MessiWillSignForVilla

Still claims to be in his Twitter bio, I imagine he'd have changed that if something had changed.

I'm not anti-Lerner, I'd say I was in the middle, wouldn't mind him staying if we were run properly, but would quite like a new owner, but you're argument is absolute rubbish. We get crap attendances because we've been atrocious at home for the last 4-5 years, and although I don't agree with the booing, ditto. As for sponsorship, I thought Macron was our most lucrative sposorship yet, and isn't Dafabet bringing in a lot too?

Erm, we do have a rich owner? One who recently got paid roughly £500-600m for the Cleveland Browns and has £1.1Bn.

When's the latest financial report from? We should be turning a profit by now, maybe that's where the money comes from.

The expectation isn't spending £15m on midfielders, it's buying enough players that can cover all positions effectively. We spent £20m, roughly, in the summer, and we got a GK, LB, CB, Winger, 2 STs and an all rounder, whilst still having a threadbare defense and midfield that was still unproven at this level. EDIT: I should add, of our signings, 2 have long term injuries, 3 never play, 1 who has been largely terrible and 1 has been showing recently he might be a bit of a coup. These signings are fine, there risks that sometimes don't work out, but you can't build a squad on those players, you need to intersperse some big-ish money signings who will be able to play straight and will be relatively low risk, which we are currently to financially restricted to do. That's the expectation from the board.

It does not stop Vincent Tan and Mike Ashley. I do not think Lerner is disliked by the majority of fans, I think RL has lost his passion for the club and football in general. Vincent Tan seems to be absolutely mental though, and I'm not sure how disliked Ashley is since Newcastle started doing well again. Maybe he isn't dislike by the majority, but the content aren't the most vocal, the most vocal are always the ones who are pissed off and the ones who are over the moon. As for the last part, that's why I emphasised the if in the last sentence.

Let's be honest, if you were Lerner would you want to show up to VP? Probably not, the majority of fans hate him, and if he turned up he'd get dogs bollocks abuse. This will probably be passed off as "defending a billionaire", but it's fairly obvious why he doesn't turn up if he does indeed watch every game.

I don't think that's very accurate, I work out the Net spend as ~£40m for the last 5 seasons, as our big outlay season was the season before the last 5, and even then the Net is ~£70m. Any chance it's on a site that isn't the Sun?

Bye then

He was, he felt tightness in his hamstring and it's been reported he's got a Hamstring strain.

I don't think that Ashton is ever coming back, he only really did well as teams didn't really know how to play him, and remember in his 9 tries in 9 games stint, he got 4 v Italy and 2 against Wales in a game where the Welsh didn't particularly impress, although credit to him he was pretty good in his games v Australia around that time. Now, I think he's been found out, and he's targeted as he's pretty poor defensively, would rather not see him start this 6 Nations.

I think if we still utilised a 451 similar to the MON days, he could be a very good right winger. As for how we currently play, holding midfield possibly? He's good at reading the game in front of him and making interceptions.Should probably stick with him at RB though and see if he can recapture his form.

I don't think he would have garnered the same amount of attention as Holt. I don't know why I'm beating this drum so much, I don't think Holt played well today, but with an unknown quality in Helenius I think they would have risked not paying too much attention to him and double up on Benteke, whereas with Holt, they knew he was a physical player who could bully CB's when on form, so needed to nullify him so he didn't impact the game. If Helenius had played, I don't he'd have gotten much ball, and if he did, I haven't seen enough of him to suggest that he could currently be our focal point in attack if Benteke was crowded out and doubled up on.

