Premier League - Villa fight back for draw with QPR
Djibril Cisse scored on his QPR debut, but Aston Villa came from two goals down to claim a 2-2 Premier League draw at Villa Park.
The away side moved into a two-goal lead after 30 minutes through Cisse's third Premier League debut goal and a bizarre own goal from Stephen Warnock.
But going two behind belatedly kicked the home side into gear and after Darren Bent halved the deficit on the stroke of half-time, Villa finally fought back to level terms 11 minutes from time courtesy of Charles N'Zogbia's decent low volley.
It was certainly a case of two points dropped for Mark Hughes's side, who missed out on an opportunity to pull further away from the relegation zone while Villa remain in 12th position.
The majority of the spotlight heading into this encounter was on Cisse's arrival at QPR from Lazio, and the striker was centre stage following 11 dull and scrappy minutes in the Midlands.
Shaun Wright-Phillips showed skill in his control of a raking pass just outside the Villa area, and though his shot attempt was woefully scuffed, the ball fell to the feet of Cisse, who expertly tucked the opener inside the far post with his first-time strike.
With less than 20 minutes on the clock, Cisse almost returned the favour for Wright-Phillips after shrugging off two defenders on the right and sending a floated centre into the danger zone, only for it to be a little too high for the diminutive winger.
Fellow debutant Taye Taiwo, on loan from AC Milan, had a little more luck with his deep delivery from the left wing on 28 minutes, though the finishing touch came from the unlikely source of Villa left-back Warnock, who inexplicably headed across his own goal instead of away and beat his goalkeeper Shay Given.
Facing an uphill task and a hostile crowd, the home side finally got their act together with Robbie Keane and Richard Dunne each forcing parries from Paddy Kenny shortly after the half hour mark before Keane rattled the crossbar moments later.
The lifeline finally came on the stroke of half-time in the form of Bent's 100th Premier League goal, the striker coolly tapping home from close range at the end of a slick passing move and Alan Hutton's low cross from the right.
The hosts remained on the front foot following the interval, with Stiliyan Petrov denied by Kenny moments before Shaun Derry appeared to handle in the box, only for official Neil Swarbrick to shake his head.
Petrov was again thwarted by the in-form goalkeeper direct from a free kick moments later, as was Keane on 58 minutes, with the rebound robbed from Bent's feet two yards from goal by Anton Ferdinand's crucial slide challenge.
With little over 20 minutes remaining, the Rs finally had another serious attack of their own when Jamie Mackie really should have converted from close range after good work on the right by Wright-Phillips, only for the ensuing low centre to go through the Scotland international's legs.
But Alex McLeish's men finally got the equaliser their dominance justified in the 79th minute when Petrov's wonderful floating cross from the right-hand side eventually landed at the feet of N'Zogbia at the far post to hammer beyond Kenny with a good low finish.
Further shouts for a penalty came on 83 minutes after Bent's header from a corner was cleared off the line and Keane's attempt on the rebound cannoned off the post and onto the arm of substitute Tommy Smith.
And Rangers had another new boy to thank in Nedum Onuoha in stoppage time when he bravely stopped N'Zogbia's powerful shot with his head.
Comment 12 - 31 of 31
Thanks Sue, whoever you really are! We've got to get some fun out of this, haven't we, or what's the point? Keep up the good work.
Anon comment 28, thank you for the kind words. A few good things have been said to me recently, I must be on good form. "Hi" to probably graham and melvyn who welcomed me. However as I replied to Melvyn I must confess that my name is a disguise and I like changing my name for a bit of fun.
I bet you cant guess my previous aliases?
Anyway, as an aside I must defend DavidD here, as I usually dont always agree with him but it was his extreme points that got me interested in this site a while ago. So keep up the rants DavidD, they are entertaining as are the replies you get.
It's the "mook" here, jeff_dkedd. Care to detail any insults I have thrown at YOU? And do you really want to enter into a vocabulary and grammar contest with me? Being deliriously happy with the dross McLeish is serving up is one thing, but having a pop at my linguistic abilities and then using the unimpeachably ironic phrase "occassional literate" (sic) is simply interfrastically disingenuous. As for swearing: If I use the word "f*ck" (it was good enough for Chaucer so it'll do for me) and you don't, there is a transparently tangential extrapolation to be made that my vocabulary is likely to be at least one word greater than yours.
However, I surrender...
