switters

Had some bad luck and iffy refereeing decisions, but were also diabolically bad at times. Targett needs to be dropped very badly. Not sure the sense of bringing Hause in for Mings. Midfield was always second best. Bailey had a miserable debut, Buendia had one good contribution for the goal but otherwise barely seen. Watkins, hard to judge, not really much supply. Cash the only player who did okay throughout. 

Seem to be completely bereft of confidence and clearly in a relegation battle now. End of Sep we were on a high after the win at Old Trafford. It's been as bad a month as it could possibly be.

Really great stuff. Particularly with it so nearly going the way we all expected with the Utd penalty at the end (I can't have been the only one seeing a 2-1 loss as soon as Dean gave that).

Luiz and McGinn stood out most for us, I thought. Man Utd fans will be looking at them today and thinking why are we stuck with Fred and McTominay. I gave Luiz motm because his setpieces also v good and got the assist for the goal

Hause deserves credit because there are moments you see why he is a backup, but in general sticks to the task and did great for the goal. Great player to have in the squad. Defence in general kept Ronaldo and Fernandes very quiet, Pogba and Greenwood had their moments but their finishing wasn't there.

These feel like bonus points 'cause we never get anything here usually and with the injury to Bailey making it seem even less hopeful. Bodes well for season.

Been a good first  half, pressing tactics are working and Cash in particular getting behind well. Have had the chances just not taking them. Of course, Mike Dean is doing his Mike Dean best to help out Utd with soft free kicks and I'm sure he's ready to step in with a penalty for them if they don't manage to get a goal otherwise.

6 minutes ago, El Zen said:

Running and tackling. Something Barkley has been working on over the summer, presumably? 

probably realised it could be only 20 mins of first team action he's getting this season.

2 minutes ago, ferguson1 said:

Following Dean’s presser, I honestly don’t expect to see Sanson, Traore and most notably Konsa starting the game. Not all bad news though, Ramsey, Bailey and Watkins confirmed as fit and available.  Tough game this and much will depend on whether Lukaku plays for them. If he’s available, I think we’ll struggle but if he’s missing I think we can get something out of the game, even snatch an unlikely win.  This is how I think Smith will start the game tomorrow:

 

                      Steer

 Cash    Axel         Mings    Targett   

                Luiz     McGinn 

Bailey         Young            El Ghazi
                    
                     Ings

Subs:  Sinisalo, Konsa, Hause, Nakamba, Ramsey, Sanson, Traore, Watkins, Archer

Largely agree but I think more likely Watkins than Bailey from the start, if they are at similar fitness levels coming back from injury. Bailey he might want to ease into the league a bit from the bench.

And possibly keep Young LB and Ramsey back in midfield if Ramsey fully fit. Shame for Chuk to get injured just when getting into team but sounds minor.

Yeah I think he'll end up playing most games. Even if not starting, he'll be the first go-to sub in a lot of circumstances. Can see him playing midfield/wing as much as full back.

Looking a bit closer, he's basically gone as close as possible to his World Cup 2018 lineup throughout the KO stages. Brackets are the only changes from then. Makes it all the more surprising that he didn't bring Lingard as well tbh:

Pickford

Walker
Stones
Maguire

Trippier
Shaw (Young)

Rice (Henderson)
Phillips (Alli)

Saka (Lingard)
Sterling
Kane

On one hand, I can understand he got to semi-final then so he can say the tactic worked in tournament football. But it was a bit of a grind, penalties against Colombia, beat an average Sweden and then came up short of ideas vs Croatia. This could easily be like Colombia but with the opposite shootout result. Or like Croatia.

Feel like Werner is guaranteed to score.

All along I've assumed you can only really fit 1 or 2 out of Foden, Mount & Grealish and I could understand any choice there, all very good intelligent footballers. In the end we get zero. Who is the creative passer in this team? Maguire?  I can just see endless negative passing triangles between Rice, Walker and Stones, Kane getting bored by himself up front and Saka/Sterling running into blind alleys. 

If he really had to go three at the back, why not at least have Saka as an attacking wing back instead of Shaw or Trippier?

Least we have good bench options to step it up in 2nd half. Just seems so extremely negative and giving Germany a psychological advantage from the start.

Just now, Herman22 said:

How is Guilbert still on the pitch? It's one of the poorest performances I think I've ever seen in a Villa shirt. Truly pathetic. 

Indeed. Been done on positioning/pace time and time again. and useless with the ball. Contributed to all 4 goals.

Guilbert needs subbing so very badly. Elmo to RB + any of the attackers on for Guilbert please.

7 minutes ago, Enda said:

Jedinak please. Crying out for a bit of muscle there.

Yep, he'd be a great addition, along the lines of Elphick. Would add both strength and experience (including being central part of a team which got promoted from this division). 

