Lerner's Driver

Sure thing. Still, would you like to praise him after today's performance?

Would you like to praise him for today's performance?

Martinez MOM purely for his massive South American balls. Superb performance all round. Would've been so harsh on Hause if we had drawn because he was excellent again and the flicked header for his goal was beautiful. Finally beating the Scum is a sexy feeling! Looks like we are turning into a very good side. That said, there's some weird chemistry going on between Watkins and Ings. Watkins is putting in all his usual team effort, but he looks unhappy. His first touch and shooting was poor today and has been in most of the games so far. Well out of sorts.

2-1 Villa. What I'm hoping for is a first showing of our best 11, to get a glimpse of what we can be.

Oh no, he wasn't.

All our players are available for the right price.

Well said. There are certain players, where as soon as you offer any kind of criticism, no matter how reasonable, you are labelled as 'just waiting for your chance to slate them'. It's absurd, why can't players be criticised fairly?

Ridiculous. He offers a lot of positives to the team and deserves criticism for his frequently costly errors.

Did he give the ball away a lot?

Agree it wasn't ideal, but Mings' still had more than enough time to make the pass. He just did his typical thing of being too casual. It's like in his brain he assumes the ball will go where he wants it to, without concentrating enough to make sure it does.

Poor finishing and brainfart defending equals a 3-0 loss and plenty to worry about in my opinion, you clearly don't agree, which is fine, but that's wtf I'm talking about. Makes no difference how well you play in between if you show those qualities at either end of the pitch. I said there were positives and there were, no dispute. We killed ourselves, as Villa nearly always do.

Result not surprising and to be fair, nor was the ultimate reason why. Mings' mistake killed the game and he was also at fault for their third. It does keep happening and the negative outcomes are often telling, so there will come a time when he will have to pay for those mistakes with his place in the team. Particularly in the first half, we showed some decent attacking intent and worked a few chances, but our finishing throughout was dire. McGinn back to giving the ball away. Steer does not inspire confidence and is not good enough in my opinion. Overall, some positives from the first half, but plenty to worry about too.

Better than expected. Ramsey great thrusting runs. We look good on the break and while pressing their back line. We should at least be level. Final shot or pass is letting us down badly.

Well yes, it might feel like it's helping, but it's still largely pointless, particularly while the things being moaned about are often moot or unreasonable.

I think the source of most recent Villa fan angst is the realisation that we aren't going to do a Man City and relentlessly spend our way to glory. There are plenty of good reasons why we haven't done that, but our rise in recent years has been such that many of us have either subconsciously hoped, or even fully believed that we were on that path or something similar. It does hurt to have that feeling of continuous progress taken away (or slowed down a bit), but that's where we are at and we all just need to wise up and accept our journey is different. What is the point in moaning about something you can't control? You just come across as an entitled twonk.

I agree we didn't want to overpay, but also think we needed to shift someone first and if we had, then we probably would have paid what they wanted.

Fair enough that you don't agree with the club that he is amazing.

Not sure that is true to be fair. There definitely are/were better players than those we've already got who were available to buy. We didn't buy them because we had to shift one of ours first and the buyer wasn't forthcoming at the price we wanted.

Not sure I get what you are saying? "It works for Leicester so why not for us" (agreed - no argument), "If something amazing comes up they will splash the cash, but why should they for a Ward Prowse for example" (isn't he amazing? The club thought he was worth bidding for)

Not much evidence of that so far, but the had a tough start.

Was there a word missing from your last sentence?

That is what plenty on here believe, yes. I don't, but I do think the heavy bulk spending is now done and any new additions will be strategic.

The thing about there needing to be a fee for one of our midfielders before we brought another one in is interesting for a few reasons because: (a) it suggests we were ready/willing to listen to offers on McGinn, Luiz or Nakamba, (b) FFP limits dictated our reticence to spend more. It wasn't that we wouldn't spend again, but that we couldn't.

The guy created the account precisely because he knows you and others feel that way.

Top half is the expectation this year, I would have thought.