KMitch

20 hours ago, Villan4Life said:

Hi Ferguson1. In my view McKenna, Ethan Erhahon (St Mirren) Ryan Porteous (Hibs) Harry Cochrane (Hearts) Kyle Magennis (St Mirren) Lawrence Shankland (Ayr) and few others. Not sure who is scouting for Villa in Scotland now whether employee by club, agents or freelance but worth us keeping eye on the lads above.

Even if we signed any of them and didn’t work out could easily sell them for what we paid.  Every signing is gamble in football so worth a shot.

I'm still shocked that nobody else was in for McGinn besides Celtic and us.  Is the SPFL's reputation that bad where clubs won't take a gamble on someone like McGinn for 4 Mil?

20 hours ago, Villan4Life said:

Few Brentford fans on twitter reckons it’s a done deal 

Brentford fans here think it's a bit of a wind up by the press/agents.  Apparently Smith didn't favor him at Brentford...

http://www.griffinpark.org/forums/showthread.php?t=117195&page=77/

Missing Grealish, Axel, and Taylor.

Forced to play Whelan in Midfield, Hutton at Left Back, and Bree at CB.  We all know how shit our Keeper is and have no depth in any position but Striker/Winger.  What was Deano supposed to do differently to "see that lead out"????

If we had Klopp, Guardiola, or even Mourinho at the helm today, we would have lost that game too.  Not Smith's fault.  

2 hours ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

Axel, you? Get a left back too and we’re good to go in my opinion, Matt Targett would do nicely, maybe someone with a bit more experience would be better

lol...  No way we'll sign Targett.  He's started the last 4 games for Southampton and has been playing very well.  They aren't selling him this window.

We really are a miserable lot...  2 months after Bruce got the sack and we're still moaning about him in every other thread.  hahaha

His move to Liverpool didn't make any sense at all.  I remember reading a statistic that he won more headers than any other striker in the top 5 leagues in Europe in his last season for us, but he signed for Liverpool, who crossed the ball the least of any team in the Premier League the same season.  Bigger club, champions league football, and a higher salary are why he signed for Liverpool, but it effectively destroyed his career.

I also disagree with the sentiment that he was lazy.  He singlehandedly kept us in the Premier League in at least one of the seasons he was playing for us.  Our entire game plan revolved around Benteke and we looked completely lost if he was out of the team or having a bad performance.  He got frustrated because our midfield lacked creativity and needed to try to make things happen himself, which is why he got caught offside a lot.  He had a bit of arrogance about him, like knew he was our best player and handled himself accordingly.  His performances backed it up, though, unlike Gabby who still thought it necessary to rub it in our faces after he hadn't scored a goal in almost a year.  

1 hour ago, Skruff said:

Great news. Anyone actually know anything about him? Is he well rated in Belgium? How's their fans view? 

 

Saw a Genk fan on Reddit say he's excellent all around, except for his goal kicks (overkicks long balls a lot) and 1:1 stopping ability (says if the striker is smart and tries to keep the shot low to the ground, he struggles to get down in time, as he is so tall).  

Replace "Christian Purslow" in the Liverpool fans comments with "Tom Fox" and you'll have our thoughts on one of our previous CEOs who was in a similar position under Lerner.  He was brought in to find a buyer for the club and tell the fans what they wanted to hear.  

I don't know the guy and I'm naturally a pessimist, but Purslow hasn't made a bad decision yet.

Look at it like this, boys...  We have a 7 Million pound keeper incoming, 2 weeks before the window has even opened.  We're not messing about.  FFP isn't on the cards anymore...  Purslow confirmed that we have a clean slate financially and it looks like all the needed background corporate personnel are in place.  Pretty sure the new owners showed a bit of restraint this summer with signings, while they got the club finances corrected and the right people appointed.  Now that the ship is steadied and the club is headed in the right direction again, I expect to see the purse strings loosen up.  This is going to be the first signing of a very exciting 2019.

What a refreshing change of pace this is!  We're actively moving to tie up our number one transfer window need, weeks before the window even opens.  

Someone needs to tell our new owners that this isn't the "Aston Vila Way" of handling things.  We're supposed to flounder around haggling over the fee with the other club for weeks, then the deal will fall through, our backup options are already signed, and on deadline day, we end up panic buying someone like Shay Given on a 5 year deal...

1 hour ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

The should have got Steve Bruce. Seriously he would be a safer interim than bloody OGS.

