rubberman

Fun article on Opta about being top at Christmas, just in case it happens. In the PL era, only once has a team top at Christmas finished outside the top 4 (and y'all know who that was!)

Teams top at Christmas go on to win the title 52% of the time in the PL era (45% all time). 

https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/12/top-of-the-league-at-christmas-does-it-mean-anything/

Thinking about this a bit, we've seen how new stadia in particular (but equally any massive infrastructure project) has really impacted big clubs in what they can do on the pitch. Arsenal, Spurs, Everton have all had to reign in spending on players while they were ongoing. With us potentially breaking into the CL clique, perhaps they don't want to have any other financial distractions. For all our owners wealth there are going to be limits to investment at any one time. Focus on the pitch and supporting Unai and get ourselves firmly established back at the top end, then move onto the stadium in a few years. 

2 minutes ago, flamingsombrero said:

Just build us something akin to Kyle Field next to the NEC and slap the mosaic on it. Villa Park was irreparably vandalised long ago and the local infrastructure is never going to be what it needs to be.

That was the example I was thinking of (visually). Mind you, 100k+ capacity for college stadium is insane!

I'd go for building a new mega-stadium with dedicated transport, and take the Holte facade and steps and incorporate them brick for brick into the new design with fancy modern insides. Everyone's a winner.

53 minutes ago, Oaks said:

I think the club have crunched the numbers on season ticket take ups and match day interest in tickets and have calculated that there isn’t 52k regular fans there atm. 

Build the capacity and even if demand drops (at current eye-watering prices) you can fill the place through selling cheap tickets (like in Germany) and still get the extra volume of merch/food & drink sales.

Just now, HanoiVillan said:

This does seem like really short-term thinking. However, it's possible that they're concerned about rampant inflation in construction projects, and it's worth remembering that the country's main builder of football stands has gone into administration recently; it doesn't seem like a great environment to be launching a new project. Not happy about it, just trying to contextualise the decision. 

That side of things isn't going to get any better in the short to medium term though.

I do get the travel issues though - that has to be sorted to allow another 10k folk in every other weekend.

2 minutes ago, JPAngel said:

Weirdly, I was thinking what a shame it is that our potential first Champions League campaign in decades would be in front of a reduced capacity Villa Park and that this was coming at a bad time.

This alleviates that worry for now, but it does just move the same problem to a different season. Surely the best plan of action would be to just get it out of the way while we're still ascending?

Said much the same in the redevelopment thread. It's got to happen at some point, but perhaps getting commercial (and support) value of a full VP for (hopefully) the first year in the CL is of some benefit. Unless (with a tin foil hat on), plans have moved on to something bigger/moving away.

I assume this is only a pause to take commercial advantage of a full Villa Park if we make the CL? Maybe...

That said, we're going to have to bite the bullet of reduced capacity at some point.

That badge font is horrific. Had no idea that is was Villa related when I first saw it and can't read the 150. Awful.

Up to 6.8% chance (from 4.1% last week) for the title according to Opta. 78.5% chance of top 4.

Coming from less than 1% a few weeks back, it's quite the charge we're on.

Looked accidental as he was trying to break things up, but clearly the ref needed to throw a red to get control. The commentator even said so a few seconds before. Annoying to lose him for 3 games, but hopefully won't have too much impact, though makes Man U tougher.

Not a season defining game, but one we should win if we have true aspirations of dining at the top table. Lose and those saying we're not ready will give it the 'I told you so's'. 

We definitely have everything in the right place for a win. Need a strong mentality and drive to go with it. 2 nil Villa. 

10 hours ago, lexicon said:

Two of Ajax's prospects look very promising - Kenneth Taylor

Oooh the gifs....

9 hours ago, Ceemo said:

So just lucking at the schedule then around those knockout ties.

Avoiding that play-off round means a full weeks rest from Man United to the Fulham to the Forest fixtures in February.

Things ramp up if Villa in particular progress in the FA Cup. You are looking at:
24-Feb - Forest (home)
28-Feb - FA Cup Fifth Round
02-Mar - Luton (away)
07-Mar - Conference League
10-Mar - Spurs (home)
14-Mar - Conference League
17-Mar - West Ham (away)
 

Nice. 7 wins on the bounce.

10 hours ago, Dillon66 said:

Ajax and Frankfurt are miles above what we faced tonight. 

If we're still in the raffle for a Champs League place come March, doubt if Unai will use this as other than opportunity to give minutes to fringe players.

What would be the point ?

As well as a trophy, the experience of playing the next level of club up the chain before meeting Bayern/Real etc. 

