WallisFrizz

What was the point in that from Walker? Massive time wasting?

That season ticket renewal “the journey continues” video features an awful lot of Coutinho. You could be convinced we were going to sign him, then you remember the Grealish kit announcement content from last season and that the people who create the content probably know as much as we do.

9 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

Shit for 2/3 of the match against the worst team in the league and now we are gonna finish top half. I know we aren’t getting relegated and I’m hardly an optimist but **** me lol, some of you lot are as delusional as the ones convinced we are still gonna go down. Who are we going to beat after brushing aside the mighty Norwich between now and the end of the season? Mental. 

Understatement of the year!
 

You  honestly don’t think we can beat Burnley in two attempts or Palace at home? I’m not saying we will but I don’t think we’re so bad we haven’t got a hope. 

22 minutes ago, nick76 said:

I was thinking something similar on Monday when it was Man Utd’s last home game of the season yet we still have three home games not starting until next week.  The Burnley thing is even more bizarre.

Think it’s nuts given that neither us or them had cup runs that our postponed game couldn’t be rearranged in the last 5 months. Now we have to play them twice when their form has picked up and they’ll be fighting tooth and nail to stay on in the league. Still think we’ll win at least one of those games.

16 hours ago, MaVilla said:

i think McGinn is a good player, but thats it.....good.

I dont see why ppl cant hold two thoughts in their head at once, he clearly does some very good things, he's tenacious, aggressive, and can have moments of amazing raking passes or the odd clever pass here and there, he also at times, has a great shot on him, i think he is probably best suited to a low possession (35/45%), high tempo, high aggression, direct style, and for him to be playing more advanced than he does with us.

However, he also regularly struggles to pass the ball 5 yards competently, or pings raking balls to nowhere, he isnt the type of player that would suit any form of possession style football, he isnt composed enough to receive the ball in a tight space then find a high level intricate pass to retain or progress possession (yes he can do it, but not a good % of the time, consistently).

I thought he played well at Norwich overall, he did a lot of good things, but a moment i saw that summed it up for me, is he was about 25 yards out from the opposition goal, at that time we had had quite a few slick, intricate passes pinging around, the ball was passed in to him, and some options were there for him to lay the ball off quickly and continue the swift, progressive, intricate build up.

What actually happened, was he stuck his butt out, let the player behind him piggy back him, and spent a good 5/6/7 seconds doing the "McGinn ass special" to protect the ball, which completely killed the swift movement and passing, and the whole move broke down, he did retain the ball and pass it, but in such away that it completely broke the passage of play down, because rather than continue the swift passing and offloading, he reverted to McGinn ass time when it was completely unnecessary, completely, and utterly unnecessary to do that, it just wrecked the fluid move entirely.

Anyway, my point is, i think he is a good mid table player, much more suited to direct, high tempo, chase the ball type play, he isnt a possession player, and if Gerrard wants to play possession football, McGinn simply wont suit that, most of the time, imo.

Just my own opinion of course, and you are free to disagree.

Do you know roughly when in the game that move happened. I’d quite like to see it. 

Sign.

1 hour ago, Dale said:

 

I'm done here. I don't think anything I've said is wild conjecture. 

All pretty fair tbh.

Think the only people who have been campaigning to get Richarlison banned are Liverpool fans pretending that they were suddenly desperately concerned about the safety of the Everton supporters in the crowds. You wouldn’t have heard a peep out of them if it was a Chelsea player throwing it into their own supporters should they have equalised.

21 minutes ago, WakefieldVillan said:

Chelsea the FA Cup - Yes please.

Totally baffled that you'd want Ci£y to win the Champions League though - probably the only thing we can "taunt" them on! 

Absolutely. It torments them that they haven’t won it. They’ve bought everything else, it’s fun watching them struggle to buy the CL, long may it continue (probably for only about 25 more days).

Dominic Solanke is one of those players where commentators like to call him by his full name rather than just surname. Bit like Ollie Watkins, Connor Coady and Solly March. 

3 hours ago, Sulberto21 said:

I think there are too many extremes in relation to Gerrard. One camp is definitely in and no criticism is allowed and the other camp can do nothing but criticise him.

