weedman

4 hours ago, fightoffyour said:

Walking off doesn’t mean anything.

I said after the replay he’ll limp off in a few minutes and we won’t see him again this season. ACL always looks innocuous.

Having ruptured my ACL I can confirm that an ACL does not always look innocuous. No way its a rupture, maybe a little tear or a ligament tweak, but a rupture of your ACL is painful and you know somethings wrong straight away. 

With any other team he's fit next game, for us it'll be 6 weeks out with some ligament injury, I'm holding out hope it's not a season ender despite all the evidence of being a Villa fan all my life saying otherwise.

Going by our luck he'll probably have to retire 

4 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Is that an admission that they weren't in his thoughts because he thought they were going to secure moves away?

How is Morgan supposed to force his way back into the team if he doesn't even make the bench? How is Marv supposed to do the same if he doesn't come off the bench?

The matches are just the bits we see, all the other work training or in the gym etc is what the coaches see and if they aren't doing it they aren't getting picked. 

This idea that if they don't play in games "how can we know how well they'd do" is such a frustrating argument. WE won't know, but THEY will, from training. 

The likes of Bailey excelled in training, did well and forced his way into the team. Just because McGinn is horribly out of form it doesn't mean that the alternatives are only not being picked because the managers an idiot, if they aren't even playing to his level right now that probably says a lot about them tbh. 

There are a lot of sticks to beat Gerrard with, but not playing 2 players that the previous manager also didn't really play isn't one of them 

49 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Don't underestimate that it's a Friday night game with an 8pm kick off

There will be people that love it but there'll also be a few people who have no interest in that, night games were always a ball ache for me and that was me only working in an office in malvern and finishing at 5.30, the infrastructure around the ground and the West Midlands at large made it shit, I missed kick offs a few times which is mad really 

Lots of people don't live nearby as well, I live around 2 hours drive away and midweek games are just a total no go unless I have the full day off work and an either another off the next day or an easy day somehow. That 2 hour drive becomes a 4 hour drive once 5pm looms and days off work is a sacrifice that's only really going to be made for big games, and with the cost of living crisis even then only if you're lucky enough to be able to afford it

Edit : in saying that 2000 seats left (mainly singles) a few days before a Friday night game isn't really too bad, I'd imagine we'll be down to the hundreds by kick off as well

On 11/09/2022 at 09:14, AVTuco said:

All games should be re-arranged to be played on Friday and Saturday. That way they could all be played. SKY won't like it, but hey-ho.

I'm not even sure sky would be that bothered, as long as the games aren't moved to 3pm Saturday (or perhaps the PL will allow a one off 3pm screening due to the circumstances), they'll take a small hit but still get the games on or they start at 5 or 7 or even 9pm. They manage regular night games in Spain perfectly fine. 

Its a unique situation that sky/PL will be allowed to find a one off solution for. The hit of reduced viewing figures is less than the hit of cancelling games then cramming them in midweek somewhere on the red button if we're lucky. 

I agree that London games will be in doubt though, although again I'm sure the clubs would agree to swap the home/away games to facilitate them where possible 

16 minutes ago, AshVilla said:

"Lets give him another 5 games" is the new "He just needs a preseason"

I don't buy it at all you can't run or manage a club like that.

It's simple If he isn't up for the job he should be replaced.

 

 

 

He's getting to the international break whether we like it or not. If (and its a big if) we win the next 2 games and play well then suddenly his start doesn't look quite as bad (still not good). That's when we can look and see where we are once the dust has settled a bit on the season by the time the world Cup rolls around which is a far better opportunity to be sacking and replacing a manager if he's underperforming. 

If we underperform and get anything less than 4 points from the next 2 then we can sack during this little break, although it would be far easier and far more stable if he can keep us ticking over until the world Cup before we replace him or, pie in the sky, if he actually can turn it around and make a success of us. 

Then we can all argue endlessly about whether he's still rubbish but lucked into a system or if he's the 2nd coming of Fergie, almost hope he fails just to avoid that! 

