MessiWillSignForVilla

6 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

That is a huge result for them, I still think they are heading for financial meltdown though.

Yeah, I'm not sure there's much more financial trickery they can do, they need to get pomoted soon or they'll be in trouble.

15 minutes ago, Gompedyret said:

Does this mean a new batch of fish puns is on its way?!

Were they ever new?

Percy is reporting that Derby have had all their charges dropped from the EFL by the independant commission. The EFL love Mel Morris I'm sure 

I think AS are a fairly reliable spanish paper, not sure though.

5 minutes ago, deeps said:

Southgate has called up Phillips apparently 

Haha, that would be absolute bullshit if true, especially if Grealish isn't picked, and for me validates that Southgate isn't picking him out of spite. "Needs to be at a higher level" yet he would have picked both Mount and Phillips from the Championship 

Edit - Just to add, I will somewhat take it back if Grealish is in the squad, but it's still rich that Grealish has been carrying us for 3 years yet barely had a look in and those two get have been selected in the mean time.

2 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

I’m not sure he can switch back. 

I think FIFA recently changed their rules so that players with less than 3 caps can switch nations, not sure if it applies to players who have declared for a nation like Grealish though.

I have a feeling we're not interested in McKennie, it seems the rumours only popped up after it was suggested on here when he was linked with Southampton, and now all the random uk football sites know we're chasing him? Wouldn't be surprised if a journo just saw his name on here and ran with it.

38 minutes ago, omariqy said:

Think he has his heart set on coming here. Only clubs who would be interested would be someone like Leeds. 

We're **** then, no-one could turn down the mighty Leeds!

4 minutes ago, rayk said:

That’s not what he says in this article.

So SJM has his heart set on Celtic, none of Celtic’s bids were accepted and then we came in with an offer that was accepted.

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2018/12/17/john-mcginn-opens-up-on-botched-celtic-transfer/

You've quoted an article where mcginn does in fact say that, albeit I remembered it slightly out of order.

Again, Celtic matched our  bid, Neil Lennon said as much, and Celtics chairman said they did everything they could to secure him, but he chose us, probably because we blew their wage offer out of the water.

24 minutes ago, rayk said:

How could he join us over Celtic when Hibs hadn’t accepted any of the offers from Celtic because they were too low?

He could only have joined us ‘over Celtic’ had Hibs accepted offers from both us and Celtic and he chose us.

But that’s not what happened.

Celtic matched our offer, but to quote McGinn "when they (Villa) came in, I was blown away, and there was only one place I was going"

2 minutes ago, thejoker said:

Not sure if it’s just me, but I read that as he wants to play in Europe (internationally) so Villa isn’t an option (not an issue).

The optimistic way I read it is that he wants to play for Kosovo next season, so playing for Villa won't be an issue (as he'll be playing regularly), as opposed to going to say Liverpool or AC Milan and sitting on the bench, or similarly at Leipzig if he feels they aren't actually that interested in him.

Oooh, 5 pages in one hour...

Bloody hell, this game has been fantastic so far.

What a header!

Not training today according to the Werder Bremen twitter account because he's "injured"*

Brilliant if true...

1 minute ago, brommy said:

That theory doesn’t seem to hold water - why did Southgate cap Mings without forcing him to move on?

1) England were desperate for a CB as most options that had been tried were shocking 2) Mings is nowhere near as important to Villa as Jack, if Mings moves on to try to get international football, it wouldn't hurt anywhere near as much as Jack leaving.

Only just started watching, but Inter look great. Their pressing is brilliant.

3 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

I don't understand the rhetoric of implying Grealish ends to move in order to play for England.

Mings played and hasn't Southgate capped Bournemouth players before?

 

My personal conspiracy theory is that Southgate is still bitter about the way it ended for him with Villa, and us not being ambitious enough for him. As such, he has refused to call up Grealish knowing it will force him to move on, and as Grealish is Aston Villa at the minute, it will hurt the club even more if he leaves.

2 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Maybe. But if there was a press embargo why would random twitter bloke be breaking it over percy or gregg evans or matt kendrick?

I'm not saying I believe him, he's probably talking nonsense, it's just that I don't think releasing at midnight is an indicator of that.

1 minute ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

And he can release the news at midnight.  How random.  Maybe his ITK news involves mogwai’s.

To be fair, isn't that typically the case for press embargoes? You can only release after a certain date, i.e. at midnight.

10 hours ago, The_Steve said:

Very normal fanbase

 

I wonder if Abramovich even knows who Leeds are?