I know you were joking but I find myself being far more pro Gerrard on this thread than I probably actually am because there is no need to add my own slight concerns because of the people catastrophising his every comment, team selection, rumour about what might or might not being going on behind the scenes. I do become defensive when people post rubbish (eg someone complaining that he always talks about Liverpool- no he doesn’t!) or giving reasons as to why we should discount the wins he’s had since he came so they can use the stats of the defeats. There’s been about two pages of drama today fearful that he’s going to bring the financial ruin of the club because Ashley flippin Preece reckons he’s going to work more closely with Lange. 
 

3 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

The same formation that does not work is being played over and over.

I don’t think this is entirely true. I agree that he has his favoured formation which wasn’t working for us but he has and does tweak it for different opponents. He set us up defensively re Leicester when it was so important not to lose another game and I’m sure he’s stopped or at least minimised the scenario of the full backs going high repeatedly leaving the midfield covering full back with Dougie alone in the middle and the defence exposed. I’m no tactician but it does seem like we’ve seen less of that. There’s also no chance he will set us up like that against Liverpool or City as we’d be murdered. 

13 minutes ago, Enda said:

I think the concern is once you open the door it’s hard to close it. Could easily see Gerrard over-powering Lange to sign a player.

Then “the system” is gone.

You see it all the time in business. Some corporate type comes in and tells the mid-level people how to do their job. Often ends in disaster.

And often doesn’t. In any case, my point is, people are frothing about something they don’t know about. Frothing about performances is one thing, getting het up this when we don’t know whether a) if anything is actually changing b) how it is changing or c) whether it is changing for the better or worse. 

Someone quoted Gerrard a few posts ago and nothing that he said was unreasonable.

12 minutes ago, Rustibrooks said:

I don’t get why him working closer with Lange and co is a bad thing? 

It’s just another thing for people to flap and moan about. We know very little of how things work on the inside, maybe it’s a tweak that needed making, maybe Lange has asked for it. Maybe Preece knows nothing. It sounds sensible to me. Let’s just see how it goes.

The ref needs to be on it this game as they are going to be kicking lumps out of us. 

I think we can accommodate both in the squad, even if they don’t play together that often. There’s rotation (hoping we get more of a cup run next season), injury cover, games where we do want to play both of them. Keep both I say.

2 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Not easily, no.

I think we've a very good chance of finishing ahead of Southampton - I'm not sure how worried you are for them, but they're on the same points we are, with a worse goal difference and having played two more games than us. They've got three games left, one of those is Liverpool, which they'll lose, one is Leicester and the other is Brentford who are also below us having played a game more with a worse goal difference. 

Brentford are interesting actually - they've got Man Utd next, but then they play three of the other four teams in the relegation fight - for us to go down, I think we'd be looking for them to beat United then lose to Everton, Southampton and Leeds, because those three would all need the three points from those games if they wanted to catch us.

Burnley would have to catch us too, they're six points back with four games left , they could do that by beating us twice I guess, but I can't see that happening - not least because if they win the first one, there's every chance they wouldn't have much to play for by the time they got to the second one.They've got Spurs and Newcastle other than us.

So then you get to the two who would face the biggest challenge, firstly Leeds, six points behind us with four to play - with Arsenal and Chelsea their next two - their other two games aren't too bad and they could come out with seven points I guess - unlikely but possible - and they'd be beating Brentford.

And finally Everton - five games left, same as us, but eight points back and with a goal difference that's 18 goals worse than ours is - they'll need to win three of those games to catch us - Leicester (a), Watford (a), Brentford (h), Palace (h) and Arsenal (a ) - again it's possible that they could get three wins I guess, but unlikely.

So there are two teams in Leeds and Everton that will both have to do unlikely things to catch us, and not only are those things unlikely they'll both need to happen. On top of those two, there's a buffer of three teams, one of whom, Brentford, will have to achieve some unlikely results in order to facilitate the two unlikely things that need to happen for Everton and Leeds to catch us and one of whom would have to beat us twice.

Oh, and there's one more team to take into account - us. I based all of that on us not scoring another point this season - not one - and if we do that, it's unlikely we'll go down, perhaps very unlikely - I don't think we'll score none. I don't think we'll beat Liverpool or City, but I can see us getting between four and seven points from our other three.

