thejoker

I’ll see if I can find it.

I read an article a while ago saying that the owners were concerned and disappointed with our drop off last season, but they understood some of the reasons (Grealish’s injury being the main one), so I suspect that there may be one or two concerns with Smith prior to this season. I don’t think our start has done much to ease the concerns. I think the next 3 matches before the next international break are vital for Smith.

I’ve always been on the fence re:Smith, but that was just awful management today. We were cruising at 2-0, why make subs just for the sake of it? I can maybe understand Dougie because of the travelling, but no need to replace Buendia or Cash. I really want Smith to be our guy for the next 5 years but he is repeatedly shown up. I just don’t think he is consistent enough to get us top 6 in the long term. I can imagine Wes is fuming tonight.

It’s just a non starter on so many levels. Why would he move to a team on the down, from a team on the up? Spurs would never pay the kind of money we’d be looking for. We paid £33m when he was a Championship player. He’s now an England international. We’d be looking to double our money at least…plus the owners wouldn’t want to sell another big name so soon after Grealish IMO, especially to a potential rival.

I think he said he’s happy with our squad. Didn’t rule out more signings. Smith said we would have signed Buendia even if Grealish stayed, so we must have at least £40m left to spend if we want to.

More a case of him wanting to go from what I can gather.

That’s disappointing then, maybe we expect Bogarde or one of the other youngsters to be ready in 12 months, so this is just plugging the gap.

I really hope that there is an option to buy this time…

I get the impression that he’s not planning a long stay at Villa. But thats ok, if he rips the league up and leaves in 2 years then we’ll probably more than double our money and re-invest again.

Yeah, let’s move on…I wouldn’t want to pay £40m for Cantwell if we got £200m for Grealish.

I’m fairly sure we announced Buendia a few weeks before he officially signed…

Great news. A last throw of the dice to convince Grealish to stay - or his replacement? I’d love 1 more season please Jack. Watkins Grealish - Buendia - Bailey

I’ll be gutted to see him go, but if he does leave, then we need to do what Spurs did when they sold Bale - sign 3/4 top quality players to improve the squad. It has happened to other teams and they have gone from strength to strength - Leicester being the obvious example. Jack Grealish is not Aston Villa, if he leaves, we move on.

If we can get anywhere near £15m for AEG then I’d take it. Scored plenty of important goals for us, but bar the odd game, his general contributions in open play aren’t up to much. He’ll probably only be on the bench this season anyway and we have Philogene-Bidace that could take his squad place.

Not sure what ‘more than live’ means, but quite interesting from Alan Nixon.

A bit less disappointing…

Collymore was with Jack's Dad at the semi-final...

Another one through the door. I’m loving NSWE’s commitment to the youth team.

I guess it must be coming from his agent. Whether it is genuine interest in joining or, or they are just using us for a better contract, I guess we’ll find out in the coming weeks.

Quite a clever move on our part to go for him now. With the new contract still not signed at Arsenal, this will put massive pressure on them to give him a huge contract. He only broke into the team around Christmas time and he’s a youth player so he’s probably only on around £10k per week (give or take). We’ve probably spoken to his agent and said we’ll give him a 5 year contract on 80k (ish) per week. Arsenal will now need to match our offer to him or risk him running down his contract. Then they have the problem of other players wanting the same deal (Saka, etc). They’re not known for splashing the cash these days, and with the pandemic, I wouldn’t rule this one out just yet...

I think that was because Caen didn’t really want to sell and the loan back for the remainder of the season (we signed him in January) was the only way to get them to agree to the deal.

Matt Maher is reliable.

He works for TalkSport. He doesn’t know anything.

Unless there is a release clause in his contract then I can’t see this one happening. Signed a new 5 year deal last year, would cost £50m I think. Can’t see it happening.