carewjust4u

He's great at holding the ball, allows the team to get up the field quicker...I think our problem in recent weeks has been our inability to hold the ball under-pressure, and he'll help solve that issue.

32 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

It's been a glaring issue for us this season.

We are unable to string passes together and it invites pressure on our back 4.

You can't say it's meaningless. We lose the ball and the opponent catch us on the break. It happens all the time.

have a day off mate, we made 10 changes from our starting 11...including 3 players who haven't played in months.

10 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

That’s what our fans don’t seem to realise. If we’re not favourites for a game it’s almost as if it’s ok to lose. It’s not. If Sheff U had that mentality they’d already be down.

I didn't realise the fan's willingness to look at results in a balanced manner had any on the player's performance on matchday.

This all reminds me of when Steve Bruce referenced the "Mass Hysteria", at the time i thought he was a complete moron..but perhaps some truth in it?

3 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Some are saying we are performing as expected. But in reality we have a under performing Ming's, McGinn and a striker who seems to have no idea. If we could get these guys performing, maybe then I will agree, this is as good as it gets.

They are talking about the bigger picture, play-off winner that had to rebuild the squad entirely with young players. In some aspects if you compare to Fulham last season, we are performing above some expectations.

he's the same age as O'Hare, the boy will become a great player.

58 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

It doesn't help that Heaton is a terrible kicker. He usually leaves Wesley with way too much to do. If we're going to expect our CF to be a target man, we might as well make Keinan our first choice because Wesley isn't the man to take 60 yard punts out of the air like they were nothing. Keinan has that gift.

This x1000000, Heaton cannot pin-point a pass (which is why Pickford is ahead of him in Gareth's books IMO), so much harder to win a ball when you have to move significantly to get into position. In the Chelsea game they hustled our defence to pass it to Heaton, cos every-time it was going to end with them regaining possession. 

30 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Again, claret and blue glasses off, how are people so sure we will still be in the premier league next year. We are in a relegation battle as we speak, with no real improvement since the start of the season.

I've asked before, will people still see us as work in progress if we end up getting relegated. I just believe some fans have patience with Smith because he is an all round nice guy, an he has Villa in his blood. Me I want a little bit more, I don't want him gone far from it, an admit he needs time, but he always seemed to inexperienced for the Premier League, he has yet to prove me wrong.

See how you feel after the seven very winnable games we have after the game vs the Foxes (Blades A , Liverpool U18s H, Southampton H, Norwich H, Watford A, Burnley A, Fulham A). 

3 hours ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Eh, sometimes that should be an option. Having a striker shoot from outside the box once in a while isn't that bad lol, I mean Wesley has had 2 shots outside the box which is more than he usually doesin the last couple of matches and I wouldn't say that's a "complete breakdown of Smith's system". If he's a false 9 as some people here say he is, he should probably have a few more shots from outside the box than other strikers.

But the bigger problem which I mentioned below is that he seems to not really shoot the ball unless he's really close to the goal which leads to a higher shots on target ratio. Look at all his goals, they're tap ins or very close to being tap ins. That's not really a problem in of itself, but if you're trying to argue he's a good striker because he has a higher shot on target ratio because of it than yeah, it becomes one. If you're not gonna release a shot unless you pretty much know you're going to hit it on target, you're gonna have a lower shots per game ratio which we know is one of Wesley's problems. And if you have lower shots per game, you might not score as many goals in spite of the fact that you shoot more of what shots you do have on target. So that statistic can become meaningless.

 

Sorry mate you've missed my point slightly, i'm saying that Smith's system is designed to avoid shooting outside the box, Instead it focuses on the overlapping of the full-backs with deliveries across the box. Of which, the striker makes a attacking movement into the front post, with the midfielders/wingers arriving slightly later into the space the striker has just created. This is an attacking pattern you can see over and over again during our games. So what i'm saying is that Wesley will be being drilled to play this way, and facilitate getting the ball quickly into these wide areas high up the pitch. As such, you won't see him wasting chances by shooting outside the box, the tactics simply don't work like that. 

With your second point i'm not arguing he's a "good striker" based on this particular stat taken out of context. In fact, i believe he has shown he has all the attributes to suit this particular system, and the potential to go on and be very successful for us. Only a matter of time before they start beating the keeper. (I remember a season where Suarez kept hitting the post and narrowly missing, and then the next season scored 32ish goals).

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting Wesley is going to turn into prime-suarez, although, that would be pretty sweet.

6 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Understat also has other similar stats of this vein. Key passes per 90, which is purely the amount of passes he's made that leads to a shot per 90 minutes. 0.52, well below the PL average.

 

 

 

 

 

Is that the PL average for strikers, or for all players? Worth noting that Maupay & Vardy has an average of 0.6. Strikers by majority do not contribute key passes due to their location and involvement in later phases of play. (Source: WhoScored)

14 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Doesn't really mean much if all his shots on target are gonna be weak shots to the keeper like the one he had at Man U. Davic McGoldrick is just a bit behind Wesley on that list and he has 0 goals to his name last I checked. Vardy is even more behind than either and is vastly superior than either forward.

In short, its a shit stat list by itself. Honestly think Wesley's shots on target stat is so high because he rarely if ever shoots from outside the box and a lot of his shots happen to be tap ins or very close to the 6 yard box. Which translates to a lower SpG but a higher SpG on target ratio.

Why would you want your striker to be shooting from outside the box? Smith's entire system is designed to get the ball behind the oppo's centre back's with men attacking the 6-yard box. What you're suggesting would be a complete breakdown in the system Dean has been working so hard to drill into his players.

