weedman

Yup that's the one, they complained about him diving for it. Like I said, we can't take anything they say seriously afterwards

And the Leeds fans made a whole compilation about it and marked it as a "dive". You couldn't make it up

In all honesty we should automatically block Leeds fans in the Jack Grealish thread. Their views are horrendously biased. Look at the video after we played them they made showing Grealish "diving", they were all fouls and 1 should have been a red card despite their guy winning the ball as it was a potential leg breaker. Better yet just block Leeds fans on this forum. They are absolutely obsessed with us so let them read it without being able to comment. Let them spout their nonsense on their own forum that we don't bother reading because we don't care about the views of little Leeds fans On topic, Grealish is **** ace just keep him away from cars please

I mean sure, it's a valid point, it just doesn't mean anything. He wasn't saying our defence was worse than last season, he agreed it is now better, he was literally saying our defence isn't as good now as it was during a tiny 4 game run where we had the best defence of anyone in the league. I think the reason people jumped on it was because what kind of a criticism is that? We finished 17th last season and critical this year because we don't have the best defence in the league after 10 games like we did after 4? We obviously weren't going to finish the season with the best defence in the league, so it was absolutely inevitable that it would "regress" in subsequent games. Using it as a stick to beat the team with is ludicrous. It's punishing them for having a good start If we win every remaining match 5-0 can we complain that our attack has regressed since our 7-2 v Liverpool? Of course not because that would be ridiculous We've conceded more goals but arguably our defence is still solid, we have a really low xG against and are getting super unlucky to concede with basically every shot the opposition has, and they're all unsaveable worldies to boot. The odds of that continuing all season are staggeringly low, luck evens out over a season and the better performances you put in the more you will eventually gain in the longer term over the course of a season. Constructive criticism and criticising for the sake of it are very different things. Taking the results with no context just in order to throw criticism out there is always going to wind people up, especially when it's pretty much been universally accepted by all apart from a few on here that we were very very unlucky not to get at least a point, and realistically deserved all 3. Getting shocked and outraged by it seems crazy to me.

So I've just skimmed the last 10 pages and I think we've concluded that our defence isn't as good now as it was when we had the best defence in the league for 4 games, if we completely ignore every stat and don't watch any matches and concentrate soley on results we're more likely to go down than we were a month ago, and if every single shot we concede continues to result in a goal while our attackers consistently miss open goals we'll be in trouble this season, got it

Surely the first goal is a problem with being overly aggressive? You can't complain they didn't show enough aggression and we're too passive then complain when they went in too aggressively and got left exposed. You can get caught out when pressing. If you want the team to play aggressively and on the front foot then they're going to get caught out like the first goal from time to time. I think that first goal was terrible defensively, but you have to accept that playing this style is going to leave us open to that from time to time, it even happens to Man City and Liverpool (against us) and they have some of the best defensive players in world football. Our defenders aren't as good as that and will occasionally get caught out I was never a Bruce basher, but I'd take the occasional goal like that given away to play this pressing style than the timid all out defensive hope to nick a goal on the counter of our previous style, which leads to its own defensive errors itself. Got to take the good with the bad, and since playing this way we've had far more good than bad

We all love Jack Grealish already

Yeah we've got a bunch of poor CBs for England. Have to also add in Dier and Walker, neither of whom should play CB (Dier just shouldn't play full stop). Mings has flaws which we can all see every week, but honestly I'd still pick him over most of those on that list. Maguire has a touch of the Titus Brambles about him, great in 1 moment and completely awful the next, Coady Keane and Gomez seem to have the same flaws as Mings and Stones can't defend and is nowhere near as good at playing as he thinks he is. Honestly the best 3 are probably Maguire, Coady and Mings, but like you said you could pick any combination of 2 or 3 and it wouldn't make a lot of difference really. They've all got mistakes in them and they're all good on their day. Pick the most in form ones at the time and that should work

How many Leeds and Blues fans must have voted on that to drag his rating down to a 7.38?!

