact on the Litex defence. Let’s not forget, also, that Litex’s performance, especially in the first half, was consistently strong and indicative of a team that really, truly deserved at least a draw. It’s a massive shame for them that the whole team imploded so badly in the last quarter of the game.
My original fears about repeating the 2001-02 debacle were unfair. The Villa of 2001 would not have survived this game but today’s Villa ground out a very respectable looking result even if the performance itself was no where near all it should’ve been. It’s a very big and very important distinction and hopefully once we’re in the group stages we can start banishing those bad memories as effectively as we are currently doing so in the Premiereship.