tom_avfc

On 26/07/2022 at 17:57, rodders0223 said:

Doesn't cover the ground aswell as Watkins and I'm concerned for him as in that aspect SG appears to be a bit of a dinosaur. That and his views on playing with injuries and such.

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. 

Just now, Steero113 said:

He has captained his country. 

Fact. 
 

 

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.

24 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Needs one in off his ass

Or maguire to set him up with a tap in 

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? 

17 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Yeah, he could have just went back see how he was, instead strugged his shoulders, not nice in a friendly really whoever were playing.

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

Just now, jayEm said:

This is a terrible result, but it's not a shocking result, and the media insisting otherwise is so frustrating 

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.

3 minutes ago, Jonesy7211 said:

Worst thing for me is that I can fully see Southgate using this appalling set of displays as the reason why he'll go back to 5 in defence and no fullbacks past the halfway line.

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

Just now, rodders0223 said:

How can any official look at that and not think peno?

How!?!?!?

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.

Just now, Keyblade said:

Why?

They won 4 out of the last 5 titles. Spent over a billion pounds in that time, including breaking the record for our captain who they used sparingly. They're everything wrong with the game. I'll never understand this sentiment. 

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.

1 hour ago, Icarium said:

What other word would you use to describe going from 2-0 to 2-3 in the space of 6 minutes?

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. 

54 minutes ago, useless said:

Micah Richards supposedly said this on 'talksport'

"Steve Gerrard would like to win the league for Liverpool on Sunday but Villa has a clause in Jack Grealish deal that could land them extra £15 million if City wins the league and in this business Money comes first."

I've only seen the quote written down, presumably he was joking, but it's been taken out of context and used as clickbait, if he was serious about the clause I doubt he'd seriously suggest that we would throw the game.

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.

47 minutes ago, Woody1000 said:

Chance Conversion %

Ronaldo 15.9
Ings 15.9
Watkins 14.1
Kane 12.5

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.

4 hours ago, paul514 said:

Salah and Mane don’t play as wingers they play as inside forwards and Firminho doesn’t play as a striker but as a second striker.

He is basically a link up man with salah and mane running into centre forward positions 

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. 

5 hours ago, bobzy said:

I don't think you've read what I was responding to?  Someone put "I think the main issue is if was Watkins doing similar on Van Dijk would it have been disallowed? I definitely think it would have been" - as if Liverpool would always benefit from that decision.  The only major decision that was incorrect in that game was not ruling Watkins offside.

Nothing to do with the game as a whole.

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. 

13 hours ago, bobzy said:

Of course it is. It’s an absurd thing to say.

The only major incident that the referees got wrong in that game was in our favour.

”But what if Liverpool lol” just isn’t a thing. 

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.

2 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

How is that not a penalty for Wolves, WTF

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. 

35 minutes ago, Zatman said:

But a lot of Burnley fans didn't sign up here to tell us how great they are

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. 

5 hours ago, Zatman said:

Option one how does it not work?

Watford have been in the top flight 14 seasons ever and 6 of them under this management.

What do you think Watford are expecting to do?

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.

30 minutes ago, Zatman said:

West Ham have Antonio with I think 51 goals

Everton another would expect would have a player on the list

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). 

8 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I'm by no means a die hard labour fan. But how can people lose faith in a party that haven't been in power for over a decade?

This is what I mean when I say the likes of the mail have won. All the horrendous shit and the state of this country because of a decade of these words removed and people have lost faith in voting them out.

I genuinely believe that this idea that they're all as bad as each other will be seen as success by Tory politicians. 

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. 

2 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

i don't watch a lot of CL but as much as we complain about our refs, theres a fair bit of dross in europe too if tonights refereeing display is anything to go by

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.

48 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Tyrone.

VT collectively voted him man of the match on four occasions, Jack three times. 

Both played in thirteen of the fifteen matches.

As it happens, in those thirteen matches, more people felt Mings was deserving of man of the match than Grealish on nine separate occasions. What game stands out for Grealish in the run in? The small heath game, right? That’s the one I think of. He must have won the vote for that game. Not according to this site.

In fact, in six of the matches in the run in, Grealish received less than 2% of the vote.

Now, this isn’t trying to diminish what Grealish did for us, I think making the argument him being the most important player at the time is fair and just. I suspect the subsequent Premier League ratings for best player were much more weighted towards Grealish.

And it isn’t a perfect metric, the VT ratings isn’t the be all and end all. But it is fairly objective, everyone has the opportunity to vote and everyone was in love with Jack at the time, so it’s not like he was at a disadvantage.

But it does kinda counter the notion of the promotion being being mostly down to him, when according to VillaTalk he was barely in consideration as the best performer for Villa in half of the games in the promotion run 

 

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.

Just now, tomav84 said:

bournemouth to a man have been excellent

all 12 of them

jammy feckers

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.

1 minute ago, Xela said:

Sign.

If we want to mix it with the big boys we need big boy players and pay big boy wages. 

Decline and you are confirming that we are happy to be also rans. 

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.