skarroki

COME ON FFS STRIKERS!! where are you?!

Try both simultaneously and instagram the result. haha but in all seriousness i'm actually quite nervous now, wasn't too bad before but it's whenever i remind myself that we could be playing doncaster next year that i realise the importance of these games

i'm still not very worried despite that 1st half, i'll see what happens opening 10 mins of the second half, then panic or relax

can this thread be locked till everyone has had a chance to sit back and think more objectively about bannan in their own time, rather than be hit in the face with 100's of stats which tell everyone why he's such an incredibly gifted talent. think people would like him more on here if it wasn't for this thread in all honesty

Assists are not a statistic about an individual player. They are a statistic about two players: one player who made the pass, and one player who scored. Key pass count is only about one player. The receiver doesn't have to score. What about key passes when the receiver does not even shoot, e.g. miscontrols, or somehow misses the ball entirely, or the linesman wrongly flags for offside, and the ball rolls through to the keeper? I will agree key passes can be under-counted. However, this applies to all players equally. Part of the skill of the key pass is passing to the right guy who will shoot. The ones that are counted are only about one player. if a key pass is good enough, it should be easy for the receiver of the ball to score. The key pass he made to albrighton against fulham was brilliant and gave albrighton an easy chance. Lowton's key pass against sunderland gave Weimann an easier than normal chance to score. most of bannans key passes are to people who aren't in front of goal or are in difficult situations, therefore, his ability to read a pass is good but his thought pattern to work out whether that player can effectively use the ball is very much lacking

i have been pretty fair i think in my predictions, giving us a narrow win, newcastle a win, wigan a draw and then saints losing to spurs, sunderland and stoke drawing, which would in fact put us on 40 points and in 13th! i'll take that senario! probably been sub-consciously bias towards villa but got us finishing 12th in the end haha, a loss against chelsea followed by a win at wigan, which will effectively be a home game in the end with the amount of fans i expect to see going up

can i point out that we are very much in form at the moment after winning all of our key games that really mattered this calendar year. We just spanked a team 6-1 that had just won 2 games without conceding and only conceded 2 goals in the previous game due to deflections against Chelsea. They just played shit enough to lose to Stoke and what's more, couldn't even score against Stoke. This isn't a must-win, but it is a should-win, and it is at a time where the current XI need to prove they are good enough to stay in the top flight next year. They've all come from lower divisions, they don't want to go back there and they don't want to be sat in the reserves either

win this and i will be feeling much more confident about our survival hopes but i am slightly concerned our players will be the same. I don't want any complacency coming into the team at such a vital time

about to sort myself, find the tickets and go pick my mates up, but just reading previous comments and comments throughout various threads i find it alarming that people are seriously suggesting all 4 of our last games are winnable games. all games are potentially "winnable", but we're playing 3 teams fighting for survival and one fighting for the CL with an incredibly talented squad. I am hopeful of us staying up but it's gonna be either very hard work or luck from other results that will make it happen, i would say our fixtures are the hardest of the lot

who did bannan score against this season? or are people referring to the pen at QPR last year? tbf his goal when playing at Blackpool is worth boasting about even if, other than that, he's not living up to his own potential and expectations.

this has tickled me, can't stop laughing now i cannot believe the Con is still spouting facts about Bannan. I rate Bannan personally and want him to stick around, he just looks like a better footballer when on the ball, like N'Zogbia, but also like N'Zogbia, i wish he would occasionally make a run and create space for someone who he can then pass to. He seems to use some of his best attributes and then supress others. I don't think he's a top 10 regular starter, but he could definitely fit into a top 10 squad and for that reason i want him to stay, his negative attributes aren't bad enough to cancel out what he can offer. He's also an academy player who i want to stick around on that Basis - at least our squad is then finished off with the best of a bad bunch of academy graduates, not the best of a bad lot of expensive 30-something year old high wage transfers

it's from a while back but couldn't agree more with this

They're doing well then considering their capacity is just over 35k was going to use the link from ESPN to back me up, then realised it was a typo, sorry, meant 34k http://espnfc.com/stats/attendance/_/league/eng.1/barclays-premier-league?cc=5739#

i agree with that, my point is that if i supported a small team i would want to earn the right to play in the prem to play big teams, not other small teams punching above their weight. it's nice to have a few in their and some success stories but i don't want the place completely littered with them, especially ones playing anti-football to stay their, spending money they simply don't have or clinging on in by a point or 2 year after year after year

we're 11th in the attendance league with an average of 36k, just below West Ham by 100-200. The attendance table and league position are fairly similar in fact, i'd say our attendances are the only stand-outs, our backing considering our league position is quite good, although of course newcastle and sunderland as always have massive attendance figures. west brom and swansea right down the bottom of the table too is purely down to stadium size i would imagine

