david-avfc

36 minutes ago, Zatman said:

isnt Football like the 5th most popular sport in Australia......no chance we have 3 million fans down under especially since we have had one Aussie international in 20 years and he was only here for 6 months

You’ve forgotten the mighty Mile

1 minute ago, CarryOnVilla said:

Many players had contracts waiting for ages, Smith Rowe for Arse last season, pops to mind first. And like Smith Rowe, Carney is shopping around 
 

splitting hairs by the definition of the “the end”. Jeeze come on, you know what I meant. If he don’t sign “near to” the end of the window, we sell to these so called interested clubs. if they want him so bad, they pay now rather than risk losing him to another club. 

At what point does deliberately not saying “yes” start to mean “no”

I think that point was probably several months ago 

If he does sign, then great, but it seems like if that happens it’s because he’s changed his mind, not because it was always his first choice 

39 minutes ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

Isn’t he? He was performing extremely well for England u19s this Summer

There’s no doubt he’s considered to be up there as the best in the current youth categories but it’s not like he’s bursting down the doors of the senior set up.  Not saying that there’s a huge number of English players ahead of him but the genuine best of the best over the years are often way ahead of the curve at that age. Bellingham for example is already a regular in the main England squad and has been a first choice at club level for a few seasons now - that’s what a generational talent looks like. He could still become a great player, or he could be a total dud but it’s not like he’s out there doing it right now, he’s still only a youth player 

1 hour ago, KevinRichardsonsMoustache said:

There's a lot of work to be done in trimming the squad down to remove the 'bloat' that SG has mentioned. 

 

Steer, Hause, AEG, Fred, JPB, Davis have to be on that list. Mixture of sales and loans. Going to be challenging to get good deals for some of them

The window still runs until the end of August right? So still 6 weeks away. I’m sure we would have liked to get it sorted earlier but hopefully there’s still chance to get some movement before the end of the window.  

I just cannot see why JPB and Davis wouldn’t be able to find loans into the championship for example. They’d find a new club the day Villa put them up for loan. I guess with Davis maybe we’re hoping for a sale but were we getting greedy with the price?

One I don’t really get though is why we renewed Hause’s deal as now he’s 5th choice in his position and is now part of the “bloat” Gerrard is complaining about, he could have been released this summer

12 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Getting nearly 20 million for Targett and Trez suggests that we are getting better.

Although £15m for Targett which I think also included the loan fee, seemed a bit on the low side considering he’s a reasonable PL player joining another PL team to presumably be a first choice starter

Great to have him back. With the new signing Carlos we don’t really need to rush him back from this point either so can make sure he is 100% right before starting.
 

4 good quality centre backs competing for game time now, it’s gone from a position of weakness to possibly a position of strength 

1 hour ago, brommy said:

I'm aware of that but he can't play until next season, is my understanding. It would be worth a new club spending a couple of million to get him playing and integrated for the second half of their season.

Still, as others have said, I suspect he wants to effectively pocket the transfer fee as his signing on bonus and is willing to sit out this season to ensure that - contract signed in January but not playing until July 1st for his new club.

A wasted year for Carney is the result of his actions.

He can sign a pre contract agreement but would still be a villa player until his contract expires in July 2023

Kaden Young looked lively today and then scored a cracking goal at the end. With the heat and it being a preseason friendly it’s hard to judge but was definitely one who caught the eye in a slightly underwhelming overall team performance 

8 minutes ago, useless said:

When Grealish was in our academy it was obvious that he was going to be a very good player, the fact that at the time there would have been other teenagers in world football already playing first team football at a high level didn't take away from that, Chukwuemeka or any academy player doesn't have to be as good as Pedri or whoever to be extremely highly rated in their own right.

Also this idea that he's done nothing for us in the game time he's had at first team level is just dumb and ignorant, trust me put most academy players in the first team and they would struggle, Chukwuemeke gets more criticism for his perforances at first team level in his first appearances than a new expensive signing would, people would be making all kind of excuses for the new signing like he needs to settle and so on.

It's not a very good sign for our other academy players if fans are going to be criticizing them for not looking like world beaters after a few appearances, have people not learned from Jacob Ramsey.

Would also suggest that it's wrong to suggest that Rodwell, Wilshere, and Barkley have done nothing, most academy players can only dream of having the careers that those players have had.

No one ever has criticised him for not being a world beater

Everyone knows youngsters need game time to develop and are simply not going to be the finished article at 17 or 18 years old.

