Villa game was simply terrible. 2 dreadful teams both afraid to really commit to attacking each other and a 0-0 was pretty inevitable. It can be summed up by the fact that apart from 2 deservedly disallowed goals, the best chance followed a Robinson punt forward, that the entire defence missed leaving Milner clean through. He fell over.

The first shot that required the keeper to make a decent save was from Smith after about 85 minutes.

For much of the game we played with Viduka upfront on his own - with tactics like that we can't really say we deserved anything. Really looking hard for positives, Kilgallon did OK on his debut, conned by Angel into giving away a few free-kicks in the 1st half and lost Moore a couple of times in the second but generally OK. Of the rest Viduka actually played pretty well given the lack of support, Batty again looked tired and gave the ball away too much and our level of desperation was epitomised by the big cheer that Bakke got when he came on.

As there is nothing else to say about the game - I'll rant about O'Leary instead. Some of his quotes in the lead up to the game;

"I'm not worried about the reception because when we played in Dublin pre-season - there were about 10,000 Leeds fans chanting my name."

Utter bollocks - there were about 2,000 Leeds fans there maximum, and about 50 chanted his name - mostly the same people who were chanting "No Surrender" to give you an idea of their average intelligence.

"I'm not surprised Leeds have improved recently, now they have reverted to the players I brought in"

Bollocks again - improvement was due to change of tactics by a manager who DOL demoted, and was partly due to Radebe, Milner (youth Team) coming back in. DOL is also responsible for us having large wage bills attached to Johnson and Duberry.

"Last time I was here, (after the last game of the 2002/03 season, Middlesboro), I did a lap of honour and got a standing ovation and the fans were pleased we'd qualified for the UEFA Cup."

Crap. We'd been top of the table in January - were we pleased to finish 5th - no of course we weren't. Failure to reach the Champions League contributed to our financial disaster and no-one shed too many tears when DOL was sacked a couple of months later.

On top of that he was apparently doing badge-touching gestures to the Leeds fans - F*** off, you're not our Manager anymore and I'm glad about that. If you carry on talking about Leeds, the Villa fans won't want you as manager for much longer either.

Wolves was a more exciting game, but to be honest we got what we deserved in the end and no-one can have any doubts any more that we are deep in the sh*t.

The team selection was deeply flawed from the start, Milner may have needed a rest, but not for McPhail playing out of position on the left, and Bakke was blatantly not fit. Seth Johnson was on the bench but never came on. You may get away with McPhail in a 5 man midfield, having him and Harte together on the left was always likely to be a disaster. Bakke was out on his feet after 60 mins but no substitution.

Despite this, once the Police had delayed us for the maximum time possible before taking us to the ground, we got off to a good start - Duberry winning a powerful header at the near post after 3 minutes. A strange aspect of the game being Pennant and Harte took some good corners between them. We looked in control for the next 10 minutes or so, Pennant was causing problems with his pace and Smith restored to centre-forward was much more in evidence than usual.

Unfortunately a freak goal, brought our optimism to a grinding halt. A Harte like corner grovelled along the ground to the near post and Smith sliced it over his own head, over Robinson, over Kelly and in off the far post. Utterly bizarre goal and it changed the whole game.

Wolves, who'd looked pretty dreadful beforehand, suddenly perked up and with our midfield sitting back again suddenly found themselves with space to drive into in midfield and plenty of crossing opportunities. With a central defence of Duberry and an inexperienced 19 year old - this is not something you want to let happen. However, we survived without too many alarms until half-time and indeed had a couple of decent chances when Pennant and Smith broke away down the wings - unfortunately Viduka was always 20 yards outside the box when the cross came. However, D'Urso was having a mare and by h-t Duberry, Matteo and Smith had all been booked. Though Matteo was a bit lucky as having already been booked, he was about 5 yards from the ball, when Smith was booked for only being 7 yards away at a free-kick.

Second half was a disaster. The inevitable happened and Harte and McPhail failed to close down an attack down our left, a cross came in, Iversen drifted off Kelly, Duberry was slow to get to him and It looped over Robinson into the net. Would this spark us into life - not really. A couple of good breaks from Pennant was about the sum of it and it took the introduction of Milner for McPhail to produce the only decent move of the match. Bakke sliced a pass straight to Milner's feet, he ran at the defence, slipped the ball to Smith, who ran into space as Viduka took the defence away. A decent shot was blocked at the last. Apart from that despite having a fair amount of ball we created very little.

As Bakke tired, Matteo was left with more and more chasing, and frustration took over as an ugly lunge at Naylor brought him an inevitable second yellow. Wolves were crap enough that we still had plenty of ball, Sakho ran around a bit, Milner tried running at them, Smith hit long balls forward from midfield. We never looked much like scoring. Wolves' third goal on the break flattered them, but we can't say we deserved much more out of the game. The commitment is there, but the quality and tactical nous just wasn't.

Scores

Where do we go next - probably down.

After an initial burst of good form following Gray's appointment we seem to have slipped back to where we were before. City, Villa and Wolves are all very average and we only got 2 points and didn't deserve anymore. To state the obvious we have got to start winning games and quickly, we have some winnable games upto mid February. If we are still in the relegation zone then with most of the top teams still to come we will go down. To win games we will need to score goals this means;

1. We need to field more positive team selections. Leaving Viduka upfront on his own, defending like hell and hoping for a lucky break, is fair enough against the top 3, but will not win us enough games against the others.

2. Don't sell Viduka - despite being a lazy fat git, I can't see anyone else who can score enough goals to keep us up, especially as Bridges appears no nearer to full fitness.

3. Keep Pennant and leave Smith upfront so that someone will get on the end of his crosses

4. Pray that Milner keeps up present form.

Our main problem is a lack of pace and flair in attacking situations. Pennant has both, but is often crossing to no-one, Milner and Viduka have some skill but no real pace. You just can't see many goals arriving. Other teams may well go out and buy in January, we'll be lucky to keep what we have.

Eddie Gray's tactical wisdom also needs to be questioned - sacrilege that it is.

• As said already we need to be more positive especially at home.

• Reid had too many loanees in the team, but jettisoning them all is not the answer. Personally I think Olembe and Camara are a lot better than Harte and Duberry and we need to get them integrated with the rest. If they all p*ss off in January our squad is extremely thin.

• McPhail is not the player for the battle we are in.

• Batty and Matteo will not be able to play all the time and so he'll need to get something out of Johnson. Matteo can do a good defensive job but doesn't help create anything.

• You can only sit deep and play on the counter with quick mobile forwards - we have Viduka lumbering after aimless punts 30 yards away.

I think the best team we can field is probably;

But we will need Johnson, Bakke, and Duberry or Kilgallon to cover for the likely absences of Radebe, Matteo, Batty and Pennant at times. Even with that team playing regularly and well it will still be tough. The only positive thing in our favour is that there are a lot of poor teams around this year.

• Leicester, Wolves and Pompey all lack quality

• City, And Tottenham are utterly devoid of confidence

• Villa and Middlesboro are distinctly average.

Maybe we can grovel above 3 of them - I'm not too confident.