skarroki

If we can get one more to join in the next 24 hours we'll be laughing. Be good to not have the old "AVERAGE" to play every few weeks

Said this a couple times in the summer transfer thread but Bali Mumba is some player. How Plymouth got him back for £1mil I do not know. He'll be in the Prem barring a bad injury by next year if not sooner I would say.

I can ask IRL people to join if you guys are looking for numbers? I understand if we're keeping it thoroughbred VillaTalk though. I've joined the league too now

Was one of the top rated players for them until the injury. Hopefully nothing serious. Does seem like a player a lot of people in the lower leagues are excited by but my worry is he's maybe starting to be discussed as someone to bring in permanently after a good loan, instead of someone like Grealish at Notts County who's clearly too good for the league and has no chance of sticking around

Mentioned on "not the top 20" podcast as one of the best players at a good Salford side last season and described as an exciting signing for Stockport

Came to post the same thing. Assuming Preston get knocked out of the League cup 1st round by Salford they'll have played 26 games by the end of the year to our 31 assuming we get through the playoff round and win 2 rounds of league cup action. Otherwise it's 23 games. West Ham last season used 27 different players in their starting line-ups and played a total of 57 games, so 17 more than if you played a normal season and got knocked out in the first round of the cups. Of those 27 players, 21 were outfield players that started 10 or more games and they include Dawson who left in Jan and Ings who signed in Jan, so effectively what I'm saying is that West Ham had 22 players they used which was essentially two full teams, then a few youngsters were given a run out on the rare occasion. Just as a side note, all four of their senior CBs got 30+ games in total including sub appearances (Kehrer, Aguerd, Ogbonna and Zouma). Comparing our squad to West Ham, they had 4 senior CBs as do we, then Coufal and Johnson got game time in the same way I expect Cash and Chambers to, Digne and Moreno in the same way Emerson and Cresswell did. Comparing defenses we're definitely in a stronger position. Comparing keepers we're weaker with 2nd choice but that discussion is at groundhog Day so gonna leave it. Comparing managers is chalk and cheese, we have the best possible manager and backroom staff to deal with the fixture situation. Comparing midfield is more tricky, I do think Soucek, Rice, Paqueta and Downes is good but we arguably even win this department for strength - Luiz, Kamara, Tielemans and Dendonker is much stronger with Iroegbunam a better academy backup than Coventry too. Strikers they had Scamacca, Antonio and Ings whereas we have Watkins, Archer and Duran so unless the hierarchy genuinely believe we can push the latter two into being strong squad options for a season, we could do with more up top I believe. Then for attacking options they had Cornet, Benrahma, Bowen, Lanzini and Fornals. With Diaby, Bailey, Buendia, Ramsey, McGinn, Coutinho, Philogene and Traore here we definitely need to trim in this area if we were to match strength in depth. When you look at Man City it's a similar story with their 61 games, only 20 outfield players for them played more than 10 games and that includes Gomes, Palmer and Lewis so basically 17 players who were established first team squad players. Again that includes Cancelo so they ended with 16 outfield players in the senior setup and 3 emerging from the under 21s to get through 61 games. Now we haven't quite got Pep in charge at the club but still. I do think the need for a big squad is a myth. The need for sensible rotation and good coaching / physios to keep on top of potential injuries or something similar is what is needed. You could argue injuries can derail a season but big injuries to Laporte and Phillips didn't halt Man City, no real injury worries for West Ham from what I see but I could be wrong.

Are there any indications as to when these games take place and where they'll be held? Do we play home and away in the group? Sorry, still fairly new to the women's game other than watching the highlights and following transfers so not sure how the Conti Cup works. Planning to get to every game Villa play up north this season so going to both the away games against the Manchester and Merseyside clubs. These Conti Cup fixtures would open up a lot of extra opportunities to go see them play though.

Sancho was great at Dortmund because of the system, we do not play close to that system so he'd look just as bad here, never mind the fact he'd need to learn a new position entirely to be effective. And we'd be going into the new season with a few quid, a fallen star and no striker with Prem experience.

Double deal for Jobbe and Kolo Muani? £80mil ought to do it

That's where I was going with it. Shirt Sales in tiny writing and Exposure in block caps and bold. There's reports of the benefits Chelsea got from having Pulisic and Dortmund got from Reyna. The British game is clearly the most profitable and I don't think it's a coincidence that big clubs around Europe constantly go after good young players they can convince to move from the UK. Juventus, Dortmund, Munich, Madrid, PSG, Milan, Atalanta, Lille, Lyon etc etc all have English players on the books and if that opens up a window to sponsorship from the UK or someone looking to tap into it, the transfer can earn back some of the outlay. Not saying it pays for itself but it makes the deal more appealing to take a risk on.

If someone wanted him he'd have moved by now due to the release clause. I think clubs interested in him will be thinking about the benefits of having the USMNT captain in their squad. Shirt sales and exposure etc. If the £20mil release clause is true then would we make an additional £20mil over, say, a 4 year contract? As that would pay for the transfer and then you're looking to cover wages only. If the wage budget you have can accommodate those wages then for me it's a no-brainer. At the moment I really feel the two clubs needing a player like Adams in their squad the most are Chelsea and Liverpool but from what I've seen, both on sky and in person, I don't know if he's good enough for that level.