Personally, I think our usual systems wouldn't have worked today either, I think we would have gotten overrun in midfield and would have been too narrow to deal with Everton's wide players. The way Everton play, they like to keep the ball, slowly build up and try to capitalise on defensive mistakes and use Baines' crossing ability if they can't break through. The best way to deal with a team that does that is to let them pass the ball about in front of you, stay disciplined, nullify their "Plan B" and watch as they get frustrated and start sloppily passing the ball around as they try and force something. Something we did fantastically in the first half. Holt, though he didn't play particularly well on the ball, was enough of a presence so that Jagielka focused on him and left Distin to deal with Benteke on his own. This is ideal for us as our best player is allowed to win the ball, have space to play and hold up for long enough that our quicker players - Delph, Weimann, Bacuna and Bertrand - can break forward. Our starting formation and line-up was perfect to deal with Everton, and it showed as we were 1-0 up and Everton were restricted to pot shots and not much else. Also the 3rd centre back often pushed forward into the holding midfield position when one of their midfielders got too much space, limiting Everton's creative capacity. Also, Bacuna did an awesome job of not allowing Baines to do much whenever he got the ball, Everton had no idea how to break us down. Second half is where it fell apart, as Lambert didn't adapt the formation to his and Everton's subs, personally I think he should have waited it out for 10-15 minutes, allowed Everton to get even more frustrated and desperate then make some subs. I would of brought off Holt and probably Baker and brought Lowton and KEA on, switching to a 41212 with Bacuna behind the striker and tried to exploit Everton as they begin to get increasingly desperate and sloppy. The introduction of Pienaar didn't really change much as it was a like for like change for Barkley, but when Naismith came on, we didn't adapt to deal with it. I think Everton went to 352 at this point with Barry joining Distin and Jagielka at the back, we should have moved to a 433 at this point with Weimann and Bacuna exploiting the gaps left behind Baines and McGeady as the bombed forward. As for reacting to Vlaar's injury/twinge, I'd have brought on Tonev or Sylla and moved Bacuna back to RB, and Lowton to CB. If Lambert had reacted sensibly to how the game unfolded we could have walked away with three points and possibly another goal and a clean sheet to boot. He didn't and it really let us down, he plugged his subs into a formation that was suited to a specific way Everton played and the original line up we had. Lambert made bad decisions in the second half which meant we couldn't get foothold in the game when Everton got the upper hand and completely undid all are brilliant work prior to that.

Total guesswork, but he only felt tightness so I'd imagine he could play v West Ham, but it may be a couple weeks out.

It's not like we're playing 3 centre forwards in the 4-3-3 system. When we have the ball, yes they have the freedom to roam inside, but they also at times cuts in out wide with sucsess. The way we've been playing recently has been with two up front, with Weimann behind the strikers (which incidentally I feel is our best set up), Gabby's role in that is to just bomb past the defence when we counter and keep the opposition on their toes. Albrighton has nowhere near the pace required to make that effective. Even with 433, Gabby and Weimann still aren't wingers really, and again Gabby's main weapon in this tactic is his pace breaking through the middle, and his sudden finding of dribbling and crossing ability. Albrighton isn't fast enough to hang off the shoulder like Gabby, he doesn't have enough in his locker to beat a man - his main "trick" seems to be knock it past and chase, which he is again, not fast enough, or strong enough, to do - and although his crosses look pretty, they rarely beat the first man. He doesn't have the ability Gabby has, nor physical aspects of his game.

Albrighton's a winger, and not very good one at that, he'd be awful up front.

Yeah, he fell hook, line and sinker for Fickou's dummy If he hadn't of bought it, there's a good chance that conversion would have been missed and it would have set up a very exciting final two minutes, or however long they would have played on after the 80.

Sounds like it's just a twinge/strain, which isn't too bad, but Hamstring injuries are **** nightmares, can take months to get over the slightest strain sometimes.

God damn why did England have to score whilst I was getting Pop Tarts and now their on the back foot again

Clicked on WTF post on Reddit and immediately exclaimed "What the ****!" at one of the weirdest photos I've ever seen, I really don't know what I was expecting...

I think his recent one was Calf wasn't it?

Bit harsh, Nigel Owens is a pretty good ref IMO

Fair enough bringing him off if his hamstring felt tight, I thought he didn't look injured when walking off. It's better he came off and rested it instead of playing on and risking injury.

This is more like it England, starting to get into this game now! Come on boys!