skarroki

If the article is right and we can send 3/4 players out there I wonder who else will turn out for them. Might be good to send one of our keepers over as we seem to have too many good prospects for the games our teams play, someone is always missing out on minutes.

I think the idea that he's a bad egg doesn't hold much water. Falls apart when held up to any scrutiny, other than the echo chamber online of false information Duran seems a commited player, exciting prospect getting a few opportunities and progressing off the pitch. Think it's a bit daft of people who think he's a bad egg and we want to get rid, to also be posting links of him to AC Milan, Chelsea and West Ham as if it's evidence. Surely it points to the opposite, we're not making a profit on a lad who's barely broken into the first team 12 months after signing. The clubs linked will do due diligence and if there's whispers on a Villa forum about him having an attitude that will have reached recruitment staff at top clubs too.

Yeah sorry I meant in the summer we could offer him that shirt, or promised it's his once available.

Noticed that Duran has started signing off a lot of his Facebook posts about villa with #JD9 which makes me wonder if he's been promised a shirt number swap in the future, or whether he's just manifesting that number.

Looks like he's playing the troll in the dungeon in a Christmas panto

Forgot we still had him honestly. Imagine the things Emery could get out of him in our set up if he wasn't made of wet paper.

We need a killer kit design that the uninitiated can get behind buying. We've already got the great colour as a relative USP in terms of top clubs in Europe. If we have a brilliant home shirt and new badge, and play in the champions league next season I think you'll start to see people wearing Villa stuff all over the place.

Just one of those where both teams and sets of fans will be gutted. You just don't want to draw a big team at this point. There's no easy games obviously as any minnow could have the games of their lives to cause an upset, or Stevenage 12 months ago where they didn't even have to try that hard. The problem for a club in our position now is that there's no particularly hard games either, other than City and Liverpool. You go into every other tie thinking we can get through. And every round after that where you don't get city and Liverpool you think it could be your year as you edge closer to Wembley. Chelsea away feels like we're out the cup but I'll also be disappointed to lose to them and I can't get my head around it.

I'm one of the simpletons loving the Wrexham documentary so would love us to play them. Have it at Villa Park and get a full episode of them talking about it being a huge game and what an amazing stadium VP is etc etc

Not too fussed either way about Duran, I'd rather not lose him but a lot of the fee we were paying was performance-based I believe. If we can get around having to pay that and make a profit on him in 12 months might be worth wishing him good luck and putting faith in other academy prospects, and getting a more senior backup for Watkins.

There's a lot of nonsense going on at Leeds with most the players having ridiculous loan and buy release clauses to higher division clubs if they got relegated baked into the contracts. That's why so many of their players have gone on loan around Europe and Harrison is at Everton. £20mil release clause would not surprise me even slightly. Worth mentioning he's represented by Wasserman, who also represent Mings, Lenglet, Dendonker, Teddy Rowe and Bogarde. So I think we would have had plenty enough dealings with them that they would perhaps flag the release clause of a player to us. They do represent loads of people throughout Europe though so I wouldn't say Villa is a particular stronghold for the agency, just that there are definite and recent connections.

I'm not saying the bad attitude thing isn't true, but the guy was absolutely sensational for Dortmund for years and as a teenager, consistently across seasons and competitions. And Man Utd spent the best part of 2 years trying to sign him so publicly they may as well have paid for public service annoucments about their intentions to pay more than what Dortmund were even asking for. Dortmund very publicly and memorably said he was their best player and they wouldn't sell for any price after a certain date in July as it would derail their season too much and they stuck to that despite how much Man Utd tried the year before they got him. Hardly stinks of a bad player and awful attitude they were forcing out the door. Also the thing about Vidic being in the dressing room with him? Unless it was for charity it's nonsense, Vidic left United in 2014 when Sancho had just turned 14 and was playing for Man City youth teams. Vidic retired when Sancho was 15 and he didn't sign for United until Vidic was 40. These rumours about him being a terrible person recently just seem quite revisionist. The guy openly said he was struggling mentally early last year. I don't know why everyone sided with the bald fraud over this too, the guy quite clearly making a complete mess of managing Utd in every other aspect seems to have been widely backed over this decision to treat Sancho like a second class citizen whilst continuing to play a lad in his position with 1 assist to his name and sexual abuse charges in public domain. I want to be clear I'm not accusing anyone here on this site or who I've quoted of racism or anything similar in nature, just stating that broadly non-white and/or non-british players seem to be called out for bad behaviour or unprofessionalism even when there's no real evidence of it aside from vague comments from a manager, whereas for example Grealish stumbling around streets coked up and smashed is just him being a lad and enjoying his success, him taking months to get going again the following season is just one of them things. I really hope Sancho turns it around, he was completely unplayable when he was still a kid in Germany, with that Dele interview last summer it's a good reminder you never know what's going on in some players lives or when that stuff will catch up with them and completely derail their careers. I used to work in a call centre with a lad who's brother was and still is a professional footballer and this guy could well have been too but he just met the wrong "friends" at the wrong time and was sat listening to abusive customers on commision 11 hours a day instead of living the dream.

Kind of surprised by this one as I wasn't sure he'd get into a club this high up the ladder and their fans who actually are okay with the signing seem to think he'll be backup. Hopefully he proves everyone wrong and does well. When lads like Barry are stuck in league two though does shock me when Revan and Chrisene are suddenly showing up in the championship. The clubs that players move to always seem so random, I'm sure we've got things in place to ensure it's a good fit but there's nothing obvious or stated from the outside.

