weedman

If Arteta ends up failing there'll aways be the "Fergie was 1 game away from the sack" line to fall back on. People seem to forget that for every Fergie that turned it round or Arteta who seems to be turning it around there are 50 managers that are just not that good and don't turn it around I would say as well, I'm usually late to the "sack the manager" train, I lost the faith in Bruce just before he was sacked, I didn't want Deano out but after that 5th defeat I accepted he should move on right before he was sacked, after today I'm a fully paid up member of the Gerrard out club so if my previous is anything to go by he'll be gone before the next game

I'll tell you exactly what he was thinking, he was thinking he wanted Ramsey on the pitch, he thought "who can I take off for him", obviously not Kamara, he's my shiny new signing, def can't take off captain fantastic, who's that left? Oh Luiz? Well, he's played pretty well but I guess I have no other option, get him off

Lol, I'm literally taking YOUR graph and explaining it. Why did you pick 11 games? Why not 12? Why not 10? Or 5? You pick 11 becuase it's the worst run you could find. Also, 9 points in 11 games could definitely be levelling out depending on what preceeded it. Go look at the graph that you yourself posted. Ignore the ridiculous and misleading dotted line and actually look at it. The last 14 or 15 games could be represented with a bloody straight line, it's the definition of levelling out I'm not even going to argue that Gerrard is doing a good job, he's not, but there's plenty of actual ammunition against him without literally making up things that aren't true. Look at your graph, it CLEARLY levels out in term of ppg at the end of the season after some big fluctuations at the start.

I mean, that dotted line doesn't actually reflect the ppg and finishes below where we finished for some reason. Pretty clear looking at that we started well, got shit, then levelled out a bit. The dotted line drawn from Watford to the end of the season (15 games?) would be basically flat Not that I think he's doing particularly well mind, but that is clearly a hugely misleading way of displaying information and seems to actually show we've levelled out, rather than regressed as the season went on

The reason it's out most successful formation under Gerrard is because it's the only formation he plays that actually allows the team to play the way he wants it to. It keeps the midfield really narrow in a diamond meaning when the full backs advance we're not wide open and there are lots of options for passing in the middle. Its not a perfect formation by any means but it's the closest thing to a set up that he's seemingly built us for. Plus Ings drops and almost plays as a 10 most of the time as well giving us the fabled 2x10s and a striker. You just can't play 2 attacking wing backs and a wide open midfield, it just can't work, the midfield diamond actually keeps us relatively compact in the middle that helps mitigate it. Again, obviously not perfect but it's much better than anything else he's served up

I just don't get his tactics at all. I assumed he'd come here and set us up like Liverpool and I was all for it. I think their system is the best one for normal teams (normal as in, not Man City with several billion to spend on whatever player they feel like), but he just doesn't. We've even got the players to make it work but we just don't set up that way. Liverpool play a 9 that drops and plays as a hybrid 10 and 9 - similar to Ings, they have 2 inside forwards that attack the space vacated when the striker drops, similar to Bailey and Coutinho/Buendia, even Traore plays a similar style. Their midfield 3 is industrious, 1 who holds but they're all comfortable defending and getting back, Kamara, Luiz and McGinn/Sanson could play this system. Attacking full backs, check, and physical, quick CBs, Mings and Carlos fit the mould but Konsa is also suited now Carlos is injured. You could argue martinez is the one that doesn't suit the style as he's a defensive keeper rather than a sweeper. Sarr would also suit this inside forward role that they play, but he sets us up to be totally exposed. 1 holding mid and 2 mids that attack, alongside either 2 attacking 10s or a 10 and 2 strikers or a 10 and a winger and a striker, a high line with both full backs forward, the second we lose the ball we are completely vulnerable. On top of that Liverpool press press press, we stand off and let teams do what they want. Liverpool set up to have lots of passing options in the defensive third, to open space to hit their forwards line quickly. If there's space on the flanks they hit it for their inside forwards, if not they get the ball into the feet of their striker who then has options from the full backs wide or inside forwards attacking through the middle. We completely vacate the defensive third which leaves us no options but to hit and hope down the lines before the ball is on. The whole team bombs forwards and when we inevitably lose the ball as we've rushed it forward we're then left completely exposed. If we set up as a 433 and play Liverpool way we cannot play Ramsey and McGinn in midfield, they're too attacking and they kill our build up. 433 with kamara Luiz and probably Nakamba from our options, with Bailey and Coutinho flanking Ings and we'd be damn close to how Liverpool set up, obviously not on their level but we'd be defensively sound and have the forward line to cause problems. Then when the next transfer window rolls around we could incrementally upgrade players for those specific roles. Gerrard earns millions a year, surely he can see this?!