2 hours ago, nick76 said:

 

2 hours ago, Peter Griffin said:

Context to the original post please Nick, I thought tabloid style twisting of comments was below u.  The post said we 'need to start now' and I pointed out that we appear to have started on Sat and we need to continue and build on it. 

1 hour ago, lapal_fan said:

The best RB performance since Matt Lowton v Sunderland in @Zatman, help me out here  

That's the only time I've walked away from a 6-1 home victory raving about how good the right back was, unreal performance that night! 

Ash certainly rolled back the years on Saturday and hope that enables us to give Cash a bit of a break - he's still a quality player and will hopefully benefit from a bit of rotation. Wing back is a hard position to play 90 mins every week to a high standard 

I've been thinking of the captaincy. Mings has improved I think without it, McGinn has shriveled with it, but Emi seemed to absolutely thrive with the armband yesterday. He was back to his best, winding up the crowd, making good saves, and just making the whole defence assured in those last few minutes. 

I think he should be taking the captaincy full time, his personality just seems ready made to be captain and he's at his best when he's fired up and given responsibility. He's a natural leader in this team

3 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Because Cornet is a much better player.

We paid ~£17m for Traore when we could have got him for £5-8m. If we couldn't, we should have moved on. He'd had a terrible season and we go and blow that money on him.

The big issue with Traore I think is that he spent basically the whole season out with various injuries and niggles last season, teams aren't going to risk big money on someone when there are serious question marks over their fitness. I think had we sold him after his first season we'd have got decent money back for him 

I'll tell you what, if he turns it around from here he'll finally replace Alex Ferguson as the go to for failing managers. Any time a manager is struggling people in 20 years will say "you know Steven Gerrard was only 1 game away from the sack" 

1 minute ago, Robtaylor200 said:

Not very optimistic today, haven't even had my 4:1 bet

 

Scenes when we win 4-1 and you can't celebrate because you missed out on million to one odds

1 hour ago, The Moustache of Teale said:

Completely overlooking the fact that we were completely outclassed in that game, and Arsenal should have been out of sight by half time. If you’re constantly under the cosh and played off the park, you’ll eventually concede - the law of averages says there will be a mistake when the opposition is in your penalty area for the 50th time in a game.

Until he takes personal responsibility for this shit show, nothing will change. In fact, it won’t even change then. The charlatan is out of his depth. 
 

Honestly, trying not to play into the memes but it's just very Steve Bruce. You know after a game where we get battered, 20 shots to 1, 70/30 possession, smashed in all the stats, if that 1 shot was a decent chance that led to a good save the whole post match press conference would be about how unlucky we were because "on another day that goes in". Like you say, if the opposition has tons of chances and spends the whole game camped in our box mistakes are going to happen, it doesn't mean those mistakes cost us the game 

1 hour ago, jacketspuds said:

So Gerrard's media mates are saying that he is learning at Villa and we should expect ups and downs.

That's great, sadly the downs for us under Gerrard will be down to the Championship.

The reason Gerrard isn't learning from his mistakes is because he won't acknowledge that he has actually made any and consistently shifts the blame on to the players or unfortunate slices of luck.

Its the Boris Johnson approach. Never acknowledge any wrongdoing and tell everyone what an amazing job you're doing at every opportunity, anyone that tries to point out your horrendous record can get shouted down by your media mates for being fickle/project fear/fake news. 

Gerrard will never acknowledge he got anything wrong even if he takes us down, it'll be someone else's fault, the board, the fans, the players, and his media mates will come out and agree and tell us how hard done by he was. Main difference between football and politics is football has a lot of fairly independent news sources which are very popular so it's harder to keep the lie going for very long, but it's 100% what will happen.

The likes of Carragher will tout him for every top 6 job going as well once he leaves here, guaranteed 

Just now, VillaParkAvenue said:

And our defence has been looking dreadful.

Midfield a bit light too 

Just now, a m ole said:

Enormous assumptions? It’s not exactly a **** dirt bike jump over the Grand Canyon, more a step over a puddle.

