allani

**** me I thought he'd been red carded for simulation!!!!

Another match against a team in / around the play-offs where we have managed the sum total of 1 shot on target so far. So negative. Hoping that we now bag three late goals to make me look like a right plonker!

Bye bye Steve. Don't bother trying to close the door on your way out.

I can't see how, after being backed so heavily in January, Bruce won't be given a bit more than 2 weeks to turn things around. His argument will be that he's only had 2-3 weeks with the players that he wants and that it takes time for them to gel. I don't know how much time exactly that buys him - probably another 3-4 weeks? If we fail to pick up many points in that timeframe we may be staring ever more closely at a relegation battle - which would almost certainly destroy Xia's business plans and potentially set us back 4-5 years at least (you'd imagine that with wages / income / etc we'd have to sell most of the squad to be able to survive financially). After all the complaints down the year about how our owner has frustrated our attempts to develop and challenge as a club by not backing the manager (other than a couple of bright year's at the start of Lerner's tenure) it is a particularly cruel form of irony that we now have an owner who is doing everything he possibly can whilst the team seems intent on some form of spectacular self-destruct.

We might get promoted next season. But only if we get relegated this season.....

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/neil-taylor-reveals-left-aston-12538335 Doesn't say a whole lot about the reasons why he left - but posted it as I think it is an interesting insight into how the player conducts himself. Lots of positive messages about how he enjoyed his time there and was keen for a new challenge. Comes across pretty well. Of course part of the criticism from some Swansea fans was his close relationship with the press (apparently he could always be relied on for an exclusive for Swansea or Wales) - so it will be interesting to see how we feel about that in the coming months / seasons.

Without quoting the whole message - my mate (Swans season ticket holder) has said almost exactly the same as @SwansFan. Good player when he first arrived - not quite recovered the same form after his injury. He also mentioned that much of the "criticism" has almost been because the local press have been very pro Taylor (for both Swans and Wales) and so he seems immune from fault. Maybe being away from Wales might do him some good? Overall I'm thinking he sounds like a decent Championship player. Not sure he's PL class - would be slightly surprised if he is dropping a division to be back-up - so I am a bit worried that this might result in Amavi getting less playing time (as I still think Amavi could be a PL star). If he has been signed as back-up then I actually think it's pretty good and will definitely strengthen our options.

Bruce seemed to be more confident that we were much closer than just "interested in" the mystery player. So either this is old news (i.e. he was one of the 60-70 players that we considered) or it is out of date (i.e. we are closer to having agreed a possible deal). I don't think Xia will hold back on the transfer value - if Bruce and Round say that he is the striker we need to get promoted then I think Xia will find the money.

Won't be that long before we all start speculating on the summer transfer window!!! :-) Can you imagine how nuts that is going to be after the last 3 weeks????

Would seem to tie in with Bruce's comments earlier. Taylor & Bedeau tomorrow - and an unlinked striker today???!!!!

Is it also possibly a "condition" of Henri coming to us at a decent fee? Give him to us and we'll loan you Tish once we have secured 2 more signings that are just being finalised? Bit of a leap of faith given the time between the two deals on their part but if we had enough coals in the fire then can see us having been pretty confident of completing on our side. Possibly just over-thinking the situation....

I wonder whether the player swap could be Rhodes for Ross plus cash? Would seem to make more logical sense?

I've assumed (possibly wrongly) that Jedi will be on the bench and coming on for the last 20 minutes or so - or rotated with Grealish depending on the opposition. I think as super sub he will play a vital role - as well as slipping into the starting XI as/ when tactics / injuries / form / suspensions kick in.

I agree with this. Jedinak and Gardner as bench options with the new midfield we will have be tomorrow (hopefully) will be pretty good for this division. I have a hope that surrounded by good players (which we seem to have now got) Gardner might kick on. I think others will be on their way much sooner.

I agree mate. Scoring in any league as a midfielder is a great attribute that we've not had for a while. Not quite sure exactly how Bruce will have them lined up but a midfield of Adamoh, Henri, Thor, Connor and Grealish - has goal threat written all over it. And most of them look like they can put in the legwork, make a tackle, read the game and have a bit of bite about them too. Been a while since you could associate our midfield and goal threat together (except to our own defenders). I'm hoping that these additions give Grealish the kick up the **** he needs and also afford him a little more freedom. I think this is an important 3-4 months for him now. Not quite make or break but getting close. I've got my fingers crossed.

Having watched a few Serie B matches this season - I wouldn't get too excited about stats from that division. It is generally not very good. My local team is Bari (in a bizarre Villa twist) and Westwood would walk into their starting midfield (but I hope he doesn't come here!).

There's a reply on the Facebook post announcing his arrival from a guy called Fabien Seiler who says: "As a FC Basel fan, I am kind of sad he is going. Because he is very strong in the midfield area and has a good ball protection. Scored a lot of goals for a midfielder as well. Wish him good luck at Aston Villa!" Not sure that tells us much more than we already knew but...

I don't know whether I am more excited about the fact that we are signing players or that Tony is keeping us all up to date with his enthusiastic tweets.... God I hope he doesn't lose interest / run out of money / patience - because I love his updates. I'd want to be doing the same thing if I was the boss! Go Tony!

Do you reckon that we can appeal to the league and say that for the first 26 matches we've only played with 8 players (at a push) so we're just averaging it out over the season?

Sorry I was deliberately misunderstanding you!!