Well...  He has gotten promoted from the Championship more than any other manager.  Once they go down this season, Bruce would be the ideal candidate to bring them back up.  hahahaha

8 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

Coleman losing his first game to us obviously didn't fit their narrative.  Left it out and made out like he had a flying start.

hahaha!!!  True...  Besides John O'Shea, Chris Coleman was the only one who came out of that documentary looking good.  The only negative things shown against the guy were that complete nutter fan who went off on him after they were relegated and McGeady complaining to the camera crew about how Coleman didn't tell the players what he wanted them to do tactically or give feedback besides "we go again" after a loss.  The thing that shocked me is that someone at McGeady's age, with his kind of footballing CV, has never played in a 4-3-3 before and said he had no idea what to do off the ball when Coleman switched to the formation halfway through the match. 

Honestly, though.  It's becoming more and more obvious in the modern game that just being a confident charismatic ex-footballer isn't enough to be a good manager.  These guys will occasionally stumble into a team where they'll have a good impact for a season or two, but as soon as things start to go pear shaped, they have no idea how to turn it around or will bail at the first opportunity.  

I feel incredibly sorry for Brentford...  Since Smith left, they've won once, drawn once, and lost eight...  They've gone from playing some of the best football in the league to relegation candidates.

Jesus...  Was I the only one who liked Cuellar?  I still rate him as the best CB we've had since Laursen.  

KMitch's Fool-Proof Transfer Policy (It works for me in Football Manager every season, so it should work for Villa!!!):

• No Transfer Fees for any player over 24 - NO EXCEPTIONS - I don't care of Messi is available for 100k, it isn't worth the massive contract they'll want
• Players aged 25-30 on Free Transfers only, and for only 2 year deals
  • If Below Age 28 after that one season and they had a great season, can extend contract once by up to 3 years.
  • If Aged 29+ after that first season, offload to the highest bidder or offer to clubs with zero fees in the worst case scenario
• Offer only made to players if they meet 3/4 of the following criteria:
  • Can play more than one position competently
  • Has a professional personality & good character off the pitch
  • The player does not have a history of injuries
  • Extensive scouting shows the player has a lot of room to improve
• If a club offers me more then 10 million more than what I value a player to be, I accept the offer without question and backfill with another prospect that I'm tracking who matches my above criteria
• If a player hits age 30, I try to sell as soon as I can to recoup as much money as I can for the player.  The only exceptions are club icons/legends who have been at the club for 8+ years.  I'll let them stay, give them a testimonial, and eventually offer them some kind of staff role, once they hang up their boots.  These don't come along very often, because if someone is good enough, ManUre/Madrid/PSG all come in with a ridiculous offer for them at some point in their careers.  If that happens, I'll offload them and count my millions.

11 hours ago, The_Rev said:

@KMitch just wait until you see his antics in the January window. His entire plan seems to be based on Micah Richards Jack Rodwell deciding just to walk away from his £60/70k (both amounts are quoted) contract and essentially become unemployed. Now I'm pretty sure the chronology of events are edited to fit the narrative of the filmmakers so you have to take this with a pinch of salt, but he doesn't appear to begin to deal with this until mid January. Rodwell decides that he'd rather honour the contract he'd agreed with the club and it all comes crashing in.  Now I'm firmly of the opinion that fans and casual observers get to call Rodwell a greedy bastard but I'm not sure senior management at the club can really play that card with a straight face.

 

I see so much of Aston Villa in this documentary and I'm really glad we somehow managed to avoid a second successive relegation. We still aren't out of the woods yet though, but thankfully we either got lucky or dealt with it better than Sunderland did. I'm pretty sure that there are other clubs on thin ice too. This documentary is a hell of a warning. 

Honestly, I'm not sure it was edited to make it look worse than it actually was...  On deadline day, Bain was admitting to the camera crew that he was still waiting for Rodwell to make a decision, because he made a comment along the lines of "if he rips up his contract today, tomorrow after the window closes, he'll be able to sign with any other club out there".  Then, the next scene, shows Bain trying to make some deals happen and promptly has a meltdown when he gets a text from Rodwell saying he's not going anywhere.  

Can we sign El Ghazi permanently in January?  He is starting to look like the player he was billed to be at Ajax and would be one we should be building around over the next few years (along with Grealish & McGinn).  It would also free up a loan spot to bring in a GK/Defender/CDM.

I expect a few players to come in next month, but from the looks of this spreadsheet, this summer looks like it's going to demand the massive overhaul we've all wanted to see for years now...

If we don't get promoted this season, I don't see any of our loan signings returning to join us permanently next season.  Besides Moreira, they've all been playing very well and will have interest from Premier League clubs next season.  That leaves us with our two best players (Jack & McGinn) the only ones in the squad on long-term deals and I can see us shifting many of the players in their final year of contract, because they will all have interest from both Championship and Premier League clubs.

