El-Reacho

8 hours ago, villan95 said:

I'd say we've done pretty well so far compared to most

Good chart that - had missed quite a few of those transfers. I tell you what - Everton need to get the finger out. Needed a big summer after last season, and they’ve signed a loan deal and a free transfer…

Lowton - Clark - Baker - Cissohko

Senderos will have to earn his starting place. Hopefully Bennett will come good this season.

4 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Because in those 60 games he has shown he can hold his own in this league and has age on his side. 
 

The senior players we are trying to sell are just not very good and the kids haven’t proven they can do it in this league. 

Yeah - demonstrating you're good enough for top six in the PL over a couple of seasons gives a player insane value, and in fairness if you can do it there these days you're good enough for any league in the world. I can't get my head around players like Darwin Nunez being worth £85m despite never playing PL football. The risk factor is huge there, whereas the risk for Chalobah at £45m is far less as you know what you're getting.

2 hours ago, skarroki said:

With clubs signing old academy players to re-join their under 21s as mentors towards the end of their career (Spearing at Liverpool, McShane / Evans at Man Utd) - what would people say to someone like Clark signing for us? He's 34 in September, could do a job lower down the league ladder but if he's thinking about coaching or staying in football it could be a tempting offer. 

This is a great shout - I was thinking more along the lines of Hourihane who has a more recent connection. Remember doing a double take when I saw the 'Paul McShane signs for MUFC'.

6 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Yea its so wierd isnt it. But i think its popular in american sports

Cos we’re so used to the live sound while the replay’s on, when the crowd go wild for the goal it makes you think you’re missing a chance in real time. Not sure if I’m making sense there…

Just now, Jas10 said:

Frank’s team talk worked well

Lol - they picked the wrong team talk to listen in on. What the hell did Emery say to them?!

29 minutes ago, rubberman said:

I dunno. DL's pass for the Diaby goal was pretty special and not the first time he's done that.

Getting very excited for the season ahead now.

Yeah that Luiz/Diaby link will really help us against the likes of City and Liverpool as there’s no way they can play with the high line they want to without us picking them off. Changes those games totally and hopefully will make us much more competitive against them.

37 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

That’s ffp football for you. 

clubs like villa can’t just keep our best players for eternity. There’s a time we are forced to sell, due to no contract signings or we need to balance the books. 

It’s fine if we can match our commercial revenue with the big clubs, but some time off that and in the mean time to balence the books we need to sell players. Selectively when we can. For example I believe we can get a minor profit on Dendonker if we sold him now. Also he wouldn’t be missed an awful lot 

Yeah definitely agree re Dendonker - and probably the other 80% of our squad. However when we've managed to recruit John McGinn, Ollie Watkins, Emi Martinez, Douglas Luiz - these players are worth more to us than their market value in cash - they directly contribute to PL points on a regular basis. It's extremely hard for clubs like us to buy players as good as these with no risk - as we showed with the Grealish money. If those particular players are happy here we shouldn't consider selling them.

28 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

If good offers come in and we have replacements lined up, then yeah sell them. 
 

McGinn was so cheep it’s impossible to not be able to flip a profit on him. Same with the other 2 when you think about it. So there’s no rush to sell any of them. 

but we should looking for their potential replacements. In particular Martinez. We got a GK spot open to develop his replacement 
 

The problem with that approach is we'd be selling those players to the teams we're trying to compete with (or jump above), and would have to spend the same amount of money we'd get by selling Martinez/McGinn/Luiz to get players to replace them like for like. We weren't able to replace Grealish when we sold him, Spurs couldn't replace Bale, and West Ham won't be able to replace Rice. If we're trying to jump above the teams above us we have to keep hold of our best players - not sell them to those clubs.

8 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

95 to 98 we were very competitive and looked like we'd push on.  We come very close to but missed out on some very big signings (possibly deliberately  -cheers Doug) in that time.  Roberto Carlos, Paul Gascoigne and Juninho were all a whisker away from being Villa players.

 

95/96 is my personal favourite Villa side and I'm the same age as the OP.

 

 

 

 

I’m a couple of years older - but peak villa for me was the ‘96 league final with Savo and Yorke up front. Can’t really remember the title challenge of the early 90s that well.

Think a lot of the guys mentioned were probably just over-hyped to begin with. They ultimately just found their level and it was below AVFC's. I'm thinking Gardner brothers etc.

3 hours ago, DeadlyDirk said:

For me, Jordan Graham sticks out, thought he was going to be massive. 

Scott Murray from the 90's looked exciting and pacey at fullback but disappeared quicker than he emerged.

Jordan graham was still at Wolves until a couple so years ago strangely enough.

6 minutes ago, alreadyexists said:

… are we the baddies?

Edit  - trying and failing to embed that Webb and Mitchell Nazi sketch....

