mole86

Surely the massive caveat to that is ‘on the sub continent’. Sibley and Burns are surely cemented for the home tests, Bairstow is only involved because of this rotational policy anyway. I’m not convinced about Crawley but I would hope and expect Sibley, Burns and Crawley to be the top 3 against NZ in June

Elmo is killing us going forward

Agree with this, I’d hate to lose Konsa but our model now is likely to include one sale a summer. As long as it’s not Grealish I’d be relatively relaxed about selling anyone if we get a silly offer.

None of them covered themselves in glory but I thought McGinn was the best of the three on Wednesday so not surprised Luiz has been dropped/rested. I think his levels have dropped off the most of everyone that was playing regularly pre Covid outbreak so hopefully it will do him some good

Really refreshing not having any fake ITK as well, offering people private messages and posting cryptic comments for attention. You really need to let it drop, you disappeared after keeping the Rashica thread going longer than it should. Really no need to bring it up on multiple occasions in the thread of an actual signing, one that you curiously didn’t seem to have any knowledge of...

I think the BT Sport graphic confused people when he got booked. It had his shirt number on it which is of course 5

2 goals, 2 good saves, 2 off target and 2 comfortable saves/tame shots isn’t a bad nights work, even allowing for the fact one of his goals was a penalty

Any positives to take from tonight in your eyes?

Leicester game really wasn’t that long ago

Didn't he do the opposite of that?

That’s all any of us can do isn’t it? I know some people think they’ve received some top secret inside information on the Rashica ‘deal’ but it’s unlikely anything official will leak directly from the club meaning all we can do is speculate from the same uninformed position. The only cast iron fact is that he is not an Aston Villa player, even the comments from Baumann could be construed as us being used to drum up interest from Leverkusen given what actually transpired on deadline day..

What does this even mean?

Three ball at The Belfry with Rashica and Leao

I’m not so sure about that to be honest, the deal was clearly set up before we knew where we would be playing in my opinion. We then still went through with it as he was going to be a more useful squad member than Gardner and a relatively inexpensive addition, particularly given how much business we then knew we had to do following promotion.

We did the same with Bjarnason last summer

Completely agree with this, it’s clearly been a tactic since lockdown to have a narrower back four. Part of that is accepting more balls will come into the box but it really needs the full backs to get out to the winger quickly and Targett just looks like he’s not got the energy to do it. The only caveat, which has been mentioned, is that he also doesn’t get anywhere near the same amount of assistance from Grealish as Cash will from the winger the other side. Not a criticism of Grealish, it seems to be how we set up.

I think it would be Rudiger they take on loan in that deal

More or less interesting than it was at Burton?

I don't disagree that bringing Davis on earlier was an option, however it could also have left us prone to a counter attack not unlike the one which led to the penalty as we'd have been a man light in midfield. The decision not to make that change earlier than 60 minutes definitely can't be called "amateuresque", particularly when we won the game. Surely bringing on a 'strong striker' might have just encouraged us to play more long ball than we actually did.... I think the patience was fine, would have liked us to be a bit sharper on the ball but that's more down to fitness than tactics at this stage of the season. I also don't think anyone will be overcome with joy at the overall performance, however these are exactly the sort of games we wouldn't have won last year so I can't view your criticism as anything other than hyperbole

What is the more fitting tactic when your opponent has eight men in the box? It’s either going to be a moment of magic or incessant pressure from balls into the box that makes the difference. I would concede we didn’t move it quick enough at times and personally I would have preferred the full backs to push higher and wider when we switched the ball but I also heard Smith shouting instructions to that effect. The reason why we aren’t better against ten men is because we don’t have enough good players, not because they are being coached inadequately.

You keep repeating '3 man backline', they changed to 4-4-1 when they made the sub at the half an hour mark

Bruno Fernandes cost £47m with a further potential £20m in add ons, plus 10% of any resale fee. Quite far off from the reported £28m potentially rising to £33m we are buying Watkins for

Who told us we had £100m to spend?

The Brentford fans are a welcome addition to the forum in my eyes but definitely not ITK, they were as surprised as we were when we signed Konsa last summer

I'd completely forgotten about that!