Djemba_Villan

Our decline since those 3 signings of Bailey, Buendia and Ings is startling.

as useless as Gerrard has been (and he has) - we are also an utterly unbalanced squad full of players who are clearly not happy going through the motions. Not a shred of passion today.

16 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

I'll have to see it again, but had the players stopped before Coutinho hit the ball?

To be fair…they did. The goalie barely moved and the player tracking stopped. It also hit stones’ face on the way through. No guarantee it would have been a goal but the principle that they didn’t play on still stands. Crap linesman call and Very strange decision against them yet again.

I wonder if we were even vaguely in the mix for Gueye. I’d have taken him back in a heartbeat. Fantastic player. 

3 minutes ago, MachoFantastico said:

Liverpool really look crap so far this season. 

They’ll be back to unbeatable form just in time for us though. 

It’s been a cracking game to be fair. I only wanted to watch for 5 mins and have ended up watching the lot. 
Agree that Everton deserved a goal. 

Just now, Troglodyte said:

Loudest chants in the stadium in which the home team have just won the championship are our away fans singing 'Super Jackie Grealish'. Villa ftw.

Is it the city fans chanting it to wind us up?

Even if so. Tragic given they’ve just won the league.

when city win anything jt always feels like a non event to me. Shrug. 

5 hours ago, Wezbid said:

It's not only his ability with the ball, he's working hard off the ball too. 

Absolute next level player. We are blessed having him and Emi B together. Get Ings in for his instinctive runs and we'll be seeing even more productivity. 

It’s a real blessing and a curse having both Ings and Watkins. We need a player that blends both!

Watkins intelligence goes massively under the radar e.g. his run to create the 3rd goal last night. Ings is more instinctive but slower and worse stamina, they don’t work together which is a shame.

Feels like we have two 7.5/10 strikers.

Just now, MaVilla said:

urgh, just dont see Newcastle getting relegated.

No chance sadly. If they get Ashworth too they might actually not just spaff untold billions on nothing too. 

Saint-Maximin Has looked a right handful to be fair to him.

For me he’s been one of our best players since he joined. I think we’re too quick to forget what it’s like to have reliable and effective full backs. 
 

Obviously the reported £40m is worthy of consideration but let’s not delude ourselves that Kesler is ready to slot straight in based on a good spell in L2.

For me, the step forward for us is actually selling non-critical players at or shortly after their peak for prime value - to enable re-investment in the squad. Something all the well ran succesful clubs do and an something that’s necessary to compete long term.
 

So if we had a replacement lined up, who we can add value to, who will perform quickly. I would be open to selling however Cash deserves respect for how he has done IMO.

10 minutes ago, alreadyexists said:

 

it’s like Christmas Yves.

This signing would IMO be the best of the whole lot over the last few years. I massively rate him.

if we pulled this off and upgraded our LB next season would demand a massive raising of the bar. It would have to be Europe.

Notice how Sky have already demoted the story well down their page. Comical

26 minutes ago, MachoFantastico said:

Sky Sports reporting that two clubs are still in talks for Coutinho, make of that what you will considering the crap they write. But if I at to guess it'd be us and Newcastle for sure. Let's hope we get this one over the line, be a decent start to the window. 

My guess is it’s BS to cover themselves in case he doesn’t join us. We wanted to avoid a bidding war so acted quickly IMO. Sky wanted a public bidding war.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all if rumours of a bust up are true.

Against Chelsea he ruined two clear scoring opportunities with his tunnel vision - missing obvious lay offs. I was fuming at one in particular.

Gerrard seems the sort to put him in his place. You don’t tactically construct two #10s only for a striker to ignore them all game. Fair enough he probably feels he needs goals to stay around England but not at the cost of the test please. It’s regularly costing us.

Typical f**** sky.

we spend a minute knocking the ball around beautifully. Martinez hits that rapid ball to Targett under pressure (something he does often) and of course it’s ‘not intended’.

On 17/12/2021 at 21:34, Delphinho123 said:

The beautiful thing about what’s happening at the moment, and I’m convinced about this, is that there is an individual or a group of individuals out there that are leaking all of these photos and this evidence of Xmas parties and the Tory party have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

It can’t be a coincidence that these stories of Xmas parties were leaked… before Xmas. It’s all designed to put Johnson in an impossible position, especially around Covid and any further lockdowns. He’s absolutely powerless and has lost all authority on the topic because he’ll be seen as a hypocrite with any action he takes. 