Alex McLeish is without doubt the greatest tactical and motivational genius yet to a don a claret and blue tie; Randy Lerner must, with all alacrity, invest in a sizable extension to the Villa Park trophy cabinet; and I extend my most heartfelt commiserations to the fans of all other football clubs, who must clearly rock back and forth crying themselves to sleep with insane jealousy in the face of their execrable inferiority to the breathtakingly unmovable Leviathan that is the current Aston Villa. The league table is clearly a misprint.
Sue#18 I've read a few of your posts and quite frankly, errrm, they're good. Be careful, though, you'll get women a bad name :-)
Ahhh normal service resumed, Liz #19. talk about hedging your bets :-)
Keep it up ladies.
DavidD, you have to resort to insults and swearing to make your "points".
I may throw a quote at you - "A person who has to swear while making a point either can not say what they really mean, or simply has nothing worth saying"
Do not blame ME for the fact that more people seem to agree with my philosophical position than your 'predictions'.
I've said it once and I'll say it again, your posts are better suited for the city pages, but at least all we generally get from them is the occassional literate sentence with the SOTV ending. You give 3-4 paragraph rants about why we're useless, lol
If you seriously believe that your being HAPPY with Villa's form and any of those stats I quoted makes you a better Villa fan than I am, jeff_dkedd, then good luck to you. But with you and at least three others (counting the thumbs-downs) being happy with it, it's no wonder that mediocrity is something we would have to make a marked improvement to achieve. If McLeish reads your easily pleased guff he'll doubtless continue to believe he knows what he's doing. Yet again you have failed to provide any evidence whatsoever that he does.
If your satisfaction and my disgust with Villa's weekly pratfalls makes you a great fan and me a mook, then print me up a T-shirt with MOOK on it, and I'll wear it with pride. I wouldn't say I was NEVER happy, but just what, pray, do I or you or any of us have to be happy about with three wins from 13 and our last home victory being a distant, sepia memory? Grow a pair, for god's sake. As for your ridiculously childish jibe that I must be a bluenose... is it you or me that's HAPPY with Villa being p1ss-poor? Makes you think, dunnit?
A good question from bornagain - why can't we show the urgency that we showed for a quarter of an hour in the second half ALL THE TIME? It's a truly magic thing when the Holte End goes mad and the players all of a sudden start playing football. It can go on for minutes and then as suddenly as it started, it peters out, the crowd goes quiet and the players go back to sleep.
I have an idea that a lot of it is down to us not having a magic winger at the moment. All the good Villa teams I've known have had a great winger or two, from John Gidman,(who was a useless right back but a superb winger) to Ashley Young. The Holte End needs a player like that to get them going. A quick ball out and a run up the wing and we all go wild. Always have. When the crowd goes wild, the players start playing and everyone goes wilder. Sometimes it works when Gabby is on form. Keane and Zog managed it yesterday, but only for a few minutes.
My solution - Randy Lerner has to invest in a class winger. Since we bought Bent to put the ball in the net from crosses, we need someone who can cross the ball. No point in blaming Bent for not scoring if he doesn't get the service he needs. He has never pretended to be anything other than an old fashioned centre forward, so we need an old fashioned winger. Alternative - sell Bent and buy a couple of defenders who don't keep putting the ball in their own net or steamrolling over the opposition's forwards to give away penalties.
Seriously DavidD, you are NEVER happy.
Only 2-3 months ago you were complaining that we were playing negative football.
Now we're generally playing a strong counter attacking game and you're still not happy.
And yes, you mook, it is pleasing to see a fightback because if we had lost 4-0 all it would do is give ammunition to fools like you and rahul who just seem so desperate to be proven right in the end because all the pair of you have done immediately from his appointment is slag McLeish off.
Looking at the teams last night, QPR are definately moving in the right direction, unless something goes seriously tits up they are going to survive and stick in the EPL I suspect, and best of luck to them.
So says DavidD the suspected bluenose of questionable punditry ability.
"Especially pleasing" to see a fightback, jeff_dkedd? I'll accept it's better than more of the same for a 4-0 defeat, but if we're going to be excellent for 45 minutes and a bad pub team for the other 45 (yet again), what difference does it make which way round it is? Two points from six home games is not "especially pleasing". Three wins from 13 games is not "especially pleasing". Losing more than we've won is not "especially pleasing". Having not put in one single 90-minute performance, 23 games into the season, is far from "especially pleasing". A return to our trade mark comedy own goals and bull-in-a-china-shop penalties conceded is not "especially pleasing".
The appointment of a competent manager - now that really would be "especially pleasing".
