weedman

I'm with stevo on Hogan, I mean he's a trier for sure, can't knock his attitude at all, but he is a really poor player. 

Its such a cop out to say we don't play to his strength, and that seems to be because his only strength is waiting for the rest of the team to put chances on a plate for him all game so he can finish 10% of them. Aside from his work rate, which is class, I don't see one other single attribute that he excels at or that would be difficult to replace.

I don't particularly rate RHM (yet), but if our team was putting chances on a plate for him a dozen times a game which is apparently "all" Hogan needs I'd fancy him to score more than Hogan because I've seen RHM actually control a football before, rather than have it just bounce off his shin for a throw in, so I'm confident he's at least as good a player 

8 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Arteta always seems to be deep in thought and concentration when watching games and listening to Pep.  

I wonder what he is thinking.

"I wonder if I screw my face up a bit, and maybe cover my mouth from time to time when I chat to Pep about the weather, if people will actually believe I've had any input into Man City's style of football" 

8 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Kuyt is a not really a good comparison. He had a decent scoring record since he mainly played on the wing at Liverpool

And I thought conversations about whether a striker should be judged on their goals even if they played on the wing would leave with Gabby! 

59 minutes ago, lexicon said:

How is he supposed to prove himself if he can't get a game ahead of a player who is totally out of form? 

Why do you think he can't get a game ahead of a player who is totally out of form? Green showed some glimpses before injury last year, and this pre season, but he's way off the pace, I'd loan him out to league 1, get him some regular games, he'll get some goals and confidence and come back in Jan for the rest of our promotion push hopefully looking like a different player 

58 minutes ago, TheStagMan said:

Don't be so utterly ridiculous. 

 

 

 

We never had a plan A in pre-season

Plan A in pre season was "get the players as match fit as possible", same as every other pre season for every other team. 

Also the 3 at the back pre season, didn't Bruce even say he likes that formation but we don't have the players for it? I'd imagine it's there as a plan B if we get the right players in - I actually think Tuanzebe Jedinak Chester would work pretty well, but then we only have Elphick in reserve, but we could always go to 2 at the back again if there's an injury I suppose...Elmo would work as RWB but need someone in for LWB

17 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

That's just one extreme example. On the whole, our squad is very strong based on how they perform now and the qualities they possess now, and other fans actually do have some reason to be envious. 

I agree, we do have a strong squad, I'd say our midfield and attack is probably up there as one of the best in the league (top 2/3/4?) once they settle, our defence however is barely worthy of top half, and we are worryingly short of strength in depth everywhere except midfield, so assertions that we should be winning the league at a canter or blowing teams away week in week out or that "just" making the playoffs is a disaster is just ridiculous 

Our squad is good enough to finish somewhere between 6th and 2nd in my opinion. We are currently 4th, now we haven't played any particularly great teams yet, but after the summer we had there was always going to be a settling in period, and we're ticking over while everything settles down and I am confident we will improve as the season goes on. Luckily we haven't had a tough start so we've been able to pick up some points and get the season going while still not 100%

Someone pointed out either here or in the Bruce thread that pretty much since our terrible start last season we've been getting 2 points per game average, continued onto this season, we may look inconsistent to ourselves watching and over analysing everything, but to the outside world we are the defenition of consistency, that team that just seems to keep picking up points regardless of performances 

5 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Interesting how a lot of people think we're not good enough for promotion, meanwhile fans of other clubs are seething about us "cheating" with regards to the squad that we've assembled in recent times. To them who only look at the quality of our squad, we're buying the league...but to us who watch the team every week, we're not good enough for promotion yet. That's a big discrepancy, and shows that we're not playing to the full potential of the talent we have at our disposal.

Its probably because the way people assess the "quality of the squad" is wrong. The modern football fan will massively overvalue players based on their reputation, and therefore assume that signing a big name player for lots of money is essentially cheating and buying the league. Case in point, Micah Richards - many fans were adamant we'd picked up a bargain with him, even this summer I heard someone saying "I wonder why Villa don't play him anymore, must be some kind of clause in his contract they can't pay because they're skint". Now we've had the *pleasure of watching him and know exactly why he doesn't play.

Everyone's assuming the same with Bolasie, for example, because of his reputation they're assuming we're basically cheating by signing a guy that's barely played in like 2 years because of injuries. He might be great, he equally might have lost it completely, we won't know until we see him, I'm happy we have signed him and I hope he turns out well for us, but if it turns out he's crap now because his knees have gone, it doesn't mean that "we should have walked the league because we had the best players", it means the players we signed weren't as good as we hoped they would be

1 minute ago, Lerner's Driver said:

Any ideas as to why that was your first thought?

I think because I've got man flu so wasn't as emotionally invested in the game as usual

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

Are you honestly blaming Chester diving in on someone in the 92nd minute on Jedinak?!

As soon as I saw that challenge I thought to myself, "I wonder how long it'll be before someone blames that on Jedinak being out of position" we're at the stage now where Grealish could miss a 94th minute penalty (won by Jedinak) to see us lose a match and there would definitely be someone on here blaming it on Bruce playing Jedinak out of position 

10 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

It’s Working for me now. 

