MessiWillSignForVilla

He's also got 0 in 3 this season and missed several sitters last night that even Gabby would've scored. Considering he's a "goalscorer", he was pretty woeful at it last night.

It was 9M Euros + Mario Suarez, according to Sky Sports. To add to the defender stat, they've also spent £290M on strikers in the same period.

Harsh to say he hasn't done much since moving to Valencia, he was the only Valencia player in the La Liga team of the year last season.

4-2 to Leicester last week, 3-0 down at home to Norwich, I think Sunderland may already be gone

Whilst Everton have been good, Southampton have been poor too. All Everton have had to do is sit back and hit them on the counter, if more teams realise that's going to be effective against them, I can see them being in for a long season. Southampton have hardly created anything, and been sloppy at the back.

Again, his buyout clause is €6m. Well, it seems to change with every article about him, so I've no idea what it is £10m is just the fee I saw the most.

Not necessarily true. It all depends on the buyback fee. If the fee is something low like say £6m (as it is for Deulofeu at Everton) then all that needs to happen is that he become worth more than the £6m in the open market in order for it to financially benefit Barça to buy him back to flog him off at the higher price. They may have to hang on to him for a couple of months afterwards in order to avoid falling foul of the "you can only represent 2 clubs in a calendar year" stuff. But it is not true to say that them bringing him back means he has been i) amazing or ii) that they want him in their team. But I've said all this yesterday so I'll leave it there. TL;DR - Buyback options are a load of betty swollocks. But Deulofeu went to Everton for about £3m, so the buy back clause is roughly double. If Barca do the same for this deal, and we sign him for roughly £10m, that means would be somewhere between £15m-£20m, so we'd still get a fair whack if they buy him back.

Wish the media would stop going on about that. Shaqiri aside they were all bit-part players at best. Nah, Bojan played a fair bit when he was at Barca, scored in the QF's too I think? Not 100%. I think Afellay also had a couple games, but Arnautovic and Muniesa are stretching it.

The difference with that was that Guardiola was directly blaming them for the amount of injuries Bayern had and was essentially saying they were shit at their job. Plus he blamed them for losing to Porto. Not to mention his childish, sarcastic applause of him after a player got injured. That's not to say Mourinho wasn't being a bit of a dick, just that his dickishness seems more calculated to ease pressure on the team.

As much of a word removed Mourinho is, no-one's talking about Chelsea dropping 2 points at home on the opening day to a mid table team. And there's no way Chelsea will sack her. For a start Hazard asked for the medical staff, she was just doing her job, plus Chelsea had virtually no injuries last season which is probably in part down to her and the rest of their medical staff. Not to mention that she would probably be picked up fairly quickly by someone else in the league if sacked as she seems to be fairly good at her job (See: last sentence) Seems to me that Mourinho is just using this to deflect from their lacklustre start last weekend. Wouldn't be surprised if her and and the other guy were in on it.

Lots of bitter Liverpool fans harping on about how Ibe is better. Pathetic. Who has any idea which of the 2 is better? Well one came through La Masia and the other came through an academy whose best graduate over the past ten years was Jay Spearing, soooo...

Joined even though I missed week 1 My team:

Let's hope not, I remember a time that Carew literally had his shirt ripped off by a defender and still wasn't fouled

Did I just see Gabby do something creative?!

I thought that when I first read his tweet, but he said he's buzzing to start the Premier League season tomorrow, not the game. I think it was just a tweet about the season starting, not specifically about our game.

Typical, in my lifetime the average Villa score was 1-1, we were probably winning 1-0 until the 80th minute too.

I know it's completely OT, but, the problem with that CSKA game was that we didn't get 4th that season more than the playing youth, for me at least. Instead afterwards we blew a two goal lead v Stoke and won just 2 more games. If after that game we'd pushed on in the league without any distractions and at least challenged top 4 then that game against CSKA would probably be forgotten. Instead it is remembered as a game that MON threw the slimmest chance of silverware and still f'ed our league position. And I agree about if Villa took that approach to qualifiers. What MON did and what Bilic did are very different. One shows prioritising different things, one is complete disrespect for the competition. Anyway, West Ham, what a bunch of bastards.

Yes, I believe it is law in Spain that all contracts include a buy-out clause, not just football contracts. As for the buy-back clause, I believe that's because we allegedly don't want to pay the full amount for the clause.

He might've played with Muniesa, but Bojan left Barca when Traore was 15 and Afellay is 10 years older too, so doubt they'd have been in the same team. Only thing I can imagine will really be a pull with those players is that they speak Spanish, so easier to acclimatise.

really? the top 4 Reading too much of the Liverpool biased media mate If Liverpool had spent that money on a decent striker, they could've pipped Utd, they were only 8 points off. Balotelli scored a grand total of 1 league goal for them, Gerrard was their top league scorer with 9. We should know better than most the difference a good striker can make. Just because their faults last season can be laid at the doors of others doesn't mean that if Balotelli had scored ~15 goals they could've gotten 9-10 points more. As for Balotelli here? No way for me, way too volatile to be relied upon consistently like he would be here.

I agree, he may have been playing on the left against Forest, but all three of his goals came from central positions. IMO, he's Gabby with better technical abilities and better attacking movement. Out on the wing Sinclair has often played for us with his head down and trying to dribble past everyone.

Well yeah, of course Aranguiz turned them down, their form last season only made Europe sit up and take notice, he's South American, duh

He was part of the French U20 team that won the U20 World Cup 2 years ago with those two.

Nani and Ronaldo? If Youth careers count. Edit: Never played for rivals did they Just seen the answer too, so way out

Gregg Evans, the Villa reporter for the B'Ham Mail, mentioned on twitter that Veretout is due in England when asked about him. Dunno how reliable they still are, but I'd have thought after both Lambert and Matt Kendrick have moved on they club may be more willing to speak to them again.