We have played better than that with him. I can just imagine people who share your opinion being happy about those few minutes, feeling all self self congratulatory over what was still sub-par football.
Stop it mate, it's not healthy. You should be hoping Ronaldo gets on a good run of form for the sake of the team you support, and not that he doesn't so you can prove a point on the internet.
I hope we go on a good run of form regardless of who plays, mate. I want us to play the best possible football we can play.
Were you happy with how we played the first and last 10 minutes of the 1st half? Would you like to see more of that?
We saw a couple of glimpses of what we wanted to see, but 75% of the time we were struggling with the same issues as we have been since September: Individual errors, bad decision making, etc. No matter what changes you want to make it will take time to implement. We still had 10 shots on target vs Villas 4 and created 14 chances vs. Villas 7, so even though we were lucky not to concede we actually created quite a lot. We obviously want to dominate a team like Villa more at home and kill off these kind of matches in stead of being pushed back like we did in periods against Villa, and it annoys me as much as it does anyone else.
Here are some numbers from our last five matches:
With Ronaldo:
vs. Norwich:
5 vs. 5 shots on target - 8 vs. 8 chances created
vs. Newcastle:
4 vs. 8 shots on target - 11 vs. 9 chances created
vs. Burnley:
6 vs. 3 shots on target - 13 vs. 8 chances created
vs. Wolves
2 vs. 6 shots on target - 7 vs. 14 chances created
vs. Villa without Ronaldo:
10 vs. 4 shots on target - 14 vs. 7 chances created.
Three of those matches were against number 18., 19. and 20. on the table. The funny/sad thing is that some people stormed into this thread to post "hahaha! What you say now, Ronaldo naysayers?"-posts as if the Villa match somehow proved we are better with him than without him......
What can you say. One match is not enough to judge on and I would give it 5 to 10 matches before you could make a fair judgement, but if anything; those numbers above doesn't point in a direction where Ronaldo is the solution.
I like thinking longterm, and buying a 36/37 year old, offering him record high wages, with the plan of starting him every game, with the young and talented squad we have was wrong on so many levels. In my opinion that took us backwards instead of forwards, and it is visible both on the pitch and on the league table.
