mrjc

Oh, but doubt his wages will be small...

Crouch...haven't seen much of him the last couple of years, but may not be the worst thing based on today. Elmo looked keen to get crosses in, Taylor was trying to overlap a bit on the left...and it may stop us having to resort to Samba as the big man up top! Other slight reservation is that he suffered, like many, with being worse at Villa than many other places he played

Not his fault, and he didn't particularly do anything right / wrong, but that was somewhere between hilarious and embarrassing. It's the first game of the season...yes, we have some injuries, but is that really what we resort to already...it's a pretty stark admission of a lack of decent ideas / options!

Hope he isn't one who's sold, but it does seem strange he didn't even get on today. Yes he's not looked as good as he did pre joining us, but we were crying out for someone who could actually keep possession and calm things down - Whelan was tiring and Bacuna wasn't really adding anything. I think he would have been an ideal sub after 50/60 minutes (although tbf I would have started him anyway)

Didn't see anything to blame him for on the goal (although only seen it live too). I thought he was really assertive today, looked well in command and took a couple of difficult crosses very well. A couple of times he did seem very close to handling it outside the area, hopefully just a couple of random incidents today. Good start to the season for me

If we had no financial worries, I'd agree. And if someone pays £3m - excellent. If they don't? We'll be no better off in footballing terms, but considerably worse off financially. I understand the sentiment of not wanting to sell for peanuts, but right now I think the certainty of the money offered made (and wages saved) it worth it. Hopefully you're right and he goes for £3m though!

I would definitely have taken £1.5m for Bacuna. He might (validly) seem more valuable given fees elsewhere in the market, but if no-one's willing to come up with £2m / £3m, that's no good to us at all. For the benefit of £1.5m in and wages saved for the remainder of his contract (and no real negative impact on our squad), I would have happily taken it.

Nothing Bruce saying there that doesn't make sense (other than that he didn't think he'd be having to deal with it, followed by saying it was made pretty clear!). The overall tone isn't positive, but agree with the above that Hytner has written it that way - interpreting his "overall impression" as frustrating. He is right, that we are obviously paying for years of mismanagement...but he also has a very strong squad so can't complain too much. Anyway, whatever his tone now, the mood will be more determined by results over the next few weeks. (As an aside, he talks about rumoured scrapping of FFP....rules or not, I'd be more concerned for our long-term viability if we were just able to keep on spending huge fees and wages).

Small point as well, but I like the fact it actually hit the back of the net rather than dribbled over the line. Better now than I remember it at the time for some reason. Still, Dalian gets the vote!

Losses were as follows (for Reform Act Ltd): 2015/16 -£80.7m 2014/15: -27.3m 2013/14: -3.9m (all from Companies House). So the three year loss is £111.9m, technically. BUT, for the FFP test there are items you can exclude from the losses - from memory, expenditure on youth development, and even some exceptional costs, which mostly made up the £81m most recent loss. In reality, any test of what the actual 'loss' is would be a negotiation - I imagine we'd argue hard for things to be excluded, but no idea how easy that is to do. From the information publicly available, I think it's virtually impossible to calculate whether or not we will breach. The fact the club have mentioned it suggests (a) we are close but (b) that they have their eyes firmly on it. That means it should be manageable. I feel like this summer has been sensible from that point of view. But, without having full view of everything, I'd expect us to hit big trouble with if we don't go up soon (perhaps an obvious statement!)

This really confused me at first...but actually it's part of the massive complication...these are the accounts for "Aston Villa FC Limited". You can also search for "Aston Villa Football Club Limited", which shows a bigger loss. Ultimately, both of these (and other legal companies) are owned by our parent, which was then Reform Acquisitions Limited (since renamed Recon Acquisitions Limited). There you'll see the £81m loss, sadly.

He generally played well last night, but his lack of engine sometimes worries me. This can create big open spaces for teams to exploit.....one time last night Richard Dunne lost the ball fairly high up the pitch, and City had so much space to exploit. Our central midfield was nowehere to be seen! In terms of the poll, it is relistically somewhere between the two options. But if we want to really challenge the very best, I think it's a no

I used to like him, just think him and his team have got far too smug lately

Too soon to say he should go given the overall progress over the last three years IMO. However, I am starting to have doubts......going into season 4 with the amount of financial backing we have had, the squad size excuse is difficult to accept.