Delphinho123

that’s only because he couldn’t be bothered to track back!

Danny Ings is a striker, not a no.10

Surely Al Hilal are interested.

This guy has been right about a few things previously..

The only player that prefers playing on the left in all those players you mention is el Ghazi and he’s crap. We still could do with another left sided player/attacking midfielder.

That is odd and on the face of it, seems very worrying.

I'd watch the interview. Either his demeanour is usually quite negative or he's not convinced JWP is staying. Those quotes out of context suggest he is staying at the club but like I say, if you watch the interview, it doesn't sound that convincing to me!

They're protected tweets.

Exactly. And that isn't a dig at Southampton as a club or at its fans. They may well do this to us in a few years time. This is just a sign of the times. At present, they have owners that aren't willing to invest into the club and have issues getting money out of China. They're happy to just stay in the league and a player as good as JWP (who I don't think is a world beater by any stretch) needs to decide whether, like you say, he wants to play out the best years of his career in a side who's only ambition is to perform well enough to receive the TV money every year or move on. In a perfect world, you'd like to think JWP would stay at Southampton as that's the club that have made him into the player he is today. Without Southampton, JPW might be flipping burgers at Mcdonalds right about now. But that isn't the way it goes, as we found out so painfully with Grealish. Players generally want to play at clubs that match their ambition and right now, I think Villa are a project that JWP may look at and think, 'I want to be a part of this with my mate Danny and Matt'. Transfers/Loyalty/Agents/Wages. It's all one big melting pot of greed and ambition. You've just got to hope you have owners who are ambitious as ours.

Nail. Head. We need to actively be looking to move El Ghazi, Wesley, Trezeguet and Nakamba on in the next 12 months. Nobody on here can tell me they're good enough for what we're trying to achieve. Nakamba, arguably, still has a role to play should we not bring in a Doucoure/JWP signing in this window. If we get decent offers for any of those players this Summer then we sell them, thank them for passing the ball to Grealish in the season we stayed up and get them off our wage bill.

This is actually true. Long gone are the days when even defenders head the ball all that much apart from when crosses come into the box. In the good old days, the defender would pass the ball back to the keeper who would immediately pick the ball up and kick it as far upfield as he could. Nowadays, most teams play it out from the back. I'm not saying height isn't a good advantage to have, especially if you're a defender, but the idea you need tall midfielders is just nonsense. Give me 5ft8 ballers over 6ft4 destroyers any day of the week. You don't need to head the ball in midfield if the other team don't have it.

I was just saying, this is the kind of ITK I live for and the reason I get out of bed every morning. If the deal comes off, it propels @avfcDJ into that legendary category along with myself and Villalad (It's an exclusive club).

I'd accept £40m + AEG.

Just give them 20m + El Ghazi and J. Ramsey on loan for 12 months. Everyone's a winner. Apart from them.

Exactly.

Yeh, I think we’ll end up bidding around £45m. Id be very surprised if they didn’t accept that.

They might see it differently. If they can get 40m+ for him, they might think they can replace him with 3 players to actually improve the team.

Barrow in Furness is genuinely one of the worst places I’ve been to in the UK. It’s hard to imagine how somewhere so close to the Lake District can be so shite.

Great post, spot on. I see a lot of Southampton fans on Twitter sounding a lot like us Villa fans two weeks ago.. ’He loves the club’, ’Been here since he was a kid’ ’Just signed a new deal’ etc. etc. I want to just tell them, none of this matters. Now we might not end up signing JWP, but I would bet my bottom dollar that if we don’t, it won’t be because JWP doesn’t want to come here (as arrogant as that sounds). Money/ambition talks. We had to find out the hard way and Southampton might too.

I don’t think 99% of Villatalk really care where Hourihane is from tbh.

That’s my point really. I think if Grealish had stayed, we’d have signed 3 first team players at most. Now that he’s gone, I think we need to almost go a bit nuclear and really overhaul the squad with the money. In an ideal world I’d like to see: OUT: Hourihane - free Wesley - loan (doubt anyone would buy him) Nakamba - 12m El Ghazi - 15m A. Ramsey (loan) IN: JWP - 40m Doucoure - 12m Damsgaard - 30m Net spend (very top line maths) - 65m.

I’d honestly sell all 4 if decent bids came in. I’m probably in the minority when I say that but if it meant we could sign Matar Sarr, JWP and a left sided forward then I’d be all for it. We’re a bit bloated in the CM department and I just don’t rate Nakamba or Luiz. AEG is mostly rubbish and Wesley wasn’t good enough before his injury. It might sound like I’m being overly harsh but we’re only delaying the inevitable if we don’t get rid of them now. None of them are good enough (Luiz may come good) and were all signed for fairly cheap when we got promoted. We’ve since kicked on from then and we need to go up another level. McGinn said it today in his interview, our owners are so ambitious that if the players don’t keep improving then they’ll be replaced. Nobody is safe. Competition is everywhere. Just the way it should be.

And Sanson… I think that’s the idea. To put together an extremely hard working side with enough quality to score a few too!

There was a time when this would have bothered me.