tom_avfc

Yeah I'd pick him as a spinner at the moment and I'd have Woakes and Rashid batting ahead of him. I've not seen too much of Archer although heard he can be handy with the bat too so I'd potentially have him as low down as number 10. I think he did open in the last world cup which as you said shows the decline in his batting.

I don't think Moeen should be batting ahead of Woakes based on current form but there was more to why we lost than purely his innings. Root did well scoring a run a ball hundred but then got out at a time when he really needed to stay in to allow Buttler to continue being aggressive. This then meant that when Moeen came in to bat it wasn't particularly clear who was trying to attack the bowling. It looked like Moeen was trying to get Buttler on strike but then Buttler was reluctant to go too aggressive as his wicket was effectively game over. Add in the fact that Roy's drop cost 60/70 quick runs to Hafeez and the fielding in general wasn't up to scratch and its a bit harsh to blame Moeen for losing the game (particularly when his bowling prevented us from being out of the game by the mid innings interval).

Fair enough. You’ve seen a lot more of him than I have. I suppose from watching the odd game and highlights he probably affects the game more once he’s drifted inside so he comes across as more central than he is (if that makes sense). Could he play wide left then in your opinion or is he likely to be purely played from the right?

Not looking great for England at the moment. Haven't really got this innings going. The form of our openers against spin has to be a concern. I'm sure most sides will try an over or two of spin at the start as both Bairstow and Roy have now been out cheaply to spin. Still time in this game but I suppose if we're going to get a wake up call its better now than at the semi final stage as in the Champions Trophy.

His starting position does look a lot wider than I thought on those clips to be fair although he does seem to pick the ball up and then come infield the vast majority of the time. I suppose the issue then would be that we'd need a full back who could get up the pitch to offer the overlap to him. I don't know what Guilbert is like as a player but I'm not sure that Elmo has the legs to be up and down the right hand side all game.

I think he'd struggle on the left side of a front three as he's never struck me as someone who's going to beat his man and put crosses in. I'd also worry for our width on the right hand side if he was playing there. I'd have thought he'll provide cover for both the right wing and attacking midfield with a starting right winger still to come in.

Is Jota not an attacking midfielder? Admittedly I haven't really seen him play for Blues but at Brentford he seemed to do most of his good work in behind the striker. I definitely wouldn't call him a wide player. If he's a winger he's much more like Grealish was when we played him wide left (i.e. constantly looking to come in off his wing) from what I've seen. I would agree that he's not comparable to an out and out striker like Gayle and to a degree he's not really comparable to Dack who's more of a goalscoring attacking midfielder than a creative one. As screwdriver said I'd see him as a backup to Grealish who could also fit in out wide when needed. A good option on the bench for me.

That's not really how it works. Nobody would pay anywhere approaching £10m for Jed Steer at the current time.

Yeah I'm not sure I'd describe it as ripped off from Liverpool when they in turn used the chant from Porto I believe. Teams take easy to chant songs and change the lyrics 9 times out of 10. How many truly unique chants do we expect any football team to have?

I'm actually surprised that he only got 3 yellows and a red although I suppose you also have to factor in his retrospective ban for diving. The playoff semi final he spent the entire game diving and fouling. He's a player I don't particularly like in terms of how he plays the game and I'm not sure he's good enough for the Premier League either. Obviously if he comes in I hope he does well but I'd rather we looked elsewhere to be honest.

Whilst I agree with a lot of what you’re saying it doesn’t mean that I don’t find it a bit stupid to spend a load of money to walk around antagonising people in a country where tensions are already high. Completely agree that it shouldn’t be an issue but why run the risk if you’re not achieving anything with your “protest” and as others have said when many people probably have little understanding of the inticracies of the situation?

Its probably not a bright idea to openly antagonise the locals to be honest. As others have said, I'm not really sure what they are trying to achieve by this. Walking around in openly antagonising shirts in what looks like a group of 2/3 people is pretty stupid. Its not like they're highlighting anything which everyone isn't already aware of either. Almost all of the reporting I have seen around the final has been about the issues between Azerbaijan/Armenia rather than the game. Is anybody looking at the video surprised that the police are getting involved? What are they achieving by doing it other than running the risk of getting themselves into trouble?

I thought this too. Would have been nice to be able to chant at the end with the players joining in in front of us but any attempt at getting a chant going was always going to get drowned out. Even the relevant songs were a bit of a stretch. Having to have the entire Madness song on for the one line song we have about Hause was a little odd!

Whilst I’d generally agree with this, who’s to say where something thrown from the stands is going to hit its target or any other bystander? People throwing coins at players and other fans has the potential to do serious damage just as much as running on to the pitch and punching somebody.

This is a strange and slightly extreme comment. He was all we could get at the last minute and had no time to get used to our defence etc. Yes, he wasn’t very good but he’s had a decent career and I can’t see why anybody would feel strongly enough to post this!

