weedman

Taken out of context a bit, full quote... He's basically saying none of the players are likely to play all the games and used jack as an example of being overloaded which we don't want to happen to everyone. I'm sure he's going

I mean the circumstances around Steer and Wesley are clearly not the same though, you must be able to see that? I'm not saying the club should never sell him regardless, I'm saying if the options are 1) sell at an enormous loss / basically give him away or 2) loan out until his contract expires and he leaves on a free then neither of those options make as much sense as 3) keep him here and see if he can still reach the potential we saw in him when we signed him. He's only played half a season for us, in a disjointed team in a new league in a new country. In that time he did...ok, nothing spectacular, but to completely write him - and the 20 odd million he cost us - off at the first opportunity is just crazy in my opinion. Its the equivalent of shipping Sanson off in the summer on a free transfer because he didn't do much then got injured after signing for £15m

I mean, surely everything you've written there screams "give him a chance" rather than "cut our losses"? There is still plenty of opportunity for him to be an important player for us, no need to just throw 20 odd million pounds away because his first few months were average and he then had an injury, why not wait and see how he recovers before completely writing him off? Should we be looking to sell Sanson as well in the summer becuase he hasn't delivered the goods for us?

This point is underrated, it's telling that the only managers ever compared to Smith are ones that have had years moulding their squads to be at a similar level as us. Last season it was Wilder, this year it's Bielsa Smith has had to oversee an enormous turnover of players and squad in a really short period of time, and despite this has generated a fantastic team spirit and seen us steadily improve since he first walked through the door. He's not perfect, and there's areas that can improve for sure, but anyone that isn't happy with Dean Smith as Aston Villa manager needs to have a long think about where we were before him

When that happened I literally shouted at the TV "the only reason that's not a fk is cause the ref knows he'd have to book him if it was", there may be been some more colourful language used.

Its not like he's a high profile charismatic character either. Man is literally struggling to string 2 sentences together, it beggars belief that anyone thought it was a good idea to put him on TV

If we sell Jack to, say, Man City, I wonder if people would continue to post in here linking him to Real Madrid or Barcelona or PSG every year?

I was at the Derby 4-0 game and sent a message to my mate saying we're gonna win 10 in a row and get promoted, he said he'd eat a hat if we did. A week after we went up was my wedding and he ate a hat shaped cupcake as a compromise.

I was so confident that Solano would stay that I went a bought a shirt with his name on the back, he left a week later and I spent a season being ridiculed by everyone around me at VP. In hindsight I should have just bought a new shirt

Here's the difference between someone having an opinion which no-one will get annoyed about "I think we need fresh legs on, I wish Dean made earlier subs sometimes" And here is what actually happens "wtf is Smith doing not making subs?! Time to start looking for a replacement, we need a proactive manager" Can you see the difference?

The subs thing is entirely a product of video games where you make 3 subs every game, virtually never keep a GK on the bench and mix up the formation regularly, and the games are designed to make you do that so it just seems crazy when managers don't do it irl. Sometimes subs win games, but most managers actually put their best team out on the day and trust those players to execute their game plan. Very few teams regularly make 3 subs before the 90th minute and you can watch teams making 2 subs after the 90th minute to waste time quite frequently. Subs are good to freshen up the team but the offset is that it will affect the flow of the team while they get up to the speed of the games. Not such a big deal when you're Man City and the likes, where your subs are £50m players, but when your subs are Nakamba, Ramsey, Hause etc unless a player is injured they are more likely to have a negative impact than a positive one. Despite that I'm sure that I read Pep uses one of the fewest number of subs in the league (although I could be wrong on that) The idea that a new manager is going to come in and them making more subs will suddenly transform us is completely comical. What do we think having Ramsey get 20 minutes instead of 10 is going to change our season? Or switching to 442 with Davis up front is going to magically get us more goals and wins despite it not being a formation anyone other than Burnley would regularly use. Smith doesn't use many subs and it's clearly working over the medium to long term, so maybe he's right and we're wrong? I can understand it in the heat of a game, I'm thinking about changes after about 20 minutes, but realistically no manager is doing that unless they've made a horrendous mistake in their team selection in the first place.