Edit: seems to work if You live in Belgium.

Yeah working for me too, just in time for half time, phew! 

It's amazing how 1 guy can stream a match successfully from his parents house straight from a sky box in full HD for the world to see for free but a multi million pound company with teams of people working on it as full time jobs charging £6 per game can't figure it out. Its absolutely ridiculous 

You guys are in the right place, it's just there's no stream there... 

4 minutes ago, Barney_avfc said:

Started without commentator. Now been kicked out of stream and not working. Anyone else in the same boat? 

Yup, ridiculous 

On 23/08/2018 at 21:59, KHV said:

I think he is a liability defensively. He has no awareness and loses people. Poor defending by him for both goals last night.

I agree he hasn't looked all that so far (hopefully he can improve!) but I feel the criticism for the 2nd goal is a bit harsh, I saw it as it happened and he was hung out to dry. Elmo pushed up pressing the defenders, and when the ball came through none of our midfield was in a position to fill in (I actually think Jack was closest, but he was clearly knackered and didn't get anywhere near), meaning Axel was caught between 2 Brentford players, ended up in no man's land really but it was 2 on 1 against him so not too much he could really do. 

7 minutes ago, Folski said:

Expectations are so low right now, it's sad.

Getting into decent positions only to put in shite crosses isn't in my opinion good play. Brentford played some lovely one touch stuff that I haven't seen us ever play with Bruce.

The amount of times we just don't look for a simple 5 yard pass when deep in our own half despite minimal pressure was insane, but will hoof it back to them to put ourselves under more pressure.

We created very little of real purpose, Brentford should have been out of site by the time Kodjia scored.

3 of the back 4 were out of position last night.

I'm sorry but Whelan in my opinion was a man chasing shadows, I only saw the 2nd half but he looked laboured, unsure in possession, like literally get this away from me as quickly as possibly, he had one hoof that went he miss hit went about 30 feet in the air and the spin took it to Grealish. He'd do the so called dirty work and might get a foot on a ball when close to a man but it was effectively going to another Brentford man. Granted some people will say he had 90 odd percent pass completion, the eye test says to me he didn't look assure at all.

Against a team being praised to the hilt for their football, unbeaten in the league, considered genuine promotion contenders, we had more shots, more on target, more possession, more passes with a higher pass completion %, more passes in the final 3rd (by an absolute mile), more key passes, more corners, all against a ref that saw Brentford make double the number of fouls as we did and give us more bookings, failed to send off their player for a blatant stamp and missed a fairly clear cut penalty, and we snatched a 95th minute equaliser. 

And some people are happy with this?! You're right, people need to raise their expectations a bit 

49 minutes ago, Skills said:

well in that case its a stupid signing by Bruce and wasted on a position that didn't need any strengthening

Im not fussed about the whole bruceball thing as the results have been ok, but very annoyed by 3 wasted signings in Tuanzebe, Morreirra and Nyland

We need a squad, not just a first team. If AT is competent across the back line it gives us options we didn't have before. It's not as easy as some think to sign top class players on loan, mainly because top class players tend to not be available on loan. Moriera has obviously been signed for the future, and we had no first team goalkeeper and brought Nyland in, I'm hoping once he settles in he'll be fine as well

19 minutes ago, Tony said:

If we sign him and don’t go up I wouldn’t be able to see this potential signing as anything but a failure. Short termism over buying and developing for the long term. Don’t go up back to square one. 

Surely every loan is "short termism"? Maybe we shouldn't bother in that case and just stuck with what we've got? 

1 hour ago, mykeyb said:

Bruce cannot improve players with coaching, he improves teams by bringing in better players, he will struggle to do that to the extent he needs to so I would imagine he won't make the end of October.

Could you not argue that Grealish has shown the best form of his career under Bruce? Likewise Hutton? Johnstone improved the longer he was here as have the likes of Adomah who had probably the best run in his career last season ("probably" because I haven't actually looked at the stats), Hourihane who has grown into the team the longer he's been here, even Chester looks twice the player he was for Baggies or under RDM. Snodgrass got himself a big money move after playing under Bruce, was subsequently bombed out of West Ham who were desperate to get rid under a different manager, back under Bruce for a season and suddenly back in the West Ham squad? 

I'm sure there are more examples especially with his other teams but that's just off the top of my head

I admit one or two of those are reaching a bit, but it's far from a fact that "Bruce cannot improve players with coaching", maybe if you'd added "as much as I want him to" then it'd carry more weight.

I don't want to be sounding too "pro Bruce" for fear of being ridiculed, and I'm certainly open to another manager (although I would much rather stick it out with Bruce while we sort out all the background staff this season, as we know we can at least be competitive under him, then replace him with a head coach the minute the season ends), but I simply can't agree with the stance that of a player gets worse, its because of Bruce and his "dinosaur tactics", but if a player gets better it's luck or coincidence or whatever 

1 minute ago, sne said:

Injuries might play a part?

I know at least Pontus Jansson is out.

For all I know he might be doing it for shits or giggles, we all know Bielsa is nuts.