Yeah, I'd probably side with this too. I'm not sure how SHA haven't been fined heavily for the fact that one of their fans has physically attacked a player on the pitch but that's where I'd draw the line on club punishments for the behaviour of an individual fan. I think you could dig up past examples of moronic fan behaviour from a number of clubs and argue for points deductions if that's how we are going to start punishing clubs. The only caveat I'd add to this is that I'd like to see a system where clubs with repeat offences gain stiffer penalties. There's a few clubs out there (with SHA being amongst them) who you kind of expect to be the ones causing this kind of trouble. For example, was anybody surprised that Chelsea/Millwall fans were the ones making overtly racist chants?

To be fair, I used to go watch them a bit when Villa weren’t playing and it can be a bit like this. Most notable was probably the Blackpool cup game on BT Sport where Dion went in with the Moors fans for TV at half time and the fans chose to give a loud rendition of “sh1t on the Villa” in one of the biggest games in the club’s history. It’s pretty sad really and suffice to say I haven’t been back to watch them since despite living down the road from them. Does seem like a bit of a mini SHA atmosphere there a lot of the time.

Resting players for a game in three weeks seems a bit strange to me. At what point does a rest become too long and disadvantageous. I guess we can manage the minutes that the players get over the next couple of games to maintain a healthy balance of match fitness and rest. Must also be an argument for just keeping on as we are to try and maintain our momentum ahead of the playoffs too.

I'm sure if Sky could reschedule this now they would. Fortunately, they have to give more than a few days notice. At the time they picked this game in the 12 o clock spot they very easily could have had a game where both teams needed the win to clinch promotion/a playoff place. It hasn't worked out for them but if you add in the huge fan base of both of these clubs I can see why they've put this one on Sky.

I think there's an element of truth in this but it is a bit exaggerated. He does like to try the spectacular quite a lot but when he was at his best this sometimes paid off (see Fulham at home in his first season). However, I don't think he's very often turned down simple headers to try the spectacular - a lot of the time he simply wouldn't be able to generate the power with a header so has gone for an acrobatic effort. I also think that you have to accept that this is the kind of player he is. He's at his best when he's playing off the cuff rather than being told to play in a strict system. In that regard he's the polar opposite of Davis who will offer the typical big man up front performance but rarely look like scoring. He's not in his best form at the moment but to be fair he's coming back from a serious injury and isn't really getting the game time to play himself back to full fitness. He's still one of our more dangerous players and looks more likely to score than any of our other options other than Tammy. I'd also suggest that had Kodjia been fully fit all season and starting in this squad he'd have hit over 20 goals already.

Good game again today. I’ll never understand the hate he seems to get from the stands. Was fairly isolated for large parts of the game and put a shift in along with scoring the winner.

I assume it was brought in to prevent teams from setting up as negatively as possible away from home. If you take the Spurs game last night as an example, even though they had the lead from the home leg, it was encouraging for them to at least attempt to attack as one away goal left City needing to score three times. That's not to say that I agree with the rule but I can see why it may be necessary to incentivise some sort of attacking play away from home to avoid every game becoming a bit of a cagey affair.

I guess he's just saying that there's a core squad of players who have taken England to number 1 in the world rankings. To catapult someone straight into that squad for a World Cup may upset the apple cart potentially. Not sure its a point I particularly agree with but its a similar discussion to those had around football World Cup when players are put in for the major tournament.

The Grealish goal was so clearly a valid goal that the celebrations would still happen and no VAR check would have happened (i.e. nothing would have changed with VAR there). I'm not sure I really get this argument. Of course celebrations will still happen instinctively when goals are scored. I don't see everybody not celebrating goals on the off chance that it may get disallowed. The reaction to offside goals shows this to me. Even when the linesman has had his flag up for a good 30 seconds before the ball goes in there are still people jumping around celebrating the goal. If a few people have a bit of egg on their face in the way that Pep and the City fans did after their celebrations, I don't see that as an issue when the alternative is to have goals awarded incorrectly and matches decided by clearly wrong decisions.

I'm not convinced it's handball even going by this rule. He clearly didn't score the goal directly with his hand/arm as it came of his hip. Did he "gain possession/control of the ball" with his arm? This one is more debatable but I'd argue that had the ball not hit his arm it would have hit his hip and gone in anyway. In short I'm not convinced that the ball brushing past his arm had any real impact on the fact that the ball went in. Given that the evidence should be clear and obvious in order to overturn an on field decision, I wouldn't really like to see a goal like this chalked off under either the current or these new rules. Additionally, we are debating a marginal decision which without VAR would still have resulted in a goal anyway. I'm not convinced this is a good argument against VAR in a game where the winning goal would have been an offside goal without VAR being in use.