Indigo

Couldn't agree any more, not to say that we aren't all susceptible to it as I found myself getting frustrated with Green a lot when he came on tonight, but perspective is important. Despite how poor we were on the whole the season before last, I'd like to think he performed well enough himself for us to cut him a bit of slack after the nightmare of a season he had last year. He has his obvious faults, he wouldn't still be here if they didn't exist, but facts are he has a real x-factor at this level that can carry a team that can be as uninspired as ours. Love the guy and have been baffled by the backlash after only a few games this season up until now.

No way of knowing how much the injury has effected him long-term, but it's certainly worth the risk I'd say. Maybe doesn't bring much in terms of directly scoring himself but he offers some unpredictability and the ability to actually carry us up the pitch which outside of Grealish we can sometimes struggle with. Getting Targett in with him would be brilliant business and wouldn't leave us far off challenging at all on paper.

Swore I read that Bruce said we were looking at getting 2-3 in and that we were light up top so a winger and a striker are the priority? Seems strange that we're then linked to Clark and Hayden in that case.

Agreed with this, not even particularly big on stats personally but there's a reason why most of them from yesterday point to him being our most influential player in terms of actually getting on the ball, passing, bringing us up the pitch etc. He was our only attacking player in the game that was constantly involved and that it didn't pass by at some stage over the course of the 90.

And I think the novelty factor is leading to McGinn's performance being a tad overrated here. Opinions eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Could definitely make a case for it given the balls in he provided directly leading to goals, just think Jack offered more than anyone in general play. Was constantly involved through the 90 minutes and always carried us up the pitch when others couldn't. Splitting hairs though really.

Far and away the best player on the pitch today and simply too good for the league.

Was pretty good today, great deliveries. Thought the game passed him by at times in general play and he had a few lackluster passes when we were trying to break but a strong debut on the whole and can only see him getting better from here.

You can definitely blame a professional footballer for not being capable of weighting a simple back pass properly whilst also acknowledging that he shouldn't be playing there anyway. It's more Bruce's fault if Jedinak gets caught out of position due to not being comfortable at CB, not when he can't manage to do something you'd expect of literally every player on the pitch regardless of where they play.

Two starting 11s in a row where you could arrange them into at least a couple of different formations based on the fact that whatever the case players are going to be played out of position. I'm presuming it's the same 4-3-3 with Tuanzebe at right back and BB as the holding midfielder though. Would much rather Tuanzebe at centre back, I know we're fed the line that he can play in a number of positions but that is clearly his strongest one. He can do a job at elsewhere but when we have about 4 actual right backs I'm not sure what the point in playing him there is, particularly when we have a defensive midfielder seemingly going to play where he should be. If he's not going to be trusted as a CB then why bother even signing him. Still a strong enough side on the whole though, I don't think a midfield of Jack, Hourihane and McGinn works so it's probably going to often be a case of a choice between the latter two. No harm in having some good options off the bench either.

We'd be mad to let Adomah go when - as well as Elmo did last night - him and Green are the only wingers at the club.

I think we need another striker in regardless but basing it off Kodjia tonight is a bit harsh on him. We can't spent the majority of the night berating the style Bruce implemented whilst also criticising Kodjia for his performance. One incident aside where he was as selfish as he usually tends to be is all you can say about him really, otherwise we played long which didn't suit him in the slightest and essentially relied on Hull making mistakes for us. As a striker, if he scores we're ordinarily not going to complain about his performance and the fact that we didn't create a single opportunity for him (outside of that blocked shot in the first half that he had no space to get off) should be of most concern really. We can't rely on set-pieces and right backs doing the job for us every week.

Could easily be either a 3-5-2/3-4-3 or a 4-3-3, would prefer the latter but if that's the case Elmo as an attacking player doesn't exactly fill you with confidence and you'd wonder why he wouldn't just play Green on the left and Adomah out right.

Would be a great signing if we could pull it off. It's good for Hutton that he's been able to transform his reputation and to his credit he's put in a decent shift at left back, but if he can be improved upon then we should jump on it and Bryan would surely provide that.

