Fans need to look at the bigger picture

WHEN I got home from Villa Park, I did what I often do, and watched the game again. It wasn’t as bad as I’d initially feared; sometimes when you are watching a game live in the ground, emotion can blinker what you see.

Mistakes seem magnified when accompanied by a cacophony of expletives — large scale groaning and a sea of heads in hands also distorts the scene. Everything is exaggerated; everything looks worse than it is.

On the way home I bemoaned how we had given the ball away cheaply, how we had showed little fight and how there was a lack of creativity throughout the match.

But having calmed down, I watched the game more objectively and without peripheral influences and found we played relatively well, but that we came up against a team who made the most of their chances and fought harder. Our record at Villa Park is abysmal anyway, so I’m not sure why the expectation was so high. Perhaps too much significance had been placed on the win over Liverpool.

Had we taken even a couple of the five or six good chances that came our way, we’d have won. Instead we have fan forums and various media outlets questioning various aspects of our game — from our vulnerability at defending set pieces to the form of our keeper, from Frank Lampard’s lack of goals, to our inability to deliver a decent corner.

It’s over the top if you ask me. Sometimes you are just beaten by a better side (or beach ball) and the noteworthy point is whether you learn from the mistakes. It is unfortunate that the result at Villa followed hot on the heels of the Wigan defeat but the two games were very different. In one, we played badly and deserved everything we got, in the other we played well and paid for a couple of mistakes. But in this age of wall-to-wall analysis perhaps we should address the aforementioned issues and put a few things to bed.

Our vulnerability at defending set pieces: I would argue that we are no more culpable than anyone else. Every team goes through a stage where they seem to concede the same sort of soft goals — it’s an anomaly that will pass.

Cech’s form is more complicated: the conventional wisdom is he is not the keeper he was prior to the head injury at Reading. Some have gone as far as to say that he should not have got his place back after he had served his suspension, as Hilario was doing a decent job as understudy.

What we as fans sometimes forget is that players are human. They go through peaks and troughs in their careers just as we lesser humans do in ours. Cech is a great keeper and we are lucky to have him. He does occasionally have a lapse in judgment, but so do all keepers. When a keeper makes a mistake, it is highlighted more than when an outfield player makes an error simply because of the way the game is played. Also when an outfield player makes a mistake, there is more chance of one of his team-mates intervening and putting things back on an even keel. Your keeper is, in most cases, your last line of defence so there is no one to dig him out of the mire.

Those calling for Hilario to assume the No 1 position also seem to be missing the obvious – that with a lot less playing time under his belt, he is obviously going to have fewer mistakes to his name. If he played match in match out, the law of probability would see his perceived effectiveness take a bit of a dive in time.

There is no doubt, that during our back-to-back Premier League seasons Cech was in the best form of his life. He broke records, he achieved almost god-like status between the sticks but we need to accept that this sort of form does not last forever. In anyone.

We need to have faith in him and accept keepers will occasionally make mistakes. But we also need to give respect where is due. Some have spent so much time analysing the perceived mistake in coming for the ball that led to Villa’s winner, that they have totally ignored several outstanding saves he made during the game.

Frank Lampard’s lack of goals will have to wait for another column as I am quickly running out of words and as for our inability to put in a decent corner, this is hardly a new phenomenon – we have had issues since Dennis Wise left the club. Anyway — there is no let up with Atletico tonight, when we will see whether Maradona’s son-in-law is worth €50m.

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