HanoiVillan

On 20/05/2024 at 17:31, Fight Like Lions said:

Most people who have worked with Lee Billiard before have no desire to work with him again. 

On 20/05/2024 at 20:59, villaajax said:

What's the deal with him?

He's always ballsing it up. 

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

Depends if he can get on or not. Guess that means 119th sub just like the Euros final....

He isn't coming on for Kane who'll stay out there even if he can't walk. In fairness Bellingham and Foden put their penalties away in the CL shootout, Saka is very good at them nowadays and Palmer been great at them so England have five good ones in the squad without even taking Toney.

Ollie as we know isn't great at them but he did score the one v Lille which was a very high pressure situation.

Yes, absolutely, a last-minute substitution is exactly the scenario I'm imagining. TBH I don't think Toney will go anyway, though the lack of Rashford maybe gives him a slightly better chance than he would otherwise have had. 

54 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Quite the opposite, they have quite close links hooligan wise. They had a load of them with them when they got turned over on McDonalds Island before the Enkleman game 

This does not surprise me. 

9 minutes ago, Jonesy7211 said:

Given the players picked, what's the starting XI? Picking a realistic midfield is hard. There's no standout to play in a 3 with Jude and Rice.

Pickford in goal, some defenders (probably the usual with Trippier as LB), then a midfield two of Rice and Gallagher, then Foden Bellingham and Saka behind Kane. 

(I suspect)

35 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

Putting aside the fact that City are clearly the strongest squad in the League and the fact that blaming us is an excuse as anyone could have beat them and we also took points off City.

Ignoring the massive hole in their logic that it's their fault they couldn't beat us.

What exactly were we supposed to have done?

Just let Arsenal win the game?

We did what we were meant to do and tried to win, which we did.

Their argument - and I'm not saying I agree with it, because context is a thing - is that we 'tried' against Arsenal and threw the game against City. Which, if you look at just those two games purely in isolation, is not totally absurd. But as I say, context is a thing. 

41 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Most of the charges are non-cooperation which, I assume, would be relatively easy to prove.

I don't see how that makes sense. If the other charges are not proven, then 'non-cooperation' just means 'mounting a successful defence' doesn't it?

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

Toney or Solanke is much of a muchness - I reckon Toney is probably a better striker, personally.

Toney takes a better penalty anyway, which is realistically about as much involvement as a third striker is likely to have. 

I think a very underpriced possibility here is that the Premier League fail to prove the charges to the Commission's satisfaction and absolutely nothing at all happens. 

He just said in the press conference that Shaw is a pretty major fitness doubt (which is understandable), so confusing why we haven't got any other actual left backs in the squad. Surely he could have cut one of the CBs he's pretty confident he won't need and put Mitchell in?

Otherwise I think it's about as good as possible with the players available. 

3 hours ago, Cizzler said:

Not many other LB options, are there? Tripper at LB and Gomez are pretty uninspiring,

That is exactly who will go. Shaw (hopefully he recovers enough to play at least a bit) and then Trippier and Gomez as cover. 

This is a slightly weird thread, which seems to be a sort of bizarro version of the transfer thread but also doesn't seem to have anything to do with the retained/released list. We're not going to be paying senior players off at the start of the window, and as far as I can see the only senior squad players who are out of contract with us are the loanees. 

That leaves the youth players, but nobody seems to be speculating about them! Except perhaps:

3 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Im.pretty sure kesler will be gone and perhaps timmy of the more high profile ones

I'm sure we'll be looking to sell both this summer if we can find a buyer willing to pay ~£5m for either, but I don't think you'll see either being released for free on the released list. 

1 minute ago, CVByrne said:

They were interested in January but Dendonker wanted Napoli instead 

He probably feels differently now to be fair 

It's funny, you can look at it in a couple of ways. On the one hand, I think if you'd said to a City fan before they'd signed him, 'this guy will cost you £100m but he'll be a crucial part of a team that wins the domestic + CL treble', they'd have bit your hands off and not considered that bad value for money at all. On the other hand, I think they'd also imagine that a guy who achieved that with them would be a damn sight better than he has been in the seasons around it. 

If he was downbeat yesterday, it may well be in part because he knows he didn't really contribute anything much to their success this season. 

4 minutes ago, bobzy said:

But that they weren’t punished enough? The rules are in place, the punishment was given… and it should’ve been even harsher?

Yeah, fair, that part is hard to square. 

16 hours ago, useless said:

I think I saw that building can't begin for another year as the site has to be cleared of Japanese Knotweed

Harsh way to talk about Miyoshi. 

14 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Farke's remit was just to get them promoted so I'm not even sure he'd start the season given how they choked automatic promotion. They'd be more ruthless with managers than the year they went down.

Sacking him (and buying much better defenders) would be their only real chance of survival. He cannot set up a defence in the top flight. 

On 19/05/2024 at 10:05, bobzy said:

I find your views so conflicting sometimes

Like, this seems like you’re very much against the anti-competition seen in the Premier League, but with Forest spending too much (which was basically a catch up between what an “established” Premier League club could spend versus a promoted team with no parachute payments) your view was that they weren’t punished enough!

