BG_Villa_Fan

Disagree. I rate Barkley and McGinn about the same but their cost would depend on how important they are to their teams. I expect Barkley to cost around £30m. Good but replaceable players. Jack is in a different universe compared to these two.

Smith has said multiple times that he doesn't want to stockpile players. They may replace some players from the squad like Engels, but their plan seems to be to buy starters, not squad players. I'd really like Zinchenko or Basham in the summer, as they can cover multiple positions. It'll be interesting how they approach the next transfer windows now that we have a pretty good and obvious first 11.

I like the idea of VAR, but never thought its main use would be to disallow so many goals due to dubious offsides. Surely no one benefits from it, including the FA.

He's been very unlucky with these VAR offsides, must be incredibly frustrating but the work he's doing pressing every game and his movement offers a lot even when he's not scoring goals. The only thing I'm unpleasantly surprised by is his ball control, which I expected would be much better after being a winger for years. Might be just him getting used to the quicker speed of the premier league.

It'd have been disastrous for the Bucks had Giannis not signed. If anything, this is protecting Edens's investment. Can't be bad for either Bucks or Villa.

Really? And what is it that he should have said so he doesn't look daft?

You don't actually believe that, do you? Easier to completely deny knowing about it in order to avoid tons of questions than to begin explaining and speculating.

It's not just one year , the picks they're trading are 2020, 2024(swap), 2025(unprotected), 2026(swap), 2027(unprotected) (They've already traded their 2022 first as well). This is ludicrous for a 3rd tier star. They must be sure Giannis is staying, otherwise it's a complete disaster. I'm not sure this says anything about Edens, but as an owner he must have approved such a crazy offer, no GM could do this without it.

Really depends on the protection of those picks, which is a complicated matter in itself, but it's pretty much going all in. If Giannis stays these picks would probably not be very valuable, although it'd still be a problem as they'll be unlikely to have assets for future trades because of the Stepien rule. If he goes next summer, though, this trade could become disastrous for them.

Bucks have been failing pretty badly, nowhere near being champions, Giannis might leave for nothing next summer and they're getting very desperate - paying wayyyyyy over the odds in a trade last night.

Then surely we could buy the clause out for the same amount their profit would be.

What's interesting is that Steer has played more career games than Emi Martinez and they're the same age. There's still time for Steer to have a good career, at least as a championship level keeper.

The infuriating part isn't that Barkley's position would have affected the keeper's chance of saving it. Fair enough it's offside. In a way similar to Southampton's disallowed goal against us last weekend. But you can definitely see this type of situation not being very strictly enforced when, say Man U score against us and nobody even bothers to check for offside.

Exactly. And losing to Fulham was a true blessing in disguise.

Thought he lacked energy against Leicester, which is understandable. No idea why he didn't drop deeper between Mings and Konsa when they were trying to pass the ball around. I can only imagine it's by design as Smith never changed it but the distribution from the back suffered.

Not only the centre-back pair, but literally the whole team consists of players just entering their prime and who could grow and improve together as a team. All aged between 22 and 27.

Can't see a wage cap in football as different teams and different leagues have vastly different budgets and setting a wage cap as a % of revenue or something like that would limit the chance for teams like us to ever catch up. Loans though, are a much easier solution, it's just they don't want to do it. Make it so that a loaned out senior player still counts on the 25 man squad and teams will think twice. Make it so that you could only loan out young players who have played a certain number of years ( say 3 ) in the club's own youth system and prevent teams from buying young talent and immediately loaning them away.

Well done Purslow. Gives me the chills every time I hear an interview with him, he looks and sounds like Ted Bundy

If you think Man City would trigger his clause and he'll pull a Mings and travel up there in a Villa kit you're crazy. The way I see it, there are 2 possibilities - either Man City would want him in their own team, in which case there's nothing we can do about it, or they'd want to sell him for profit, in which case I'm sure we could negotiate with them. Either way 35 mil is a lot of money and with some prudent management can get you a very good replacement. Regardless of what happens that deal has been absolutely fantastic for Villa. I just hope they don't trigger it in January or the last day of a transfer window.

It'd be crazy if all the transfers on that journo's instagram post happen, except for Rashica to us

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've read somewhere that the German transfer deadline is much earlier than the British one, so if there's anything happening it won't be too long until we get updates.

I thought exactly that! Then I thought Connor wouldn't have made the run at all. He'd have stayed around the edge of the penalty area.

We could do with a back up winger, sure.

A is for rashicA right? Right?

I doubt it. Apparently, just like last summer, we've had two lists of targets - one in case we're in the Premier League and another in case we're in the Championship. I believe some of the leaked info on the likes of Eliasson and Swift is from the Championship list, just like Sawyers was last summer.