Well that well thought out and reasoned response answers my questions on whether or not you're a troll. Thanks mate

When literally every single post of yours is being critical of a manager that has brought us more success than we've seen in more than a decade then I'm sorry mate, that's an agenda. If every single post of mine was criticising Jack Grealish I'm sure most would consider me nothing more than a troll, opinion or not. Dean Smith is to Villa managers what Jack Grealish is to Villa players. There you go again, completely dismissing the win because it doesn't suit your narrative. Why are only games since January important? Why not the whole season? Why not Smiths whole tenure? Why, if you have no agenda, are you only considering games that we played badly in when you critique the manager, why dismiss the games we play well? Especially when this is our best season in about 15 years? You say you won't change your opinion overnight, and given that he is a manager that has brought us consistent and sustained improvement from the first minute he walked through the door I'd say that must be right. I'd say you didn't want him to start with and if he won the Champions League with us you'd still be critical. If you are completely incapable of offering a single bit of praise without caveat during the clubs most successful season since MON then you clearly have an agenda

Tbf you've done absolutely nothing but criticise for months and after a great win you seem to be desperate to dismiss it with a "yeah yeah it was good BUT..." If you want to critique the manager it's fine, but if you completely dismiss any positives and focus on every tiny perceived negative, then no-one will take anything you say seriously, you just come across as having an agenda, no matter if your points have any validity or not. Of course if your intention is just to wind people up then it seems to be working. So if that's the case then crack on and anyone not interested can just block you and don't need to worry about it

Which is a fine stance to have, but some are desperate to complain that we are so far off Leeds when the reality is we're in basically the exact same position. An inconsistent mid table position

Revolutionary

Yeah that's one of the worst decisions I've ever seen, stuff like this shows we need some match fixing investigations going on. There is no way that qualified referees genuinely think that's a sending off

Twitter? Well it must be true then

Maybe he meant a player who's left the US recently?

The worst thing about highlights being on the app rather than YouTube is that there's no obvious "videos" or "match highlights" section on their app, you have to sort of figure out where it is by clicking on a bunch of things. If you want to find highlights of an older game it's pretty much not going to happen.

You need stronger refs. I watched the 2nd half of the baggies Chelsea game and the ref kept play going all the time, didn't give those little "not really a foul but always seem to get given" free kicks and the game was so much better for it, was similar in the PSG game last night. Having a ref that let's the "soft" fouls go means the whole game is better. We were pretty bad at going down easy the other day, but the ref blew his whistle at virtually every opportunity, so the players are always going to try it on and the result is a broken fragmented game where there's no real chance for quality to show.

Its quite telling as well that he clearly sees the praise Smith is getting is unwarranted, but at the same time knows he has to strawman the points to make them seem silly, I'd assume because if he used our actual position in the table, and actual praise Smith is getting from supporters, his post would be completely reasonable and no-one would know it was meant to be sarcastic. I wonder how someone can get to a point where they know that the praise a manager is getting is justified, they know our position in the table is great, they know that we're showing tremendous improvement year on year (because if they didn't they wouldn't need to exaggerate these points so much), and rather than be happy about that, decide the best thing to do is to make stuff up that hasn't happened, get angry about it, and rant on a messageboard because barely anyone agrees with you. I don't get it, but each to their own

Did Smith actually say that though? I'm sure I heard him say that he was progressing well but got an illness which set him back. He didn't say he'd recovered from his injury from what I heard, just that his recovery had been set back by getting ill, although I'm happy to be proven wrong on this one.

If we had a chance of Saint Maximin I'd sign him in a heartbeat, he's class. He's the player everyone seems to think Adama is, in reality he's got all the excitement of Adama but with actual end product. I'd imagine he'd have better options than us should Newcastle go down however