BG_Villa_Fan

2 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Doubling the size of the club shop, building the warehouse for 3,000 fans to have drinks/food in hospitality areas... but not increasing the size of the stadium as we have enough seats.

WTF. 

Unfortunately it makes sense. They’re operating on a revenue-generated-per-visitor vs cost basis, which is what they’re looking to improve.

2 minutes ago, osmark86 said:

Ahhhh, the club we all love. Haston Villa.

That’s Haston Uilla. And a snake that’s been run over by a truck.

Really like Cooper. They’ve had some bad results lately but surely he must have had some goodwill in the bank, especially since they’re not really in danger of going down and can afford to give him time.

Bit like Deano’s sacking.

Surely his next tweet has to be : just joking guys. Please.

Well that was bloody awesome.

Consider me well and truly rattled.

Empty seats, my lord, empty seats.

Matty is a good premier league player. The fact that it seems we're currently outgrowing him says more about the fantastic job Unai's doing than about him. 

The energy level of the Newcastle players after such a tough week is incredible. If they can maintain it for the whole season they’d be difficult to overcome for top 4/5.

1 hour ago, oishiiniku_uk said:

I'm pretty sure I saw this exchange between Emery and Cash just before he fouled Bentancur:

Don't believe you.

This is clearly Lange.

42 minutes ago, FLVillan said:

Don't get me wrong, Bruce is not a favourite of mine, but I don't get all the ill feeling and insults.  He was brought to our club when we were an absolute s**tshow both on and off the field.  A broke, dishonest charlatan of an owner, a succession of "executives" who didn't have a clue what they were doing and a group of players (they weren't a team) that was led by an out of condition "captain" who had rebelled/downed-tools against a succession of managers.  If we had continued on the trajectory that existed before his arrival we'd probably have finished up in League One and the investment by Wes and Nas would never have happened.  He wasn't great and some of his decision making was bizarre to say the least, but he did at least stabilize things to the point of getting us to a play-off final and brought in a few players that served us well.  SJM from Hibs was perhaps the deal of the lot. 

Nah, disagree completely with the whole ‘safe hands’, ‘stabilising’ us and so on. He was a terrible manager, who played awful football and never understood the club, nor the fans. He managed and talked like we were small club underdogs in the freaking championship.

If anything, him losing that playoff final might have been the biggest blessing in disguise in retrospect.

Poor guy, now instead of spending two weeks training and improving with Unai and his coaching staff he'll have to do his best not to undo what he's learnt.

Nah, joking (not really tbh). Super happy for him. 

A Mondeo of a player. Or something.

Inspired by the Trezeguet thread, I'm always surprised when reading posts about that first transfer summer in the Premier league people often say that only Luiz, Konsa and Mings were hits but so many others were as well, including Trez, El Ghazi and others. They were the right players for the time at the right price. Were they ever supposed to be in the team years later when chasing top 5/6? Not really, no. I actually doubt any of the 3 aforementioned were supposed to be if not for their immense individual improvement. But at the time, during that summer, when we had to buy a whole new squad we actually did impressively well considering the task at hand. Only Samatta and Drinkwater were failures and both were brought under pressure due to injuries. Everyone else played their role, so that we can be here now. 

Suso lost his job because of Wesley's transfer most likely, but he should get his fair share of praise for the job he did. The only issue was it was damn clear there were Suso signings and Deano signings, which probably wasn't the ideal approach. This seemingly continued in the following seasons as well.

Anyway, point is, the club's recruitment and structure have grown a lot as well and we should be more forgiving for the occasional missteps, especially having a look around at what other teams have been doing lately.

3 hours ago, TomC said:

To be fair, as Unai pointed out, he missed the whole preseason. He was generally competent last year. He may still have a role to play.

 

His role at the moment seems to be being subbed in with 5 mins to go when defending a lead.

1 hour ago, Villa87 said:

Liverpool, City, Arsenal, Brighton, Newcastle, Spurs and Man Utd. We need to finish ahead of two of these for 5th. Big ask. 

We have to finish above three of these for 5th, not two. A big ask indeed but Unai can deliver.

3 minutes ago, sne said:

Apart from Digne 

Digne pays the rest of the players off of his weekly wages.

I also haven’t been convinced by Lenglet on the odd occasion I’ve watched him but as a stopgap solution and with an option to buy it sounds like smart business.

Besides Unai has a history of buying players who’ve lost their way a little and getting the best out of them, doesn’t he? So, hope this is another case.

Unsure whether to be happy we've missed out on a player I don't rate or be worried we've not getting someone Unai wanted. Probably the latter if we're being rational, but then football fans aren't rational. Former. I guess. 

Hate it.

BUT.

Devil is in the details, it all depends on what the buyback option is worth and how it’s worded. Difficult to know what to expect when so few of these have actually been triggered.

This could be a blueprint for future deals as well. We have a lot of good young players and they will need to play real games to progress. Should the Villa persist as a top 6 team or better it would make it that much more difficult for them to find the game time with the big club. The loan option has been the obvious solution in the past, however, due to how ffp rules are, deals like the AJ’s might be more efficient.

Let’s hope he smashes it and is back within a couple of years.

27 minutes ago, beachboys1 said:

tom collomosse says diaby prefers to go to a champions league club

Shock!

In his next column he'll explain in detail how footballers like money. Stay tuned.

Other than the shoulders and the sponsor logo it's not horrible, just meh. That said, if West Ham were releasing that kit I would've mocked it relentlessly tbh.

Let's hope it becomes super iconic not because of the design but because of the incredible season we're about to have.

Rodrygo and Tyler Adams are the only two Leeds players I rate as squad players for us. Pub team, pub players.

Laporte would be amazing , if he's willing to come. Thought it was a certainty he's going to Barca.