Would still swap in a heartbeat thou.

Oh who knows why managers do it really, but there must be a reason, because they literally ALL do it. The great Pep relied on Snakian Delph at LB last season, Southgate got England to the Semi Final of a World Cup with Kyle Walker at CB, Man Utd converted both Ashley Young and Valencia to wing backs. Hell, Gareth Bale started his career as a LB before he was played out of position. We played Barry and Milner out of position in the middle, even Petrov was an attacking midfielder before he moved back into the defensive role 

I don't even bother to mention it anymore because I've just accepted its something every manager will do, and it's something that fans who don't like that manager will always use as a stick to beat them with. I just found it amusing, all the love Bielsa gets he goes and "does a Steve Bruce", couldn't help to mention it 

Interesting that Leeds are playing with 3 of the back 4 not in their natural positions, I guess that rules out Bielsa for a few posters, or is it only a problem if Steve Bruce does it? 

2 hours ago, New_Hope said:

All I want to see is a manager that can come in and give us a 'Villa' brand of football which is implemented right throughout the club from academy up to 1st team and is given time to make a success of it and lay the blue print for any subsequent managers to follow. 

Look at the successful clubs in Europe that often promote a reserve/youth coach from within who continues to follow on using the same blue print and are successful (Luis Enrique, Pep, Zidane etc).

I'm fed up with hiring managers with a short sighted approach that continually serve up rubbish on the pitch in the hope of smashing and grabbing promotion!

This is not a managers job.

This is a setup that needs to be implemented from the ground up before a head coach is brought in the bring those plans together. Head coaches are far more easily replaceable as they don't have the same responsibilities as a manager would because they specifically don't do any of the things you want 

If you expect a manager to come in and change the entire set up at the club implementing a style and brand from the youth system up, while managing the first team himself with a fan base that considers 4th place a catastrophic failure you're going to be incredibly disappointed.

That's a job for the board, not a manager. A manager is not going to work his ass off doing the work of a dozen (or more) people to effectively make himself easily replaceable

7 minutes ago, vreitti said:

Probably a solid choice against Ipswich though, if my memory serves me correctly, they were quite direct, with plenty of long balls, etc.

This. It's completely clear and logical why you would play our strongest player in the air against a direct long ball team. I also maintain that, while he has made some mistakes, Jedinak is nowhere near as bad a CB as people make out. He's our most commanding defensive player and I think it makes perfect sense for him to be at CB until we can sign someone to replace him with a similar physicality although I fully expect to be shot down in flames for that opinion! 

16 hours ago, romavillan said:

I again call BS on this Dean Smith malarkey. What he is, is a head coach in a system with good scouts and a DOF etc. You know like a modern football head coach in a modern set up (modern for the UK anyway).

What he isn't is a manager who claims to run everything from the scouts, to the training to the tea ladies knickers, the board room and the football direction of the under 11s.

I imagine like most successfull clubs with a head coach recruitment is the result of a discussion between the head scout, the head coach and the director of football. That DOES NOT mean he's a "face" for the Brentford system. It means he's the head coach responsible for implementing the wider footballing philosophy of the club on the pitch every game. you know that team that have absolutely **** schooled us every time we have played them? Yeah. That team.

All this is true, but you NEED the right personell in place across the board for a head coach to be effective. We don't have that (at the moment) so appointing a head coach would be absolute suicide.

Once the staff are in place across the board and they've had some time to actually assess what we need etc we can move forward with a head coach to implement the clubs "vision", until then we need an actual manager to do that work and separate coaches to do the coaching 

30 minutes ago, A'Villan said:

Well said, until you mentioned modern football only being concerned with goals and assists. To anyone with an actual interest in football, every aspect of the game is open to interpretation and consideration. Sure, goals and assists win games and are paramount to any success, though overlooking the other facets of football would only serve to hinder judgement, and would be detrimental to preparing a team for success.

Otherwise I completely agree, it's what I was alluding to in my comment about his close control. Anything he can do to give him that extra second on the ball to fire a shot off, and as you say, having a left foot will add a dimension to his game that opponents will have a miserable time dealing with.

Sorry, I meant modern fans, which I'm assuming is why a club like spurs wanted him for £25m but their fans had no interest whatsoever. Even players seem to be all about the numbers now as well rather than their actual contribution to the team. 

9 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

Last season, maybe against Bristol or Burton at home, he cut inside from the right and bent a wicked left foot strike with pace and power onto the far post. He definitely has a left foot.

Maybe I worded it wrong, needs to be more confident with his left foot maybe? I'm not saying he hasn't got one, I mean, I'm a retired Sunday league goalkeeper and I'd say I have a decent left foot, as a professional footballer, especially one as gifted as Jack he must have one, but he so rarely uses it that defenders always show him onto it and it really stops him being that prolific (maybe in the same way as Downing and his lack of a right foot, he still assisted a few with his right though because every now and then he mixed it up. He didn't do it enough really, but more often than Jack and he's nowhere near as talented) 

If he can start shifting the ball to his left and doing something with it other than a square pass defenders won't be able to stop him and he'll be miles ahead of anything in this league