Summer Transfer Window (2024/25)

[Leeroy]

7 hours ago, Jenko#4 said:

Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Pau*, Maatsen* Onana* Tielemans* McGinn, Rogers*, Bailey, Watkins 

I think most people will agree that this is probably our strongest 11 at the moment, but one thing to note is that only 5 of the 11 are Emery signings. He has an ideal way of playing, and he has managed to get us to where we are with a majority of players that are neither his or Monchi’s. 

We now have a midfield duo hand picked by Emery, two new fullbacks that fit his style (Maatsen & Kosta), and a group of talented youngsters that are here because of him, which is a big positive. 

We’ve also cleared out a lot of players that were not his choice (Dougie, Chambers, Tim, Coutinho, Sanson) and weve done it all with a very low net spend. 

We need to trust the process and let him build a team fully in his style. This will not happen in just 1 or 2 summers though so patience is needed. Sit back, let Unai and Monchi get the right players in at the right time, and enjoy the show……

 

I'd agree that is currently our best 11. The two weaknesses IMO are Cash and lack of goals/creativity further forward. None of those players behind Watkins have ever got more than 6 goals in the league other than Bailey who got 10 last season. If we could take out one of the CMs and replace with a true number 10 who can create and score, we'd be a lot better. 

 

I think every manager has the same issue going into a club where they are not his players, but if the player is quality the manager won't care. Glasner went into Palace but I'm not sure he'd be complaining that Eze and Guehi weren't his players. Likewise Pep didn't sign KDB but he is still a key player for them now 8 years later. 

 

What is interesting about that lineup is the other 6 players were signed by Dean Smith, who deserves a lot of credit. Meanwhile, none of them are Gerrard's signings who IMO is totally to blame for the financial limitations we have now. Dendoncker, Coutinho, Chambers, Carlos, Olsen - all Gerrard signings. He even gave Hause his new contract and we now can't shift him. Digne has been ok/decent but probably we hoped for a bit more. The only one he got totally right was Kamara on a free who is absolute quality but even then the guy has been injured for half the time he's been here. 

 

Smith can be proud that over half of our current strongest lineup were signed by him. 

[Nicho]

8 hours ago, grobs said:

I still think we are crying out for a CB. We are so light there. I don’t think we can rely on mings being the player he was 

Out of interest do you think the same of Kamara and Buendia or is it because it’s his second one, his age and the length of time out? 

Im hopeful he’ll come back the same but the concern is there. Think we need a centre back regardless. 4 is not enough.

[sne]

12 minutes ago, Nicho said:

Out of interest do you think the same of Kamara and Buendia or is it because it’s his second one, his age and the length of time out? 

Im hopeful he’ll come back the same but the concern is there. Think we need a centre back regardless. 4 is not enough.

For me it's a combination of age, type of injury and that he's quite a big player. I don't doubt for a second that he's put the absolute maximum effort and dedication into coming back thou.

[MSvillain]

5 days until the olympics finishes, wonder if thats when the Felix smokescreen will clear for Baena/Fermin Lopez 

[lexicon]

9 hours ago, _AA_786 said:

Fair enough but IMO if we want someone experienced and happy to be behind/rotating with Ollie then we're looking at someone up to £30m like Tammy (who I'd take but many have been against resigning him) as some of the other options have found clubs now. Alternatively it would likely be a free agents like Ben Yedder as players won't come on loan for limited minutes. 

In that context, a talented player like Roque gives us not only a player for this year but a potential future beyond Ollie in years to come.

Roque is completely unproven and a bit small for my liking. He's not going to function as a lone striker for us - Tammy would be the better option of the two but I'm not that convinced by him, especially for the price. 

For me, an ideal candidate would be someone like Gerard Moreno. 

[lexicon]

4 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Sid this before, name a top PL team that carries 2 reliable experienced number 9s

Newcastle...city don't, arsenal don't, Liverpool dont

If you take this fullkrug as an example, if we were to sign him as this reliable back up, what would we do with him? Give him 30 mins a month and hope that he's happy and doesn't decline as a footballer? Or just be Ings again 

City have two reliable strike options but due to their respective ages, it's a problem, because they're both good enough to start and only can be the main man. It's a more exaggerated version of the problem we have.

Arsenal have been crying out for a striker for ages.

Liverpool are less reliant on their striker than us due to the system they play. 

All you'd be doing by replacing Duran with another young striker with potential is showing that you'd not learned any lessons and finding yourself in the same spot in 6 months time. 

[rubberman]

14 minutes ago, lexicon said:

All you'd be doing by replacing Duran with another young striker with potential is showing that you'd not learned any lessons and finding yourself in the same spot in 6 months time. 

Not saying it's the right strategy necessarily, but given the likelihood of still being under PSR/new system financial constraints next year, turning a ~£20m profit on a young striker as we have with Duran isn't a bad thing. Ideally they work and become a longer term Ollie replacement, or they don't quite fit and we flip for a profit, or it's not much (relatively) cash spent on a flop.

