Blessing In Disguise?

im with the article. id rather lose in this cup. look what happened last season

This was your best chance of winning a competition, now you'll in all likliness be trophyless - I wouldn't exactly call that a blessing, unless you manage to finish fourth, but I honest think you'd have had a better chance winning the cup than finishing in 4th

Yup I'm with Fear, and completely disagree. We want to be winning things and that should've started this season with the League Cup. Calling it the Milk Cup and all that is just not on. We aren't going to win UEFA (semis at best) and we're not going to get 4th (5th at best, being realistic) and FA cup we'll get knocked out by Manure 3rd round as usual. I am gutted.

But in answer to the article in hindsight it is a blessing. But we still should have won.

I just think we cannot afford to be choosy about trying to win cups and I fail to see the silver lining here. We got dumped out by a Championship side. In the 1990s, we were glad to win this pot twice. We used to have a reputation as a good cup team. Huh! Say what you like about Big Fat Ron (and no doubt many of us could say a lot!) but he knew how to get a team fired up for these "one off" events. This is a set-back IMO.

3pts against sunderland, nothing else matters!

The simple fact of the matter, is that virtually every season for the past twenty-five years plus, this competition has been our only real hope of lifting a trophy, and yet once again we have screwed up big-time and thrown away a golden opportunity. Winning trophies is what the game is all about. It can only be good for the club, helps and attracts a better quality player, helps to raise the profile of the club, and arguably, most important of all, helps to create a winning mentality within the club. It concerns me that yet again it is fairly clear to all that we find ourselves totally dependant on a squad of fifteen, maybe sixteen quality performers, the remainder simply not up to the task when given the opportunity to stake a claim. You have to wonder exactly where we would be, if heaven forbid, GB, John Carew, Ashley Young or Gabby Agbonlahor even, suffered long term injuries, because my reading of the situation is that we quite simply couldn't cope. It would appear that no lessons were learnt following the Leicester City reversal at the same stage of the same competition last season. Making changes to the team isn't something I have a big problem with, far from it. We've played a lot of games in a relatively short space of time, and with the fixtures continuing to come thick and fast over the course of the next couple of months, its realistic to take the opportunity to keep players as fresh as possible, however, in my opinion, making SIX changes is both unwarranted and unnecessary. Three, maybe four changes is o.k., but surely never six? Now we at least get to trot out that tired and well worn cliche, 'Well, we can at least now concentrate on the league/FA Cup/UEFA Cup'. Sorry, it just doesn't wash.

Even with the 6 changes we should have had enough to win the game. Harewood can't finish anything except his dinner and should be sent back to the spammers in px for Ashton in January. I sort of predicted this would happen on Weds morning with another Villa fan at work because of Dowie and what he did to manure last year with Cov, but it still hurts that a genuine cup chance has gone down the toilet again with a home defeat. Good luck to QPR, but we must put it right on Saturday and send Keane back up the motorway with his tail between his legs.

Whole heartedly disagee. This is the kind of stuff you come up with when you've been dumped out of the cup - ways to justify that it's for the best. I'm sure if we'd have beaten QPR the other night we'd all be writing about how we're going to have a great cup run and how important it is to do well in the League Cup. Yes I agree that it does mean we have a few less matches to play so key players can be rested, but how be being out of the cup be better than being in it?!?! Maybe if that's the case we should not bother showing up for UEFA or FA and focus on the league??

We've built the 1st team up to a decent standard finally, and to some extent we have got 'a bit of a squad' to back it up - but if we look at the situation in all honesty then we're still short of quality in our back up players, and possibly one or two positions still can be significantly improved in the 1st team. So I think we're all being unrealistic expecting us to compete on all fronts this season - I think we're still in the 're-building' phase, and hopefully we can add more depth and a bit more quality in the next 2 windows. Next year, providing we stay in Europe, I think we should be better equipped. I am pretty disappointed we lost, but of all the games in the last 10 days or so I would have accepted losing this one over the others. I for one fully believe the league placing is most important - at the moment cash is king, and I think this year could be our final shot at breaking top 4 - I think next year with other clubs spending squillions we'll be out of the frame for good.

Maybe the 20,000 who turned up deserved a full strength team with the balls to grip the match and put QPR to the sword early doors so players could have been brought off after the job was done. The League cup has traditionally been a cup Aston Villa have enjoyed great success in, the guaranteed place in Europe is also a prize worth fighting for, above all else the one thing that you cant get is personal pride of a job well done, that will have to wait till next season before the annual one game in the League Cup comes around again.

The only positive to come out of this, is that the players have been brought back down to earth with a bang! Maybe after 3 aways wins on the bounce they were getting a bit too big for their boots? I think that defeat is the perfect tonic to get them fired up to go and beat Sunderland on saturday and stay in the top 4!

So, After our amazing 11 th and 6 th place finishes, combined with getting knocked out the fa cup in the 3rd round 3 years running and the league cup two years running against championship opposition AT HOME!! Were going to have to buy a new trophy cabinet soon for all the hong kong sevens tournaments weve won.

I think it goes to show that our "backup" team aren't good enough to compete! So the less competitions for the regular/good players the better really.....!

Thats a good point to make ' In MON we trust!'. Hopefully it will get them additionally fired up for the Sunderland game, plus of course, aided by a little bit of desire for revenge after last seasons home reversal at the hands of the wearsiders.