danceoftheshamen

I do like the idea of more pace & actually having a big counter attacking threat (Especially as we nearly always lose the midfield, if there's a battle). Still need to sort this defence out though. We have a misfiring Digne and Konsa is just so poor currently plus whatever the reasons, we are just so porous when trying to play whatever the system is we are trying to play. Massive game now on Sunday against Wet Spam. We really need something from that game but I'm not holding my breath.

Looks like Newcastle & West Ham are/were also after Sarr "according to reports" so not convinced this is close but we'll see.

Thanks PPV, MaVilla already spotted it & i've adjusted it. All the points still hold so far as i'm concerned. 2-0 there was pathetic and we've now seen a repeat at Palace which, although they are a much better team, was still another shocking display and could easily have been 4, 5 or 6. I have watched a few Forest games this season too (as I am surrounded by their fans at work so wanted to be able to comment on the games when we chat on Mondays) & they look far more organised than us currently and have a clear plan. Their players are so well drilled and clearly all know exactly what they are doing & that's with how many new signings?! We are the polar opposite yet have only a couple of new signings! Says all you need to know for me... The coaching is poor!

lol! Thanks MaVilla, It's been such a whirlwind of crapness I even lost track of a score Now adjusted

On the squad. Digne - Has looked poor for me thus far this season. I always thought Targett was "ok" defensively but poor going forward. Digne looks a little less solid defensively but has more ability going forward, although currently he appears to be out of form and his end product / crossing is no better than Targett currently. So for me we have come off worse in that deal as we have gained barely anything going forwards but have lost solidity at the back. Carlos was looking decent - Now he's out for the season of course and we 100% need a replacement. Kamara - Looks good but he is lost in the sea of incompetence & confusion ahead of him...That is more on Gerrard than the players he has at his disposal for me. My questions are: What the heck happened to Nakamba? All last season Gerrard was saying how he loved him & how well he adapted to his system etc... His reward? He gets bombed out! What sort of message does that give out? We always look more solid with Dougie... Where is he? Him as an 8 & Kamara would surely make sense? Sanson - Still not had a real chance in this team. He is clearly a guy who needs a run of games to get up to speed. He has never had that. Traore & Elghazi I understand as they do not fit in with this bizarre, unknown & unfathomable style we are having forced on us (Even though it clearly doesn't & hasn't worked for over half a season now!) Again, that's on the manager! The dropping of Ings just as he had scored and ws looking better against Everton. The captaincy saga It just goes on & on & yet we look worse now than under DS. Shockingly bad in fact. My prediction currently is relegation, we are that poor. Look at Bournemouth yesterday, absolutely hammered by Arsenal on their own patch. We lost to them 2-0!! Just digest that for a moment. Likely the worst team in the division & we lost 2-0 there. That is not a lucky 1-0 win...... 2-0!!! They have lost badly in all their games since. The warning signs are clear & bright. Gerrard is not a coach - He has admitted as much. We are a mess defensively, 6 goals already against 3 of the poorest teams (Maybe Palace aside), We are also barely creating chances and midfield is attrocious. I dread to think what'll happen when we play a stronger team although we won't have to wait long to find out. Beale left and Crighton came in so we are effectively in unkonwn territory with this management team. From my viewpoint it looks a shambles and I simply fail to see another way other than a complete rethink or to get in a World Class experienced coach to sort this mess out.

This is the grey area for me. The better he does, the harder it would be if he "did one" to Plop and the more likely we would face some kind of period of transition. We all know how those go Seriously though it is a big point really. The bigger the success of a manager the harder it appears to be to get over their departure. I'm thinking Fergie at Man U (Still in a descending circle even now) Wenger at Arsenal & you could even factor Bob Paisley at Plop into that. Whenever an iconic manager leaves it is almost impossble to not go on a downward curve because they are so ingrained in the club. In fact it is usually the end of an era of dominance for that club. It may well happen to Man City too when Pep leaves. The only ones who seem to not suffer from it are actually Chelsea and this appears to be due to the very short lifespan of their managers even if they win the Title! Maybe there was method in the madness of Abramovich afterall! Of course we are not talking about Fergie or Wenger levels here so hopefully we will move on a lot smoother if/when he does depart provided we then get a truly top notch manager in.

