The First Half
You know what, Aston Villa weren't too bad in the first half. Granted, that all became completely irrelevant, seeing how we went into the half behind, through a Yohan Gouffran goal. It was a pretty terrible goal to concede too. Newcastle took a short corner, and Mile Jedinak failed to clear the ball twice in the resulting scramble, allowing Gouffran to power past a helpless Johnstone in what was the only shot on target in the first half.
Bjarnason missed a decent half chance, and Kodjia had an effort deflected onto the crossbar in a half that Villa were well in. Taylor especially played quite well. But going into halftime, a huge question hung over the team. How would they respond to going behind? All too often, Villa have seemed to capitulate after conceding. Would the same happen again?
The second half
Yeah it didn't get much better. In fact, when Newcastle went 2-0 up, you could quite convincingly argue that it got worse. From another Newcastle corner, Jamal Lascelles headed against the post, and Lansbury kind of kicked it into his own goal. I'm not really sure how he did it. He hadn't played well up to that point either. One player who has done alright is Sam Johnstone. I still don't see the point of him, but he made a few decent saves tonight.
Steve Bruce continually does himself no favours, waiting until the 70th minute before making a single sub. Why wait that long when it clearly isn't working? I have no idea. It's baffling. And worrying. Tactically, I still think Villa lined up wrong. We sold a striker in Jordan Ayew, who failed to make an impact because we played him out wide. Tonight, we played Jonathan Kodjia out wide, and surprise surprise, he failed to make an impact. Hogan struggled up top on his own as well.
83 minutes and Bruce subs Gary Gardner and Leandro Bacuna on for Jonathan Kodjia and Bjarnason, in a really pointless and too late looking move. Why? How was that going to solve anything? It's almost as if he'd given up on this game at this point, which is a super worrying sign.
Oh, and the cherry on the top of what has been a godawful game in what has been a godawful season is that poor Scott Hogan has seemingly broken his ankle. His season is probably over, and I can't see him playing again for a while.
The highlight of the game is that it's over. Like, for real. We keep sinking and it stopped being fun a long time ago.