nepal_villan

Just cant see us getting 20M for someone who is 6 months away from signing a pre-contract and will not immediately start for any big club.

He seems so fragile. Every time he goes down you fear an injury based on his reaction. Was it the same at Leverkusen?

I am less optimistic now than a few weeks back. Feel other clubs have caught up to us in terms of signings.  Think we'll be right around 10th. Maybe 1 or 2 spots higher or lower.

Shame he will be leaving, and potentially on a free. This has been festering for over a year, so it's not like Villa left this until the last minute.  We tried to extend the agreement over 2 years before the termination date. Can't do anything if a player and his representatives are hell bent on running down their contract. 

2 hours ago, TRO said:

I am happy with the calibre of players we have now......my question is can we play as a team? and find a level of consistency....that is what will shape our future.

That's the challenge I am looking forward to.

That's pretty much on the coaching staff, no?  I just feel the midfield needs a bit of a refresh to make it "click". Wouldn't mind seeing one of McGinn or Luiz leave and someone else of a similar or slightly higher quality come in.

1 hour ago, Rustibrooks said:

 

Could mean nothing but this has been floating around in the last hour lol. I mean i wouldn't be surprised if he did end up signing on, although this pic means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Think this was done many weeks backs.

4 minutes ago, messi11 said:

Modern game

Did you watch the match?  

Not sure how realistic it is but would love to get Paqueta from Lyon. Maybe with Sanson going on loan to them as a sweetener.   

Edit:  rumored with Arsenal and Newcastle, so we certainly could compete for his signing.

If he is better than Target, I am happy. That should be the litmus test for any signing - he is better than the guy he is replacing.

Anyone else feel his positioning was totally off against Walsall?  Had a few good forays forward but was a mess in defense.

3 hours ago, david-avfc said:

Not going to get too bogged down on individual performances in our first pre season match, but saw Ashley Preece raving about him today, not so sure from me - he’s a very tidy player but didn’t show much cutting edge and either lacked the pace or the confidence to bust forwards on a few occasions when space opened up

Not sure why anyone would listen to the football analysis of the likes of Preece or Evans. They are simply writers and not analysts and certainly not ITK.  There are so many Villa vloggers and podcasters that understand the game and analyze them far better than those two. 

Thought Kesler was great going forward but all over the place tracking back.  Probably needs another year on loan, thus would be good to keep Guilbert as the backup RB.

4 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Me neither, but I've seen that he's both impressed, and not impressed.

Vintage.....

He was very active, maybe that impressed some.  But did not really show any cutting edge that would put him ahead of our established players.

was very active but did not offer anything special for me. You can easily see that players like Buendia are miles ahead of him.

Been a big critic of his, but if he shows the energy he did today - on top of his crazy skills, then he definitely has something to offer our squad.

So no JPB and Guilbert of the players that were in training this week  

2 minutes ago, VillaBrum said:

Can't see Bailey playing a lot of games this season - injuries going to catch up with him again. Unless he actually needs a full pre-season to sort out his fitness.

Agree. Seems so fragile.  Every time he goes down it feels as though it could be a long-term injury.

Azaz impressed. Good energy from Bailey and Traore. Archer is a natural. Carlos seems very comfortable on the ball.  Only real minus was Mings' composure and distribution. 

Feel we are getting Cazooed!

Something like this could have worked for a secondary logo
 

2 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

I don’t think we’re that good on paper tbh. If we were so good, we wouldn’t have finished 14th this season and 11th last season with Grealish in the side. Theres a reason we lost twice to Watford last year and failed against some pretty dour teams. 

We have some good players. A couple of very good players but other than that, we’re average. 

At the very least, we needed a centre half and two midfielders this window to become a top 10 team. I think we’ll probably go on to do that and we’ll be a better team for it. To go higher in the league, we’d probably need another centre half, striker and attacking midfielder. Pretty sure that doesn’t happen this window. 

You're looking at this in isolation.  Our squad is better than many that finished ahead of us.  Sure you can always say the table does not lie....but would you trade our squad last year for Brentford,  Crystal Palace, Newcastle, and Brighton?  I wouldn't!

1 hour ago, allani said:

We also had a couple of spells of properly dreadful relegation form during that season.  Many of the team we had 2 seasons ago were bought with the purpose of staying in the PL.  The players we are now buying / trying to buy are to try and achieve a completely different target. This is one of the impacts of FFP (and some p1ss poor management by previous regimes) we couldn't buy the team we wanted straight away because the rules prohibited it.  Instead we (and Newcastle will be in the same boat) had to buy 2 or 3 squads in quick succession order to try and catch up.

Quite simply many of the players that we had 2 seasons were not good enough to sustain a position that we now aspire too.  As demonstrated by the fact that for 1/3 of that season they were (mainly) great and for 2/3 of the season they were (mainly) awful.  When they were awful we didn't have enough strength in depth to drop players in bad form or to try something a bit different.  Last season was pretty similar - although our good spell was shorter.

Even now how many of our team would actually be picked as a starter for any of the Sly 6 teams?  The answer is probably none.  We can't expect any manager to perform miracles and get a team of average talent to compete and beat teams who have better quality players in place.  Just compare the value of the subs that Man City brought on in the last game of the season to the value of the subs that we brought on.  Of course Man City and Liverpool are on a different level.  But Chelsea, Arsenal, Man Utd and Spurs all have much better squads than us.  Thanks to FFP we are not allowed to try and compete with them by buying players with the same value.  We have to be smart and buy the right players and hope that the talented prospects coming through the academy develop into the right players for the first team in 2, 3, 4 or 5 years time.

I think the Board are doing the right thing.  Short term we have to buy.  Longer term they are hoping that by investing and developing top youth talent - some of those youngsters develop into players who can play in the first XI and make us competitive.  I think we are attracting some awesome talent into the academy but it will take time for those players to (hopefully) develop into quality PL / international players.  We may luck out on a couple getting there early - but it is a "long game" strategy.

Somewhere along the line we will have to punch above our weight. A good start would be playing to our potential, as certainly on paper we are better than 14th!

1 hour ago, messi11 said:

I think we only gonna sign players now that improve the starting 11! and thats the way it should always be from now on

So no back-up LB?  

Did not see him in today's training video. Maybe he was given a few extra days as the EFL Playoff was a week after the end of the PL season.

Always gave a 100%  - except for that silly dive. His goals kept us in the PL.