I cant agree. You stay up on merit and it is good for Premier LEague to have small teams like wigan stay in league every year instead of "bigger" teams In spite of Whelan. if the situation was different Id be cheering Wigan to stay up But why? they'll be over hundreds of thousands of people who will be absolutely gutted if we go down, wigan can't even sell tickets when they get to wembley! the only place small teams should be in the prem is on FIFA. If a small club makes it up and stays up and their fanbase grows, they want to be playing the biggest famous clubs in the country, surely? not getting the chance to play swansea, stoke, west brom, hull and wigan

if we go down and wigan stay up i will be enormously pissed off as a general football fan that a great football club with a big, local backing has once again fallen at the expense of an utter shite B-team to the Rugby club. Don't want sunderland down either because of the fanbase and stadium numbers they bring in every year. Got a soft spot for Norwich too but Stoke can go **** off if Wigan stay up

i would be very nervous right now but for some reason i have decided to completely right-off wigan. they need to pick up 3 more points than us before the end of the seaon and unfortunately for them i can't see it happening. They are relying on other teams, primarily us, to keep slipping up every week whilst they try to grab a few more points. then you've got sunderland who i am still not convinced by. I rate Di Canio and some of their players but it's too little too late for me. Stoke are still shit despite beating the worst team in the league and Norwich aren't much better either still. I'm not saying we're better than them, but i think we're on par, and with a better run-in than some of them. We have to stay up

fact is i would rather have 25-30 players at the club who the manager wants, on fair wages. Having 20 or so and then a bunch of overpaid players who aren't featuring is pointless, even if they do have talent/ability/potential. Ireland fits into that category along with the likes of bent, makoun, hutton, etc so may as well leave and try to kick-start his career again

if we were to stay up and Wigan, QPR and Reading went down, my ideal transfer list would be: OUT: 1 Given - out of favour 2 Hutton - out of favour 5 Dunne - end of contract 7 Ireland - out of favour 9 Bent - out of favour 17 Makoun - previous agreement 19 Petrov - end of contract 24 Dawkins - end of loan 33 Marshall - end of contract I would also consider selling/loaning out Delfouneso, Herd and Lichaj but those 9 players are definite priority for leaving and 9 first-team players leaving is a lot as it is IN - some of this list maybe not all M'Bia - QPR McCarthy - Wigan Murphy - Crewe Cavanda - Lazio Hooper - Celtic Sinclair - Man City Douglas - Twente Dier - Lisbon Think all of those transfers are fairly realistic, some obviously harder than others to pull off but i think that lot would be a great bit of business and would start to push us higher up the table on a better wage budget

oh yes of course they are lets write off and generalise about every person who's taken up a career in football. All the evidence is there of course.

don't really care what the football shirt ever looks like really, my only wish is that it changes significantly enough to make it worth paying for. I think we get that most years so i'm happy. If i was a Chelsea fan i would be fuming they've had the exact same shirt with slight changes in detail since 1971, bar changes to the badge

going to be going to this one a lot lot less confident than the QPR game but i am confident of winning this one. we have the quality its just the experience, but lambert knows how to play against a Di Canio side, we have the massive advantage of playing one of his sides earlier in the year, they will have done their homework then and they can combine it with what they are seeing now

would love it to be this season, potentially during half time right before the players come out to get the whole crowd bouncing and make the atmosphere incredible ready to push the villa players for one final 45 minutes

if i can't get a ticket in the away end i would be very tempted to get a ticket in the home stand, but got to admit i would be very panicky in the home end as i am prone to screaming out and jumping up. I am also worried that if the worse happened and wigan sent us down, that they would all jump around celebrating all teary eyed and pissed, and i would be stuck in the stand with them. Also the shit situation where i have to watch on at all the villa fans jumping about whilst i'm sat there pretending to be gutted. Will still do it probably