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According to TalkSport, Henry is set to become Egypt national manager. Adds even more weight to the talk of him talking to NSWE over our own managerial position......

Also may point towards increasing confidence re JG staying....?

Not convinced on Hugill. Scores around 1 in 4 and has very little pace. Yes he has physicality but surely there are target men out there with a turn of pace as well. We must have the slowest team in the division!

However, if he comes in then I’ll fully support him and hope he is a huge success. 

1 minute ago, Farlz said:

that thatcherlover bloke doesn't know anything 

Mmmm...hit and miss at best I reckon. Until i hear it from VillaTransfers it aint 'appening  

Just now, rodders0223 said:

Will be very pleased to get another CM in, we are a bit light tbf

Ryan Woods would cost upwards of £8m I i imagine.

Tammy Abraham is exactly what we need, he is big and he is quick, and he can score goals. His loan at Swansea wasn't a massive success but would be surprised if he drops down again to the Championship.

Yep....would be massively surprised if either come off. TA for me would a superb loan signing and give us that target man we so desperately need. Woods is a very tidy bDM but i'd rather give more game time to JDH.....unless Woods is only 3M and we are losing whelan/jedi/lansbury.....

lot of twitter talk especially from Thatcherlover that Abraham to join on loan (prob what dan bardell is alluding too as well as a permanent transfer of £3M (yeah FFP, i know) for Ryan Woods from Brentford...

......don't shoot the messenger!!

Come on mate....this is Bruce tactics.....I doubt if even the players know. No striker, 2 holding midfielders....please make it stop

6 minutes ago, Fowlersrs said:

Is this 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 again...

 

 

We need to give these kids experience and get them into the first team. He has looked one of our better players in pre season but again Bruce will go with ‘experience’ as is his default strategy. Our young players just will not be given enough opportunities with Bruce in charge. Fact. 

Hasn’t travelled to Germany according to a reliable guy on Twitter. No reports if an injury either. 

Bruce playing to type as ever!! Absolute joke if true. 

1 hour ago, PieFacE said:

January is probably the better time for us to sell in all honesty. If the owners have any belief that Bruce can get us promoted this year, then I think they should let him have Grealish for 6 months and assess where we are at that point. If we're second and looking strong, it may be worth just hanging on to him and they may want to gamble promotion. Alternatively, if we're mid table it will be clear that promotion isn't really likely so they can start thinking about a rebuild. 

I see your point. I have little expectation of a promotion push this season (naturally pessimistic!) and think we are at our strongest now in regards to getting best price for Jack as opposed to a take it or leave offer in Jan when we will have little choice but to accept.

However, I can see both sides of the argument here, mate, and until we get some more clarification from NSWE on their plans I guess its a case of watch this space...

I think we need to accept that Jack WILL leave simply due to FFP. It is our only viable option of resolving the black hole we have. If he is not sold in the next 2 weeks then he will leave in Jan; it would make financial sense to sell him now as his value would decrease in Jan (due to our own financial position). 

8 hours ago, KSV said:

This is odd... those Henry rumours were serious..  no denials were being made and even Steve Bruce was worried.

Suddenly we have made a U turn.. kept Steve. Some brief statement saying hes staying and then Bruce refuses to talk to the media after the match? Maybe they are forcing Henry as his coach and he wasn't happy as he feels he will be forced out eventually. Who knows. Maybe its just me reading into it too much

I agree.

1) The generic zero-detail statement whose brevity is very telling - no personal endorsement from the owners for SB 

2) Not even a mention of SB in their first interview....or even ‘management’. 

3) SB declines to speak to media when you would have thought he would have been shouting from the roof tops about how great the meeting went and that he knows he is the right man for the job etc etc. 

Ok, I really want Bruce to go, however, just looking at the facts above, something doesn’t add up here. I would suggest that any assurances SB has been given are rather short term and he maybe realises that he is on borrowed time following discussions yesterday. 

IMO timing of the takeover has kept SB in a job and that’s about it. Change is afoot....just a bit further away than I had hoped. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Henry in place before Christmas. 

Just now, TRO said:

absolutely right.

I can promise you this......2 dominant center Halves at least one, One Target man who can score headed goals and an effective midfielder and we can go up.

without them.....we can all forget it.

Agreed we could be in the mix for Play-Offs......but trouble is to be able to afford those players we will simply have to sell Jack.

Just now, TRO said:

We simply don't have the players who can dominate to play 3 at the back....we resort to defending  in numbers, which then leaves the attack under deployed.

We need a couple at least dominant defenders, particularly in the air.....not for the squad, the first team.

Exactly and we are crying out for an effective target man. Not sure if KD could be that man but Jimmy is not a target man. We need physical presence at both ends of the pitch, desperately.