22 minutes ago, jacketspuds said:

Still hoping for Diaby and Johnson. Then a backup RB...Max Aarons?, and a backup GK.

If we have anything left, and we're not planning on using Iroegbunam next season, then a backup DM might be worthwhile.

Odd that no one has ever taken a punt on him. I've seen him linked with ManUre and Arsenal, and I was pretty sure that Newcastle had all but signed him last summer. Wonder why he's still at Norwich - just noticed he's 23 now.

Seems like the type of player that would quietly have moved on to Sevilla before delivering on his initial potential.

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Felix is the better player I just have a bad feeling about him.  My opinion on Celso has no baring on my thoughts on Felix. I don’t think we’ll sign either of them. 
 

I mean who’s this punk think he is squaring up to the great one. 

Not sure if I’m missing humour/sarcasm here but are you suggesting that he has no right to square up to another player because he’s not as good as them?

1 hour ago, Steero113 said:

Nothing comes cheap from Spurs whilst they have Cue Ball in charge. 

That Grealish bid still sits top of the podium amongst the most offensive bids of all time. 

Also one of the stupidest decisions of all time - if they’d bid something remotely sensible, even £15m they’d have a generational talent up front with son and Kane. Crazy opportunity missed because Levy thought he was too clever.

7 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Hope they get ruined.

Players are totally stuck there unless they take a huge loss.

Fati is on £200k a week and Barca owe him about £60m on his current contract

To get him out, you'd have to get Fati to agree to a drop in salary or get Barca to pay for some of it.

Alemany is a genius of course, so nice and easy for him.

It’s depressing when you see good players sign obscene long term contracts that are way above what their level of performance deserves. Sure it sets them up financially (unless it’s Barcelona paying the salary) but will pretty much destroy their careers.

It leaves them stuck at clubs they’re not good enough to play for and not able to go anywhere else without taking a pay it which they won’t do.

The lack of any action is because we’re going big for the forward positions. Ferran Torres, Harvey Barnes, Gnonto etc all there for the taking and it seems we’re not interested….

29 minutes ago, david-avfc said:

Someone like Danny Ings you mean? 

Either a past-it player picking up their last pay day, or a £40m+ player to sit on the bench… neither of those prospects fill me with much confidence at all!

I get the arguments about not wanting to rely solely on Archer, but at some point he’s got to take the step up, he has to be given a chance and buying someone to play ahead of him but not even being first choice himself will just block his progress.

Yes Watkins could break him leg and miss the season, but that could happen to literally any player at any club, at any time, you have to take the risk somewhere down the line - and there are a lot of worse back up strikers in the Prem than a 21 year old who’s averaged a goal or assist every 91 minutes in the championship, and even better for the England U21s.

The chances of Archer or Duran being a top 6 PL level striker really aren’t that high. If we lose Mings we’ve still got Torres, Konsa, and Carlos, if we lose Douglas Luiz we’ve got Tielemans, Kamara etc. Don’t understand why we wouldn’t want that same depth up front.

44 minutes ago, MotoMkali said:

Which is my point. We can either spend a serious chunk of money on a backup striker or we can give Archer a go. 

Surely we’ll want someone to strike fear into the opposition when he’s coming on after 60mins. Archer and Duran aren’t there yet - so it’ll likely be a £40m+ forward I reckon. Or maybe someone in their 30s that would have a cheap transfer fee but hefty wages and will be happy to come off the bench for the majority of games.

2 hours ago, CarryOnVilla said:

Cameron archer is pretty cheap.. done wonders in the championship and his goal to minute ratio for the England  under 21s is awesome. 

I think he’s the perfect back up striker. 

Think Archer’s still a season away from being Watkins’ deputy I reckon. If he did have to step up and lead the line for 8-10 weeks in the PL it would be a huge gamble. I think we’ll spend big on a player to take the burden off Watkins with Archer playing cups and Euro Conf. If we get to the business end of the Europa Conference or the cups then Emery will be using Watkins in those games too so he’ll will want a proven deputy to take the pressure off him.

6 hours ago, Kiwivillan said:

Konsa has played season worth of games at RB in his career. Are you really telling me who played where last season? Now you're taking the piss 

No recollection of Konsa starting a game at RB for Villa mate. Think bringing in a new RB is pretty much certain this summer otherwise we’d have kept Young for another season.

1 hour ago, PieFacE said:

How does that make any sense whatsoever? If it's more than release clause then how do they accept?!

And why would they offer a penny more than the release clause?

36 minutes ago, mrhaneen said:

I’m surrounded by Leeds fans at work and they all think Gnonto is clearly a class apart from the rest of their squad. He hardly started a game though towards the end of the season when they really needed something so they figure it must have been either the new manager didn’t trust him, or he’s maybe got a bad attitude. Whatever it was they couldn’t believe he couldn’t get a game.

Sam allardyce was their manager in fairness so I wouldn’t read too much into that.