Okay but done over a month ago and suddenly found online as an easily accessible, public item anyone can pull a copy of? Who was the first person to find the copyright and start shouting about it enough to get national attention? Why did it take so long to find? I'm a complete nerd when it comes to videogames and especially Pokémon and you wouldn't believe the amount of stories over the last 10 / 15 years about new Nintendo consoles, logos and new Pokémon games that all just end up as dead ends, some randomly have their trademarks and stuff renewed out of nowhere and then nothing again. So maybe I'm being completely stupid about this but it feels like a thing I've heard before where people have been furious and then nothing until a few years later someone is like "remember this? What was all that about" If Villa have paid for this badge and someone's created it, couldn't it just be copyrighted for legal reasons with no intention to use it? How many other images have we got under copyright and how many of them are relating to the badge and in current use?

This is very cynical but whenever one of these "leaks" happens where it's difficult to work out where the leak started, who had the material to put it online, I'm inclined to assume it's a deliberate ploy by someone and not accidental. Either club endorsed, to float the current favoured badge internally and monitor the reaction to it around the world to see how people feel about it. Or, what I would think, someone from the external logo design company has done a fairly basic mock-up of a badge for the club based on what the people our side involved on this have requested, this has been sent over and someone probably junior within that company has seen it within an email chain and downloaded the image. So they have sent a mockup of the badge to a news outlet anonymously to try get a bit of cash. I normally think if it would involve more than 3 people it's probably not what's happened, so I would bet the club is maybe waiting to next week to understand who has leaked the badge and what steps the company has taken. If they know that either this is all fake nonsense, or that it's a genuine design but from ages ago and has moved on since, they won't address this at all because the proof will be in the reveal when a completely different design is shown. Twitter football moves so quickly these days, especially in transfer windows, this will all be buried by midday tomorrow I'd think and no-one will care

I'll come back in February

Sorry to respond when you've said you're leaving it but more generally speaking in, this is what I meant by box clever. If he's coming in at 31 on a 3/4 year deal it's a bad move, if we spend £22mil on Zaniolo and bring Anderson in too, keep Bailey and Diaby and don't play with wingers it would be bizarre. If we know we can get good money for someone in the squad who's perhaps floating that they wanna go, and the recruitment team feel like they can get someone on the continent signed up to a pre-contract agreement, even if we're paying higher wages/ agent fees etc, for profit and sustainability rules we'd be in profit because we'd bagged a transfer fee for one player and paid no fee for the other. For example, if Traore is saying he wants to play regularly and we get offered £5mil from Turkey that's £5mil profit, if we then bring in X from Germany who's on £10k more, a similar age on a 3 year deal we'll be £5mil to the good by the stupid rules which can go towards a top target instead of being eaten up by supplementing the squad with a £15mil player on less wages on a 3 year deal that would balance out to £0. Sorry if I'm labouring the point, I just feel that with all the workings with fees at the moment, I think we could bring in more players who are genuinely top tier in the summer if this season carries on in the same vein. Spending on any position means we have less wiggle room if someone amazing becomes a realistic target. If Leao becomes available in August for example, and we've got any chance at all of getting him in a room with Unai and Monchi, I don't want us to have spent £45mil across a backup striker and a couple midfield bench options that's meant a deal isn't possible or we have to sell a good squad option to make it happen. Especially if there were interesting free transfers to be had on sensible contract lengths.

Why is he? Has he done something in his personal life that makes him undesirable that I've missed or do you just not like his personality?

Anderson is genuine competition and is also free in a position we don't have particular depth, and will be coming in next season not in Jan. If we don't sign Zaniolo it's like for like replacement.

Lot of stuff still swirling that Djed Spence was recalled as he's being sold. We need a right back in the club, if we'd got him at the time he went to Spurs I'd have been absolutely buzzing.

Look for every example of one thing there's an example of the opposite, but people talking about Anderson at West Ham as if that's his entire career and therefore he's not that good, sound like people who still can't help themselves with mentioning Emery's time at Arsenal as if he'd never held another role before or since. The guy has played most minutes of every season since 14/15 and is consistently getting great numbers in the league. We are going to have to box clever to continue rising and this guy on a free looks good business.

Think if O'Riley is on the move we should be in the conversation 100%

Living in Leeds I actually have a slight soft spot for the team and the Podcast The Square Ball is top tier in terms of team specific podcast. Don't know anyone that doesn't rave about this guy and think he's brilliant. He's only turned 22 a couple months ago so to be honest I think he's a similar situation to lots of European talents moving to the Prem. They bought a brilliant talent around 18/19 but were fighting relegation and he wasn't ready to be bedded in slowly, he wasn't given the opportunity to cameo and make a name for himself. There's people who still have no idea who Duran is even though we spent £20+mil on him a year ago. Some of these guys just stay out of sight for a while.

Bogarde only played 14 of the 23 league games he was available, seemed to fall out of favour at Bristol Rovers. I would think he's being recalled because Matty Taylor doesn't want him, rather than because a club higher up is trying to get him in. Don't think he's seen a minute on the pitch since Taylor came in. Really happy for Azaz to get a move to a big club like Middlesbrough and seemingly cement himself as a championship player. Was league two level when we brought him in so been able to help him up the leagues and give us a tiny bit of wiggle room in the P&S rules.