Very excited to see what Deano can do with players who will fit his system and we'll see how our Spanish-influenced scouting department will fair.  

Watched a few more episodes...

Everyone at the club and most of the supporters were making Jack Rodwell out to be the reason why they couldn't bring in players last season.  The club stupidly signed him on a 5-year, 70k/week deal, without a relegation wage drop clause in his contract.  Sunderland's CEO, Martin Bain, was pressuring him to rip up his contract and go find another club, so they can use his wage money to fit the bill on new signings.  Instead, Rodwell was more than happy to show up, go through the motions and pick up his paycheck every week, exactly the same situation we've had with players like Micah Richards, so Bain throws a little temper tantrum for the cameras and slams some office doors... 

I've never understood that argument that our supporters have been making for the past 2 years now where Richards should just void his contract by mutual consent and walk away.  Picture this...  You enter in a business deal with a company like Tesla Motors or SpaceX that gives you 18.2 million over the next 5 years for doing minimal work and they realize a year into the deal that they made a terrible decision and forgot to put in a clause to pull the plug on the deal.  You wouldn't see Elon Musk bitching to the media/shareholders that his company made a stupid decision with a supplier, and the supplier is the reason why his company isn't building enough cars/rockets, because the supplier is holding them to the deal both parties agreed to.  Even the most dedicated "Cult of Elon Musk" supporter would be hard pressed to justify that one, so what makes football any different?  

The main issue was that their owner pulled the plug on investing more money into the squad for players and took a mid-table Premier League team down to League One.  Jesus, I'm having Lerner/Xia PTSD by watching this series...  I feel for Sunderland's supporters...

9 hours ago, LakotaDakota said:

Milner is 33 in a month and can't see anyone screaming if he was to come here for 2/3 years (Obviously he won't but just an example of age not always being an issue)

Jimmy Milner really is the exception to the rule, though.  He's still a top Premier League talent and his fitness levels are incredible for a professional footballer.  To be honest, he could probably continue to play at a high level until he is almost 40.  I watched some preseason fitness test videos Liverpool put out this summer on YouTube.  One of the first things they had them all do was a lactate threshold test where they were drawing some bloodwork in-between running intense sprints and long distances laps.  The cameraman asked Klopp who his money was on to last the longest out of the squad and he immediately replied "Milner" without a thought and then added a cheeky smile to boot.  Players started dropping out left and right, but a 32 year old Milner continued to lead the pack and even did extra laps after he was the last man standing in the squad.  The guy is a machine.  He's been playing in the Premier League since he was 16 (soon to be over half his lifetime) and doesn't look like he's slowing down anytime soon.

Re-signing a 38 year old John Terry was something most of us wanted to happen again this season, but asking us if we should re-sign Whelan, Jedi, Elmo, or even Sir Alan of Hutton next season?  You'd hear some grumbles.  My point is that Age does not matter for a world class player.  

12 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Brentford look nothing like themselves since Smith left them. Their looing like a relagation team.

DS must be a total genius of a manager.

I thought he just passed out the bibs and put out the cones?  lol

TBH, Chelsea's strikers haven't impressed at all this season.  Giroud & Morata have been hot garbage in Sarri's system and they would arguably be destroying teams ever more so if they had a better forward to lead the line.  Tammy would have no problem breaking into the Chelsea first team next season, if Daddy Abramovic is still looking at selling the club and doesn't want to keep dumping massive funds into the club.  If they decide against buying an expensive forward, they'll use Tammy next season.  If they decide to let him go, we'll probably be the first team in line to get him.  

37 minutes ago, Johnnyp said:

People will probably go nuts with me here but i think we are actually Tottenham light in what we are trying to do. We press very high. Direct balls at pace between the lines. It's a joy to watch. Now, we are light years away from them obviously but it's what we should aspire to be. 10 years we were finishing ahead of them.

Why would they go nuts?  Spurs have a great set up from their Chairman on down.  Their fans have always been a bit delusional over the years, but you'll be hard pressed to find someone around here who won't admit that Spurs are a joy to watch at times.

8 hours ago, Kuwabatake Sanjuro said:

I don't know if it has been mentioned but would it be fair to say that Dean Smith is very similar to Maurizio Sarri in how he has the team playing and how he has them set up. It is a potentially world class manager we have on our hands here now, without getting carried away too much.

I can see that....  Also similar in the way they worked their way up through the lower leagues.