nick76

Fair enough! I’m glad you are! Just the people I know and around me have struggled more last season. Maybe the over excitement of coming back after Covid and the football not living up to hopes

Not comparing to anybody, just my experience of football past and present. I love football, have all my life and obviously been a Villa fan all my life. We (Villa) go through periods or seasons of entertaining football, boring football and mostly ok football. Being a Villa fan, I tend to be on the rosy side of our football because of the bond I have with the Villa. I’m finding the football mostly…let’s say the majority of the games we play a bit dire to watch. There have obviously been worse seasons by far but so far the majority of football has been dour imo under Gerrard.

Yeah I would say we are. Maybe because our record was poor last season but we aren’t an exciting to watch at all at the moment.

I have no issue with that, I just worry that our attacking play seems like we haven’t worked together, we aren’t clicking, continuing from last season. I look at our talent and see creativity and forgetting hammer and tong, I would just like to see good play between the players, creating space, creating better/clear cut chances. I’m seeing similar things to last season attacking wise where there doesn’t seem to be a plan attacking wise apart from the basic. I hope I see better over the coming games.

Yeah they’d already talked about that during the game. It’s preseason training they overload players to improve fitness, they do it all the time in preseason, every year, every club, the tops clubs do. Preseason is predominantly getting fitness to a high level while also bonding and players ideas, tactics and goals into the players. This isn’t anything new! Even at my substandard level of football when I used to play, in preseason we just ran and ran until we couldn’t run anymore, then we’d do sprint training drills and then more running, and then play a friendly games to get match fitness. The attacking issues wasnt just down to fitness. I keep going back to the word cohesion, something we lack as an attacking force. On top of that we were playing Brisbane Roar, not exactly the world class team of defenders.

well he could be about to go a whole season without competitive football if he isn’t sold this summer. If he’s indicated he’s definitely not going to sign like the media reports we are seeing then he’s getting no time with the first I suspect and in our development teams where he’s been playing mostly, why would we bother developing somebody whose leaving, better to give playing time to players hanging around that we can develop. That’s not being vindictive just looking after players that we can develop further to the first team. The development teams aren’t really about winning as much as they are about developing so they are ready for the first team so I’m wondering if Carney is around for the next year as his contract winds down whether he’ll just be getting training but little to no game time in the development teams.

Never seen much with him. After we were linked with him I watched him a bit more closely than previously and still never saw enough for us to be interested

Yep, I loved Ragnarok and I was hoping more of the same

Watched the new Thor film yesterday! Quite enjoy the Thor movies but this was rubbish from start to finish, just all over the place, trying too hard and too often to be funny and failing! I was trying to think of an Avenger film I’ve disliked, this is it.

Thanks for the discussion, we disagree on almost all of it but that’s cool. I’m out for today!

I thought Brighton had bid for him, so I assume it’s them.

Yeah I’m thinking of getting the haircut

Or we are signing Charlie Austin

It’s called form, ever heard of it? We finished the season in the last 11 games with 9 points giving a indication how after six months how we were doing under Gerrard. You want to go back further? In 2022 in all competitions we won 6…great! 5 draws and 10 loses….so a 28.5% win rate, not great! Our form in 2022, not an isolated period was not great…that’s our form! That’s how we are doing most recently over a very extended period. You want to include the first half a dozen games to cover the poor ending. The run rate of points per game at the beginning of Gerrard’s tenure is far more than at the end of the season, we were getting worse. Never mind the argument that the first handful of games could be considered a new manager bounce, the euphoria of a new manager, players wanting to impress the new manager, the players also haven’t gotten Gerrard’s methods and tactics really in their heads at that point because they’ve had very few training sessions. This is further back up that people say that Gerrard needs a full preseason to get his methods into the players so then hard to justify he can do that in the first few games of his tenure. The hype around a new manager and players wanting to impress is generally the answer and proven in many studies and defined as the ‘new manager bounce’. By the time we are into April, we are into a six month period where he’s had more time with the players and his ideas yet we are worse then ppg wise than earlier in his tenure as I’ve shown. You want to dismiss form over an extended period because it doesn’t look good. Gerrard needs time and this preseason is giving him that but what we have seen in 2022 and in games like today especially from an attacking point of view isn’t as rosy as you are portraying. You don’t agree, fair enough!

Lost the 4th most league games last season at 19 games so we’ll end up 17th next season. See, individual spouting off facts that support an argument doesn’t give the picture of what is happening. How about the final 11 games we got 9 points, so based on that we’ll get 31 points next season over 38 games. See facts in isolation can say anything. I don’t believe we’ll be relegated, I don’t believe we’ll be 7th. I worry about how we lack cohesion, how the attacking side of game is poor despite the talent we have. I don’t see what you have been saying and you don’t see my view and others side based on the above comments. I think we’ll leave it there as we don’t have any common ground.

I’m worried now it’s not just poor form for so long, that that first season was just a one season wonder or Grealish just made him look better than he is. Even aside from scoring his all round play has decreased so much, that the attributes people say about him are much less obvious nowadays. Archer’s performance all around completely overshadowed Ollie’s little contribution.

Tell me what he’s doing then? He was absent for the first 15 minutes of this half, had a couple of touches, misses his shot but the kid saved us. He has been completely overshadowed both in play, involvement and scoring by the kid Archer.

Says it all….Watkins misses the chance, Archer scores!

Great whose been the better striker this half? Ollie or the kid Archer?

Imagine Watkins being in that position to score

Yep, very evident for some time

That rings a bell, I was probably there…couldn’t tell you a damn thing about it.

I agree, on the other hand is Watkins even on the pitch? Non existent

My worry is that we don’t create clear cut chances or get many shots on target. We literally have Coutinho, Bailey and Traore on the pitch and we’ve create nothing…how is that possible. It’s only preseason I know that but as you say it’s worrying because it resembles what we’ve seen before and thus is a warning for this upcoming season against better opposition. The attacking side of our team has talent but no cohesion, ideas, way of playing that is working.