M_Afro

45 years. Remember 1981? 14 players won us the league that year. You also don’t need to rotate so many. Keep your spine and rotate around it. It’s caught us out so many times. Emery will sort us out. It will take time but he will get us there. When he does and we start to play 50 plus games per season, I will accept some rotation. Until then, whilst we only play 40 games per season and we haven’t won anything since 1996, I will hope he’s learnt his lesson and will take things more seriously in future.

Stevenage are doing really well this season. They played like a well drilled and confident team. We played like strangers. Why not start with your best 11 and then it doesn’t matter if you make a balls up in the 88th minute because hopefully you will be multiple goals ahead. I’m not sure how long you’ve followed villa for but we have had multiple examples over the years where we field a weaker team and balls it up. Why take the risk?

We’ve just lost to a 4th division team at home. No away game is straightforward for us. We haven’t won an fa cup game since 2015!

Today is on Unai. He chose to play a weaker team and we lost. Having said that, the players also let us down with such a poor performance. We were unlikely to win the cup so it doesn’t really matter but I don’t understand why we have to rest players. Our squad must be the most underused squad in Europe. They are virtually part timers. 38 league games and 2 cup games a season should be fairly easy to manage!

There’s no point getting emotional. He’s not good enough. He won’t be here for much longer. Unai will give them chances and slowly rinse out the weaker players.

Awful today again. I am very quickly running out of patience with him. The Grealish three (Bailey, Ings, Buendia) will all be gone before the start of next season I reckon.

I’d be all for that. I agree with you. I think everyone wins with that scenario.

Harry Maguire is better than Mings (and I rate Mings). If he were available at the right price/wages then he would be a great fit for us. Unfortunately I just think he would be too expensive and therefore I’d give it a miss. I also think there’s absolutely no truth in the rumours.

I only saw Gray when he came back and he was at the end of his career then. I think I was maybe too young to appreciate Withe fully but I think Benteke was a better all round player. I loved Wally. He was my very first football hero. His step overs were a thing of great beauty. Wonderful player.

1. Cowans 2. McGrath 3. Yorke 4. Benteke 5. Walters If you have never seen Gordon Cowans play football, treat yourself to a few YouTube videos. I have never seen anyone who could hit a first time pass with such vision, accuracy and control. He was better than the media darling Hoddle in my view. He owned the football which did exactly what it was told when Sid was in charge. He was truly magic.

If we don’t think we can give him much game time next season we should send him on loan to another PL team. He is ready for the PL and we can get someone else to pay us to aid his development. I think he will be much better than Carney and will play for England 50 plus times (injury permitting). He’s got it all. He really understands his role in the team and is very disciplined at carrying out his manager’s instructions. The Sultan will love him.

Looks very similar to a young Jack Grealish!

This guy was so good yesterday. He just gets better with every match. He must be worth £50m already. We’ve been crying out for a player of his ilk for so long and hopefully he will stay for a long time. I just love him. It also brings me so much entertainment watching the reaction of my wife, every time my 8 year old son shouts out “I love Boubs” at the top of his voice! Ha ha. Love it!

Anybody know where Donk was today? We may need him on Wednesday!

He was excellent when he came on. I think that super sub works best for him and Buendia. Little Phil could really be important when trying to break a team down or trying to hit teams on the break. Good to see.

Incredible performance. Another assist and he gave the Spurs defence all kinds of trouble. Really pleased for him. Keep it up Ollie lad.

Poor half although he did a few good things towards the end of the half. Needs to get involved more though.

Agreed. Credit where it’s due. Solid half.

If the right person is available, at the right price, we will do some business. If they’re not, we won’t. We will be trying but there’s no guarantee and also no need to be reckless. I’d be happy if we could just offload a few and free up some salary for moves in the summer. We have to get away from constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. Unai will be happy to work with what he has for now. If we continue to play like we did against Liverpool, the rest of the season will be really fun.

I agree. He had to take the chance. I suspect it may be his last sadly.

You’ve kind of missed the point mate. This is about competing at the top of the table and having a game plan to be able to do that. You can only do that consistently by controlling the game.

There’s some very funny comments on here and Villa Twitter after yesterday’s match. I genuinely enjoyed the match yesterday. Some of our football was fantastic, creating chance after chance against a top side. Yes we conceded some chances too but the approach that we took against a top side was admirable and exciting. Check our Klopps comment post match. He was really happy to get the points. Under Smith we could never have played like that against a top team. I know we hammered them once but our tactics to get 11 men behind the ball and hit on the break failed more often than not against the top teams and was pretty dull to watch. It played a key part in our progress but further progression was needed. Gerrard recognised this and tried to change our approach to a possession based, progressive team. He knew that this was the only way we could ever possibly compete. Sadly he did not have the coaching ability or the players to pull it off. Unai has continued with this approach and we look so much better as a team due to the much improved coaching and tactics that are being employed by Unai. Sadly though, we still have the same players and the coaches can only do so much. We are at the point now that we just need to keep signing quality over quantity. Players like Carlos and Bouba. Add the quality of the coaching and the young players that are coming through and there are so many reasons to be optimistic.

I just don’t think it’s going to work out for Emi at Villa. I predict he will leave in the summer, having failed to nail down a regular starting place. I really hope that he will prove me wrong still but I just don’t see what a lot of our fans do. His stats in the PL are poor and I think that’s backed up by his performances.

I honestly think that Freidel was overrated. He was terrible at commanding his area and was totally reliant on his big centre halves when defending free kicks into the box. His strength was that he made few obvious mistakes but he couldn’t do half of what Emi can. Certainly one of our better ones but not in Emi’s class in my view.

I’m sorry but he is not easily replaceable at all. He’s the best keeper we have had since Bosnich. That was probably about 25 years ago. Since then we have spent an absolute fortune on sub-standard keepers. Non of which are in the same class as Emi. No keeper of equal standing to Emi would touch us with a barge pole. We have a top player who loves the club and has a massive profile. Why on earth would we want to lose that? Keep the guy and make him captain. Aston Villa had become a breeding ground for players who don’t really care. We are slowly changing that culture and keeping actual winners around is critical to achieve that. We must keep Emi. It’s essential for our future.