MessiWillSignForVilla

More likely to be due to squad size, you can only register 25 players, and we have 28 senior players now that Luiz, Davis and Konsa(?) no longer count as U21. We could register a 25 man squad with Wesley, Kalinic and Nyland/ Heaton likely to miss out, but would leave us with no room for any additions other than U21s, hence we need to sell.

Wow, and here I thought that David Squires cartoon was just a joke...

Supposedly it's Leicester's club doctor (ex?) that died of cancer recently.

Yes he did, but the point he was making was that the authorities don't respect them as they aren't "big enough", so they've given them a schedule where they'll be playing every two days over the next week or so.

It was, for me it's what made the goal, drew the defender freeing up the pass from AEG to Trez and then giving him time to line up the pass across to Watkins. All round a well worked goal.

lovely move!

Watkins coming on it looks like.

Brilliant finish and a good pass from Ramsey for the assist too.

The problem with this is it looks good out of context, but in context, it isn't that great, just kind of okay. As others have pointed out, this is likely xA/90 for players that have played 1000+ minutes, however his xA is around 27th in the league, which is still fairly high. You also have to consider that over half of his xA is from set pieces* and corners (according to understat - 3.01 xA from set pieces and corners, 2.72 xA from open play - this open play xA would drop him from 27th to 100th in xA of players with 1000+ minutes), which when looked at deeper shows that whilst his open play has a higher xA than his set pieces alone (2.72 v 2.49) his xA/Key Passes (passes that result in a shot) is higher for Set Pieces (0.25 v 0.17), which would indicate that from open play he provides a higher quantity of lower quality passes, and the inverse for set pieces. Which essentially paints the picture that most of us already knew, Conor is a set piece specialist, and mostly average elsewhere. Specifically, he is a free kick specialist, as from the 6 players that I can see that took corners for us last season, Conor ranked 5th with an xA/KP of 0.04, with only El Ghazi's 0.03 ranking below. (This is partly due to the fact that corners are getting increasingly harder to score from, hence why so many teams now take short corners as they have a greater chance of goals). Having said that, I couldn't find how many corners each player took, so I couldn't how these numbers compare to the volume of corners taken, which could add further insight. This is all to say, stats like xG and xA can be useful, however they are meaningless when used in isolation to compare players, and you need to dig down in to them to help formulate a greater picture of a player and what they offer to a team, and they also need a good sample size to be relevant, which is why xG for singular games is useless, whereas over an entire season it can give you an idea of team performance. *I don't know why understat separates these out, I assume they are just free kicks.

You have Roderick, so would only need one more Portuguese CB to fit a traditional back four. I imagine the point wasn't that Wolves could field 11 Portuguese players in their current system, just that they could field something like a 4-5-1 with only Portuguese players if they signed another CB.

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but the Milner stuff is twitter BS. It's based off one random account that claims the Liverpool Echo has said we're interested, but there is nothing on their website or social media pages.

It was Rhian Brewster, the original said they had bid £25m for him.

Assuming that TransferMarkt's stats are correct, amazingly it is true! Three GKs have saved penalties for us in the Premier League and kept a clean sheet, however, none of them at Villa Park. Bosnich in a 0-0 draw at Everton in 98/99, Thomas Sorenson in a 2-0 win at Man City in 06/07 and Brad Guzan in a 1-0 win at Norwich in 13/14. Funnily enough, it even holds up in the Championship and again with GK doing it away from home, with Nyland in a 1-0 win at Swansea in 18/19.

10 men that barely left their own box and was the 4th best defence in the league last season.

Not very? Sheff Utd wouldn't have been camped in their own box for an hour if it was 11v11 and we would've had more chances.

Oh god, we don't have a good track record with parachutists.

He's an England player now.

Celtic supposedly only want around £15m for Kristoffer Ajer, I reckon we should try and tempt him here at that price, would make a good partner for Mings and can step up to midfield too. May be a bit fanciful though, as Milan are interested too.

Listening to Gary Neville right now;

Don't think it's a pen, but definitely enough in it to not get overturned.

He's looked really dodgy these first two games, three goals Leeds have conceded now that he's directly responsible for. Could've been four when he completely lost Hector on a corner earlier.

Really hope that decision is upheld, it's about time fouls were given even when players stay on their feet.

Jesus, that was awful from Fulham. Off the back of a player ducking on a corner and bounces to a completely unmarked player at the back post. It's gonna be a toss up between them and WBA for bottom, and they'll both be far adrift of 18th I think.

His teammates have said he does too. It's similar to Aguero, who can speak English, but very rarely gives interviews because he's not confident enough.