My friends telling me that Cash might be out today...he's less ITK than I am but follows all those Villa facebook pages...anyone closer to the club heard anything?

What's with the obsession with win rates? If you're going to judge a manager on such a simple metric like that the only acceptable one is ppg. That doesn't take context into account and you'd have to judge cup names separately but at least it gives you an accurate idea of how we're performing over a period of time. Win % is such a stupid metric to judge someone against. Draws are worth points as well everyone

His system only works if you're the strongest team in the league. His style in our team and its Brighton. Lots of boring matches and struggling to score despite 60/70% possession. I'm not criticising him either, he only manages top teams therefore his style only needs to work managing top teams, lots of managers struggle with that so it's not to be sniffed at, and no one is turning down a £500m war chest, but it wouldn't work with us firstly, and it is simply not a level playing field to compare Gerrard to him. I'm a gardener, if I started a new gardening company tomorrow and Elon Musk also decided to start one at the same time his company would be 100x the size of mine by the end of the year and its not becuase he's a master gardener compared to me, it's because he's got unlimited resources to build. It's not a level playing field and to judge Gerrard against Pep is frankly crazy

I mean, guardiola has the benefit of being able to buy a player for £100m and play them on the bench for a year while they adapt to his super specific system because he's already spent like £500m on other players first. He also inexplicably gets people calling him a genius for navigating an injury crisis because he's forced to play players he spent £50m on like Ake Man's been given more tools than any manager in the history of football, its not really fair to judge anyone against that

The thing with the 2 strikers that we play is that it's very close to the 2 10s that he wanted to play straight away. Ollie is a classic striker, plays on the shoulder, stretches the play while Ings is much more of an all rounder and drops in to get involved in the build up. Ings ends up occupying one of the #10 positions a lot of the time and it seems to work better with him and Coutinho than it does with Coutinho and Buendia. Maybe that's down to the starting positions. Ings is starting high up and dropping in, where a classic 10 starts further back and pushes forward. That means Ings is dragging a CB out whereas Coutinho and Buendia are pulling CMs back. Playing them both forces teams to be more defensive which we can't break down, and we're vulnerable to a counter attack. I think its actually a pretty good system all in all for the way he wants us to play, the main issue we have is that Buendia is performing far above anything Coutinho is offering but seemingly Gerrard doesn't want to drop Coutinho. They don't really work as well together (albeit I've only seen them play a limited number of times, so there's still potential there for them), so it leaves us in a tricky situation of either not playing our best player, or not playing Phillipe Coutinho

Is anyone elses stream lagging constantly? Every few seconds it's stopping to load, got fast Internet and no issues on any other platform?

