tom_avfc

Why does wanting a striker who presses well make Gerrard a dinosaur? Must be a fairly large proportion of teams that want a striker who can run the channels and press in the premier league.

He’s at best third choice captain for a second-rate (and that’s pretty generous) international team. Using that to show him as a good captain for a premier league team hoping to kick on to a minimum top half finish is wishful thinking in my opinion.

He scored against Walsall with a good finish. Since then he’s made two 45 minute appearances without a goal. Hardly a goal drought is it?

He went over to him to check on him and they shook hands.

It’s pretty shocking to be fair. I don’t know what the odds were on Hungary 4-0 but I imagine that’ll tell you how shocking it was. Were not very good under Southgate but to lose 4-0 for the first time in England’s international history can’t be described as not shocking.

He’s done that for the second half here let alone going forwards.

I kind of understand the on field decision. The player has made it look like a dive. Whoever is watching that on VAR should never referee another game of football though. It’s the most obvious penalty you can ever see.

How has that not been given as a penalty? He’s kicked his leg onto his other leg as clear as day. The exaggerated fall didn’t do him any favours but how a VAR has looked at that and not given it is beyond me.

They’re breaking football. Would it surprise anybody if they won the next 5 titles? They’ve just added one of the best strikers in the world to a team that has every other position covered with 2 or more £50m+ players in every position. I genuinely couldn’t care less that Grealish plays there. Couldn’t stand them before he went there and still can’t stand them now. Even their own fans cant be bothered to turn up they’re that manufactured and boring. Fair play to Liverpool but I fear that the two team league is very quickly going to become a one team league.

Outclassed, outspent, unfairly disadvantaged… We’re playing a different game to them. They had our best player in years sat on the bench despite paying £100m for him. They can score 3 goals in no time against anyone particularly having brought on £100m worth of talent and with a full week off opposed to our 3 days. Great 70 minutes from Villa and disappointing to lose but it’s far from an embarrassment and many teams wouldn’t have run them that close to start with.

He didn’t say it at all. He’s come out and said that he didn’t say it and he hasn’t been on Talksport for years. Another example of social media at its worst where someone makes up a story and within a few hours people are taking it as truth.

I think people see what they want to see a lot of the time. When he takes a chance, however difficult, it’s glossed over and then he misses a couple and he’s a bad finisher. We’d be hard pushed to bring in a better striker and it would cost us a lot of money to do so.

It works because Salah and Mane are quick and like to play on the shoulders of the last defender. Firminho could drop deep and play the ball through to either of those players. I’m not convinced it works with Coutinho or Buendia. Firminho would be dropping into the exact space that both Coutinho and Buendia want for themselves. If we were to sign Firminho it would work better with Watkins and Bailey on the wings as they’re more in the style of Salah/Mane ( although obviously nowhere near as good). Basically I don’t see Firminho as someone we’d be interested in. Gerrard has never shown any intention of our attacking football relying on pacey inside forwards which is why Firminho was so effective at Liverpool.

Sorry yeah that’s me getting the wrong end of the stick. The argument being put forward on the radio after the game that the ref was beneficial to Villa on the basis of that one decision was annoying. Completely agree that that goal wouldn’t get overruled at either end as it simply isn’t a foul.

This major incident argument is tedious. The linesman got an offside wrong in the build up to our goal. Its not the major incidents that were the issue in the game. It was every little decision that was going Liverpool’s way every time, particularly in the first half. If you can constantly ruin a team’s momentum by giving every decision against them then it’s inevitable that they’ll lose the game, especially when playing against one of the best teams in the world. If anybody thinks that the refereeing in that game was favourable to us on the basis of one missed offside then I’d question whether they even watched the game.

What’s the point in VAR if they’re not overturning that. It’s as blatant a penalty as you’ll ever see. 100% would have been overturned at the other end.

Not sure they even know what the internet is in Burnley to be fair. If their fan base is anything to go on a large proportion of them seem to be stuck in the 80’s.

Completely agree. It’s a strange approach chopping and changing managers as often as they do but it has seen them performing at a higher level than they have for most of their history. Them getting relegated has far more to do with the strength of their squad than changing manager mid season.

Gabby has 74. I'd also add that he played quite a number of games on the wing and largely played for a dreadful side once all of the better players were sold around him. I think its a real shame how it all ended for Gabby to be honest. The derby goals and his better years all seem to be completely forgotten because he turned out to be the idiot that we all knew him to be from the start. I'd rather remember the good times he gave us until Lerner lost interest in the club to be honest. Some of my favourite moments watching Villa centre around Gabby (I'm thinking of winners at The Hawthorns, St Andrews and Old Trafford in particular).

Of course it’s a success for the Tories. They’re banking on a load of people saying “they’re all as bad as each other” as they vote for them. There is literally no reason to vote for them so they have to promote this myth that they’re all as bad as each other. The papers and social media are all over it and doing most of the job for them while they sit back and watch people lap it up.

Has he been that bad? A bit lenient with the yellow cards for both teams but overall I don’t think he’s been awful. The BT Sport commentators will have you believe that every City challenge is fair and every Madrid one a foul but all in all I haven’t noticed the ref particularly.

This is partly due to how good Grealish was for us. It’s easy to take it for granted that he was going to be our best player and therefore other players were getting man of the match. In reality he was the key player for us in getting out of that league and staying in this one. No number of man of the matches awarded by VT will change my mind on that.

When you see that Stuart Atwell is ref then you know what’s going to happen. Haven’t seen such a ridiculous refereeing performance since the last time I watched him ref.

If the money is better spent elsewhere then it should be. There’s other players who would be statement signings that would be far more effective in my opinion.

Given that Smith had 11 games as opposed to Gerrard’s 22 this season it’s a bit more nuanced than simple league table positions. One way to look at it would be to compare the relative performance of those 11 games with the reverse fixtures. Smith took 10 points from the first 11 games of this season. Gerrard took 7 points from the same 11 teams with only the win over Southampton bettering the result from first time around. Beating the likes of Leeds and Norwich isn’t really anything to write home about. I’m not massively against Gerrard and I hope he does well but to suggest he’s doing a better job than Smith was despite losing to practically every team that we lost to under Smith is by no means a statement of fact as you’re trying to make it out to be. Add in arguments for whether the style of football has improved, whether Gerrard has had fewer injuries and the outlay on expensive players in January and theres far more to the debate than a simple points comparison over games against different opposition will ever achieve.