pas5898

Cant believe people are moaning about the potential aesthetics to be honest. We finally have owners who are increasing the capacity at Villa park and "filling in" the gaps around a new North Stand.

Owners don't have a choice. Buy 4/5 first team players or for certain they will go down next season. Both Bournemouth and Fulham have PL experience and will push the 35 point mark in my opinion.

I don't think anyone at UEFA or FIFA cares about logistics, deaths of workers, football and most definitely the fans. The financial push of 3/4 countries is greater than 1. It's all about how they / their sponsors make the most money. Anything else, like football, deserving nations etc is completely irrelevant.

Burnley is a bit of a free hit for him. If they don't get promoted, well the team has been demolished this summer and will "take time" to rebuild. But he will also have a huge budget by championship standards due to parachute payments + a few players like McNeil who will absolutely tear up the championship.

TBH Earlier this season, except for Son / Kane, on paper there wasn't a massive difference in quality between the squads (Dier, Emerson, Davies, Hojberg, Winks, Doherty, Bergjin etc). It's just Conte is an absolute world class manager who has revitalised 4/6 of those, and added 2 really smart signings. Dier, Emerson and Davies would have got nowhere near our first team 6 months ago. Now they walk into it. That's down to Conte.

Problem position signed for "free". (Sure he made a sizeable signing bonus) Providing we raise around 40/50 million (El Ghazi, Trez, Targett, Guilbert, Keinan + maybe 1or 2 youngsters), we could easily spend another 100 million., for a 50million net spend. Thinking an elite CB will be on the shopping list. Exciting times.

In the leveraged buyout Burnley effectively took an interest only loan for 60 million, secured against TV rights. There’s a clause meaning if relegated they need to repay either 40 or 60 million in 12 months. They’ll probably refinance that again at an extortionate rate, which with the championship FFP will be like a millstone. Add to that 10 players out of contract, even with parachute payments it might be a while before we see them again.

Oh no

Nerves will play a big part on Sunday. Man City will beat us, but I don't think it will be as straight forward as people make out. Remember Villa park? We should have got a draw out of that with Konsa and Chuk missing absolute sitters at the end.

Sky Sports / BT Sport will be absolutely unbearable if they win the quad.

Its Spurs. I can see them losing to Burnley.

A long drawn out war is exactly what "the west" wants. As long as Russia don't win. 1) The longer this goes on it weakens Russia. 2) Biden and other governments can pour money into their War Machines (cough financial donors) whilst not risking local troops.

"We're in an emergency with our squad. We can barely compete." Pep Guardiola - March 2023

Just 57m Laporte and 40m Ake at the back for them. Poor Pep!

Ancelotti is a world class coach / man manager. He probably has minimal input on the signings. Give him the players and he will extract the most from them. As a really good manager, he over achieved with that squad by getting them near Europe. Where they are now is more representative of the squad and wasted signings.

FWIW (not a lot), I was personally Abraham joining us in the last 2 summer windows. Reason being, for us in the championship he was wasteful in front of goal. Yes he scored, but he would miss 2/3 very good opportunities a game. In the premier league for us he wouldn't get that many chances. I don't watch much Italian football but it looks like his finishing is getting a lot better. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but he was a risky proposition at that time, especially as we already has Watkins.

Stockpiling midfielders is his forte. It only worked at Barca because he had the worlds best ever attacking midfielder / winger who happened to score 40/50 goals a season.

Hilarious how Milners tackle for the Liverpool goal was then a good "firm tackle". Mings dares tackle a top 6 sweetheart in Saka and it's a red card!

Man City's league dominance is predicated on them having so much depth enabling them to rotate based on form. End of last season Sterling was awful, therefore 4/5th choice. Silva had little impact therefore was available for sale and barely started. Now Sterling / Silva are the first names on the team sheet. Foden was starboy last spring, now he's. 4/5th choice. Same will apply to Grealish if/when he hits form.

Think it was Greg Evans who said training under DS was moved to a later time just to accommodate Grealish. Some players, are just different and need to be treated differently (Gazza, Merson, Cantona) For all the talk of Fergie and the "hair dryer" treatment in the AF documentary he understood Cantona was a maverick and allowed him to do what he wanted (he'd disappear mid week and be the best player on Saturday). The other players never resented that because he was so good. I think Dean Smith understood that, which is why he got the best out of him. At City he is one of many, he is expendable and will not get that special treatment.

His brother / agent is clearly a moron and very inexperienced. He's been played by Napoli and wasted another 6 months of his brothers career. There's a really good defender there, instead of going for the name of Napoli he should have gone to a Brentford, Norwich, even a Leeds where he would start every game.

Worryingly they've been quite sensible. Targett, Tripper, Burn etc are solid PL players who will see them solidify as a mid-table premier league team this and next season. I was hoping they'd go for the ultra mercenaries such as Bale, Ramsey, Dembele and get relegated with a monstrous wage bill. After a few years of spending, they will eventually get to the FFP ceiling, where they just cant have 6/7 players on 250k+ a week. But i'm sure the Saudi state can ensure players are recompensed via offshore (and un-taxable) ways, untraceable by the PL and UEFA. Obviously the Saudi National bank is represented by PIF.

Can't buy a win? Can't score? Manager about to be sacked? Enter Aston Villa

Game this weekend against us will show what Newcastle are made of. Everton was a massive must win. They are in free fall, inexperienced manager, influential players going off injured, years of bad spending. 15/16 vibes. We are a good team, with a good manager and some very very good players. Let’s see how they get on.

I do find it amusing that their only hope in games are 2/3 “DVBs” that weren’t even good enough for us in the championship. Meanwhile we are signing established French and Brazilian internationals. Deep down you know it really grates them…. hilarious. Mate