I'm in the "bit too early for this vote" camp. Had we lost against Everton I would likely have felt differently but I saw enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I really hope it works in one way, in another I can't help but feel if it does work it'll merely be a case of he'll be off to Liverpool sooner rather than later and then we are left high & dry again with yet another new manager situation which could of course at that point destroy everything he had built regardless. If it doesn't work then I guess it gives us the chance to try our luck with a top manager to handle a squad full of Brazillian, French & Argentinian internationals. In some ways you can't help but think we may as well take the plunge right now rather than wait for the inevitable Liverpool situation to rear it's head. I think though there is not much option but to stick with it for now and maybe we'll all be pleasantly surprised!

Sadly I agree that the protection racket that surrounds these scummy 6 clubs will ensure there is no relegation for them. We already saw VAR trying to intervene when they were losing against Brighton. Every single big decision, a couple of them totally blatant like the McTominay non sending off for a blatant red card offence and the disgusting failure to award Brighton a Penalty when it was as clear as day that their player got a charge in the back off the utd player.. VAR of course conveniently ignored both hiding behind the "not clear enough to overturn it" excuse when it couldn't have been any clearer! Despicable, and the reason there is not a cat in hells chance they will be relegated. Last season should be evdidence enough of this when they were woeful & still finished Europe! I see the disgraceful & violent Romero hair pull on a Chelsea player also went "unoticed" by VAR. (It is of course very unusual for a scummy 6 club to be victim of a blatant VAR going against them "Unless it is against another scummy 6 team" as was the case here with it being Spurs vs Chelsea) History also shows different outcomes for "hair pulls" for non-scummy 6 clubs as compared to scummy 6 clubs. No surprise Man Utd are front & central in this as in 2016 Leicester City's Robert Huth got retrospectively banned for pulling Marouane Fellaini's hair & yet in 2018 Fellaini (Then playing for Man Utd) then pulled Matteo Gendoui's hair and a free kick resulted but no card & no retrospective ban! Move on to 2022 & Romero's disgraceful assault on Cucurella, far worse than the Fellaini incidents by the way, and VAR fails to do anything about it whatsoever...Guess who was the VAR ref?!!! .......Oh yes! ... The man himself, Mike Dean! But because VAR looked at it (With blind eyes) no retrospective action can be taken. No doubt had that been Mings on Romero he would have seen red & been banned. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

Judging by Bournemouth he is even worse in a one up top system

Absolutely gutted for him, what a tragic start to his Villa career & at his age devastating for him & us. Need a new CB again now. What an all round calamitous start to the new season, what with the Bournemouth debacle & all. Thankfully he helped us get the first win which just could be the most important one of the season.

Typical Villa Happened to Adama T too didn't it? against Notts County in the cup. Our new players almost always get injury issues almost as soon as they kick a ball for us. Bailey vs Everton Last season for example. Heaton & Wesley both doing their cruciates it just goes on & on.

Good luck Keinan! Go and clean the place after that Deeney bloke stinking the place up.

Exactly my point! 30 crosses by all accounts! You just know he would have got on several of those and held the ball up for others.

Maybe that is the plan? To not be too predictable? To vary the patttern or something

And yet he is likely much better at holding the ball up than any of our current strikers who seem incapable of doing it! For me he would have done much better against Bournemouth, as well as knowing their game having played against them last season, than Ings who was totally ineffective. Oh & a question for you all.. On current form.....Who is the better finsher? Watkins or Keinan?

Dunno but i cringe when I hear sweet Caroline & Hi Ho Silver Lining. It's not like they are exclusively Villa songs even. But then I am a DJ so I would have some stuff on which most people at the game wouldn't have a clue as to what it was lol! I like fresh cutting edge stuff rather than music that's 50 odd years old.