I'll just leave this here. (Excludes the "big six" clubs)

On 02/12/2019 at 06:50, Delphinho123 said:

Needs to seriously think about playing Mcginn up front. He’d hold the ball up better than Wesley. He’d shoot better than Wesley. He’d dribble better than Wesley and he passes better than Wesley. 

Genuinely think we’d be a better side with him up top and Nakamba in midfield alongside Hourihane and Luiz.

and what about when the ball is cleared out of defence, is 5ft6 SJM going to be trapping the ball and/or winning the flicks?

On 21/10/2019 at 13:08, carewjust4u said:

Needs a rest...has played almost every minute. I remember last year around jan/feb we gave him a game or two off and he came back storming. Give the wee lad a chance to recover and play Luiz in his stead against City, will probably give us more balance aswell against vastly superior opposition.

Still needs a rest...

10 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Not too sure about that.

Konsa already looks better than him imo. Mings is very prone to mistakes, Konsa isn't.

Everytime Mings get's on the ball i get nervous.

The key difference between these 2 centre-backs in the Key-Passes, Mings contributes alot more to the attacking play. For example, against Newcastle Mings had completed 2 Key-Passes, whereas Konsa had zero. Konsa was superior in the Defensive aspects, but with our system the balance needs to be a combination of the two. 

https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1376017/Live/England-Premier-League-2019-2020-Aston-Villa-Newcastle-United 

44 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

At least he got into positions to be able to miss them!

Wesley most of the time doesn't make the runs to get into scoring positions at all

Sorry mate, that isn't true at all...he always attacks the front post when the ball is taken to the byline. 

Bruce's system with Villa always failed against Dean's Brentford....badly.

I have every confidence we'll get the points.

Don't rush Jack back, wait until he's is 100% fitness....maybe give him 20 mins at the end, it really isn't worth risking it.

On 26/10/2019 at 21:31, TRO said:

season before we lost 1-3 at home to them, so I guess that is progress.

No complaints from me.....but when we win 1-5 away to Norwich, which was a great result.....we need to watch the game more carefully to know where we are really at.

We have a long way to go and I suspect Dean knows it.

 

Think those two results show the obvious, that we are vastly superior to injury-ravaged relegation candidates and vastly inferior to polished English champions. If you look at the performances from the other games we've played they've been by far positive, in the respect that we've been very competitive and sometimes unlucky. 

You're right that we have a long way to go, we have alot of new players and it takes at least 6 months to fully adapt to a new system..even longer to adapt to a new league. This is the start of a 3-5 year project, and avoiding relegation is the target this season. Currently, it's looking positive and I suspect we will results improve as time progresses.

30 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

He's really improved in this area in the past few games. First few games he just wasn't making those runs, but now he's looking dangerous and he's already scored 2 goals this season making that run. There was a chance in the first half where Guilbert whipped a ball in. Wesley's movement was perfect, but the ball was just a little too close to the keeper. In the first few weeks of the season, he wasn't even making that run. 

That's what I like about him. He's clearly working on the weaker aspects of his game along with the coaching staff. It's something that Brugge fans were saying to us when he joined. He has a lot of rough edges but he's willing to put in the work to smooth them out. Considering he only started playing football at 16/17, I'd say he's making very swift progress.

100% mate, he's got a brilliant attitude and show he has the capacity to learn/adapt his game. His influence on the forward line is only going to grow, I just hope the more impatient parts of our fanbase give him time.

He's very good at attacking the front post, which is especially useful for us as we play with over-lapping FBs. Whenever he attacks that post, it opens up space centrally for Hou/Mcguinn which is great because those boys can finish. 

23 hours ago, villalad21 said:

He's like a quick Emile Heskey.

Emile Heskey was a fantastic target man who earned high-praise from all his strike partners....hope you meant that! 

Needs a rest...has played almost every minute. I remember last year around jan/feb we gave him a game or two off and he came back storming. Give the wee lad a chance to recover and play Luiz in his stead against City, will probably give us more balance aswell against vastly superior opposition.

8 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Just a thought - how much credit do our coaching staff deserve for that? Did we improve Tammy or was his career always going in that direction?

I think our coaching staff are very underrated at improving players, are there any players you think have declined since Dean came in..I honestly don't think I can. Dean had a good reputation for improving his players before coming in, and now it's there for all to see. (Taylor, El Ghazi, Hourihane, Mcguinn, and Grealish all noteably have performed better individually imo)

With Abraham everyone definitely knew his potential and he'd been a great player at Bristol.  I think under deans coaching and the big club pressure maximised through the players, he developed to be ready for Chelsea. He'd be the first to admit that, and I'm sure he holds Villa in great value because of the platform and devlopment we gave him

22 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:

There's also a chance that it would put off any clubs looking to do a similar deal with City in the future, not to mention the difficulties of getting a work permit for another team in England as a lot of them have higher record transfer fees than we do, which is pretty much how we got the WP done.  I also don't think Pep is really the kind of person to do it.

23 hours ago, Sam-AVFC said:

And why would he agree to be their pawn to make them an extra few million quid if he was going to be here afterwards anyway?

The only way that happens is if City convince him he's going to play there then do a u-turn when they resign him. If they'd given him a hefty pay rise when signing it's a risk as he could feel slighted so refuse to move on.

Edit - a very similar scenario you could see happening that is effectively the same is if we agreed to pay City an amount to buy out the buyback clause.

They recently did something very similar with Angelino with PSV https://www.mancity.com/news/first-team/first-team-news/2019/july/man-city-sign-angelino-psv-transfer-latest-update

Quote

Manchester City are delighted to announce the re-signing of Angelino from PSV Eindhoven, who will join subject to international clearance.

Granted they haven't sold or loaned him back out yet.

What is likely is that City will buy him back to then sell to us at a higher price...Players of this ability always have a catch when you sign them, his ability is there for all to see.