weedman

1 hour ago, Pimlico_Villa said:

A LB! Even one on loan, as it is an emergency situation and we’ve known that since August. I know January market is difficult, and our main targets were not available, but surely - given that we have a Director solely focused on bringing players in - we could have at least got one in on loan? 

Would have taken a PL U23s LB and been happy over the other dross we’ve brought in.

And if that PL U23 LB was worse than Taylor you'd still be happy? 

2 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I've started feeling like this is a mix of Karma from people who were in love with Bruce and some of us being critical when he was in charge.

I also realise some people will never be happy no matter what, and some will be "happy clappers" as some people say.

I wish more of us could offer a more realistic medium ffs.

The number of fans on here who act like they are new to Football is incredible.

We've signed a number of players we were excited about over the years who have turned out to be shite, and vice versa.

In the years I've been on VT, you'd think the maturity of the fanbase on here will have grown with it.

There is having an opinion, and then there is straight up horseshite and childish expectation (which ironically, is also my opinion).

This. There's been tons of signings that have come with massive hype and expectation and a big name and they've almost always ended up being awful. A few lower profile signings may prove to be better? At worst case we should see how they actually perform before casting judgement. 

I mean I'm pretty underwhelmed by our January transfers, but I was excited by the likes of Hogan, Lansbury, Bree etc last year and look how they turned out. Being unsure, or underwhelmed is fine, labelling it a disgrace etc before any of these players have even kicked a ball for us is ludicrous. 

I mean before January started we pretty much all agreed that our squad was hugely imbalanced and top heavy, we had no fit CB, with a common complaint being "Chester playing on the left side is hugely detrimental", a calamity of a goalkeeper and our defensive midfield options were Whelan, Jedinak (injured) or Thor, with a manager who wants them to be a quarterback pinging passes around and dictating the tempo. We've addressed all these issues, we now have 4 CB, 2 right sided and 2 left sided (one of whom is also a competent LB giving us 2 options there as well), with Axel still to return, a new keeper and a new DM who can actually play football in Smith's system. 

While the window was underwhelming we've addressed our weakest areas without a huge financial outlay, so sure it could have been better, but it could have been a whole lot worse as well and there are definately reasons to be positive 

2 minutes ago, Risso said:

I agree, unfortunately.  Signing three unfit players and not fixing the most pressing problems in the team is not a good sign at all.

We started the season with 1 central defender and Nyland in goal. Those superceded all else in being very clearly our most pressing problems and we fixed both of them

Just now, sidcow said:

If he comes or not or is a success or not at least it shows they have correctly identified our problem and are trying to fix it which is more that I have felt from those in charge in years gone by. 

Tbf over the last decade we've probably signed about 47 left backs, it's just none of them have been any good 

7 hours ago, Tommo_b said:

The flip side of this I feel is that if Hogan had got into Tammys positions Hogan would not miss as many of the easier chances, but probably would miss the harder ones Tammy puts away, granted that’s all hypothetical in my mind and it actual real life  haha.

The main problem with that logic is Hogan doesn't get into those positions, whether or not he might be able to finish the chances if he did is a pointless discussion. 

Its not coincidence that when Tammy plays he misses 3 or 4 good chances and scores 1 or 2, and when Hogan plays in the same team he barely touches the ball, not missing or scoring any chances. All these tap ins that Tammy gets are a direct result of his clever movement, reading of the game and his desire to get into the right positions, unfortunately Hogan possesses none of those attributes 

35 minutes ago, LondonVillian said:

 

Dress it up how like we are not making the play offs - that will be proved true therefore making it a fact as per your definition. 

"well if my personal opinion can't be considered a fact then what can?!" 

1 hour ago, TheStagMan said:

Rather you than Micah Richards!

Can't argue with that 

11 hours ago, Villan_of_oz said:

I was sick of Lambert by the end only because it went on longer than it should've but much like Remi Garde I really felt sorry for the fact they were basically babysitting the senior team. No real opportunity to put their brand or style with their players into action. I will be/have been ridiculed for but I'm comfortable with that, I truly believe we destroyed Lambert but there is/was a good manager in there.

I thought Lambert was OK generally, but I'm pretty sure he went to Germany or something before his last season and suddenly wanted us to be a possession based team with virtually no final ball, as a result we changed from frequently having 25-35% possession and surviving (with a few memorable games on occasion) even surprising the so called big boys from time to time, to having 50-60% with at least 2 months (from memory) where we couldn't even have a "goal of the month" because we hadn't scored any, because all we did was pass the ball from side to side endlessly.

He seems to have carried on this possession with no end product mentality and his teams continue to be totally toothless 

I think he was a good manager, I mean he kept us up repeatedly on a shoestring budget with a team which had Westwood as a key player, currently however he's terrible, and unless he changes his tactics up again he'll continue to be terrible

42 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

The best players are always the ones that don’t play. 

Its funny how true this is, even Tuanzebe has gone from decent young defender starting to find his feet to an absolutely pivotal, irreplaceable messiah that is, alongside Grealish, completely indispensable in terms of our style of play

I've never rated him, but dare I say it our only consistently good defender this season has been Elphick, and he's spent most of the season at another club 

28 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

And if we didn't then what?, revan being a example could have been a massive success. 

