MessiWillSignForVilla

This team is far, far, far better than that team. Yes, some individual players were better, but that's what they were, individuals, they were never interested in playing together and outside the starting players, we had barely anyone decent. This current crop i by far the best England team I've ever seen, and it runs a good 2-3 players deep before you're taking much risk on who you play.

This is going to be reactionary as **** and with the benefit of hindsight, but Gareth Southgate, you are clearing in the woods and that loss is solely on you. Why in the actual **** did he give our last three penalties to two players brought on seconds before the shhout-out and the decisive penalty to a 19-year-old!? The pressure he placed on those three players that were already in the biggest games of their career is insane, and I expected better from someone who knows the pain of missing an important penalty. It's a joke, and I feel for those players being thrown to the wolves like that. I was starting to warm to Southgate as a manager, but that decision proved to me that he think's a far better manager than he actually is, and he's lucky he has one of the best England squads we've ever had to bail him out so often.

This is why you don't have a final at 8pm on a weekend.

Not a photo of him humping the trophy? For shame

I thought what Chelsea were done for was signing U18 players from non-EU countries? If it's in the UK then it doesn't matter how old they are as long as they live in a reasonable distane from the academy but it's against FIFA's laws for U18 players to transfer between countries, or at least countries without a free movement arangement. I believe it was our very own Bertrand Traore that was the one that got noticed and landed them in trouble. Edit - Probably should've read the next page...

Getting him to sign a new deal though would kill all the rumours and show players we're willing to reward them when they have a good season, especially if they're important to us.

Reckon we should go for Zouma, apparently Chelsea want to move him on, and he'd provide good competition for Konsa's RCB position.

I feel it's pretty obvious that our signings currently hinge on Grealish, I doubt a lot of our targets would want to join if they thought he could be out the door a week later. I'm fairly confident he'll sign a new deal next week after the Euro's finish, then we'll see more movement transfer wise.

I mean players that were actually at Villa when they played in the final.

I was fuming about that. Didn't care that it was Grealish, but why the hell was Kane going for that shot whilst running away from goal with a player lined up to hit it first time behind him?

This is what annoyed me about when people mocked the price we paid for him, we essentially had our captain contracted to another club, we were desperate to get him back (and for good reason), it's no wonder Bournemouth had us over a barrel. At least they refused to recognise how good he actually was though!

We have four players in the Copa America and Euros finals this weekend, and all four made their debut whilst at Villa, four! Have we ever had a player play in either of those finals, let alone four in the same weekend? We're an exciting place to be right now and have shown we can develop talent on to the international stage.

For me there was contact from two players that on their own aren't enough for a penalty, but together would make it very hard for Sterling to stay up.

First final for 55 years, cheer up you miserable ****

Crunch time for Italy, the first time they've been properly tested this tournament.

Really?

What a very sane, very normal party...

I think I accidentally hit on why we let him go last season when I was talking to someone on reddit about him. Essentially, due to playing Grealish and Troare (and this season Buendia), our wingers are very narrow, so a lot of our width comes from Targett and Cash overlapping. Whilst Guilbert is a very good defensive FB (looking at his stats, he's one of the better defensive FBs in the Top 5 leagues), he's lacking when going forwards which can stifle our attack. So I don't think it's that Smith doesn't like him per se, more that he just doesn't fit with the way we play. It does make me wonder though with his defensive abilities if he could do a job as CB back up?

Another West Brom youth player about to join, anyone know anything about him?

Can't wait for when he'll just be a shit Alex Iwobi according to Arsenal fans in a few weeks.

I believe it's closer €150m+ per year (something like €640m over the last 4 years in total, although the source I saw may have been in dollars). It's why he won't go anywhere other than Barcelona, no-one else can afford the jump in wages and comply with FFP, even if they paid half what he's currently earning. Barcelona have got to this point on a slow boil, increasing slowly over the past 10-15 years, but for everyone else it would be too big of an increase and it would cripple them.

Everything just seems so low, why is the badge just above the stomach?

If he doesn't sign a new contract, this is the last summer than Arsenal have any power over the situation, next year ESR will hold all the cards and either take Arsenal to the cleaners or be able to choose who to get sold to at a cut price, and if he has a crap season, then £32.5m suddenly looks an amazing deal for Arsenal that they can't get anymore, so selling now when they can get a guaranteed fee may be appealing. From experience, we know you should never let a player get in to the last year of their contract without renewing and that's the dilemma facing Arsenal if he doesn't accept their offer.

I think the one I saw was a tweet with "Premier club interested in Gana" which wasn't exactly breaking news at the time, and I think one recently that was "Villa bid for midfielder", which again isn't sticking your neck out really. If it's had other stuff that has been more concrete, then hopefully that means it's genuine. Especially as the meltdown from other clubs fans would be pretty fun if we kept Jack.

Was skeptical when this account was brought up in the transfer thread, but that's definitely clear claim with no real wiggle room, hope it's not a bullshitter.