KMitch

Chambers again... He's been awful tonight. Looks lost and is struggling keeping the high line.

2-1 - JJ scores from a corner

Sorry, that's Chambers... Can't tell from this horrible angle.

Oof... That's 100% on Feeney letting his man get in front of him for the tap in.

Oooof.... Ollie tries the spectacular scissor kick, then remembers who he is and misses horribly.

Buendia has covered every inch of the pitch so far at the half hour mark... He's been everywhere and at times looks like he's on a completely different page from the rest of the team. Nobody knows what he's going to do, including his teammates and passes are cut out or runs are not made. Need to get on the same wavelength, but that's to be expected in a Friendly with a mixed lineup.

He is the only one of the front 3 actually seeing any of the ball, to be fair. Trying to bring the others into the build up and getting swarmed.

Definitely being played at a Friendly pace... Revan looks like a bundle of nerves so far. Hopefully he can calm down and grow into the game. Kamara has played a couple of beautiful passes forward... Apart from that it's a snooze fest...

Good chance for Emery to both take a look at some of our youngsters and see how the 1st team is absorbing his style. UTV!

Zych Konsa Douglas Luiz Ings Digne Bailey Ramsey Bogarde Raikhy Feeney K. Young

It always bothered me the most under Gerrard to watch the squad on matchdays have incredibly heavy first touches and no movement off the ball. Looking back on Gerrard's training videos the squad seemed to do a lot of 5 or 7 a side games and then a lot of individual finishing drills... Compare this to the two videos of Emery so far... Lots of emphasis on teamwork, movement, and 1-2 passing all around. I can't wait for the friendly matches now... Already sick of turgid group series WC footy...

I've pretty much always thought this way about Portugal... Before Felix and Fernandes they had Nani and Simao. Before Ronaldo, they had Figo...

Injuries have always haunted Pulisic. Can never get a steady run of games because of them. We can't afford him anyway. From a marketing and shirt sales perspective, he's worth more to Chelsea being on their bench than selling for market value. Would love to spend big on Gio Reyna, though. Kid could be world class in a few years.

I wouldn't worry about the performance loss. There have been a lot of improvements in sports medicine for healing Achilles separations in the last 15 years. It used to be a career ender in the 80s/90s, now most athletes who are treated by the top surgeons and rehabbed properly can be back to 95+% condition in a year or so. Like that link mentioned, the biggest hurdle is allowing the tendon time to reattach and heal fully, so you don't run the risk of reinjury during explosive movements.

Jack got all kinds of flack from the media for years for being all flash and no end product, but that's Adama to the T.

If this team is as good as it seems on paper and we stay healthy, we can still make a challenge for Europe this season. Hell, imagine if Emery has the same effect on Villa as Howe has had on Newcastle since he arrived there. That said, I don't care where we finish this season as long as we continue to show progress tactically and mentally. I want to see the team continue to fight for a result in every game and develop the resiliency to regularly come from behind and/or see games out.

January will be relatively quiet, but I think there will be more business in the summer that many anticipate.

Emery is one of the top 10 managers in the world right now. Gerrard was a player everyone respected and looked up to, but Emery is a manager with a proven track record that players genuinely love and want to play for. We already have some top players with big reputations at the club (Martinez, Coutinho, Luiz, Kamara, Bailey, etc.), we're a team on the up in the Premier League, and can offer wages competitive to anyone but a handful of clubs in the world. We have a lot more pull that we had in the Lerner years. I think some will be surprised in the next couple of years at the genuine quality we're going to be going after in the transfer market.

Arsenal fans got it in their head that Wenger was holding them back from regularly challenging for league titles and trophies. They also expected "exciting and progressive" football in addition to immediate results. Emery got a lot of points his first season, but was also criticized by their fans for being "too pragmatic" with his tactical approach and was slated for being more concerned about disrupting the opposition instead of taking the game to their opponents. He also was blamed for a lot of poor signings during his time in charge, even though that tune has changed since and there is a lot of blame pointed at their former Director of Football. Arteta also showed the following season that there were a lot of knuckleheads in the dressing room and needed to get rid of the bad apples at huge losses in order to move the squad forward. To be honest, that run of games which got him the sack wasn't even that bad on paper... 5 draws and 2 losses isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things, but the biggest issue which caused the fans to turn on him quickly is the way the media treated him. They made him out to be a bumbling idiot who "can't even speak English, let alone coach football". Whatever... The move to trade him in for Arteta is clearly working out for them and Emery worked miracles at Villarreal on a shoestring budget, so he's bounced back as well. We've seen enough of Emery in his first 3 games in charge to know that he is a class apart from all our other managers in recent history and NSWE clearly made the right call with appointing him our manager. We'll win something under his leadership in the next 5 years. I can feel it.

Shut a lot of people up today and was great all around. Glad to see he's figuring out Emeryball. Can't wait to see him playing for us after the WC break.

Got to admit that I didn't want him anywhere near Villa Park again when Deano signed him on a free, but he's been outstanding for us under Emery. Keep rolling back those years, Ash!

Goes to show you that when the team is set up to play to his strengths, Danny Ings will score goals. His lay offs were fantastic today as well, which isn't something we saw a lot of under Gerrard, but I have a feeling he'll be used as a much more rounded player under Emery. I think the thing we're going to see more from Emery than any other manager in Villa's history is just how much of the entire squad he'll use and rotate on a regular basis. He's used 21 players in some way throughout his 3 games so far. Saw a post from Lyric on Twitter (The guy who broke the Emery signing) before the game and said we're going to spend big on a top top striker in January and try to sell Watkins/Ings, but Danny proved that he can work well under Emery and already is a 20+ goal a season striker.

Let's see if they're still flying after the World Cup... I'm anticipating some teams falling off their good form from before the break and others coming back swinging... The World Cup is going to blow up the Premier League table in the 2nd half of the season. All the teams in Europe will have to rotate consistently. Everything still left to play for now. The Premier League table at the end of the season will shock everyone, IMO.

Fooking masterclass by Emery. What a manager!!! You'd think we were going to get our teeth kicked in the way some were moaning in the prematch thread... Not today! Also, when was the last time we had a Villa team this mean, physical, and who actually want to win games??? I lost count of how many yellows we picked up, but this squad is not mentally weak like some were going on about all week. I'm chuffed! UTV!!!