Only Bruce can change to a back 3 AFTER we have lost 3 x CBs!!! Beggars belief!!

Just now, ramshackler said:

Great to see after the full backing of our new owners, Brucie manages to be the only manager in world football to play 3 at the back and still only 1 up front

"Only SB can turn a 3-5-2 where we can play 2 up top and only 1 semi holding midfielder into a defensive 3-5-2 where we have 2 x holding midfielders in our midfield 3 and our best box to box out on the right, in addition to only 1 striker. I cannot see how anyone thinks this manager will look to evolve us into a progressive, forward thinking team!! 

Jimmy isolated, very few options going forward and JG coming deep to pick all up. This all places a lot of pressure on the back three as the ball just does not stick. This is gonna be another season of poor game plan with the hope that JG can do some magic. 

Bruce cannot and will not change, so until we change him.....neither will we." 

I put this in the WHam thread but very relevant to SB obviously. A complete dinosaur, clueless about tactics and will hold us back until he's gone. Thankfully,  NSWE will make a change once they realise he is not the right fit for us going forward.

Only SB can turn a 3-5-2 where we can play 2 up top and only 1 semi holding midfielder into a defensive 3-5-2 where we have 2 x holding midfielders in our midfield 3 and our best box to box out on the right, in addition to only 1 striker. I cannot see how anyone thinks this manager will look to evolve us into a progressive, forward thinking team!! 

Jimmy isolated, very few options going forward and JG coming deep to pick all up. This all places a lot of pressure on the back three as the ball just does not stick. This is gonna be another season of poor game plan with the hope that JG can do some magic. 

Bruce cannot and will not change, so until we change him.....neither will we. 

Mmmm....that statement is not exactly a ringing endorsement with no quotes from NSWE. Unless there is another more detailed comms on the way, this seems very much like a short term plan.....it’s as though they forgot to add the words ‘....for now’.  

Disappointed that SB remains but I firmly believe it is a decision based on logistics and timings as opposed to him matching the vision. 

Just now, thabucks said:

The more the day progresses the more I think we are stuck with him...... oh well could be a whole lot worse I suppose 

The silence is deafening though with no denials on anything TH from any side. If, as mooted by many, the meeting is around lunchtime, i guess a statement one way or the other will be released in next couple of hours. I'm still of the opinion that had NSWE been clear backers of SB it would have come out by now. The lack of that coupled with all of the TH stories suggests to me that SB will be mutually leaving AVFC later today.

1 hour ago, Jareth said:

If it is TH then I think it’s worth focusing just as much on what this means for our philosophy going forwards. He doesn’t have to go get us promotion this term but he will probably refresh our squad with young technical players and adopt a style to suit. The existing lads of jack if he stays, COH, Green etc will all thrive in that sort of environment. I think it’s a risk worth taking if we are ever to become a modern club and it doesn’t have to break the bank. 

Spot on mate. I’m 50:50 on TH. However, I think the ethos of the team will change for the better and bring us back to the modern day. Will he get us promoted, I very much doubt it. It could be a bit nervy along the way and we may flirt with relegation. Looking at the bigger picture, though, he may very well implement a more fluid, attacking approach to our game that has yielded success in this division, ie Wolves, Fulham. 

More imortantly that team philosophy once embedded COULD continue and evolve with future managers if our owners see it as the best way to sustain us as a Club and a business. 

I know there’s a lot of ifs, buts and maybes there.....new era, new ideas.....the rollercoaster will continue and it may be one hell of a journey. 

1 minute ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I’m not seeing the good in him or thinking he has our best interests at heart. I’m all saying he is may have done pulled off the best thing that happened to the club. Whether he did it for the club or not I don’t. 

Apparently every decision Lerner made was for the benefit of the club and it lead to a steady demise. Believe me if Lerner didn’t have Premier League tv money we would have been bankrupt a long time ago. 

Well mate we can at least agree on one thing there in that Xia may have fluked the best takeover ever. Let’s hope he has

4 minutes ago, lexicon said:

You don't know anything and never have. 

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that mate. 

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I know we all hate xia right now but it sounds like he held out for the right people. 

I honestly thing the main reason for the crisis was Wyness.  I wouldn’t even be suprised if that 3 team and plan if didn’t get promoted bollox was even sold to Tony. End of the day you would trust your CEO. 

Would love to hear the truth one day. 

Really?? Let’s not pretend that Xia ‘held out’ for the ‘right people’! He was purely waiting for someone to offer HIM what HE wanted. Not what was best for the Club, not what what was best for the supporters.....only what was best for HIM! The man is a complete fraud and so very nearly destroyed our very existence. I cannot and will not give this charlatan one iota of credit for this takeover ( no pun intended).