If we get one win in our last five games, goal difference means that Leeds would need to go undefeated against Arsenal, Chelsea, Brighton and Brentford and win three of those games.

So, yes, we can still drop, it's possible - just - but easily?

Nah.

Fair play, you put a lot of work into that post. No idea how accurate but I choose to accept every word and look forward to next season in the PL (never really too worried anyway).

11 minutes ago, lexicon said:

The players you've posted play pretty much all over in terms of attack, and I suppose that's the point - goals come from multiple sources these days and even as a striker, what you're creating is almost as important as the number you score.

Watkins had little experience of playing in a front two before this season but he looks like he's adapting to it. That little chipped pass to Ings was absolutely class, for example. 

It would be silly to sell him for anything less than silly money and I think we might be able to reap a lot out of the Watkings partnership next season.

I agree, I don’t want to sell either of them but I can see why they might want to buy another goal threat option, although I suppose if we buy players that can dominate possession more, it might allow more opportunities. Our problem yesterday wasn’t opportunities though, it was finishing.

35 minutes ago, HalfTimePost said:

The truth is people are chasing and hoping for a player that A) doesn't exist. B ) wouldn't join us if they did and C) We don't necessarily need to get to where we want.

Chelsea: Lukaku (5 Goals), Werner (4), Havertz (7)

Arsenal: Auba (4), Lacazette (4), Nketiah (4)

City: Jesus (8) (5 of them in the last week)

Liverpool: Firmino (5), Jota (15)

Even Spurs: Kane (12) 

West Ham: Antonio (8)

Wolves: Jimenez (6), Hwang (5), Silva (0).

Aston Villa: Watkins (9), Ings (6).

The 20-Goal-A-Season striker is virtually dead in the Premier League. Kane & Ronaldo the best examples of players that should or will be that player - but it is nowhere near a necessity to have the all-encompassing Striker in a team challenging for trophies anymore. 

They need to be able to work hard, drift wide (Jota the top scorer in this list notibly is the one least like a Striker), hassle players by pressing from the front, create room for and bring others into play.

Watkins is just fine for where we are but, crucially, where we want to be going too. He may not always be first choice but it would be stupid to sell him.

 

We need a third player who can hit those numbers then. Because of most of  your examples above there are other players within those teams who have scored more. I’ll ignore KDB, Salah and Mane as not fair comparisons but Spurs have Son, Arsenal have ESR and Saka, West Ham have Bowen. 
 

Even Leicester have 3 midfielders- Lookman, Maddison and Tielemans that have scored more than our forwards. 
 

Even if Ramsey ups his numbers a bit next season, given that we are looking to improve our defensive midfield (rightly), I can see why a wide forward is on the list. We do need to up our goals scored. 
 

1 hour ago, Villan_of_oz said:

Villa end tickets sold out in 4 minutes, not sure why I bothered registering my interest. Scalpers dream. 

That’s a shame. Hopefully they all went to genuine Villa fans.

4 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Spotted this in the article. Hopefully this might calm some nerves about us being after pensioners?

 

So they don’t want to sell him and he would prefer to stay there…Sounds like we’re going to assist in someone else’s contract negotiations with their existing club. Let’s do this every transfer window, it’s such fun.

3 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

It's probably just me, but I find the explosion of double-barrelled surnames in football really interesting.

Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe a product of changing views. In the past it seemed to be solely reserved for the types of families who want to 'protect' a name. I have met a Baker-Baker before, which I found funnier than I should.

I just think it’s totally reflective of society in general. I look at my kids class lists, it’s the same. Think it’s an increase in women valuing their own heritage and not just taking a man’s name.

26 minutes ago, sne said:

I'm fairly convinced we will buy Joe Gomez in the summer and I doubt we will buy another CB after that but who knows.

Why are you fairly convinced? I’ve seen him linked a couple of times but that’s about it.

6 minutes ago, Villaphan04 said:

this will be interesting 

I saw this earlier but couldn’t quite work out how important it was. It’s an event that student can buy tickets for so an Interesting discussion panel rather than a meeting for change? Not sure?