But, if Chukweumeka was always planning on leaving, which based on this contract saga it looks like this is the case, then there was never any point playing him because we were never going to benefit from his development and quite simply we have better senior players in the squad who could have played instead. This is why his contribution on the pitch has rightly been criticised, because if there’s no development gain for the club he has to be better than Sanson, Luiz, Nakamba, McGinn, Ramsey etc to deserve game time and frankly he hasn’t demonstrated it on the pitch (although Sanson hasn’t done much either)

I don't mind if he wants to move on, other players have moved clubs at young ages and have been successful in doing so, particularly those moving to Germany in recent years. After all we signed Carney from Northampton Town anyway so we can't complain too much at him wanting to do the same thing again!

But what does irk me is that it seems like the lad has been given preferential treatment to entice him to stay - all our other youngsters have been loaned out first, and none of them were given reasonable PL game time at the age of 17 - and it looks like we've wasted our time when we could have prioritised giving other youngsters game time, or just playing senior players and maybe picking up more points during the season in games like Leeds, Burnley or even Liverpool and Man City. It's not his fault as he's just playing the cards he's been dealt to the best he see's them, but for the club it seems like poor planning as this could have been foreseen well in advance as transfer rumours go as far back as 2 years with this lad.

I would love us to continue to develop youngsters,  hopefully Ramsey will be our next home grown superstar and will then hopefully be followed by the likes of Archer, Kesler-Hayden among others. However, the players we chose to bring through at the very basic level have to be committed to Villa, if we are committed to developing them. The point of the youth system is to improve the club in the long run, either through selling them for significant transfer fees or bringing them into the senior squad. If we prioritise developing youngsters who don't want to stay around for the long haul it is hard to see what the benefit is. 

33 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I don't think there is any chance we sell McGinn.

Crazy how some fans have such a vendetta against him for some reason

2 hours ago, Indigo said:

Yeah, Villareport just does what it says on the tin and aggregates "news". Some of these accounts fall down these weird rabbit holes of trying to do that but then getting in scraps with other fan bases etc and seem to lose sight of what they're actually trying to do. Stressful enough navigating VT at times without following pages like that on social media as well.

Yeah most of them I swear are managed by kids, well if they aren't I'd be pretty worried to be honest. The lad PGL is a reasonable follow as he looks at the data side of things so a bit different to the generic nonsense fan account. Villa Academy is also good for u23's / /u18's coverage. The rest can be binned off.

4 hours ago, mjmooney said:

According to Wikipedia he's a lifelong supporter of Manchester United and dreams of playing for them one day. 

But according to the VillaTV interview when he gets announced he’s a lifelong Aston Villa fan and has always dreamed of living in Birmingham 

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Starting to feel like having a well run club is a bit shit.

I want consistent, sporadic stupid links and will he/ won't he type transfer sagas for average players which run the length of the window.

What's Rubin De La Red up to these days?

I was going to post that I thought he died, but before posting I did a quick check and he’s still alive but retired after having some kind of cardiac arrest on the pitch in one game 

49 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

I prefer the players to be players, not good guys in the dressing room. Sure, he can play in many positions, but no longer to the standard required.

The kids have so many good international players to play alongside now actually on the pitch, they don't really need past-their-best influential players in the dressing room.

We all know the impact John Terry had on the likes of Grealish (and by extension the impact of not having those types around beforehand). I think Young will be a great influence on the rest of the squad, and he can also slot in to a few positions if required, he's a useful utility player and I don't believe he's totally useless on the pitch - not like Micah Richards who was a busted flush for years before we finally got rid

Not going to get too bogged down on individual performances in our first pre season match, but saw Ashley Preece raving about him today, not so sure from me - he’s a very tidy player but didn’t show much cutting edge and either lacked the pace or the confidence to bust forwards on a few occasions when space opened up

4 minutes ago, hippo said:

Tbf I'm struggling to see the point.

Back up LB to cover Digne - where we have a promising youngster and Ashley young.

All well and good. But I don't see a back up LB as a deal breaker next season.

A promising youngster isn’t going to improve on the bench, so this gives him the opportunity to go out to league 1 or 2 and play 30 or 40 real games not just kids games so he should come back twice the player.

As for Young, he’s a versatile back up not sure we’d want to rely on him though. Think he’s probably only a year or 2 away from retirement but seems like a good senior pro to have around the dressing room for the youngsters and to set standards for the rest.

This one just makes a lot of sense to me. A relatively inexpensive signing, will do a role in the squad, and as it’s a loan it leaves our options open if he impresses, or not

19 minutes ago, theboyangel said:

What a nice grounded kid! 
 

really like our interviews with the players 

Makes a difference with a proper sports reporter doing the interviews, Michelle Owen who’s usually on sky sports. Better questions for a start and then able to ask good follow on questions to keep the conversation flowing rather than just following a list of inane questions like they usually do 

On 26/06/2022 at 13:41, Zatman said:

His last appearance because we need to always start McGinn for some reason 

Also because of the fact we got battered and it was the worst midfield performance of the season by a mile

He wasn’t that bad individually in that game, but it was a shocking performance as a midfield unit and he was 1/3 of it, so rightfully that experiment wasn’t repeated. 

