Jarpie

Tshibola is injured apparently, I don't think we really have anyone else to put on other than Veretout. I wonder why he's not even on bench.

I'm vindictive enough to hope he flops horribly and would be forgotten.

Sauce?

Tactics Tim would've been perfect fit for Leeds, but he's probably deludedly waiting for PL job.

Yoann Gourcuff, I remember us being linked with him couple times. He was very highly rated ten or so years ago, think injuries finished him. Back at Rennes apparently.

Absolutely gutted, one of the first players with Deano I remember watching from Aston Villa when I became a fan.

1 minute ago, The_Rev said:

All three Wales goalscorers are English. 

Not according to the teamsheet.

And now the humilation of english national team is complete lol

Like I've said, there are no quick fixes for why english national teams always fails in the big tournaments. Forget the current generations of english footballers, they're lost cause IMO, they are mentally screwed, even the ones who are now about 18. IMO there's something obviously wrong in how the youth teams and players are coached, especially the mental-side of things.

I see the exact same problems in vast majority of finnish athletes, they don't have the mental strenght to take charge and be leaders, nor they don't have the mentality to deal with the pressure or the high-stakes competitions/games. We used to have some amazing athletes who thrived in the big competitions and their body language showed the confidence and self-belief that they can win it. But when I see our current athletes who pretty much always crumbles in pressure - I see the exact same look and body language as with the english footballers in high-stakes games.

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

That's what I mean.   It's like all sports and political committees  it's run by people more I interested in what they can get out of it,  how much power and prestige,  how many  freebies and what fantastic dinners and foreign jaunts they can go on.  They have no interest in actually sorting out problems and issues in the sport.   I mean if they were to highly pay a load of talented youth coaches to go forth and change the game they might have to move their AGM to Rhyl and move their dinners from the Ritz to The Premier Inn. 

I remember seeing statistic that england had many times fewer youth coaches than other big countries, like 1700 vs 6500 or something.

It might not just be coaching problem. I saw bbc docu about mental health problems of footballers, and they interviewed youth players. All of them said that they want to be footballers because they'd make a lot of money and get famous. Would be interesting to see if italian, spanish, french youth players are the same.

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

My entire life (I am 46) I have been hearing that the FA need to change grass roots coaching because there is something inherently wrong with English football. 

Yeah, and will they? No. It doesn't mean it isn't true if it's been said for ages, it just means that it's been broken for ages.

6 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

I think Jarpie alluded to a major problem.

The premier league is a great watch but it's played so fast and end to end it dosen't produce home grown players that "think" Football.

We've seen the problems in this tournament, People whinging about teams parking the bus. However England simply don't produce players in that middle area who see threading a throughball past a packed defence as a challenge...y'know the sort Iniesta has done a few times in this tournament.

I just think at the prices people are paying they won't put up with kick and rush football and hitting it up to a big targetmen as the talented players like Payet and Coutinho got driven out.

English just don't produce those sort of players.

I think it goes deeper than that, I imagine that the players aren't taught how to "think" football and/or it gets coached out of them when they're playing for the youth teams. I know football and ice hockey are different sports, but we had basically very much the same problem in finnish hockey; we didn't produce the skillful and creative players for 10-15 years, till the finnish hockey federation took a serious look into how youth players are coached, and changed it. It took some years to take a root but we're again producing more skillful or creative players which we were lacking for like a 10-15 years, and our hockey has again more brighter future.

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

This has been said since, what? 1970? 

No idea, I wasn't alive back then. English players don't have vision, creativity, flair and they're incapable of improvising. Not sure is it cultural, the english mentality or are those things coached out of them.

AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm sorry britbongs but I just have to laugh. If this isn't proof that english football needs a huge overhaul from the youth coaching to the top of the FA, I don't know what is.

This is the Woy I remember from when he was manager of Finland.

Renaming the stadium is part of the modern football, and I don't think most fans would have a problem if it'd be something like "Lotus Villa Park" or something similar.

I dislike how money driven football is nowdays, it always has been but now it's even more than before. 

IMO only way ffp-style regulation works if it's set up like salarycaps in NHL which does really level the playingfield in my opinion, this current shitfest is even worse than what we had before so I wouldn't mind at all if we get creative circumvating it.

21 minutes ago, Daweii said:

I've also never seen a chairman attacked so brazenly that he needs to prove his wealth. 

If Xia got £10 million for every time he was asked how much he's worth he'd be a billionaire even if he wasn't before hand. It's borderline racism that he's getting the treatment he is just because he's Chinese. Yes he's a very private man but that doesn't mean he lacks the funds. There are lots of billionaires in the UK that no one in this country knows about as not everyone is Richard Branson living in the media 24/7. I think if he was trying to convince people of something he is not he would be showing off far more than just a bank statement from a recent sale. He has done the bare minimum that he is comfortable of doing, he doesn't want his wealth out there for whatever reason and the public and the media should respect that. 

Maybe he is a con artist but on the flip side maybe he isn't. Personal wealth is a very personal thing. Xia keeping that to himself doesn't make him a bad guy.

I don't think it's racism as such, I think it's at least partly that they can't fathom chinese buying club such as Aston Villa is, "Why is he buying Villa and not one of our fashionable London teams?". Also Lerner being the seller will also play into it too, I doubt anyone even in the media doesn't know how horrible decisions Lerner has done, so they probably presume that as he's selling to some obscure chinese millionaire/billionaire, so the buyer is probably a scammer.

I doubt there'd be nearly the same pestering and shitflinging if it wouldn't be so quiet in the english football at the moment, so the journalists scumbag demon spawns will have to fill their columns with something and get clicks.

4 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Same guy, this time contradicting his first tweet. 

https://twitter.com/Matt5cott/status/736941427142332416?lang=en

 

Dare I say...backpedaling?

There are still serious news oulets? Next you're gonna tell me that Loch Ness, Jeti and Santa Claus are real.

Clark and Baker doesn't strike me as rocket polishers and scumbags, unlike some of our other rotten lot, so I'd probably keep Clark, and possibly Baker if we could get good partner to play with them. I'd first get rid of Richards, Gabby etc.

3 minutes ago, jon_c said:

With this talk of buying clubs in other cities (a la Man City). I just wondered what other cities you think would be suited to a Villa franchise? In USA I would've thought somewhere with a sizeable Irish population would make sense. China and India, I've no idea.

Boston, New England Revolution but I dunno if it' feasible to buy MLS team, at least at this time.