[AshVilla]

I think it's a case of if Watkins were to get injured for a long length of time and Duran were to be sold, would you have faith in Bailey, Tielemans, Jaden, Archer, Buendia, Ramsey stepping in and matching our output from last season in terms of G/A.

Bear in mind that based on preseason we have not upgraded at CB or RB and do not appear to have improved defensively and last season we conceded 60+ goals and kept only 6 clean sheets so to finish top 6 again we would probably need to match last seasons output?

Watkins 19G/13A

Doug 9G/5A

Diaby 6G/8A

Duran 5G

---------------------

Bailey 10G/9A

Tielemans 2G/6A

Jaden 12G/6A (Championship)

Archer 4G / 1A

Buendia (Injured)

Ramsey 1G / 1A

Edited August 5 by AshVilla

[villa4europe]

25 minutes ago, lexicon said:

City have two reliable strike options but due to their respective ages, it's a problem, because they're both good enough to start and only can be the main man. It's a more exaggerated version of the problem we have.

Arsenal have been crying out for a striker for ages.

Liverpool are less reliant on their striker than us due to the system they play. 

All you'd be doing by replacing Duran with another young striker with potential is showing that you'd not learned any lessons and finding yourself in the same spot in 6 months time. 

Alvarez? he can play multiple positions, kind of the same with arsenal using Jesus, they're not out and out number 9s, they're both better in that position than us having to use rogers or bailey or last season diaby, signing say felix might make more sense as he can cover 10 and 9, thats how liverpool set up too, if nunez gets injured then salah, jota, diaz step up not another striker

I don't think we can carry a fullkrug or a tammy or to be honest I'm not sure who this experienced striker it is that you want - some suggested jonathan david - complete waste of money IMO, its proper rainy day stuff, £30m back up striker in case ollie breaks his leg

Duran's age and development stage is perfect for where we are and he is, its just a shame he cant see it

i would more argue that the experienced guy is learning nothing from danny ings

 

[lexicon]

5 minutes ago, rubberman said:

Not saying it's the right strategy necessarily, but given the likelihood of still being under PSR/new system financial constraints next year, turning a ~£20m profit on a young striker as we have with Duran isn't a bad thing. Ideally they work and become a longer term Ollie replacement, or they don't quite fit and we flip for a profit, or it's not much (relatively) cash spent on a flop.

I understand what you're getting at here but I just think we have to balance the squad effectively. Watkins is likely going to be our main man for the next 4 or 5 years still. 

[lexicon]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

Alvarez? he can play multiple positions, kind of the same with arsenal using Jesus, they're not out and out number 9s, they're both better in that position than us having to use rogers or bailey or last season diaby, signing say felix might make more sense as he can cover 10 and 9, thats how liverpool set up too, if nunez gets injured then salah, jota, diaz step up not another striker

I don't think we can carry a fullkrug or a tammy or to be honest I'm not sure who this experienced striker it is that you want - some suggested jonathan david - complete waste of money IMO, its proper rainy day stuff, £30m back up striker in case ollie breaks his leg

Duran's age and development stage is perfect for where we are and he is, its just a shame he cant see it

i would more argue that the experienced guy is learning nothing from danny ings

 

Several points to make.

First, Jonathan David is 24 years old, so he doesn't fit the profile whatsoever. 

It wouldn't be a waste of money if it helped us retain a CL space.

Duran's development is being stymied by not getting enough minutes and he's certainly not ready to start games for us. We're in a catch 22 with him where we can't really afford to give him the minutes he needs to develop without suffering as a side. 

Danny Ings CLEARLY wasn't the right type of player, which is another odd pull, and he wasn't happy being a rotation option, so again doesn't fit the profile. 

[allani]

11 hours ago, romavillan said:

He Is not liked in Rome, but the then owners were pricks.

His transfer record at Roma was actually pretty good (I have posted before on the Monchi thread a list of all his transfers at Roma and there were a lot more hits than misses).  However, as you say the owners sanctioned the sale of a couple of keys players and then forced through the signings of Pastore and Santon (plenty of rumours that Monchi advised against the first but was told to buy him by the owners).  Schick is the enigma - rubbish at Roma and yet been a pretty big success in the Bundesliga.  Monchi was an easy target for the owners to "blame" for their failure to deliver what was expected and was also a very prominent figure of the old regime after those owners were eventually replaced with new owners and a new regime.

[Demitri_C]

16 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

We haven't replaced Barry or Grealish yet. Don't forget to moan about them.

Diaby and Luiz faded along with everyone else last season. Neither of them ever lifted the team like Martinez or Watkins or even McGinn has. Those are players we couldn't afford to lose.

You are wrong again here as with grealish we exceeded anything we did with him in the side.

Furthermore we decided to build a team with a number of exceptional players to improve as opposed to becoming a one man band.

Cant believe how low you speak of luiz too. Its baffling

Edited August 5 by Demitri_C

[Tomaszk]

3 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

You are wrong again here as with grealish we exceeded anything we did with him in the side.