Yeah it's a weird point scoring thing I think, I mean when people called him slow it was pretty much universally in the context of "erm where has his pace gone? Is he still injured" type posts. Its good to see him able to use his greatest asset again and long may it continue

Yeah I said the same after the last friendly, they could have avoided all this by having everyone's subscriptions expire at the end of the season so everyone was in the same boat for the new season but they've gone with the subscription lasts 12 months but if you want to watch anything in the new season you also need to pay again but you probably can't even do that because our website is managed by idiots approach. Its novel you have to give them that

Yeah me too, the whole thing is v frustrating

Probably not, but you're wrong. At the end of the day, if we've only got him for another 12 months then potential is completely irrelevant to us, he has to be good enough to play for us now. He's not better than our current first choice options, so he's not worth us playing him over then. Its a final attempt by us to get him to sign, we've made it easy for him so far, he's played games, offers on the table, take your time and make a decision. Now that decision has stakes because it's actively harming his development. He won't want a wasted year, we don't want to waste our time on a player that's leaving. I think he'll leave or sign a contract this summer, but I don't think he'll leave for free next year

Disagree, I think we'll be challenging as well. Don't look at us in comparison to the top 6, look at us in comparison to the teams genuinely challenging them, West Ham, Leicester, Wolves. Our back 5 is as good as any of theirs if not better, midfield with 3 of McGinn, Luiz, Ramsey, Sanson and Kamara with good youngsters coming through as well. Maybe could use another 8 but that's still a comparable midfield to those teams. At the top Ings, Watkins, Bailey, Buendia, Coutinho is incredible strength. We may need 2 or 3 more before we could realistically become cemented as a top 6 team, but no reason whatsoever our squad won't be challenging up there next season. I think with the investment in players who are in their prime its pretty clear to me that the owners aren't here for a 9th-11th season this time round. We're not buying players for incremental progress, we're buying ready made for now. Also worth noting last season Gerrard had the team in 9th in an inconsistent season with glaring holes in the squad. We've filled the 2 most important holes (CB and DM), there's no way we shouldn't expect to already improve on that

I get it, really, my gripe is with the fact I pay money for VillaTV+. Which is the only available streaming package. I understand that they can't put live competitive games on there for licensing reasons and if they could it would be much more expensive, but they put highlights on and I'm happy to pay. But now we have genuine games, games that the club are easily able to broadcast to fans, and - despite already paying for the subscription - I need to pay again for this privelidge. It's the equivalent of paying x amount to sky or BT for the sport package but then being told you need to pay another fee to watch certain games. Not only that but this wasn't really advertised in advance, there was no warning that even if you were a subscriber you would still need to pay again, so rather than prepare in advance I had to wait and see at the time And despite that, I was going to pay for it, I don't really even get the chance to watch most pre season games due to work and timings but I'd like the opportunity to watch what I can just to get my Villa fix, and after trying every package on 3 different devices I only got an error message each time meaning I couldn't even do that. I understand the club needs as many revenue streams as possible and the easiest way is to squeeze fans, but at least do it in a competent way

Have to say this has annoyed me a bit, pre season friendly games which bring in so little revenue they were available free you now need a subscription for. OK, fine. But now, I have the subscription and I need to pay again just to watch the game AND the link doesn't even take me anywhere that I can even buy a pass to watch the game, just kicks out an error at me every time. Its bullshit and honestly for all the investment we're putting into the club our media offering is embarrassingly poor They'd probably make just as much money by streaming it free on YouTube again with a few ads thrown in and they'd reach a lot more people with a far more accessible service

What are the odds that if we sign another 5 players someone would want more signings because "if those 5 players get injured we're back to the same team as last season"

The funny thing about everyone resigning over how Boris ignoring allegations against a colleague and promoting him anyway...hasn't Boris himself been subject to basically the same accusations and they all ignored it and promoted him anyway?

As much as I agree, I really wish Starmer had anything resembling a personality or charisma. 90% of voters don't really follow politics and just vote for the person they like the most. Boris is charismatic and for people that don't follow the absolute shambles of his leadership or get their information from the Daily Mail that's enough

The man who consistently gets all the big calls right as long as you completely ignore all the big calls he gets consistently wrong

He's just said how important it is to follow the rules when asked about another confidence vote, has anyone told him the reason they want another confidence vote?

I'm sure he's been designed in a lab as a social experiment to see just how much stupidity one person can get away with if they have a posh accent