I've noticed this too, he seems to love a Ben Mee style "leave one on them" kind of tackle and he needs to cut that out or he's going to either seriously injure someone or get a red card. Aside from that I think he's been decent, not spectacular, not bad, around a 6-7/10 so far and room for improvement

I mean haven't we only conceded 1 goal from an indirect free kick since lockdown v1.0? It's only been a problem in 1 match out of the last 10, I don't think that's cause to write off everything we've been doing and throw the defenders onto the scrap heap over it

The problem with man marking set pieces is its relatively easy for an attacking team to set up to block a defender if they're chasing an attacker. A little bit of movement and suddenly attacker has gone one way round a crowd of players and defender has to go the other way and, oh look another attacker happens to be standing there and defender has to divert, meaning the man they are marking is now in acres of space for a free header. Zonal marking, or a mix of both, as we do is definately better. All the top teams do it this way for a reason. We just did it badly, the zones were clearly wrong and McGinn, who's job is really as a disruptor in there didn't disrupt anything. Zonal marking isn't the problem, our execution was the problem

He also can't make big tactical changes when the games are so close together, it would be counter productive to keep changing things up. You want the players as used to the "system" as possible, small tweaks here and there, sure, but big tactical changes specific to the opposition will cause so many issues. Remember these players are people, not robots. A lot of football is intuitive and spontaneous, telling players to do things contrary to how they naturally play is asking for trouble. They need to be working on that change for a long time before it can reap any rewards, doing it on a game by game basis will just lead to a truckload of mistakes

As a keeper I never wanted my wall to jump. If someone puts it over the top and under the bar fair play, if they put it under the wall its much harder to save and have you ever seen a wall in real life? They're pretty static most of the time

Fair enough, maybe a good incentive to them to throw a couple of pundits at it? Not the proper ones like Carragher or Neville but the shit ones they pick up in the Championship or talksport. Just some drones to chat rubbish to get people to watch the ads? I'm sure they'd still turn a decent profit at a fiver with all that

That is absolute bullshit about it costing them money at £4.95 per match. We don't pay £4.95 per match now (taking subscription into account) and they still find the money to spend billions on the rights. A little thing called adverts that they show repeatedly throughout the broadcast seems to cover most costs normally, if anything with no half time analysis they can just play a solid 15 minutes of adverts instead and make more money than normal can't they?

I agree, I think people wouldn't have been happy with paying £10, but a lot of people would have done it, I mean I paid £7 or whatever it was a game in the Championship through the website, I'd probably pay £10 in the PL, especially when you're getting full HD etc with that, but £15 is a piss take and I'd imagine there's a lot of people that could afford it but won't pay it out of principle - I'd also guess that most of those would end up paying the tenner if that was the price

If they'd aired the game free they'd have made more in advertising revenue

This is where I'm at as well, £15 a game is taking the piss, especially with so many games in such a short space of time, it's not like boxing where you pay for one fight once every 6 months or a year, there's multiple games a week at the moment! I mean, they must have done their research, but I'd imagine that price is just causing people to find alternate ways of watching, if it was priced at £5-8 kind of range so so many more people would sign up.

I don't really have much to say, I just wanted to say I love him, wouldn't swap him for anyone in world football. He's absolute class and he's the best attacking player I can remember at Villa (going back to around Yorke times). I felt personally offended when Southgate snubbed him and now actively seem to want England to fail just to justify my position. I'm 36 years old and shouldn't feel this way about a pampered mid 20's multi millionaire with greasy hair who kicks a ball for a living, but I'm on this train now, #teamJack

Yes, wasn't referring to you, perhaps certain other Leeds...sorry, "Villa" fans that even when blocked seem to keep clogging up the board by appearing in quotes

Doubting is not the same as writing off. Doubting him was perfectly normal - with the way we were playing I'd be surprised if there was a single Villa fan without any doubt. Writing him off was and is completely different and, as has been proven, completely wrong. When you couple the "writing off" with ridiculing and putting down anyone who didn't agree with you and then proclaiming that you were clearly right to do so whenever we played poorly and despite being proven absolutely wrong by the seasons end STILL trying to take the moral high ground by claiming it was nothing more than a simple critique it just makes it clear trolling rather than an informed opinion or debate

Isn't that the same? What's to stop teams deliberately losing because they need lots of signings and need to finish lower in the table to achieve that?

The issue with that is its open to manipulation, sitting in 9th place with 5 games left it'll be better to lose and drop down to 11th for the signings rather than push for 8th which will only hinder you the following season

Just scrap loans altogether. Bigger teams will have to decide to either play their young players or sell them, smaller teams will be able to keep hold of their up and coming players who'll be reluctant to move without any guaranteed playtime, meaning bigger teams would have to pay the market rate for when they are ready, spreading the ludicrous PL money down the leagues. Scrapping loans is worst for the teams at the top and best for the teams at the bottom so it'll never be passed but it would be the fairest solution to all. It wouldn't work out great for teams like us, but for teams down the pyramid it would mean they can keep hold of a Mount, or Tammy, a Tuanzebe without them just being hoovered up by the top teams for a pittance, and if sold would potentially fetch enough money to save a smaller club from administration