Furthermore we decided to build a team with a number of exceptional players to improve as opposed to becoming a one man band.

Cant believe how low you speak of luiz too. Its baffling

I'm never wrong.

[ender4]

If you ignore the ins and outs of youth players and players who don't play...   

We have lost Luiz and Diaby

We have gained Onana and Maatsen and possibly Philogene.

I think that makes our first team weaker so far. Hopefully Monchi pulls something out of the bag in the next two weeks!

[WallisFrizz]

14 minutes ago, ender4 said:

If you ignore the ins and outs of youth players and players who don't play...   

We have lost Luiz and Diaby

We have gained Onana and Maatsen and possibly Philogene.

I think that makes our first team weaker so far. Hopefully Monchi pulls something out of the bag in the next two weeks!

Yeah, I’m hoping the Diaby money is for spends, not for future PSR proofing otherwise we are significantly weaker, especially given we already had (and still have) two other senior left backs. 

[VillanousOne]

25 minutes ago, ender4 said:

If you ignore the ins and outs of youth players and players who don't play...   

We have lost Luiz and Diaby

We have gained Onana and Maatsen and possibly Philogene.

I think that makes our first team weaker so far. Hopefully Monchi pulls something out of the bag in the next two weeks!

with Rogers, Ramsey & Buendia available - would we need Diaby? And I was a big fan of his.

With Tielemans and Barkley available - i think we needed Onana's profile more than we needed Luiz, but the former are not like for like in terms of quality.

Maatsen - long term I think we needed, as Digne and Moreno are getting on and I thought Moreno was being sold. Ned looks a good right back deputy.

At the moment if Duran goes we need a replacement

And we haven't replaced Lenglet and Carlos isn't that great and might be sold, so I would say CB is the biggest position we need to strengthen urgently.

Luiz is a big ask to replace though, would be nice to have a combination of someone like Felix and Onana - but i don't know if all the Felix talk is just hot air.

It's going to take a while to bed in new and returning players so I fear the seasons start will be less than smooth.

Edited August 5 by VillanousOne

[allani]

4 minutes ago, ender4 said:

If you ignore the ins and outs of youth players and players who don't play...   

We have lost Luiz and Diaby

We have gained Onana and Maatsen and possibly Philogene.

I think that makes our first team weaker so far. Hopefully Monchi pulls something out of the bag in the next two weeks!

Football's not a first XI game any more.  At the very least it is about the 16 players who will go onto the pitch during the 90 minutes.  Our first 16 is without question better than our first 16 last season.  This means that we can "rest" players from the first XI so that they aren't completely out on their feet for the last third of the season.  Which again over the course of a season makes our first XI better.  I think you can easily pick a starting XI without McGinn and argue that it is at least as strong as an XI with McGinn in it.  However, more to the point we can play McGinn for 60-70 minutes and get the best out of him rather than have him having to play 90 minutes and being a bit "hit and miss".

I also think that last season we had a clear starting XI (although due to injuries we were rarely, if ever, able to select it) - with possible question marks had Mings and Ramsey been fit and available.  Now I think we've got more options available in terms of tailoring our starting XI and tactics generally depending on the opposition.  

[allani]

14 minutes ago, WallisFrizz said:

Yeah, I’m hoping the Diaby money is for spends, not for future PSR proofing otherwise we are significantly weaker, especially given we already had (and still have) two other senior left backs. 

I don't get the significantly weaker thing I really don't. 

Onana is a different type of player than Luiz for sure.  He's not significantly worse.  Indeed with Kamara out a midfield of Onana and Tielemans is more balanced that a midfield of Luiz and Tielemans.  And I say that as one of the biggest supporters of Luiz on this board.  Clearly Luiz and Onana would be a dream pairing and with the return of Kamara - those three would be as strong as any midfield in the PL.

We've yet to see who will play the 10 role with Ollie in the team.  But I personally think that Rogers is more suited to the way we play - driving the ball out of midfield - than Diaby.  It would be a new / different role to how he has played for us so far so initially yes we are probably weaker - but longer term I think Rogers would surpass Diaby quickly enough.  And that's assuming that we don't spend money on a new attacking player.  Felix would be a considerable improvement but even if it's not him - someone in that mode of playing a bit deeper and collecting the ball in the hole between the defence and the midfield is more in tune with the way we play - especially when we have players like Bailey who can run in behind the defence.

[striker]

5 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Sid this before, name a top PL team that carries 2 reliable experienced number 9s

Newcastle...city don't, arsenal don't, Liverpool dont

If you take this fullkrug as an example, if we were to sign him as this reliable back up, what would we do with him? Give him 30 mins a month and hope that he's happy and doesn't decline as a footballer? Or just be Ings again 

Villa have a lot of games to play this season so Watkins will need a rest in cup and league games to be fresh for CL. Fullkrug would have been given plenty of game time as would any other striker particularly if Duran is sold.