I don’t know what the issue with Sanson is, but two managers now haven’t fancied him and although he’s looked OK in cameos here and there he hasn’t really done anything to stand out. It’s up to him to win the shirt and he simply hasn’t done enough in the eyes of the manager, and I have to say I haven’t seen anything from him either, perhaps harsh given his lack of game time but I’m not clamouring to see more of him 

15 hours ago, MrBlack said:

They aren't being offered in tranches of 500.

Villa said they'll be offered in a volume similar to the number of tickets that are left, and be offered on a first come first served basis.

This suggests they'll offer slightly more than are available for each tranche, and then if everyone takes it up they'll have to say "sorry, too late" to a few.

Chances are, there are a lot on the front of the waiting list that joined it over 3 years ago, and, whose lives will have no doubt changed in the interim. Not to mention massively in the last few months thanks to energy costs, mega inflation, and wage stagnation.

I suspect they'll get to tranche 5 or 6 before they're sold out. The fact they've already hit 4 suggests to me quite a few aren't taking up the option,  which is pretty sad if so. Had prices not skyrocketed, and season ticket prices not jumped over inflation rates, I'm sure they'd all get snapped up in tranche 1 given where we are as a club.

I don’t know anything other than what’s on the official website, but it suggests the number of tickets were ringfenced separately for each tranche - otherwise they’d have stated more clearly that the second and third tranches were subject to availability only, and nowhere does it say it’s first come first served for the first tranche only.
 

The point about the volume of tickets matching the number of invited fans is that if your name gets called up you’re guaranteed a seat if you take up the offer, not that all the tickets are being offered immediately to the first tranche. 
 

I assume each tranche initially was set out at a fixed number, and then any unsold tickets from the first tranche were rolled into the second tranche, and then into the third, and any residual ones from that rolled into an extra 4th sales window. On the AVFC Support Twitter it says tickets in this 4th group are subject to availability only which suggests they’re expecting to sell them all and they’ve slightly oversubscribed the numbers.

3 hours ago, PaulMcGrath_5 said:

 

That journalists is a waste of space, fires off so many rumours eventually gets lucky on one or two which probably makes him seem reasonable, but most of his stuff is pure trash. He was pushing the Suarez links hard not that long ago, along with several others which never went anywhere in recent months 

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

As.others have noted, Otavio in a tiny bloke, but seems tenacious and has good defensive stats.

We all know, and I'm sure SG does too, that we need more physicality in the squad.

 

If only we already had a small but tenacious South American winger with good defensive stats

2 hours ago, useless said:

At Cheltenham from what I've read it sound like he was used as more of a traditional central midfielder, which he's probably fine at to a degree, it's where he played for our U23s, but at this stage and maybe in the longer term I think he's probably more suited to playing further forward as a first team player, almost like a No.10; for example I think he'd do better in the championship as a No.10 than he would in League One playing as a 8, so it's about finding the right club for him.

He's got a very good U23 record, he's been an ever present in all the England age groups that he's been available for, captaining them on many occasions, he didn't disgrace himself last season with Cheltenham, he's got a pretty good reputation in the game, I could see maybe Championship clubs like Coventry and Blackpool being interest in him.

If Archer can thrive in the Championship in the right set-up, then certainly so can Ramsey.

If it is to be the League One for him though, then Charlton could be a good option, Ben Garner now their manager did well with Kesler-Hayden and Barry last season when he was with Swindon, if not Ramsey then wouldn't be surprised to see them end up with another of our youngsters on loan.

It’s a shame we didn’t loan him out last summer, as a full year under his belt in league 1 would have set him up perfectly for a stint in the championship you’d have thought. Seems like he did OK at Cheltenham so hopefully he can step up to another level. Another spell in league 1 would probably be far better than going back to the u23’s but would seem like a bit of a sideways step. 

Probably needs a loan out to the championship for a season before he steps up to the senior squad, but another exciting talent

20 minutes ago, sne said:

Why does the star need to be white? Can't it be gold/yellow as well like the rest of the badge.

Looks goofy with that white dot. And I'm not a huge fan of the placing of it either, looks like it's about to hit the lion in the noggin.

The "original" current badge under Lerner looked like a cat playing with a ball or something. At least they made it look a bit more like a lion in some of the subsequent changes