Villaphan04

3 minutes ago, AV82 said:

Is Tim Howard starting tonight? 

he's commentating on the other games tonight I believe

2 hours ago, TomC said:

Sorry, I disagree with you on this one. Keeping our best players increases our chance of getting into the CL, which would raise our FFP ceiling and more than make up for selling one of them.

 

Whilst I agree with that sentiment, but that is still a "if we make the CL"... we will still have to comply with ffp. It's just something we have to keep in mind, as we are not going to have the youth prospects to sell for decent wedges of cash like Manchester City have done in the last year.

1 hour ago, KMitch said:

Exactly...  Every club that does this "sell one of our best players and replace him with a potential bargain" strategy like Leicester, Southampton, Swansea, Bournemouth, etc.  all eventually sell all their best players and are left with an aging mediocre squad on massive wages while circling the drain toward relegation.  Good clubs keep hold of their best players and only sell up when they absolutely have to.  

You could also say that a club like Everton did the exact opposite, kept buying players (high reputation but might not be that good as we know) and not selling them & are facing financial difficulties for the last year. Also, I can't really remember a good club that kept their best players & ended up being super successful... 

1 hour ago, KMitch said:

https://www.avfc.co.uk/video/ebea43be-72b0-4f16-ab7d-3a11dc6c0b0b

Apparently Tielemans was wearing a bodycam during Sunday's friendly.  Really cool to watch.  Reminds me of that awesome Nike commercial from ~15 years ago.  

6 hours ago, CarryOnVilla said:

we need to recycle our financial assets at some point. 

As good as Donk is as backup, he’s not going to get better. let’s flip him for someone with potential. 

keeps FFP demons at bay and gives us a chance to improve the squad long term. 

this is exactly what I would be open to selling a player like Konsa, Dendoncker, Bailey, Buendía or McGinn for FFP purposes. Allows us to cash in on a player will give us breathing room within ffp for the upcoming years. Deciding that we are not going to sell any of our best players is what we all want, but we are not at the financial level commercially that we are able to do so. Unfortunately, the reality of ffp. 

5 hours ago, MaVilla said:

Luiz also made the same mistake. so yeah, only seems Donk is held to account for it.

tbh, Donk, Luiz and kamara all made the same type of mistake, Kamara made it twice but was only punished once, none of them should be considered s*** by fans for making a mistake like that, unless they continue doing it again and again.

it's the exact same mistake that comes from playing the ball out from the back. It will happen again this year, but the benefits to playing out from the back outweigh the negative of this mistake

7 hours ago, TRO said:

I'm not sure what the fascination is with Ferran Torres and Joao Felix.

I can't say, I have studied them forensically.....but their goal scoring records are much inferior to Ollie Watkins, not even close.

I am not particularly taken by Vanity signings.....Thats what Chelsea have been doing.

neither of them are what would be classed as a #9. I would say either of them would be a massive upgrade on what we had last year but we can't compare them to Ollie as neither plays the same position as he does. Archer is more similar to Ollie than those two are

7 hours ago, TRO said:

If within reason, I could get a striker, it would be Evan Ferguson.....as young as he is.

would be a great signing but completely unrealistic. He'd probably cost close to double our current transfer record fee & we have Durán and Archer already. 

8 hours ago, skarroki said:

There's not enough good strikers out there to be selling off one we brought through the academy. 

They're in hot demand currently, it's well worth keeping Archer around. Could save us £40mil if all goes well. 

That step up from Championship to the Prem is a complete unknown most the time. There's players who look ready-made for the Prem who cannot hack it and players that you'd think are struggling at that level that suddenly become Prem regulars. 

Because of that, if we need more numbers in the squad, I would want any academy players reaching the 21-22 age bracket where they need to be registered as one of the 25 to be kept on and hope they'll impress Unai.

I don't know if this is a commonly held sentiment in modern football, but I think acheiving anything good this season will be better if the Ramsey's, Philogene, Archer, Iroegbunam et al had a hand in that success. 

 This is the thing we don't know with Cam. From all accounts, he was average at Solihull, came back and scored plenty in the Championship. Whether he can do that in the PL is yet to be seen, but there are other parts of his game that will also need improvement (as with every footballer). It's all well and good if he can score a bucketful of goals, but the other side of the game which Ollie is extremely good at 

12 minutes ago, alreadyexists said:

 

 

 

I know I'd prefer Fresneda or Arnau Martinez but definitely a good sign!

3 hours ago, Kiwivillan said:

Didn't Dubravka concede 3 so Olsen conceded the least including Emi?

our 3rd was exactly the same as what Olsen did for their third. Dubrakva was not that good last night either!

I'd keep him around this year. Think he counts for homegrown numbers in Europe & is a good squad player around. 

Cash played the whole game -- I think we need another RB

i think this is exactly what Unai wants from pre-season. Actual competitive time vs another PL club. It provides him a lot more film to analyze outside of training

Buendía looks that step better than last year

American refs, interesting