I'm losing patience with this guy. I know he's not always been played in his favoured position but I'm getting fed up with his terrible free kicks and hands on hips demeanour.
He's polar opposites between defending and attacking. He gets stuck in when defending but when he goes forward he looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
My only question of you Steve; if Bunn has been ahead of Gollini for the last few weeks, why is he not on the bench behind Johnstone today?
That seems to be a strange decision despite the fact I'd rather have Gollini as number 2 than Bunn.
Villa can do this!,They have left their big guns out and we shouldn't be afraid of that starting line-up of theirs. I would love for Gabby to return to his old form and terrorise their back four.
We want to go up to the Premier League ASAP so we need to be careful how many players we buy, together with the terms of contract, because we don't want to be laboured with a squad that is only good enough for the Championship. I think loans are the way forward for us herein. Johnstone is one, I'd make Rhodes another, Jenkinson (if possible) another and maybe Matt James. We could then go and buy Lansbury and Hourihane (if they want to join) because they would be decent enough for a squad in the Premier League, whereas Westwood and Gardner have already proved they aren't up to that level.
Win/win situation to put out our strongest available team. Win the game and we take a big scalp in the cup, lose and it will show the owner and everyone else at the club just how far off this lot would be competing against one of the bigger teams in the Premier League.
Johnstone, Jenkinson and Rhodes on loan. Lansbury £4m, Hourihane £6m, Brady £10m = a further £20m to get us promoted!
With that lot in the team we could play a 4-1-4-1 formation as follows:
---------------------------Johnstone---------------------
Jenkinson-------Chester--------Baker--------Amavi
-----------------------------Jedinak------------------------
Adomah------Hourihane-------Lansbury------Brady
------------------------------Kodjia--------------------------
That's a decent attacking line-up!
Maybe the hope with Johnstone is for us to go up and then sign him permanently? The GK coach is ex Man Utd isn't he? Could he have coached Johnstone at some point and be aware of his potential?
Just trying to figure out why they'd go for him.
I think he already knows that Westwood and Gardner doesn't work but had his hand forced by Jedinak being out. Maybe now he will realise that he has to try anything but them two in the middle whenever Jedinak is out? I hope so!
I can't stand them either so think it's a win/win situation. If our guys play well and keep them up we have two better players for the experience. If our guys play bad, they go down
I'd be happy with that. A line-up of this until Kodjia returns would be more than decent:
-----------------------Johnstone----------------------
Jenkinson----Chester-----Baker-----Amavi
--------------------------Jedinak-----------------------
-----------Lansbury------------Hourihane--------
Adomah------------Rhodes-----------Grealish
Kodjia can replace either Rhodes or Grealish when he returns, if they're not doing the business.
I think we should send both Rushian Hepburn-Murphy and Andre Green to Coventry, on loan of course! It's down the road, they're not in our league so won't be counter-productive to us and, they need all the help they can get, so more likely to give them a game. Also, we can send someone to keep eye on them every other game, to see how they're developing.