Thug

Alli is younger than Grealish, not exactly a ‘has been’ wasting time and resources on trying to revive careers could just as easily be interpreted as taking an opportunity to buy a player that’s fallen out of favour at a cut price deal. Lingaard got 9 goals and 4 assists in 16 matches - and fits your definition of ‘has been, career revival player that would hinder our progress.’ Actually no, turns out he’s a recent England international that fell out of favour, who is actually pretty good, and almost dragged West **** Ham into the champions league, Everyone loves a fairytale obscure player picked up from the remote village of Botswana -swapped for a zippo lighter- story, but let’s face it, when there’s an opportunity to pick up a good player for a good price, we can’t be silly about it. IF the price is right, the wages are right, and the player fits the mould of what we’re looking for, it shouldn’t matter who they are. As for the right attitude, and not having trouble makers, that part I totally agree with. So maybe that would be a reason to steer clear of Alli, but quite honestly I know nothing about that to make a judgement call on it.

And note, dribbled past stat should be the other way around, RB should be red, not 94% centile but rather 6th centile for getting dribbled past. Basically a traffic cone. Alli is 85th centile

Well I may be generalising, but I think that would pretty much translate into defensive input. When he had the ball, he'd put in the effort, and when we were breaking forwards he'd get himself up there - but the real lack of effort came about when we didn't have the ball. Alli is a completely different kettle of fish. I know stats shmats and all that, but for lack of any other objective way of comparing here they are. Sorry, fbref comparison page doesnt seem to be working right now so I've had to do a snapshot side-by-side Alli certainly gets the work in.

That interview of him after the germany game made him look so dim.

As a player, Dele is much, much better than Barkley - and form a footballing point of view I would be very happy with that transfer. Barkley's biggest downfall was his complete and utter lack of providing any defensive input at all. Alli is significantly better from that point of view, whilst still being a significant attacking threat. My big concerns would be from a party-boy reputation point of view.

That soooo should have been 11-2

I don’t think you’re wrong, but Chelsea scored only 3 more than us and finished 4th

Welcome to the club Remi.

Haven’t been in this thread a couple of days. I was just on some Spurs forum enjoying the meltdown of them appointing Nuno when to my horror some guy posts ‘villa want winks for £25m’ Their collective reaction was that they should snap off our hand grabbing that money. Harry **** Winks. No **** thank you.

He’ll be after a new deal next season too. After we bid £40m for him

I assumed the pivot to mean that the two holding midfielders had an imaginary ‘pivot’ point between them. A bit like a seesaw. The further forward one of them is, the further back the other is. Supposedly allowing both of them ‘creative freedom’ so long as the other is covering defensive duty.

There is a difference between wanting something to happen, and believing it will happen. I’d say pretty much everyone here would be happy for us to sign Tammy. Most of us are a little dubious that a) we are in a position to slap down £40m on a reserve striker b) Tammy has any intention of being a reserve striker As for point B, Tammy is no winger. Ollie played on the wing before, but I can’t see him wanting to go out wide again. 2 up top? Don’t see smith changing his formation just to get Tammy into the fold. Tammy needs game time. End of story. As much as I’d like for us to sign him, I don’t see it happening. He should’ve pushed for a move when we wanted him, but he made a really really poor decision in ‘staying and fighting for his place’ at Chelsea. He’d probably be playing for England now had he come to us back then.

Was just about to make a similar point. Sancho is about to sign a £250k a week contract (allegedly)

Tammy would be a fantastic signing if we can afford him

That’s long been settled when he picked him for the Euros coming back from a lengthy injury. I think you’ll find the most recent argument was that he HAD a personal vendetta. Jack is slowly convincing him that he’s worth all the attention, and he’s finally boarding the JG train. One could argue that he only picked Jack to come on because it’s hard to ignore a stadium screaming his name - but actually Southgate is exactly that man who would not bow to that kind of pressure. Regardless, the last paragraph is bang on. His job is to win the Euros. As much as I’ve doubted his decision making, he’s got us comfortably into the quarters, we’ve not conceded a goal, and quite frankly never looked like losing tonight to one of the tournaments favourites. Credit where credit is due, well done Gareth. But if anyone tries to tell me that there was no vendetta/dislike of Jack at the beginning - they can do one. Still, this guy is starting to grow on me lol Never thought I’d say that.

I’m not black, but honest to god I had to do a double take too!

Maybe you can edit yours too? (Remove the quote)

Nah, he meant that. you could see genuine happiness there. Also with him bringing Jack in ahead of Mount, Rashford, Foden, Sancho means this was purely tactical. And considering we just beat Germany 2-0, I begrudgingly have to admit he was right

Southgate so dumb, he’d get run over by a parked car.

No Mount… and still no Grealish. Midfield of rice and Philips what an utter **** disgrace call me unpatriotic, call me childish, call me whatever you want. I hope we’re 3-0 down by half time. (I’ll calm down in 30 minutes I think)

Yet I would (edit: wouldn’t) swap either of our two for him. Don’t look at what they cost, look at what they’re worth. Ours are over £50m each using that yardstick

City fans wouldn’t take too kindly to him kissing the villa badge on Messi’s shirt though

Actually, that guy was a fake Defoe. He was actually a:

I was merely responding to that quote. You have since qualified your reasoning much better. I agree that we have more pressing areas of the team to improve, and that splashing £40m on a striker who would not be an immediate starter is not a luxury that we can afford at present.

We paid £2.5m for McGinn and £10m for Nakamba