Is Nyland coming in on a permanent rather than a loan? Assuming it happens, of course. Can't say I know anything about him, and when have YouTube highlights ever been reliable sources of information when it comes to keepers in particular, but I find it encouraging all the same that he at least seems to have a bit of pedigree. Not that I have any knowledge of the Norwegian national team but it's interesting he's managed to amass the amount of caps he has considering Rune Jarstein is the first choice for what's been a decent Hertha Berlin side for the last few seasons. Whatever the case there's a lot of ifs and buts but we're getting the makings of a decent team going. Needless to say a lot of that hinges on what happens with Jack though. Still think we desperately need at least another winger in, Adomah and Green are good but we can't afford to have those two as our only actual wingers and rely on the likes of Elmo to deputise in case of injuries or suspensions.

Desperately hoping he doesn't go for a 3 at the back, we really don't have the personnel for it right now and he'd only be shoehorning lads into certain positions for the sake of it. I think the 4-3-3 that's been posted a few times in here is definitely the way to go, more or less picks itself for the most part and should be good enough to beat Hull...saying that I've the feeling we may have to settle for a scrappy draw.

I think we can get too bogged down on the finer details on the merits of certain signings sometimes. Ultimately none of us are going to be complaining about the lack of resale value of 4-5 signings who're in their late 20s/early 30s if they're going to contribute to us getting promoted, the same works for the criticism of "improving other teams' young players rather than our own" that we may take in on loan. The step up from the Premier League to the Championship is such that to have any hope of competing again up there we'd have to sign a significant number of players again upon getting promotion anyway, we'd have to do EXTREMELY well in our current predicament to bring in signings that tick both boxes. Snodgrass as an example might be 32 or whatever he is, but he's a demonstrably top player in this league and we're that light on wingers as it stands that I've been a bit bemused to see people turn their noses up at the idea of him coming in again (granted it's apparently not going to happen now). Same with say a Tuanzebe, yeah he'll only go to United at the end of his spell, but in the (entirely unlikely) event we get promoted and he played a part in it I don't think we could legitimately complain that he denied someone like Suliman getting minutes.

Also worth noting that Tuanzebe was played out of position for the bulk of his time at Villa. Would be happy enough with him coming in to play next to Chester. Not sure about all this talk of Powell being imminent, I saw someone on one of the supporters pages on Facebook say their mate said they saw photos of him in a Villa kit today and from what I can tell that's the only update on the rumour, if you could even call it that.

Not much to go off that tweet really, on that basis it could be any of Gray/Ulloa/Abraham/Gayle/Bamford/Wells/Ings/Hugill, maybe more. Some more realistic and desirable than others but at this point I wouldn't really turn my nose up at any of them tbh.

Hahahaha Jed Steer, man. It would be Villa to prove the common cliche of "you can't read too much into pre-season" wrong, that was irrefutably awful. Cannot make sense of the system really, I started watching with about 5 minutes gone and at that point looked as though it was a 5 at the back with Hutton as the right sided centre back, then went 4-3-3 with him at RB and Elmo on the wing, then they swapped...what's going on.

I refuse to believe this is anything other than tongue in cheek. Not even these subsequent seasons could make me warm to Sherwood even slightly, he is and was awful.

He's definitely nothing special, but from what I've seen he's handily the best at actually keeping it on the ground and maintaining possession.

Going to a back four should improve things, if only by an insignificant amount. Although as much as I've not yet turned on Ayew I don't think he really works anywhere but down the middle in a 4-3-3, he wanders too much otherwise. If you're going with a back three I think Chester has to play in the middle simply because he's the most composed and capable of playing out from the back.

Finding the use of this formation confusing, still absolutely baffled as to what Bacuna has ever done to convince several managers that he's capable of playing in the middle. Adomah has been just about the only semi encouraging sign, and even then he's being completely stifled due to being deployed as a wing back, which is just - again - confusing.

Thought he was the best player on the pitch yesterday, aside from Martin beating him to a flick-on to put Ince half through he didn't put a foot wrong. Looks as dependable as Elphick whilst also being a bit more comfortable on the ball than him.