Frustrating but not a disaster. We need to regain winning mentality, but this was always going to be a tricky fixture to start with. Once we get some cohesion up front between Ayew, McCormack and Grealish we'll cause lots of teams problems, and once we start getting goals, confidence will return to the side.

Think it did show we very much need investment in midfield. Defence was solid for the most part but it was a classic cock-up of the kind we did all the time last season (all the more frustrating that it's completely new player doing the same kind of thing)

well, we still got a suicidal cockup in us. Gollini looked good until that moment.

sorry meant Richardson..

There's a decent player in there but just too damn inconsistent and prone to disappearance. Maybe he should fully convert to striker, he didn't seem to have the discipline for the position but he's a good finisher. 

Anyway, good move all round. Should do well for Celtic 'cause the defences up there ain't gonna be too great and Celtic are going to be dominating against most of them which'll keep him involved. And we've done well to get some money for him and shift another player who is strongly associated with the horror of last season (even if not the worst culprit)

That's 8 players from last year's squad moved on now (Richardson, N'Zogbia, Guzan, Clark, Gueye, Sinclair, Crespo, Gil), along with a few youngsters.  

Expect Veretout, Sanchez, Lescott to find their way out by end of month, maybe one or two others (can't see we'll keep all three of Amavi, Bennett and Cissokho, for example) and then with a few coming in, we'll really start to feel like we've started fresh.

Very concerning if Samuelson is indeed involved. What we know so far does have a few similarities to the Reading takeover:

Quote

When Anton Zingarevich arrived at Reading, it seemed the perfect fit.

Here was a wealthy, young, ambitious man who was offering to take the club to the next level just as chairman Sir John Madejski was looking to find a ‘sugar daddy’.

And he had links to the area as well. He wasn’t just another foreign owner arriving in England with no direct connection to the club he was buying.

In fact when the Russian came in there were stories told of the times when he used to watch Royals from the terraces of Elm Park while he was studying at Bearwood College

http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/zingarevich-dream-ticket-who-turned-7207377

Hopefully this season is enshrined forever as the lowest point in our history.

I guess you could call it a battling point and a bit of resilience for the first time in months. Zero attacking intent, but screwing Newcastle is a nice bonus.

Something's gone wrong with my screen, there appears to be a bigger number next to Villa's name than there is for the opposition 

Richards is probably on 40k a week minimum. Which equals at least £6m in wages over the next 3 years. If we can get someone to take him off our hands on a free, we should consider ourselves extremely lucky

My guess is King & Bernstein had put together a plan for overhaul which started with the words 'As soon as relegation is confirmed we need to: .... '

Relegation was confirmed Saturday and now on Monday they resign, so either they have been given an outright 'no' to significant parts of the plans, or they have been met with indecisiveness & dallying which is as good as a 'no' when your whole plans are based around acting early & decisively to prepare for next season. I think on past form, it is likely that Lerner has been dallying (probably on some tenuous hope of selling before he has to commit more money), and they've decided it's better to cut out now than risk reputations on a project that's doomed to failure without commitment from the top. 

I can easily see us shipping about 15 players, with a mix of sales, loans and paid off/released. It's certainly not unheard of for Premier League clubs relegated to the Championship to make changes on this scale. Realistically, we're not necessarily going to be able to shift all the ones we might like to (Agbonlahor probably heads this list) or indeed keep the few we might prefer to (Ayew). So at a guess, we'll be looking at something like: 

Release/pay off/get negligible fee for - N'Zogbia, Richardson, Crespo, Bennett, Guzan, Richards, Bacuna, Kozak

Sell (as they will want to go and clubs may pay actual money for them) - Ayew, Gueye, Gil, Sanchez, Okore (between them might bring in ~£20m)

Loan - Traore, Veretout (I think these two will want to leave and we'd struggle to get half what we paid back so a loan might make more sense for now)

--

Would leave squad along lines of:

GK:Bunn, Steer

LB:Amavi, Cissokho

RB:Hutton

CB:Clark, Baker, Lescott

CM:Westwood, Gardner, Lyden

Wide:Grealish, Sinclair, Green

FW:Agbonlahor, Gestede, Robinson

That would need serious work and investment: 3 or 4 quality additions in midfield and at least one striker who can definitely score goals at this level. And a first choice GK, 2 or 3 in defence and some more creativity, means we'd be looking at 10-12 incoming (maybe fewer if there are others in youth setup who can realistically step up). The good thing about this is that a new manager would get a real opportunity to make something like the squad he wants so obviously it's important we get someone in before too long so they can be making decisions early in the summer.

If Norwich win today we can officially be put out of our misery next week.

Think the sole remaining pleasure we can hope for this season is taking Newcastle with us on 7th May.

Hopefully then the clearout to end all clearouts in the summer. If more than 3 of today's starting line-up are lining up for our first championship match, I'll be surprised.

Two world class misses late on, just to prove our attacking is every bit as inept as our defending. Good stuff, guys.