Think we were monitoring that situation but that ship has sailed. I imagine we had him as an option if Pau Torres deal looked like it could get away from us, as soon as we knew we could wrap that deal up for certain we left that alone.

Neither currently at the club. Gallagher potentially on the move too. Adams isn't good enough for where they want to be but I'm sure Chelsea have weighed up the financial impact of losing Pulisic on the American market and bringing in the USMNT captain as an option in midfield probably helps mitigate some of the loss of earnings

Tom Carroll is a great pick up, hopefully he'll do well. Didn't work out for him at all at Villa but should be one of the best in the league at that level if he keeps fit (big if I know) Thanks for answering all of that following the YouTube account and watching with keen interest now. Huge win especially considering it would have been 4-0 if not for a saved pen. Clips from the end of the game Sinisalo looked like he was loving the love from the crowd. Opening game results like that can define a season but a paper thin squad might take its toll. Who knows. Exeter seem a great club though so fingers crossed they do well and Sinisalo smashes it to help you up the league.

Don't think that's how Premier League players think. If you've got to this level of the game you back yourself all the way. That's why players like Scott Sinclair and more recently Kalvin Phillips join Man City, they think they'll actually be able to prove in training they deserve to be part of the team. Don't think it'll be easy to come across a player that's said "I ran down my contract and left because the club I was at signed someone better than me and I wasn't playing anymore" or "I signed for this team even though I had interest from bigger clubs because I wanted to play games"

Was your step-dad called Anakin by any chance? Only the sith deal in absolutes

That's not a statement from the club its just lazy journalism. There's lots of reasons Barca is run terribly, but the way journalists are translating reports from other journalists that might not be true or accurate, is not one of them

Found it funny that Exeter have signed Sinisalo that Burton deemed not good enough for them, and Burton have signed Blackman from Exeter. They're replacing each other but had very different seasons last time out.

Be interested in @Exeter Fan Too and @Exeter Fan opinions on their chances this season. I've been paying attention to them since Sinisalo went on loan to them and I personally think they've had a pretty horrendous transfer window. Unless the few youth players they promoted are league 1 quality, they've got a paper thin squad and lost almost every player that impressed last year. Only 10 points above relegation roughly and worried they've lost the players that earned them that cushion. Sinisalo could be busy early on unless they make a lot of transfers in the next couple days. Either that or he'll be sat on the bench again behind Wood

Decent edit but a lot of red flags plus it's from an account that's busy giving opinions on lizzo a couple hours ago, not exactly a serious leak account.

The ones I highlighted are the ones I was thinking of, plus Watkins. I think McGinn could get there, and a few others like the ones you mentioned and then there's players like Digne, Coutinho, Bailey, Buendia and Tielemans that were all sought after by champions league clubs in the past and have that ability within themselves. I'm not sure we can ever get that potential back for a variety of reasons but I'm sure Emery will try.

Right sorry, I just had a lot of thoughts on it and laid them all out in a response to you. Overall I agree that we should keep him, I agree with you too. My only concern is the player he turns into with us and the player he turns into if we sell now could be worlds apart in terms of ability. There's a scenario we could live to regret both decisions if he never kicks on for us, but would kick on when sold.

I based my "should be worried" on "should fear relegation" because I cannot switch that part of my brain off in the era I've grown up supporting Villa. Feels like a relegation scrap is inevitable any minute now haha. I think there's 10 teams looking good for relegation this year which means good news for the promoted sides, who I think could all potentially surprise and keep themselves above the line. Leicester and Southampton must be screaming themselves to sleep, I think their current squads are good enough to stay up in this new season if they hadn't got it so wrong last year. I think the Liverpool side looks very good in an attacking sense personally, I like Szbolsosjfuiskxj and Mac Allister and their forward players are potent when on form. Van Dijk looked not himself last year, they need to hope giving him the armband brings back some form, I do not rate their centre backs and the full backs are offering nothing defensively either. My two cents anyway.

Nothing is certain in football, but this is a kid that has been with us 10 years and his whole family are fully embedded into the Villa. I'm not being funny, but I don't understand how any club could ever be more sure of what they are keeping hold of, or selling on. I imagine Emery and his staff have read all the reports of the youth team, watched their clips, had them in training, spoken to the youth staff about them, got a gauge of their personality and their drive and how susceptible they are to injury etc etc etc. I'm not pointing the finger at you TRO, but I think in the modern age of video game football and stats overload everywhere, people are quick to announce the career decision of a player as definitively good or bad or indifferent based on the levels they think everyone involved in the move is at. If Wesley didn't get that freak, career-defining injury that transfer might not have looked bad value. Likewise, if his career suddenly takes off at Stoke were we wrong to cut our losses? I was equally gutted when we sold Young, Milner and Downing. One of those sales ended up looking a steal whereas the other two sales, if we had those players in their prime at the club now, I'd expect us to ask for Grealish money to sell them on. This is a long and winding way of essentially saying, I don't think you can ever be sure you've made the right choice, and you have to hope hindsight proves you right in the long run. I'm sure the club have their reasons if they sell any academy player and I hope they make a good call and every lad from the academy has a good career.