villadodo

I don't think he is arrogant. I saw an interview with him where he was trying to answer the questions but clearly finding it a bit uncomfortable. He's only 21 its only natural to find it a bit awkward having to make conversation with total strangers who think they know you because they've seen you playing football. He probably comes across that way because so many other footballers seem to be unnaturally confident and have had loads of media training.

I wouldn't worry too much about what Newcastle are doing. If we finish below them we are 100% down. Better they took points off Brighton. Plenty of time for our team to start clicking.

For anyone concerned about the ability of our team to stay up this season let me reassure I have just spent 90 minutes watching Newcastle vs Brighton. Brighton completely dominated that game without ever looking like scoring. Passing and moving beautifully until they got to the Newcastle penalty area and then running out of ideas. Not disappointed at all that we missed out on Maupay he looked selfish and bang average. Newcastle are exactly what you would expect of a Steve Bruce team. No attacking cohesion whatsoever. Standing miles apart and punting the ball in the general direction of a teammate. Completely reliant on a moment of individual brilliance. Fortunately for us they don't look like they have an individual remotely capable of providing a moment of brilliance. We need to step up our own performances but definitely nothing to fear from these two sides.

I am wondering whether at some point Smith might try moving Jack back onto the wing and bringing Conor back into Centre Mid. Jota, Trez and El Ghazi have all struggled so far. Grealish has also not performed to his best level in centre mid this season. I also feel we have missed Conor's set pieces and goals. However it is hard to find a place for Conor in centre mid ahead of Grealish and McGinn and Nakamba looks like a more solid option in defensive midfield.

To be honest I don't think VAR is the only problem it is the ridiculous nature of some of the rules of the game. Why is the goalkeeper not allowed to stray a millimetre off their goal line? If they dive straight along the line they will crash into the post. Why is the strikers toenail not allowed to be past the last man without being offside? It is surely impossible for the striker to know exactly all of their body is onside when they are moving at speed without starting their run well in front of the defender. What happened to the rule about handball having to be deliberate? In the City game today the ball brushed Laporte's arm it was clearly unintentional.

My opinions why Dean Smith is the best manager we have had for years. 1) Tactics and coaching Sometimes I think people exaggerate the importance of tactics and coaching like they are a magic bullet that can win games on their own. If you have shit players you are not going to win regardless of your formation or how good your coaches are. Smith does the simple things well. All the players know we are going to play 4-3-3 and know exactly what their roles are so if we get an injury that player can be replaced seamlessly. There is no random chopping and changing like Bruce deciding to play 3 at the back on a whim. I actually don't think Smith does anything particularly special tactically but we are organised, have a plan and he doesn't sabotage the teams chances with strange decisions unlike previous managers. 2) Meritocracy Smith bases team selection on meritocracy. I guess it was surprising to see Taylor, Elmo and Hourihane in the starting line up against Spurs but actually it makes complete sense as following on from last season it is still their shirt to lose. The only position Smith frequently rotated last season was Adomah / Green because neither of them performed consistently well enough to keep the shirt. Players were only replaced due to injury or bad performances e.g. Tuanzebe for Hause (injury) and Hourihane for Whelan (performance). The player who came into the team always kept their place if they performed well. We have seen numerous managers in the past persist with selecting their favourites despite prolonged periods of underperformance e.g. Weimann and Gabby under Lambert which led to Albrighton leaving. Albrighton put in some great performances during the brief cameos he was given by Lambert and its hard to imagine the same situation happening under Smith. It must create a great competitive edge when no-one's position is safe and everyone has the opportunity to keep a first team place if they perform well. 3) Round pegs in round holes Smith selects players in their strongest position and only deviates from this approach unless there is no alternative e.g. Hause covering at left back last season when Taylor was injured. We all know Bruce loved to select players in random unfamiliar positions which reached its disastrous peak at the start of last season when Tuanzebe became RB, Hutton LB, Jedinak CB, Kodjia LW, Elmo RW... WTF! I clearly remember feeling the same frustrations with both Lambert and McLeish. 4) Personality Obviously this is a bit more difficult to judge as he could easily be a different person behind the scenes. However he always comes across as an amiable, humble and intelligent guy who loves Villa. Bruce made his own situation worse by antagonising the fans. Di Matteo was robotic. Garde realised he'd made a horrible mistake. Sherwood was a clown. Lambert was dour. McLeish couldn't shake off his past. Houllier was respected by the fans but not the players according to Petrov. Its hard to imagine anyone taking a strong disliking to Smith. 5) Conclusion Dean Smith is our best manager in years because he does the simple things well. The Premier League is a massive step up for our squad and there is only a certain limited amount the manager can do to impact results. Ultimately much of our performance this season will come down to the quality of recruitment we have done which is based on work from our scouting department, Pitarch and Purslow not just Dean Smith. If the going gets tough and Smith starts to get scapegoated I just want to remind you all of the list of our other recent managers Bruce, Di Matteo, Garde, Sherwood, Lambert McLeish, Houllier... etc. It is a lot easier to find a crap manager than it is to find a good one!