3 minutes ago, TheMightyVillans said:

shame no lenglet. surely we will try get rid of chambers in Jan. Emery really doesn't trust him at all

I wonder if he's just not mobile enough to play in our defensive line. Or just hasn't bought into Emeryball. 

Decently strong side. The drop off from first choice just isn't so much of a thing these days (famous last words...) 

Crikey - the odds are a bit mad. We are 1/4, they are 9/1 for the win.

Guy I work with was working at Arsenal when Unai was there. Says he's a really nice fella and would stop and chat with everyone and was really treated badly by the club. Still likes him even after the weekend's result!

They are very bad at podcasting - all talking over each other.

I would not be taking a draw. No easy games and all that, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't get much more straightforward than against a depleted team who've lost 4 in 5.

Also, doesn't this give us another record to break - most wins in a calendar year? Unai loves breaking records.

2 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

This weekends key fixtures:

Spurs away at Forest

Newcastle at home to an in-form Fulham

Arsenal have Brighton

United away to Liverpool

City v Palace

Hopefully a few go our way. Expect Arse, City and Plop all to win really, important we do too.

I find myself conflicted over the United v Liverpool game. I guess in this thread a Liverpool win would be good, but with my Title thread head on a draw would be better.

Do our job and see what happens. There's bound to be one upset over the weekend, just make sure it's not us. We'll need to be super focussed not to undo the work of last week.

3 hours ago, It's Your Round said:

I’ve been thinking the same. Do players really have such short attention spans?
I regularly attend 1-2 hour Teams meetings 3 or 4 times a day, and let me confirm that these are really boring. I’d love to attend a 90 min tactical lecture from the Don. 

I think this is one of the key things in the Emery revolution. The players all deserve huge credit for all accepting that they can (and will) learn from what Unai has to teach them. You'd maybe expect some not to get it, others not to buy in or hate the analysis etc, but they seem to have universally as a group gone all in. And it happened really quickly. Great teamwork and a sign of some strong leadership and togetherness in the dressing room. 

1 hour ago, JPAngel said:

I just wanted to pick up on the bit in bold, here.

When swapping out Leicester, Leeds and Southampton for Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton (in that order) our results from last season for all of our remaining fixtures this season equals 34 points (W10, D4, L8) and would leave us on 69 points. Weirdly, that's exactly in line with my pessimistic prediction for the rest of the season (W9, D7, L6) and would see us claim 5th but I'm quietly confident we can do better than that!

Interesting. I assume a fair few of those must have been during the Gerrard days, so there is almost certain to be improvement.

22 minutes ago, JPAngel said:

I'm not sure if this is any good to anyone but I'm far too excited about the prospect of getting into the Champions League and I needed an outlet.

I checked back over the last 10 or so years to get total point averages for finishing 4th and 5th (with 5th seeming likely to obtain CL football next year) to see where our current trajectory stacks up. On the chart below, the X axis is games played and the Y axis is points accrued.

As you can see, our current points total has us above where we need to be to reach the CL by around 5 points. Sometimes it's good to see things in the cold light of a spreadsheet!

For fun, I took a stab at predictions for the rest of the season. I know it's a fools errand but I wanted to see where we'd end up with some very conservative predictions and it puts us right in the middle of the average points for 4th and 5th. For context, I've not been wild with my estimates and have called the remaining games as: W:9, D:7, L:6. Crazy to think that winning just 9 of the remaining 22 matches (along with 7 draws) would see us amass a total of 69 points which would almost certainly be enough for 5th.

Crazy to say it, but that looks very pessimistic! Whichever way you look at it I can't see us getting 7 draws - it's not how we are set up. If you extrapolate season to date to the remaining 22, you get W15, D3 and L4, so 83 points. If you look at his entire time with us you still get W14, D3 and L5 for 80 points. And just for completeness, using just last season (which is kind of like-for-like timeframe), W13, D4 , L5 - 78 points. I'm sure someone has a spreadsheet to compare the remaining fixture points vs what we got last season, but I'd be surprised if it gave much of a different picture. 

Maybe injuries, europe/tiredness will come to bite us in the latter stages of the season, but while Newcastle/Spurs are already looking leggy, we're looking brilliantly managed so far. And maybe expectations are getting too high, but to finish mid-60's would be a pretty big drop-off from here.

24 minutes ago, Adman said:

Agreed.  How many times have we crumbled when winning, losing or drawing? We just look so composed and assured now whatever is happening on or off the pitch.

Unbelievable 

Yeah - the fact that we haven't dropped a single point after taking the lead in 11 games is extraordinary. Great, great mentality.