Peter Griffin

Because errors from a CB cost us points and stop us progressing to be a Euro qualification team Maguire and Stones make fewer errors and certainly fewer costly errors. With Stones, when he starting making errors he was dropped and out of the City 1st XI. He looked done and dusted and City and then came back into the team last season and he was excellent for them and that is why he got back into the England setup. Also, we (like most teams outside the top 4/6) have more need for our defenders to be less error prone as we don not have the quality players in the rest of the team as they do. Our errors will cost us more than their errors. Look at Chelsea and Liverpool, you don't see too many errors at the back from them.

I am not sure the relevance of spending millions under Xia. We bought crap players and had a crap manager. The 350m spent under DS has improved our team and is the biggest contributor to our midtable PL position last season. And yes Mings proved himself on loan, he was brilliant for us but that was in the Championship. He has been a really good addition to our team in helping us stay in the PL. But we are a team trying to get into a European position in the league. We won't get there with an error prone CB no matter how good a leader he is. The PL is a very difficult league and mistakes are punished and more so with defenders and GK than the rest of the team. Yes we need a leader and yes we need someone to organise our defence but imo this person cannot be error prone if we want to move to European qualification.

No knives being sharpened

We haveWithout question, Mings is better than what we had at CB but there are other influencing factors as to why we may be improving. One of those factors is that we have spent about 350m on players since he has come here too.

Unfortunately I expect Edu and Arteta will be in different jobs then. But if they are still at Arsenal then happy days. I think Vieira is doing his CV a lot of good. If he continues getting Palace to play as they are then I can see him going to Arsenal. His work in the transfer window is looking really good and that is something that is looking like dog shyte at Arsenal. 75m/80m on White and Ramsey

Yep I am with you on that, but given the choice of getting some cash for Mings and getting Tarkowski on a free for a few years on similar wages I would take it. But Tarkowski's availability will reduce Mings value

I don't believe that. Link to data?

and free next summer

That's the difference between top 4 and us. They have better quality players than we do across their entire squad. Yes, we have some quality in our squad but not to the extent of the top 4. DS / Lange / CP have now got Villa to a place where we finally have a decent squad with some depth in just about every position except GK. It cost a lot of money to get us to where we are. We have also started to add some top 4 quality (Ings) and top 4 potential quality (Ollie, Buendia and Bailey) to our team. We need to continue improving the quality across the full 1st XI and imo that means improve on Cash, Mings, Targett, Nakamba as a priority while continuing to let the youth develop. I am sure some would include Luiz in that list but I want to see him for another season before judging, I think he has the potential to become top 4.

You would certainly think so, the penny doesn't appear to be dropping though

Fair play to him.

What is the fantasy about what I am saying? Improve players? Lange is responsible? And yes ALL players should be under constant review for improving and selling on. The reason to sell Mings next summer is that due to his age and time with the club we would make a significant accounting profit on him. If we keep him his value will just go down. Then in a few years time we will be needing to buy a new CB for 50m/60m instead of adding 30m to what we could sell Mings for. This allows us to continue to invest more in other aspects of the team during that window.

I agree with that. And that is exactly why I think we should sell him next summer. We should hopefully be able to make a healthy accounting profit on Mings next summer, crica 20m/25m. Add the extra to that and we could have the CB pairing to take us to top 4/6. Mings is not the player to take us to that level.

I am not putting words in people's mouth, if you you don't like what I am saying then you can ignore me. But if you engage I am perfectly entitled to debate. This is an Aston Villa forum, all I am doing it debating things about Aston Villa. I am saying we should upgrade Mings and the point you are putting across is that we wouldn't''t be able to get better. I disagree with this.

If recruiting players was as easy as going to a fans forum and checking out which player a club should buy then clubs wouldn't employ scouts nor recruitment specialists to find players. Do I take it that if we could improve Mings you agree we should and the reason we shouldn't sell him is because we cannot find better?

And what is wrong with that? Do you honesty believe we couldn't find a player that we could afford, would come to Villa and would be better than Mings? That attitude would get us nowhere

If DS and Lange can't look at our squad critically then we will go backwards. We need to be constantly looking to improve every aspect of our play and that includes every player. It is this approach that makes winners. Sitting back and thinking we don't need to improve is not an attribute associated with winners

I agree but the problem is he does make mistakes. Villa wants to be competing with the top 6 clubs. If Mings isn't good enough for top 6 then how can we not want to upgrade him

I would say there is a bit of not making too many changes at one go and also keeping within FFP / P&S. I would hope to see some improved quality brought into the back next summer. And yes, Konsa should declare for Portugal, I really don't rate GS as a manager.

Agreed, but we haven't upgraded our defenders is quite a while. All of our current defenders came in when we were forced to buy a new team and couldn't splash too much cash on a single player. They are all doing a good job but Konsa is clearly the standout performer and has the ability to move up a level. The same way we have significantly upgraded our attacking players with expensive quality, we need to do this to our defence and get some real quality to play with Konsa and Martinez

What are u asking? What is a club like Villa? What is a player like Mings that make fewer mistakes? Konsa is a player that plays for Villa, is better than Mings and makes fewer mistakes

Suggesting that we can't get better than Mings is a fruitless argument. I wholeheartedly disagree. For example, Konsa is a better CB albeit not left footed. It is up to Lange and Co to find the right person but it is imo naive to believe that better doesn't exist

But is happens far less frequently to the better players. Elimination of mistakes is a huge part of what makes a great player great.

Way too early for a must win. If anything, our performance yesterday showed that we are safe and will remain in the PL next season. I would like us to win but if we show the same type of performance as we did against Chelsea I will be happy. That said, if we show the same type of performance again then we will comfortably win I suspect

They will be in the shake up though