I'd say deciding that 1 out of a dozen possible explanations is the only one to consider despite the fact that he was initially offered a contract when playing every week which he didn't sign. 

Anyway, I think we can both agree that he should be playing in our midfield every week with Kamara and 1 of Sanson/McGinn/Ramsey and we may never know the reason he hasn't signed a contract yet. 

1 minute ago, a m ole said:

Because he had a new manager who kept talking about wanting to sign a number 6 and a number 8.

Contracts are two way streets. He was very smartly waiting to see what happened in the summer.

And I accept that is a possibility, but is it an absolute certainty? Of course its not. By stating 

38 minutes ago, a m ole said:

He would sign a contract if we were playing him

You are making enormous assumptions based on virtually no knowledge of the situation. For all we know he fancies himself in goal and is annoyed the manager hasn't given him a chance there 

1 minute ago, a m ole said:

Yeah, so he was considering a contract offer - what do you think would have made him sign or not sign that contract? What possible variables could exist considering the figures on that contract are the same?

Like I said, potentially loads of things. Maybe he wants a crack at Champions League so wants to keep his options open. Maybe a big team has been chatting with his agent and indicated that they'd sign him on a free on double his wages if he runs his contact down. Maybe he just doesn't like Birmingham. Maybe he's gotten bored of his Mrs and is looking for an excuse to get out. None of us have any idea into his thinking around signing a new contract. 

And I'm not even saying it's definitely not down to game time, but I'm saying that none of us can possibly know that for anything close to certain. If it is solely down to game time why didn't he sign last season when the contract was offered and he was playing every week? 

1 minute ago, a m ole said:

Explain why he was taken to Australia but Chukwuemeka wasn’t, then.

Explain why we haven’t signed an immediate replacement for him this summer and sold him already.

Becuase he was considering a contract offer so we treated him as normal, whereas Chuck made it clear he wasn't signing? Perhaps the noises from his camp was that he would sign it - there were loads of rumours to that affect around the start of the season, when the contract wasn't signed before the season he was benched and only thrown in recently as Gerrard is getting desperate? 

There are loads of potential explanations. I understand we are all in agreement about Gerrard being terrible at the moment, but that doesn't mean every single thing that happens is automatically his fault.

Luiz has had LOADS of time to sign a contract if he wanted to, explain why he didn't sign last season if its only due to playing time? 

9 minutes ago, a m ole said:

He would sign a contract if we were playing him

There is no way you can possibly know that. He was playing last season and didn't sign. Perhaps he's not playing because he's not signing the contract? 

6 hours ago, Tom13 said:

According to a fair few on here, he was an absolute bargain.

Tbf he looked like a bargain, his performances dropped off last season but that's easy to dismiss due to fitness reasons as he'd barely played before coming here, but now several months later his fitness hasn't improved it seems which is a worry

Having listened to the presser it seems he was taken off with cramp so should be fine the midweek. You really have to question why a 29 year old after a full pre season is physically completely shot after 65 minutes of the 4th game of the season which is typically when players are really getting into peak condition. 

Can't help but think we've signed a bit of a dud here 

5 minutes ago, calcifer said:

If he picks Ramsey & McGinn and leaves Luiz  he needs to book himself into a mental asylum! 

He'll play Luiz, but in place of Kamara with Ramsey and McGinn as inverted 8s. Kamara off the bench in the 89th minute up front to try and nick a consolation goal 

1 minute ago, imavillan said:

Don't forget the stupidity of bringing Archer on for 3 minutes of added time.

Both of them were mind boggling decisions.

That Archer sub is the sort of thing managers do to waste a bit of time at the end of the game, baffling 

18 minutes ago, jackbauer24 said:

Highly unusual that not a single Villa player has posted on social media tonight. None of that normal 'not the result we wanted' stuff... Odd.

Don't know what it means, if anything, but holding on to the hope it's because something is brewing behind the scenes. 

I thought that, I know players won't generally do their own social media, but it's clear that they've been told to keep off it for now, for whatever reason. I'm sure the same thing happened before Smith was sacked but can't be sure