Quite frankly it was a disgrace that he didn't start against Bournemouth in my view. Head & shoulders our most consistent defender in my book & also contributes with goals & sublime forward passes on occasion. How the heck he got overlooked is yet another reason I have given up on Gerrard.

Exactly, So in other words if you take out the false impression of the new manager bounce it was relegation form.

At this point , after watching that absolute horror show against the mighty Bournemouth, I would take just survival as this seasons achievement. As we saw last season with Newcastle, you can suddenly whip through 14 games in this division without a single win, if you get off to the wrong start. I just hope & pray that our home form level is way above our away form level. That's what I am clinging to but I fear the dressing room has now been divided after "Mingsgate" and I am genuinely fearful for our season. Sounds as though there is some internal disruption affecting things as that performance was not normal. That was more than an off-day, it was like a bunch of disinterested blokes going through the motions with no interest in trying to get a result.

Have to add.................Emile Heskey! We were I think 2nd or 3rd and scoring freely when he arrived. 4th was absolutley there for the taking. Signing him was like throwing a huge blanket over our goals for column and we ended up 6th.That was the huge mistake for Lerner & O'neill in my view. A poor, poor decision. It was clear for all to see that our goals had dried up as a result but MON's stubborness in persistently playing him instead of Carew etc reminds me of Gerrard's insistence in playing a woefully out of form Coutinho!

Saying i'm not patient? I've been waiting 40 years to see us have another really decent team! It's been all excuses, poor choices, lack of investment just at the time we had a chance to complete a decent side. Atkinsons, Gregory's, O'neill's & Little's Villa teams all were ok to decent but thanks to Ellis none were ever "complete" in my view. I remember the nonsense about Jounihno, Robbie Keane etc. All BS stories by Ellis who simply refused to go the extra mile needed to give us a genuine chance of titles etc FOR 40 YEARS we have been patiently waiting for owners like these. Now we need that manager who can build the team we need. I think that's pretty darned patient personally

"There for the taking", are the only words which spring to mind after Saturday. (I mean us of course), Absolutely dreading it.

The more I think about Saturday the more fuming I get. Of all the things to do on the eve of a new season you shaft the club captain and then face him off publicly by saying "when he looks me in the eyes" etc and give it to a guy who did nothing of a leadership nature at all on the day, with even media reporting that nobody was shouting or leading on the pitch! Why do that on the eve of the new season! He then drops the same player who was likely the only one we have who would have dealt with their giants in the air! To make it even worse the second best guy at dealing with them, who in my opinion on pre-season form and form last season, is Chambers! Instead he goes with the two players who have played together the least as a centre back pairing! One of whom has been suspect for a good while now. Unbelieveable to be quite honest. Coutinho should have been hauled off too quite clearly as should Ramsey & McGinn.

It really is a worry Chris, I don't see us beating Everton tbh. We have had a good few wins against them over the last few seasons and it just feels like time they got a result against us for some reason and we are looking pretty much in disarray after that shocking performance at Bournemouth. Would even be happy with a draw just to get something on the board. I don't like our strike force (Great to see Archer in there though but way to early to be expecting too much from him especially whilst it's a bit sour) nor our rather weird midfield. The two just don't seem to know how to play together and haven't done for a good while.

I see they have started early this season. Strike 1 - (Dubious) Brighton 2-0 up at Old Trafford, Disgusting leg breaking tackle from McTominay.....VAR fails to turn the given Yellow into a red. Strike 2 - (Disgusting) Then even worse an absolute stone wall penalty for Brighton when the UTD player rams into the back of the Brigton player blatantly pushing him over....Guess what! Of course no penalty given. Strike 3 - (Clearly corruption at play) Now UTD score and the ball hits the arm of the UTD player in build up - Strike 3 Goal given. Disgusting and corrupt. As ever Utd losing and in trouble, all of a sudden absoltuely everything starts to go their way assisted by the ref & a clearly corrupt VAR system.