tom_avfc

Has been a pretty even game to be honest with Ipswich possibly shading it. Ipswich have had a good goal ruled out for offside and a possible penalty not given. Both teams had good spells in that first half and both look fairly decent.

I'd actually kind of agree with your point anyway to be fair. Looking at some of the players who've been given squad numbers there's clearly some who will never play and don't want to be here. Could perhaps have saved a few numbers knowing that players were likely to be coming in. I suppose potentially some could leave this week freeing up a number or two for new players.

I think every number up to 23 is now taken other than number 9. If nobody leaves then he's going to be number 24 at the lowest. Nothing to do with showing a lack of respect, that's just how it works.

Who/what is this based on? Not saying you're wrong but I've seen nothing to suggest that our youth players are any worse for this than any other clubs. The Grealish story is the only one which sticks in the mind but I've seen plenty accused of this with no real substance behind the claims.

Thought he had a decent game to be honest. Was quite often left with two against one due to Ayew not really playing a right midfield role and he came out on top more often than not. Few mistakes but who doesn't make mistakes and I think he's largely had a decent start to the season. Additionally he put in a few decent balls into the box for Rudy. We could definitely do with a RB but Bacuna is by far the best option in our current squad in that position..

The defender falling was an element of luck but many goals at all levels have an element of luck about them. He took the goal really well and deserves credit for doing so. As for the wouldn't score it in the Premier League comment, I'm sure we'd never see the club captain of a Premier League title chasing team fall over to give away a title deciding goal!

Yeah I saw this but I think Diego Costa also ran straight into the crowd behind the goal. Grealish got booked for doing similar in the Villa game on Saturday but this seemed similar to when Vidic did so on a yellow card at VP and wasn't shown a second. I don't really agree with the yellow card for this but it surely can't be applied at some times and not others.

Was it not Costa in the crowd after he scored as well? Was only half watching so may not have been him but I thought that was an automatic yellow card.

Just realised you probably mean the pre season friendly not a loan spell. 2 games is a bit harsh to judge a young player on and in his 20 min cameos he's looked lively to be fair.

At Bristol? Confusing him with Callum Robinson? I thought he started brightly but the Luton defence quickly worked him out. Probably best used as a late impact sub if at all currently.

Ayew was playing on the left hand side of midfield though in that formation yesterday. It was a 4-4-2 or maybe more of a 4-4-1-1 as McCormack was dropping pretty deep. I don't think the issue was purely his lack of tracking back. He did get back pretty well on a number of occasions. The problem was that when he was back he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He quite often got back onto his man and then just let him go again which caused real problems.

I like this team but with Gardner in for Westwood. I just think that Gardner needs the minutes more judging by yesterday. McCormack getting his goal tally up and running for us would be a good bonus from this game.

Agreed but if we do play him you have to play to his strengths. I'm not really sure why we played him yesterday if we weren't going to do this. We could easily have put Ayew further up or played one of the youngsters. I'd like us to use him in the same way as Wednesday used Nuhiu. I thought he was a brilliant option for them off the bench and think Rudy could have a similar impact in games where we need something different for the last 20 minutes or so. I see him as kind of similar to the argument people had for Carroll going to the Euros although he's nowhere near as good! He's a different option which we could turn to as a plan B when chasing a goal.

This is a fair point and I'm only basing my opinion on two games against decent opposition so far. It just looks a bit too easy to cut right through us on the counter attack with 2 or 3 passes at the moment and I;m not sure how good on the ball you have to be to do so. I do think Amavi and a better right back would help to be fair. I'd like to see a right back with similar attributes to Amavi come in to give us a bit more balance in our attacking play. Like you said it does show our dominance and this is a better problem to have than last year's problem of simply not being anywhere near good enough to cope with the opposition.

It was a pretty horrendous mistake to be fair - there's no harm in saying that and I'm sure he'd be the first to admit it himself. Yes it was unfortunate in the way that it was punished but the slice was one of the poorest kicks I've seen from a back pass that was pretty routine to deal and on his favoured side. He didn't look to be under too much pressure either so unsure why he looked quite as rushed as he did. I would question why we felt the need to keep passing it back and forward to him as well to be fair. When he kicked long he seemed to hit Gestede on the majority of occasions and we were picking up quite a few second balls off him as well, including our best chance of the game. Wednesday were pressing so high up the pitch when he passed it out that it never seemed likely for us to get the ball out of our own half without going long anyway. I'm not trying to say this is his fault as they were clearly told to do this but for me it didn't really work. Other than that though I agree. He had an excellent game, made a few top top saves and I'm more than comfortable with him in goal. At his age I'm excited by the potential he has to become a very very good goalkeeper. We may have to accept a few mistakes as part of his development but I feel its worth it as long as they don't become too regular an occurence. Even De Gea had his own issues at United when he first came so I'm more than happy to cut him some slack.