Which way should it be?

TBF you can reconcile those opinions fairly easily by thinking that the rules Forest were punished under were bad, but also that the rules are the rules and while they're in place Forest should have obeyed them. 

2 hours ago, Adam2003 said:

I do - the rules were intended (leaving aside the whole “keep the established clubs in place” angle) to keep spending sensible, make clubs more sustainable, etc - and you would expect that to naturally include prioritising homegrown players (hence spending on youth teams not counting). However, the rules have ended up meaning it makes sense to sell homegrown players. That was an unintended consequence.

That’s not Villa’s fault - the authorities need to fix the rules - but I definitely get the point on the ‘spirit’ of the rules - or the ‘intention of the rules’ perhaps. We now have a weird situation where every PL club would be better off in the short-term selling a homegrown player who’ll never make the team to another PL club for £100m and buying one of their castoffs for the same amount in return. That can’t be sensible.

That's a different point, though (one I agree with). I agree that needing to sell academy products is an 'unintended consequence' of the rules, but 'not in the spirit of the rules' is way of calling something unsporting or morally dubious, and I can't understand why anyone would consider Archer's transfer in that way. 

8 minutes ago, Adam2003 said:

Interesting when you think we are (or were when I last looked) the lowest-pressing team in the league (which I assume is intentional from Emery, but maybe he’d approach that differently with different players etc)

Yes, exactly - it's very much not how we play, or how we have played anyway, but if this transfer were to happen, I think you'd have to assume we'd be changing style. 

55 minutes ago, Made In Aston said:

Its not in the spirit of the rules and the club is exploiting them, like chelsea's 8 year contracts. The rules are not tight enough to stop it, so i'd say it was a loophole. But let's not get into semantics. Someone asked why we would make such a deal, as it didn't make sense, and I was explaining what the benefit was. 

I don't understand what you mean by 'it's not in the spirit of the rules'. 

49 minutes ago, Adam2003 said:

As I just said I don’t think he’s a *bad* player and he is certainly good in the press (a willing runner, as I’ve said several times). Equally, a couple of days before/after that game, our midfield was dominated even more effectively by Vicente Iborra and Santiago Hezze, and I just had to look those names up because I’ve never heard of them despite watching them make fools of us over 180 minutes.

He's not just 'good' in the press, he's very probably the best player in the whole division at leading a press and winning the ball back in the opposition's defensive third. 

I don't think I've ever seen a sillier comparison than another poster comparing him to Dendoncker. 

11 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Kind of hard to do in one of the worst teams in PL history.

2 hours ago, May-Z said:

I'm not sure it has been a poor season for him.

He's not got a lot of goals...but that's because Sheffield have been so bad as a team.

If you look at the goals he has scored though, there's some great strikes and teams will recognise that he's a good player. 

 

Obviously Sheff Utd are a dreadful side, but Archer mostly hasn't looked too good for them, certainly not since the first month or two of the season anyway. Missed some great opportunities, including a howler against Newcastle recently. I'm not saying he's terrible or he won't become a PL level player, I can't know that, but he hasn't been impressive this season. 

1 hour ago, HKP90 said:

They are gonna let them win this league without addressing the charges, aren't they?

lol yes, they're not going to issue a judgement before tomorrow afternoon. 

I do think people getting annoyed by this idea ought to think about what proportion of 7-11 year olds in organised football actually go on to make a career from the game, because I suspect it's extremely small. 

On 16/05/2024 at 09:58, Unused Sub said:

Not much to say on the game last night. I was expecting a tight game, similar to the previous rounds. Like the look of Rowe and Borland (just wish he was a foot taller). A word for the Warwick goalie, got caught out for the second goal but played well having a hot time of it second-half, almost kept out the pen.

 

Scorers: Kellyman 18mins, Borland 20mins, Young 35,57mins, Moore 67,90+1(pen)mins, Pierre 73mins, Richards 86,90mins

 

Team: Wright (sub: Emery), T.Rowe, Patterson, Bogarde, Swinkels (sub: Katsukunya), Borland, Young (sub: Richards), Alcock, Wilson (sub: Moore), Kellyman, Jimoh (sub: Pierre)

 

At the trophy presentation I was pleased to see the County FA chap pointing out (I assume) our name on the plinth to our captain James Wright. In our 150th year its nice that the cup that cemented our name back in 1880 is back in our hands.

 

Away from the game itself, the longest queues I’ve seen at half-time for food and drink – hope Heck was in attendance to see it.

 

Loved the look of utter confusion when a women carrying a pint of larger was turned away from the stand and was told she could only drink it on the concourse.

 

Lastly, had the honour of sharing a urinal trough with Tony Daley. Pisses like a horse.

 

The queues at half time (and before the game) were absolutely ridiculous. From my group of 3, the club missed out on the sales of 6 pints, and I'm sure they missed out on a lot more besides.