Lets be honest if a player is a top performer in the French, Dutch, Belgian, Turkish, Portuguese or Russian top tier or the English Championship then they stand a decent chance of being ok in the Premier League. Some of those leagues have a few standout teams but in general the standard is pretty much on par so it doesn't make a big difference where they come from. We've seen in the past a player can have years of experience in the Premier League and still look bang average in the Championship e.g. Bacuna, Westwood, Taylor, Weimann, Baker. I guess they just got lucky to spend so long in the PL without being found out.

I know we all love Mings but Bournemouth must be absolutely delighted. They have brought in £30m for two surplus players! Meanwhile we had to pay McCormack to get him to leave and we will be lucky if we £2m back for Hogan!

I managed to find the stats you were talking about. Looks like he had quite an injury hit season. Also the year before he was hardly used other than as an option off the bench. He is only 21 so he is doing well to get a reasonable amount of game time in La Liga and is only going to improve. I completely agree that based on those stats I would be shocked if Smith was planning to rely on him to start every game. Expecting him to be another rotation option like Konsa, Hause, Hourihane, Jota, El Ghazi.

Not sure if this has already been answered but not seen it anywhere. Last season he started 16 league games and made 7 substitute appearances for Girona. I've seen lots of comments both on here and in media saying his loan was a huge success. If it was such a big success then why was he not involved more particularly as Girona were relegated? Any ideas?

It's funny that because I was under the impression he was younger as well but looked him up and he is actually 28 which is only 1 year younger than Sturridge. They are both very injury prone but I would say Sturridge is a much better player with a better goalscoring record if we had to choose one. To be honest I wouldn't be keen on either of them and I don't think the club is even considering these type of players.

I thought he was poor. Not anticipating some of the crosses into the box. And there was a strange moment where he just stopped playing to have an argument with Hourihane. First game of pre-season so lots of time to improve.

They are a kind of weird chav / hipster hybrid. They certainly look like no one I have ever seen watching or playing football. I will not be buying the new kit. I like the colours of the away kit but nothing else. The marketing campaign is just stupid. Repeatedly saying the word 'iconic' does not make it so. Would be more accurate if they substituted it for 'disappointing'.

Well at least this season he will definitely be there or thereabouts... the relegation zone.

Wish him all the best but poor signing for Forest in my opinion. Great character, lovely guy, good player for a couple of years but really starting to live up to his uncle Albert nickname in that last season. I think we got promoted in spite of him rather than because of him and he only stayed in the squad for lack of a viable alternative. It was like pass the parcel at the end of the season between him and Green with both of them trying their best to be dropped for the next game.

Is anyone else enjoying a transfer window where we sign sensible players for positions we actually need to fill instead of selling our only centre back to raise funds for our tenth right back?

I'm happy with the signing and hope he does well. Has played a huge amount of football for a 21 year old at a decent standard. Could be worth a fortune in 2 years time or be our centre back for the next 10 years. Think he might turn out to be a rotation option for now particularly if we can bring back Tuanzebe on loan. I have a slight concern when it comes to Brentford players. Mainly because if Mepham, Konsa, Henry, Maupay, Benrahma and Watkins are all as good as we've been told then why the hell did they finish 11th? Also why do their players rarely go on to hit the same heights when they leave Brentford? Maybe its because they seem to buy these players for about £500k from nowhere when they actually perform well they get a bit overhyped?

I think some people on this forum have a very basic misunderstanding about the nature of his role. Mainly the comments about why we are signing British based players and where is Suso with his 'foreign gems'. He is the Director of Football not a European scout. His job is to work with Purslow and Smith to come up with the style of play and profile of player we want, draw up a shortlist and go out and get them. I think the scouts are responsible for identifying individual players who fit well within that system British or not. Suso may have even decided we want to mainly target British players as they are easier to integrate into the squad. Who knows?