Blimey - if we have to wait for Gabby to score twice before he's out he'll have retired before he leaves.... (Sorry I know - wrong thread - but that was too inviting a set up!).

Ok - firstly, if the talented new recruits that I took on were of questionable character than I have ****ed up my recruitment. My job when recruiting was to pick people who had the ability to do the specific job I wanted and to work effectively in a team. (I worked in IT - so when signing a programmer, their coding skills would only have been one of the factors to consider - it was just as important that they could work effectively with the testers and / or client reps. Indeed there were probably very good coders that I "rejected" because I could never, ever have sat them in front of the client and asked them to explain how part of the software system worked). It is not always easy to spot that in an interview (or to revert back to football through scouting). BUT.... If I recruit someone of "suspect" character and put them in an environment where the rest of the team: turn up on time, have a high attendance record, work bloody hard, and act professionally - then there is a chance that the "suspect" character will pull their socks up and live up to the standards of the rest of the team. But put a "good" character in a team where everyone is taking the piss, turning up late & hungover/pissed, leaving early and generally dicking around then it is almost guaranteed that said "good" character will in no time be less professional than they used to be and highly likely that it will not be long before they are as bad as the rest of them. (Which has almost certainly impacted on us in the recent past.) So if your team is full of "talent" but the wrong attitude then bringing in a handful of new recruits is not going to work. This is exactly where we were last season. Not only were the team poor - but they delivered less than they could / should have done because they had no fight and very little professionalism. That is what hurt more than anything. Not so much that we were bad - but that we had no fight. I'm still concerned that we have too many players who failed on many levels last season still in the squad / team and that this is partly why we are still struggling. These players need outing not just from the team but from the squad and the club so that any new players aren't dragged down to their level. This is why I still think we are in need of major change not just tinkering. There are probably at least 8-10 players here who shouldn't be and we don't have the strength in depth or (from what I can tell) the young players coming through to drop them without replacements. And that's before we consider what happens should we do well next season (or by some miracle hit an amazing run this season) and get promoted - for example with decent fullbacks and a solid midfield - Baker / Chester looks pretty decent for a promotion push next year. But would either let alone both be good enough to survive in the Premier League? I don't know. So even our better players / professionals are I think of limited value as they will ultimately need to be replaced if we are to get back to where I think we all think we should be. If we only do that a couple of players at a time then we're looking at 6-7 years minimum and also at the fact that with that timescale we are constantly going to be losing our better players to clubs that might be able to fulfill their ambitions at some stage during their career. Unless of course we fluke "a Leicester" - but that happens once every....

But we didn't buy a whole team. We bought a load of players who all played in the same position and then tried to figure out how to play them all in the same team. If we had bought a whole team (i.e. one player for each position in the starting XI - rather than just the random scatter-gun approach we seemed to have take) then it would have taken about 5 minutes to figure out our best team (we'd have just signed it!). Players train together all the time - so it really shouldn't take 6 months for a team to gel especially if you play the same team (bar the odd injury and suspension) every week. We might have been a bit dodgy in August, maybe at a push September. As it is we have been dodgy all the way through to January. I once worked on a project that had been going to **** for 12 months. The team comprised about 10 people. I identified that of those 10 only 2 or 3 were actually any good. I got rid of all the people I didn't rate and replaced them with people who were talented in the roles that I required. It took us a few weeks to get the team together and handover the project / domain knowledge. I'd say that within 4 weeks the new team was as effective as the old team (the old team really wasn't very good), another 2 weeks before they were actively more effective and OK maybe 3 months until they were flying and working at close to their full potential. But that was still 6 weeks of being noticeably better than the old team before they really hit their stride. This is exactly where Villa were in June / July. OK football transfers are not the same as the usual job market - but it was our failure to recruit a coherent squad that was the problem not the number of players we bought. Every one of us looked at our central midfield at the end of August with disbelief. Nearly all of us were concerned about the lack of depth in defence. A lot of us commented on how unbalanced the squad was and how many players seemed to be "out of position". Once you have a decent team then I agree with your point that you should only be tinkering and adding 2-4 players per window. But we had one of the worst squads in Premier League history and needed a major overhaul. if you have a crappy old mini that is falling apart - there is no point in buying a new exhaust, a new steering wheel and a new set of tyres. You are still left with a crappy old mini that is falling apart with some nice new,shiny bits. Better off to send the mini to the scrapyard and buy yourself a new one. Will take you a few weeks to figure out what all the new gizmos do, etc - but once you do you are sorted for a few years (bar the odd bit of maintenance and maybe replacing the odd bit because you realise that the extra funky alloys you bought just make you look like a bit of a clearing in the woods).

Now, now - let's at least get the facts straight. It wasn't "no shots" at Wolves. I think we actually managed 6 "shots" in 90 minutes (which is one every15 minutes). Just that none of them happened to actually be in the direction of the goal!

I'm trying REALLY hard not to let my disappointment with the start of 2017 get the better of me. Maybe two or three midweek signings will suddenly instill me with new found optimism and maybe even better they will suddenly be the magic key that unlocks the potential in the team and we go on an incredible winning streak that, if not pulling us back into contention for the play offs, at least gets us into a decent run of form heading into the new season. But I am a long way from convinced that that would be anything other than blind (misplaced?) optimism. Please prove me wrong - I just want to be a happy fan again who looks forward to match days rather than dreading them!!!! :-)