tom_avfc

It’s Potter who is flavour of the month now. Could be Vieira or whoever can put a 3 game winning run together next. The rule is that you always compare Dean Smith to whichever manager is having a purple patch at any time regardless of any context. Personally I’d stick with the plan that seems to be working so far. If we finish mid table without Grealish it wouldn’t convince me that we’re not progressing as a club.

I guess you could make the argument that our first eleven is close to theirs although in Leicester’s case I think even that is a stretch. Neither of those clubs have subs benches made up of the likes of Nakamba and El Ghazi and a bunch of kids which is a pretty big difference too.

I don’t really agree. We signed Bailey, Buendia and Ings without European football. If you offer players the money they want then you can get them. I’m not sure many players are looking at the European Conference League and thinking they want a bit of that. The better players that we would look to sign would likely be rested for the majority of that competition if we were in it anyway. If we made the Europa League it might be different but I don’t see us threatening to do that this season.

Based on what? We finished 11th last season. We lost our best player in the summer and had a net spend of -£5 million. If we finish in that 9th to 13th bracket I don’t see that as a really poor season. It’s about what I’d expect and to be honest with having to completely change our system from the reliance on one player I’d be fine with that.

Yeah I completely agree I just feel that it shouldn't be necessary to have to do this and I feel like it'd lead to having to do the same thing in numerous other places in the rules. If referees weren't so quick to look into the rules for justification of bizarre decisions then it wouldn't even be an issue. If a referee can't apply the most basic common sense to their decisions then we'd be constantly updating the rules until every possible scenario that might happen in a game is specifically included in the rules. I guess my main point is that if it hasn't been an issue previously for however many years without said clarification then surely the people interpreting the rules are the issue rather than the rules themselves.

Whilst I agree with your post in a lot of ways I don't think the issue is with the rules but more the people interpreting them. That goal is offside. It has always been offside and it has always been given as offside. No matter how many attempts are made to make the rules watertight there will need to be an element of common sense applied when refereeing the game. Any referee who agrees that the rule should be applied how it has for that goal shouldn't be refereeing football games. Its the same as the City goal against us in that if a referee wants to look for hidden meaning within the rules to the game then they can probably justify almost any decision they make. In reality if they just came out and admitted that it was a mistake then we could move on and everybody would know going forwards that this should always be given offside. If we were to go forward with the rule being applied how it was here then football becomes a completely different game.

If failing massively constitutes finishing in the top four in the majority of seasons while regularly reaching cup finals and winning a few trophies I think you could sign the vast majority of teams up for that. Newcastle cannot fail to be up there challenging spending the amounts of money which they will be spending. Yes, it might take them some time to get there but there's no doubt that they will become the next Manchester City but with even more money behind them. I would say that I am pretty glad that this takeover isn't happening at Villa. I felt pretty uncomfortable with the Dr Tony takeover and I'm not sure I could give my support to a team financed by the Saudi government. I guess its difficult to know what you'd do until you're put in that situation but this takeover more than any other must be a particularly difficult one to ignore and continue to support your team.

Just looking at this point on Leicester's rotation from a quick Wikipedia search I get the following appearances: 38 - Schmeichel and Morgan; 36 Mahrez (1 sub) and Vardy; 35 - Huth and Drinkwater; 34 - Albrighton (4 subs); 33 - Kante (4 subs); 30 Christian Fuchs (2 subs) and Danny Simpson. Thats 10 players that started at least 30 games in a Premier League season. Vardy, Drinkwater, Simpson and Huth were all suspended for at least 1 game in that season. Additionally you'd have to take into account the fact that injuries will have reduced some of these appearances. I think to say that Leicester won the league without rotating is a pretty valid point given the above. They got on a good run and didn't see any reason to change things with the momentum they were on. For me it would have been more of an issue if we'd "rested" players the week before an international break and then lost the match. As it is Spurs have one or two players who are head and shoulders above what we have and therefore are capable of beating anybody on their day. Slating a manager for not rotating a team that had just won away at Old Trafford over a week previously seems a bit much to me.

I'd normally be fully in agreement with what you're saying here. However, with this particular Tory government I think it is difficult to see how anybody can look at what they are doing and think that is something that they want to vote for. The people at the top seem to be incompetent, terrible human beings or a mixture of the two yet people still see that as what they want to vote for. It genuinely amazes me that they have so much support still. I remember when Trump was elected in USA there was a lot of "only in America" type comments from a large number of people. I look at what we have elected and seemingly would continue to elect and I'm not convinced we're much better off over here.

This whole guidance is ridiculous. People don’t want fouls let go they just don’t want soft fouls given that disrupt the flow of the game. What we’ve ended up with is random blatant fouls being ignored and then we still get the soft fouls at other points in the game. At the end of the day most of the refs are just poor at what they do so you can tell them whatever you want and they’ll still be poor.

She’s just lost a major tournament final to a player ranked far below her going into the tournament. She congratulated Emma and her team. It’s a lot easier to big up an opponent that you’ve just beaten in a final than one you’ve lost to. I thought both spoke well to be honest.