And if anybody thinks the way Villa are performing is not down to the manager, could they please explain to me what the f*ck he's being paid for?
villa were poor and sluggish first half - and another ridiculous self harm episode.
keane and nzogbia were outstanding second half and we were all over them.
why not this urgency consistently !!
i had never seen keane before this - brilliant midfield play.
ireland and clark were also good.
bent has to have the ball just right to score his goals - wasted several chances.
looked at coldly we lost 2 points again - qpr were very beatable.
re bent he has a minimum skill set and its not possible to build a team around such players.
in contrast keane was all over the place and he can bang the ball in as well.
i was a big critic of stewart downing - he is not setting liverpool alight either.
so i may be right on bent as well.
The only positive thing I can say is that the great Zog actually played some good football and the goal was a cracker.
We can't be happy with a draw against QPR. Unfortunately after being 2-0 down we have to say it could have been worse.
Incredible the number of handballs in the game - 2 out of the 5? 6? were definitely good enough for a penalty in my opinion.
Hard to look at what Sunderland are doing and not feel sad about how happy we were just 2 years back.
Sue, it might have been a Villa fan who couldn't bear the thought of yet another draw! The thumbs down may have indicated that they didn't want your prediction to be correct, not that they thought it couldn't be correct. On the other hand, I could be completely wrong!
who thumbed down my prediction of a draw? Tell me what does humble pie taste like?? ; )
@No 16 Convey I know you support Ireland if I am not mistaken and I had posted in the Summer that QPR were going to sign Keane but then he left for the US .He was outstanding tonight and set up that first goal beautifully so its looking good for the Euros this Summer .I was disapointed in all his anticts though running to the Ref all night but the Commentators said thats his usual so be it.Villa were lucky to get him and he will really help them.The bad news for ROI is Dunne was brutal and looks either slow or injured and I cringe when I think of Spain attacking us with wave after wave Given will be very busy .
I honestly think regardless of how good Mcliesh is as a manager that they should make Keane a permanent deal he is pretty decent.
Been tonight Villa Park is a morge, no atmosphere, whats happening to supporting your team? McLeish is going know were surely its about getting behind the players, no matter who the manager is, we murdered Q.P.R tonight, i am still wondering how we got 0-2 down, but then i relised its the same defence that was hopeless at best last season, Dunne is to slow for the premiership, Hutton and Warnock have to be the worst FB's in the league, only Collins when he is is fit is any good and he needs a quick CB along side him, Cuellar played ok tonight but looks more at home at RB, why is Lerner not giving us a chance know, we needed to buy a CB with pace in the summer, but we didn't, and we needed a another midfielder in this transfer window, after Jenas's injury and we haven't brought one, no wonder McLeish is getting so much stick, when he hasn't been given a real chance so far.
if we play like we did 2nd half were a match for anyone, but the negative boring slow starts to games under mcleish like the first half then we would struggle to beat anyone
@ 11..... P what does the P stand for ?........ it may be P**sh**d ! ..... P *I*K.....or is it ....P*L***k ....either way you are one sad DUDE
Just a quick responce to Darren (comment 9) -
We have nothing against him (in general), infact many of our fans rate him, as do I.
If you took the time to read the post I made, the issue isn't with the player, it's with the style in which he plays.
In short, when a team gets too reliant on a single goalscorer, they begin to fall apart when they're not available or unfit, want a recent example? look at Liverpools when Torres was playing there, when he was fit, they were a leathal team, when he was out they were not even remotely daunting.
So rounding the point off, I didn't want us to sell Bent, but at the same time I worry that we may come to rely on him too heavily that when he's not around we're going to be seriously missing him.
Anyways, tonights game...
How many Villa fans were wondering if we were going to get a 3-2 win after being 2-0 down?, lol
Although I only listened to the radio commentary, from what I gathered Villa were totally dominated in the first half hour and then totally dominated for largely the remainder of the match.
Especially pleasing to see a fighback when you might expect a rather deflated villa side after the arsenal capilulation.
Just a side note for QPR, excellent that Cisse has scored on his debut, but I wonder if he'll 'deflate' after this point. I only say this because when we had Milan Baros 6-7 years ago (a similar player in both skill and tempermant) he scored on his debut and frankly didn't ever really turn out for us again. I don't want to piddle on your parade, I just don't think he'll provide the goals the fans may hope for.
What was my pre-match prediction? - A good match for the neutral.
My punditry talents know no bounds!!!
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