VillaJay

Emery sees him everyday and must trust him to carry out his tactical instructions more effectively than Ned at this point in time. He's a young player and had a good pre-season similarly to Ned, he looks off the pace at the moment and these minutes and experiences will serve him well and I'm sure he will be in and out of team throughout the season. Fans always want youth players to succeed, but we won't know how good he can be unless he gets a chance and a good run in the team. Jacob Ramsay had a very uninspiring start to his Villa career but is now a key player.

Not a great performance again, but young players need opportunities and game time, Unai obviously rates him and these games will do him good.

Our second best player after Youri tonight, uses the ball so well, and should have had an assist for Duran.

I think this is a little simplistic, the 100m sale of Grealish was pure profit that ultimately enabled us to continue buying after that summer, without that sale there is possibly no Pau Torres, Diaby, Rogers, Digne and so on. Monchi has already alluded to selling one big player to fund a refresh of the squad is part of his recruitment strategy. Until our off pitch revenues improve hugely, we will need to sell to push on.

I think Monchi has done a very good job trimming the squad and trying to tailor it to Unai's vision. We now only have a handful of players that we'd ideally move on vs the bloated squad they inherited and now have 20/22 players that the manager trusts as well as a younger squad profile. Dendoncker(7m to anderlecht buy option)Hause and Coutinho won't be part of the squad again. Diego Carlos, Moreno and Olsen could be moved on too next season and we have a crop of young talent out on loan at good levels ideally developing value and ability. Considering the financial constraints it's been a very good few transfer windows.

Did ok but was really poor for their goal and some of his passing was off, but if were to judge Morgan Rogers first game as yesterday, he'd be written off too. I thought he looked one of the bright sparks in a very poor preseason and deserves a chance, and it seems Unai thinks so too, which is all that matters.

Fair play to Chelsea the FA and Premier League are obviously doing nothing about it, there's something quite impressive about their brazen lack of care for the rules.

This has been a long game window, which sets us up more sustainably with a younger squad, handcuffed by PSR rules, we've done reasonably well and have good depth and strong squad to choose from. Ideally we'll sign someone on loan tomorrow who can add something to the squad, Geertruida i haven't seen enough of to judge, but Nedeljekovic looks very promising and looks built for premier league football.

Did ok yesterday and looks physically bigger than I remember him to be, Barkley, Rogers and Onana are all very physical players and have added some much needed power to the middle of the pitch for us.

Powerhouse of a performance yesterday, bullied Rice and Partey all game. Still room to improve but he just has a huge confidence to his game and is quickly becoming one of our most important players.

Guehi is Harry Maguire mk2, a decent player but no where near worth 70m. He would struggle with the weight of expectation of a 70m player and I'd be very disappointed if we had 65/70 to spend and put it on Guehi. Anderson is very average too, there has to be better value in Europe with good scouting.

Very intelligent guy and shows on the pitch too.

Huge key to their success, especially when you see a lot of sporting directors hired independently from the coach and friction occurs as they're not aligned on strategy, Newcastle and Eddie Howe seem to be in this situation right now.

Great read and insight and interesting that maybe we were open to selling Diaby and Luiz anyway to strengthen the squad, I'd expect we may sell one big player each summer to continue to strengthen the team.

It's fairly obvious we need to sell before we can buy. We probably expected Duran to go and free up some space to buy someone like Felix. Same with Carlos, we won't see any incomings until we move some other players out, our squad is too big and in a PSR landscape we need to trade. I think Felix could be good here, however I feel very meh about all our outgoings and incomings so far this summer, we've a good squad and importantly a top class manager who I trust to keep moving the club forward on the pitch. This season could be a 1 step back to take 2 forward situation, we've built more depth to our squad, added more potential and youth and a top 7 finish and CL knockout phase would be a good season to continue establishing Villa as a European qualifying team.