Continuing the same thing with ifs and buts is a pointless exercise anyway. You don't know how well or badly he would have done. 

I love how people assume because we haven't seen them play in a first team game there's literally no other way that a manager could ever know how good or bad they are. I mean no one's ever seen me play a first team match for Aston Villa, but I can guarantee if they signed me and threw me into the team it wouldn't end well

4 minutes ago, Leveller said:

But two clubs currently above you in the table are apparently fighting over him. Interesting.

On loan, which says a lot 

12 minutes ago, Leveller said:

But he used to be excellent. So what happened?

He was never really excellent, he had 1 patch of fantastic form that he has never come close to repeating as he lacks certain attributes, such as the ability to control the ball, or pass, or shoot, or head it. Other than that he's OK, apart from being quite injury prone

On Hogan's runs, someone said earlier that there's a difference between work rate and intelligent movement and that is absolutely right.

Compare him with Tammy Abraham, both run their socks off, but somehow Tammy is always in the right place at the right time. None of his goals are 30 yard screamers, you don't see him beat 3 or 4 players and smash a ball into the top corner, he scores so many goals because every time the ball comes into the box he's there to tap it in. He has great movement and great work rate - I'm sure it was on the weekend he started a move from a cross field pass from the left back position, immediately sprinted the length of the field and was waiting for McGinn to slip him in, completely unmarked (he scuffed a shot at the keeper instead). 

Compare with Hogan, he runs a lot as well, but when the balls in the box he's never quite there, he's always a few yards off the pace, marked out of the game by a defender or just in a  position where he'll never receive the ball. Not only would he never be capable of linking the play the way Tammy does, but even if he did he wouldn't get into a position to finish the move because he doesn't make those intelligent runs. Running around a lot doesn't make a good footballer unfortunately 

5 minutes ago, pintpotvilla said:

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, it just seems that from your perspective everyone else is wrong!

Well, if his opinion is Hogan is crap, and your opinion is Hogan is good, it would surely be he thinks that you're wrong in exactly the same way that you think he's wrong?

But Hogan is terrible. Things he can do: make runs. Things he can't do: control the ball, beat a defender, win a header, outpace someone, complete a pass, score goals, make assists, basically anything football related that isn't "making runs" he is completely incapable of doing. Even if some of his runs were picked out what's the point? He'd just miscontrol the ball out of play, or misplace a pass immediately, or shoot off target. He's just been awful for us

18 hours ago, villa89 said:

Sigh. They are meaningless because they don't really represent anything. They are over inflated because he takes the free kicks and corners. So if you look at Grealish's or McGinn's stats you might see that Hourihane actually has more goals/assists/whatever but when you use your eye's and actually watch football you can see that he's nowhere near the level those two are at. If Grealish was taking our frees and corner it wouldn't make him a better player than he is now. 

Example, Let's say Hutton takes the penalties instead of Tammy, now instead of scoring one goal a season he scores 7 or 8. Is he suddenly a better player? The answer is no but he'll have brilliant stats for a defender and commentators will spout nonsense about him scoring one goal in every 8 or 9 games like it means something, when it doesn't.   

TL;DR Hourihane is good a taking set pieces and not much else. (*He's also shockingly one footed which really bothers me in general in football). 

 

On the bold, penalties are not comparable to corners and free kicks. Do you think if Hutton started taking all the corners and free kicks he'd have a load of "meaningless" goals and assists? Of course not, because he's not very good at those things. Conor is.

He's not at the level of Grealish or McGinn, as far as I can tell no one is claiming he is are they? But he's an important player because he is the only player other than Tammy capable of regularly producing end product. You can have all the skill, all the talent in the world, but if you don't have any end product it's completely worthless. 

9 minutes ago, Hev said:

There's no atmosphere pre-match either.  You go to other grounds and the atmosphere is ramped right up before the team comes out onto the pitch.   We have nothing - even Hi - Ho Silver Lining barely got a response on Saturday - and how anyone can get hyped up by that crap awful screeching that we come out to is just beyond me.

That sort of stuff always depends on what's at stake. V Boro in the playoff semi final the atmosphere pre, during and post match was brilliant, because it was a huge game. When teams play us it's a big game for them because of our history, because we're one of the biggest teams they're likely to be playing for a while at least, so their atmosphere will be ramped up. For us, we're used to playing the top PL teams, quite simply no one is as interested in Ipswich. It simply doesn't mean as much to us especially given our position in the league (mid table mediocrity), if we're within a few points of playoffs with a few games left the atmosphere will ramp up at the ground 

11 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

The thing is, you would consider being 2-0 up as 'things going well', and yet the atmosphere was still fairly poor. There was a little bit of chanting after we went 2 up, but nothing like we've seen before while winning.

I know a few people can't be used as any kind of gauge, but some of the people sat by me on Saturday were still moaning at sideways and backwards passes while we were winning 2-0. 