Bizarrely it was actually an uncontested drop ball with possession going back to Chelsea due to Chalobah sitting on the ball. How he got to that restart decision I have no idea.

A major goal creating gaff every game is a massive exaggeration. He makes mistakes like this from time to time not every game. If he didn’t make these mistakes he wouldn’t be playing for us because his general level of play is top class. The silly mistakes like today are why he plays for us rather than a champions league team.

I’m not sure I’d class playing two up front against Chelsea away as a defensive set up. Interested to see how it pans out. Has potential to be a good set up for us but difficult to know given we haven’t seen it previously.

I can’t stand the way he plays football. For a player who has the skill to be great to watch he really does act like a horrible petulant child.

Zaha has his hands up in tanganga’s face there and gets away with a yellow. As someone with his track record of lashing out it surprises me how much he gets away with.

I’m not sure how it’s unfair. People who go every week get ticket priority. Surely that’s how it should be. It makes it difficult for anybody to get any sort of booking history on away games but thats the problem with a high demand for away tickets. I say this as someone who used to go to every away game a few years back and now wouldn’t be able to get an away ticket.

I'd imagine Martinez comes straight back in. He's a keeper with a settled back four in front of him so I don't see a particular issue with that. In reality they'll have missed a week longer than Mings, McGinn or any of our other players who have been on international duty this week (not sure there's actually that many to be fair!). If they keep fit in Croatia then I wouldn't be surprised if both are in the starting lineup for that Everton game.

Yeah its not ideal for left handers with the rough being outside their off stump. Much easier for the right handers against Jadeja on this pitch. You'd have thought this would be a draw but I can't help but think that if Root was to get out early then it might start to give England the jitters a bit.

They were never going to be playing against Chelsea from the moment we decided they could join up with the Argentina squad. We knew that and to be honest I'm fine with players missing one game to go and represent their national teams. They'll be back in time for the Everton game. I guess the frustrating thing is that given Buendia hasn't played a single minute for Argentina and the farce that happened last night Argentina really didn't need to call them up in the first place.

The football industry produces a lot of stats - how meaningful and how widely used a lot of these stats are is pretty questionable. Looking at somebody's win percentage doesn't tell you anything though without recognising the state of the club that a manager is working at and has historically been working at. Sean Dyche has a 36% win ratio. Given that he has spent a long time at Burnley keeping them in the division whilst spending very little money I can see why a team of similar stature would seek to hire him. By the same token other managers will have higher win percentages purely because they were at bigger clubs. Its far easier to assess a managers performance by looking at what they have achieved in terms of league finishes etc. than to look at a win percentage figure. If Smith continues to achieve for us then he will be rewarded with pay rises based on how Villa perform and whether we continue to progress not because he's raised a win percentage to a certain level.

Apologies wasn't meant as a dig. Was more a response to the general comparisons being made of varying manager's win percentages. As far as I'm concerned the team's position in the table is what matters and how those develop over a manager's time at a club given the resources that manager has to work with. Looking at win percentages stretching back over 100 games or 3 seasons worth of football doesn't really inform people of how a manager is performing at a given time.

His win percentage in the Premier League last season was 42%. One extra win would have got him to 44.7% so as close to the magic 45% mark as you could get. If we'd got that extra win we'd have finished in exactly the same position as we did anyway. I don't really get what a win percentage is supposed to show that looking at finishing positions in the table doesn't. The easiest way to look at the progress a club is making is to look at their finishing positions in the table in comparison to expectations. In my opinion we dramatically outperformed what I was expecting from last season and, having lost our best player, a similar finishing position this season would be a good showing. If we finish in the top half then I couldn't really care less if Smith's win percentage is higher or lower than any other manager in the league. We finished two places higher than Wolves last season - am I supposed to care that Nuno has a higher win percentage at Wolves than Smith at Villa?

Couldn't agree more with this but I'd add that I think comparing managers win percentages is pretty pointless in almost any situation. Having a really high win percentage when you're playing Championship football having just signed the captain of Porto and other Champions League players is pretty predictable. Ironically if Leeds had got promoted rather than us then it would have given Smith another season to try and boost that all important win percentage and probably would have seen Bielsa's win percentage decrease from what it is. If that doesn't sum up how meaningless the comparison is then I don't know what does. I'd rather look subjectively at how a manager is performing with the resources available to them. Given what Smith has achieved here there's very few managers who I'd say have done a better job than him. The fact that people are picking managers like Bielsa (who has also done an exceptional job) to compare him to highlights how good a job Smith is doing to me.

Makes him far less effective for me. I never got the obsession with demanding he released the ball quicker. He’s the kind of player who wants to be on the ball as much as possible. If he’s passing the ball rather than drawing defenders in and going past players then he’s not at his best. Obviously there’s a middle ground where you’d like him to be but releasing the ball quickly isn’t his game and he’s good enough at what he does to be allowed to play his way.