weedman

Off topic but I always find stuff like this amusing, was the same with Ronaldo. These guys are earning hundreds of millions, and while obviously it's ultimately their responsibility, as if they have the first idea what's happening with their taxes. They'll hire someone to deal with it and see that they pay as little as possible, like I'd imagine every pro footballer does

Watkins didn't play as a striker under Smith either, didn't stop us bringing him in

Sounds like a ready made Villa player

Isn't he 29? I'm very underwhelmed by this signing but it's not the 90's, central defenders are still at their peak well into their 30's as long as they look after themselves (I have no idea if he does or not). There's very little chance of resale value whether we give him a 3 or 5 year contract, and I doubt we'll see a really noticeable decline in his ability between 32 and 34 There are reasons to be underwhelmed by this potential signing, but him getting a 5 year deal instead of a 3 year deal isn't one of them in my opinion

How on earth is kalinic still our player?!

Thanks for these, really does help to show that we are making progress, even if it's not immediately apparent. I think with a few good additions we'll do well next season

Yeah this would have been a really good final

Are some of their players injured or something? I know salah and van dijk went off in the final didn't they?

Sometimes you just have to marvel at how managers like Pep can pluck these players from obscurity and turn them into title winners

Also, get in Forest!

No chance sky won't show genius Pep somehow bringing the title home for little Man City. It's a fairy tale underdog story like Leicester and they won't be able to resist a 2 hour wankfest over it

There's also a big difference in PL terms in "not being good enough to break into the Liverpool team" compared to "not being good enough to break into the Aston Villa team". If you're a middling/relegation team you take the chance that a player that's not quite good enough for Liverpool but highly rated would be good enough for you, but a player not good enough for our team will probably also not be good enough for another team in a similar position

It's "the other 14" so excludes those teams to find the "best of the rest" in particular stats. Not sure this particular stat has any real value though

Some of the criticisms of Gerrard here are well founded, but if you hire a manager mid season, and before the end of that same season you're looking at ppg as anything other than ppg since they took over then its only because your biased and are cherry picking stats to suit your argument. The only people that do that regularly are the Watford owners and look how it's worked out for them

Did he? From my memory he was sluggish and miles off the pace from minute 1 with us, just like Drinkwater was (of course he went on to have a very good career after leaving, unlike Drinkwater). I'm not blaming him necessarily, we were an absolute shambles run by probably the worst coaching setup I've ever seen at a football club overseen by an owner who didn't give a shit, but some of his performances were embarrassing. For comparison Gueye was also fairly poor for us, but he put in some good performances here and there and actually established himself as an important player in our midfield On to Sanson, aside from the odd game where he's been a 6 or 7 out of 10, has he shown us anything? No goals, assists, I don't remember and shots or even key passes (of course I could be wrong). He's performed better for us than Veretout ever did, but that's a low bar. He's struggling to get any minutes in a midfield just about everyone agrees is by far the weakest part of our squad, and this is now under 2 different managers and coaching setups, so it's more than just a manager not rating him. As I've said before, I like him and I think he's a good player from what I've seen, but I just have a feeling he's going to go somewhere and play regularly and we'll all see he's actually not that good.

Honestly one of my best moments at Villa Park. Seeing that whistle in from the Holte was glorious. Highlights will never show just how tense that game was (both games to be fair) and the absolute relief that this goal brought was immense, I never thought we'd lose from this moment on

Basically my thoughts to the letter, bang on

Bailey should do better but that wasn't a sitter, it was fizzed into him and bounced right before he struck it. It was a difficult chance

Completely off topic but I was so happy when we signed Veretout, you could just tell he was gonna be a good player. Unfortunately he joined during the lowest period in my memory for coaching and he just never got anywhere near up to the required standard fitness wise for us, which made his whole game suffer and let's be honest, he was awful for us. I had such high hopes and he put in Drinkwater esque performances due to many reasons already covered. Back on topic, Sanson is a decent player but he's not going to be as good as Veretout, and conversely has played much better for us than Veretout ever did

I know, but obviously multiple managers now have seen "something" to suggest he shouldn't play so there could be something in it. Like I said, I agree with you, I think he's looked good and should be in the team over McGinn who's looked poor most of the season, but I thought that about Berson as well, and I thought Cuellar should be our CB and it was terrible he didn't get a chance. I also remember thinking Maloney should have played more but that's more because I bought him on football manager once and despite average stats he played amazingly and became a mainstay in the team (a bit like Milner in real life) My point is, we don't have the full picture, we've only got a snapshot and we might just be wrong

I really get the impression Sanson will leave and it'll end up being just like Cuellar and Berson. Everyone (myself included) thought it was criminal Berson didn't get enough chances then he moved and got some and turns out he was pretty crap. With Cuellar we shoe horned him in at RB and we all said when he moved that getting back into CB would prove what a good player he was, it didn't and he proved how bang average he was. I like Sanson and think he's a good player and would love him to get more chances especially over McGinn the Undroppable, but I think when he leaves and plays regularly for someone else we'll all see he's actually probably pretty rubbish

I'd be really disappointed if we sold him for £10-12m on the back of him being injured all season. We'd be better off getting him fit and giving him a chance next season, it's not like he has a long injury record prior to this year and we'd be selling him at his absolute rock bottom lowest possible value. If it's £10m or nothing then either keep him or loan him somewhere where he'll get regular games and up his value a bit like Mings with us

What would you expect him to say at a Newcastle fluff video? "Nah mate the trainings a bit crap but I guess this tin pot club was never gonna compete with Villa, sooner I get out of this shit hole the better"

Yeah, because Matthew Targett will definitely be the reason Newcastle start throwing around silly money in the summer

Look its pretty clear to me. Obviously we would rather have Targett now that Digne is out, however, given that we're pretty comfortably stuck in mid table, the club clearly took a bit of a risk and decided that whatever finances were involved in the deal were more important than a player that would, with any luck, not feature for us for the rest of the season and destroy his value sitting on the bench. It's easy to look back now and say we should have kept him, but honestly how many extra points are we gaining with Targett playing instead of Young for 5 or 6 games? We may also plan to play a youngster there for the last couple of games now there's no real risk to help prepare them. We just don't know. Its all far too "Fifa" to me to just assume that every first team player we sign will move the player they replaced to the bench rather than sell them. We have rich owners but we can't destroy our players value just in case our first teamers get injured at some point because we'd never bring in any money from sales - hasn't our inability to ever sell a player for actual money been something we've all constantly moaned about for years and something that heavily contributed to our financial meltdown? After signing Digne, our first choice, we had 2 other left backs, one we could realistically command a £15/20m fee for, and one that has no value due to his age. We sold the one with value and kept the one without to stay as a backup