I'd say our atmosphere is slightly worse than other clubs with large grounds in the country, at this moment in time.

Its all due to expectation. When we exceed expectations (even if that's not a win) the place is bouncing, if we're falling short (even when winning) it's flat. 

At the end of the day we were 2-0 from a  goal after 5 mins and a fortunate penalty against the worst team in the league, the atmosphere was never going to be the same as if we were beating Man City, for example, but it was "OK". A few songs, a little noise etc. It all went tits up when they scored because firstly we had completely let them (the worst team in the league) back into the match and it all had a feeling of "here we go again", that's where the frustration comes from, because for our faults we should be fairly comfortable against the worst team in the league if we have any playoff aspirations (which we do, as a general fan base).

And if this was a one off and we'd been in decent, playoff contention form you wouldn't see it, but we've been playing v poorly and not winning games for ages now, and we need wins to have any chance. Against the worst team in the league we shouldn't be struggling and that's where the fans frustrations start spilling over 

1 minute ago, VillaAlex said:

Gonna whisper this, I think Whelan has a had a very good game so far.

Agreed, but if we don't win he'll get dogs abuse obviously 

1 minute ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

I see what you’re saying and I agree with you but before on here other posters have criticised me for having a go at certain players I won’t name names

There will always be people who disagree with you, doesn't matter if you're saying a player is brilliant or awful or anything in between. It's just saying every player is amazing is as counter productive as saying every player is awful. You can also like a player, think he's really good, but think that he won't make it for us because he's probably more suited to lower leagues 

The discussion earlier was that we had 4 players from our acadamy currently playing in the PL, so we can assume a similar number from our current youth team meaning the vast majority won't make it at the top level

12 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

Yet you proclaim having watched these games like a badge of honour and as if you’ve some mystical insight into young players that others don’t have time and time again. Usually followed by some daft comment about having met them, how nice looking they are or some other irrelevance before proclaiming them the greatest player ever, it’s just a bit silly and boring and done in my view purely for effect.

To be fair while anyone can go, most people don't so it is fairly useful to have some insight on the young players for those of us that don't, it's just not so useful when that insight is that every single player in our youth academy is brilliant and also really nice and funny

11 hours ago, Brentfordnylons said:

You are correct it was 14 million Fact

As everyone knows putting "fact" at the end of a statement on the Internet makes it definately true

15 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Facts what facts? The same papers that said grealish was leaving?  The ones that said Henry would be our manager? And who is the supposedly second player e have had rejected us.?

also can you provide evidence that terry is taking over over smith?

The most believable bit is we're raiding Brentford for players but sending John Terry to negotiate because, well, I guess we just don't have anyone on the books with a closer connection to Brentford I guess

35 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I mentioned on Facebook that in some strange way I actually think yesterday could very well be a turning point in our season.

While the result was disappointing in the end we started to show shunts of the things we were doing when he first came in.

Belief to come back and some decent passages of play.

I think Kalinic will grow in confidence, Hause will get ready and Dean will eventually get it right.

We need to remember it is a work in progress and so many variables and unexpected spanners have been thrown into the works he has had to do alot of thinking.

Still not sure if we will make top 6 though.

20 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Second half was a lot more like his early games. We kept the pressure on and kept getting balls in to the box quickly. Play like the second half on Saturday and we should win comfortably.

I said this to my mates as well, that goal from Chester seemed to change everything, we actually were much the better team from that point onwards and it was night and day compared to what we've seen the last month or so. It's possible that we were knackered from the Christmas games and a couple of late goals knocked their confidence. 

If we get back to playing like we did when Smith first arrived he'll get a lot more leeway (from the fans at least) even if results aren't quite there yet, because we'll at least be able to see what we're building towards 

50 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Whilst I agree with virtually all of your post the first sentence is pathetic drivel and seems to endorse a mindless. anti-intellectual outlook. People ought to be able to debate and criticise on a forum without being derided for their lack of 'credentials', it's totally missing the point.

Agreed. An argument based on authority is always a terrible argument. Debate the point that's made, not the credentials of the person making the point.

Otherwise you'd have to say every decision ever made by every manager in our history was correct because they're more qualified than we are. Jonathan Kodjia launching a 35 yard shot out for a throw in instead of passing to a player clean through on goal was correct because he's a professional footballer and we're not. A referee missing a blatant hand ball equaliser was OK because he's a qualified ref and we aren't. The list of mistakes qualified people make is potentially endless and if the argument is noone can say anything about DS unless we have our coaching badges then we may as well shut this thread down. 

With the original point I do agree DS needs time to implement real changes, but the lack of defensive organisation at the moment is really worrying, our full backs are never in line with the center backs and play far too narrow meaning every ball down the line finds a winger with acres of space to play in, whoever plays CDM isn't dropping in to cover the CBs when they split to cover our marauding full backs. This happens whatever players are playing in those positions, it's tactics (or lack of defensive tactics) that's causing it and DS is the head coach, he needs to sort it out, we may not be the best team, but consecutive 3-0 defeats to Swansea and Wigan? We're better than that