I was watching some videos of Carlos Valderrama the big bouffant Columbian legend from the 90s other day and I thought his style of play reminded me a lot of Grealish. The languid playing style, the ability to drift past players, the appearance of having all the time in the world despite being in the most crowded areas of the pitch, incredible passing range and a few times when he gets crowded into a corner by opponents and pulls out an outrageous piece of skill to keep possession. Apparently Laurent Blanc said this about him. "He was a natural exponent of 'toque', keeping the ball moving. But he was so gifted that we could give him the ball when we didn't know what else to do with it knowing he wouldn’t lose it... and often he would do things that most of us only dream about." If that doesn't perfectly describe the Grealish role at Villa I'm not sure what else does. There are loads of videos on youtube so have a watch and see what you think.

Tony Cascarino is a typical talksport pundit. He will give an opinion on anything he is asked about even if he has no clue whatsoever. His opinion is as good as a blind guess. It is quite possible someone stuck a bit of paper in front of him telling him what to say. https://7500toholte.sbnation.com/2019/6/16/18680871/new-signing-analysis-wesley-moraes-xg-shotmap-heatmap-tammy-abraham-data-analysis-player-scouting I found this article quite interesting. Suggests to me that Wesley goalscoring figures have not been incredible but that is partly due to the position he has been playing either as the deep lying forward in a front two or on the wing. He is very good at getting on the end of crosses so if he can be coached to play in a more advanced position then he could be an effective replacement for Tammy Abraham.

If we end up paying anything like £20m for Mings we have been completely mugged off in my opinion. Obviously we want to keep hold of the players who got us promoted but not at any cost. Based on the usual transfer values that are quoted I'd say he's worth about £12m. 1) If we had paid £20m for Mings in January we would have all thought the club had lost the plot. Even if we had paid more than £5m it would have seemed strange. A players asking price shouldn't quadruple on the back of an excellent half season in the Championship. 2) Bournemouth clearly want to sell him. Even though he had an excellent half season for us he has not proven himself in the Premier League. I do not think Bournemouth would have any other clubs interested in buying him for £15 - 20m. If they want to get rid of him they need to lower their asking price. 3) There are other centre backs we could sign instead who also had excellent seasons last year. Yes Mings is a hero after what he did but it shouldn't blind us to the alternatives if his price isn't right. Our recruitment team found an underrated gem in Mings. I'm sure they could do the same again. 4) You've compared him to the Wesley transfer but I don't think that holds up. Wesley is a striker and strikers always sell for more. It seems there were other clubs with a concrete interest. Brugges were not in a position where they wanted to sell him. He is 22 whereas Mings is 26. I'm not saying Mings is old but Wesley still has more time to improve and his value to increase.

It's a weird one. The Guardian don't normally report nonsense clickbait rumours but it wouldn't make sense. Not for us based on what Purslow / Smith said about loans. Not for Chelsea based on their transfer ban.

I think he is a top goalkeeper. The only thing is what would this say about Kalinic and our recruitment? He has only played a handful of games. Ok he wasn't great but are we just writing him off? That would make me more worried about the Wesley transfer. Even if we signed Butland I still think Steer has earned the right to start the season with the shirt. He has done very well for us last season as well as two good loan spells at Charlton and Huddersfield. We've never given him the trust to make the shirt his own. We tried Gollini, Johnstone, Nyland and Kalinic and after all that the goalkeeper who helped take us out of the Championship was at the club all along.

I would not be surprised. They are so badly run that it almost negates their massive financial advantage. Hiring Lampard / Solskjaer are the sort of decisions that suggest the directors pay more attention to what the fans and media want rather than actually researching the right candidate. Daniel James promising talent but £25million!? There are some well run, professional teams waiting to take their places I think.

Would be entertaining if Lampard went to Chelsea and tanked. I don't think he was that impressive at Derby. They usually finish in or around the playoffs and had some good players this season so it wasn't a huge overachievement. They didn't turn up in the playoff final and their win against Leeds was more down to injuries, goalkeeping mistakes and a red card than Frank's tactical genius. He might turn out to be a good manager but I don't think there's enough evidence of that based on just one season as a manager.