The worry with the way we're playing at the moment is that we look really susceptible to counter attacks, particularly down our left hand side. Every time we break forward Hutton and Cissokho get so high up that any time we give away possession our opponents can just play a long ball to a wing and it seems that we're in real trouble. Bacuna seems to do a decent job at getting himself back and has an understanding of what to do when defending on the wing from his games at RB. Ayew doesn't have this. Yesterday the best example of this is the attack where Forestieri had his shot saved at the near post. Baker had slid in and taken out the striker as he laid it off on the halfway line. If he hadn't done this then the striker could well have been well placed for Forestieri to give him practically an open goal in a similar manner to a couple of the Boro goals.It shouldn't be so easy for a team to slice us open on the counter attack and this is a real concern of the system we're currently playing. The real worry is that even the lesser teams in the league can come to Villa Park and set up behind the ball, wait for us to give it away and then hit us on the break with 6 or 7 of our players high up the pitch.

Agree with this. I thought Bacuna had a pretty solid game yesterday and was also one of our better players against Boro. I think his work rate has been noticeably high over those two games - he tracks back very well and also tends to be involved in a lot of our attacking play. He's not brilliant, but nobody is in our team and he wouldn't be one of the first I'd look to replace. If we do sign another attacking midfield option such as Morrison I wouldn't be against putting Bacuna back into right back. He did alright there before and if we're looking to get the full backs as high up the pitch as possible as we have been doing, then he's much more capable of a decent ball into the box than Hutton. The number of times Hutton got into good space going forward but failed with the pull back/cross was frustrating and I feel we'd create more opportunities if it was a more attack minded full back supplying the crosses if that's the way we want to set up this season.

Actually thought it was a really good day out. Was a decent game of football which could have gone either way and both sets of fans were loud which made for a good atmosphere. We parked a fair walk from the ground and getting away was no real issue and their fans were friendly enough on the walk back. Much preferred yesterday to a lot of the games in the Premier League and came away thinking we might actually win a few aways this year which would be a pleasant change.

Agree with this to an extent. However, things like pre match shows and player/manager interviews may be more watched in the Championship due to the lack of much coverage elsewhere. Since all Premier League matches are covered in more detail by other websites (Sky, BBC etc.) and on TV the AVTV coverage was pretty redundant. I agree we don't want to be spending fortunes on AVTV but I can't imagine the costs involved in putting a few videos on there is that high for a football club.

Marc Albrighton has just won the Premier League, Gary Cahill has been a Chelsea and England regular winning league and Champions League titles, Steve Davis is an international captain and has had a good Premier League career at Southampton, Craig Gardner has had a good Premier League career. That's just the first few examples I could think of and all of those players would have been useful to us at one time or another. Players like Andre Green, Gary Gardner and Jack Grealish coming through now should play a big part this season. No academy is going to consistently produce the best players in the world but we haven't done too badly with ours and a fair few have been given a decent chance in the first team. Obviously we're going to need money spent on transfers but investing in the academy would be extremely worthwhile.

This pretty much sums up how pointless his predictions are at this stage. If we sign Kodjia off them then that's going to instantly change those particular predictions. Predicting the finishing positions of the league with a month of the transfer window left is pretty pointless. I also think part of him predicting Villa to be way down the table is to generate interest in the article itself. In reality there's not much between a lot of teams in the league and therefore its pretty difficult to predict anyway. Teams like Leeds, Ipswich and Blues who he has up near the playoffs could easily finish bottom half and teams like us, Reading and Fulham could easily be playoff contenders even with the squads as they are now.

Agree completely with this but don't know why Amavi or Grealish are any different. Nobody is going to offer what we'd want for either because of last season's form/ injury but if they did they'd be off just as soon as anyone else. They're in a similar situation to everyone else as far as I can see.

The article is based on an interview with Di Matteo. The part you quoted is not a quote from Di Matteo and is written by a reporter who clearly has no idea how release clauses work. Why would anybody bid more than the release clause when matching the clause means the bid has to be accepted.

Why would there ever be a bidding war? If a club offers £7.1m then their offer can't be rejected. It is then down to the teams who meet this clause to discuss wages etc. with Gana and he will choose whichever suits him best. No club is going to offer any higher - what would be the point?

This makes a lot more sense but I suppose the real question is how well does that £40m cover the loss of income from not being in the premier league. I know we'll have seen reductions in some players wages but I'd still expect to see the decrease in income being greater than the decrease in expenditure. If this is the case then we are immediately more loss making as a club and Xia is going to need to inject more money than RL just to meet costs. Using that £40m against Xia when its replacing a larger figure from the previous year is a bit false.