Every other day, something new is leaked. He’s hired this chap to Investigate the parties, oh, he was at the parties? 

Somebody has the Tory party by the balls at the moment. The North Shrops by election result is evidence of the damage that is being inflicted onto Johnson and co. at the moment.

And I’m here for the ride. Enjoying every minute of it.

I distrusted the bloke from day one like many. The BBC documentary following him around in his role in foreign office was scary. But it’s clear to me that someone somewhere has decided his turn is up as PM. 

We’ve lost some of the midfield since the Ings change. I reckon Chuck on for Watkins. 

1 minute ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Norwich fans booing.

As they are used to dominating teams in the league...

they have been particularly dreadful haven’t they.

We MUST not let this be like Burnley. They were equally dreadful first half then came back to win.

Just now, AV82 said:

Watkins yet again not playing someone in. Not good enough.

It’s really irritating me now. We get it…you’re a striker…now please pass 4 ft to the left. 

Cashy MOTM so far. He’s been a fantastic signing. 

1 hour ago, BOF said:

I think any short term benefit the sport received by having a thrilling finish for the cameras can very easily be over-shadowed by the damage done to the sport by how that thrilling finish came about. I don't think it's a stretch to say the integrity of the sport; if not damaged; was certainly called into question by the scarcely defensible actions of the race officials this weekend, and that can have a far more long-lasting damage than any instant gratification gave us.  If you end up irreparably damaging your sport (and I don't think they've quite gone that far here...) in a single-minded attempt to appeal to the casual fan, or even worse, the person who doesn't give a shit about it but talks about it by the water cooler, then you have got your priorities wrong and you are no longer working for the best interests of the sport that you're in charge of.  You end up with WWE if the racing isn't organic.

I think my point is that the people questioning it are fans already, who regularly get annoyed by these sorts of incidents. But they have potentially gained a far broader viewership. It was pure drama to a layman newcomer. The ‘damage’ will be forgotten soon by many - like most things. (Even in football no real measurable material damage has actually been caused by the breakout league, examples of corruption, poor isolated decisions etc.)
 

Not agreeing with it morally but it’s probably how the new owners and also the teams envisage growth of the sport. 

3 hours ago, BOF said:

The more I think of it, the worse it is from the FIA.

Had they decided the lapped cars couldn't overtake, then there would have been too many cars between Lewis and Max at the re-start and Lewis wins the title. Had they decided the lapped cars could overtake - as in all the lapped cars, the way the rule is written - then they would have needed another lap to get that done and Lewis wins the title behind the safety car. So Michael Masi didn't just change his mind half way through a safety car - which is bad enough in itself, he changed it to an interpretation of the rules that artificially manufactured a scenario where Lewis and Max got to race for 1 lap purely for the cameras and to hell with the integrity of the championship. I feel sorry for Lewis. He was hung out to dry, and Max didn't do anything wrong. He had to do what he did. And both drivers would have been worthy champions. I don't see it being overturned but I do see the teams looking for a new race director behind closed doors. None of the teams will be naive enough to know that could have been them on the receiving end of a terrible unfair decision and plenty of them have already been affected by him.

Part of me wonders…when all the current hoo har is dealt with, when both teams are back to parting on their mega yachts and laughing about it all in a few weeks….is this all just cognisant drama (including the teams)….They’ve captured the imagination of everyone yesterday, I even heard my missus talking about it to her non-sporty colleagues….will Lewis/Mercedes just recognise that they will enjoy a bigger pie now and it was worth it. They surely aren’t stupid and recognise one driver and one team winning everything is dull as dishwater and damaging to the sport. I can honestly see Mercedes not pursuing this. They just need to discredit it just enough.

An irony I joked about during the race that weirdly happened is that it was Mick Schumacher that caused the crash leading to Lewis not breaking his Dad’s number of title record.

I was joking that this would be Horner’s Plan B/C at the time. Just imagine…

43 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Yes but if the crash had happened a lap or two earlier and there had been time for normal safety car procedures then we'd still have had Max on new tyres behind Lewis on old tyres at a restart with one or two laps remaining. That is a perfectly normal situation. I don't really buy into this argument that Max was well beaten by so many seconds, because safety cars always mess up big leads, that's just the luck of the draw.

The only issue is that in this particular case the race should have finished under safety car conditions.

Agree. Also surely the red flag option results in Max having 5 laps to overtake Lewis anyway…with his tire advantage.