Chicken Field

Fins rhe critism of him to be hilarious. I've never seen fans be so critical of a coach before, without there being some obvious thing they have done wrong. I truly believe all the critism of him has only startet because of his hair, because the fanbase has absolutely no idea what his role truly is and how he is doing

That people are even attempting to blame Olsen for the goal is mind boggling to me, the fault lies 100% with Dendonkcer,  it was a terrible touch, terrible decision making and also a terrible attempt to give away a freekick, at least foul him before he reaches the penalty area instead of that half-arsed attempt, he gets sent of either way. 

Dendoncker has three options there, pass it to his left (where Olsen is clearly indicating him to pass it), pass it back to Olsen who hoofs it or hoof it himself. 

5 hours ago, stewiek2 said:

Swap deal for Messi. He'll want Emi's babies after Sunday, of he doesn't already for winning more with Argentina than ever before our hunk of loveable madman (aren't all great goalies a bit off their heads) came along. If Leo thinks winning with Argentina is high octane imagine finally winning us something after all these years? He can have his statue, after Unai and Emi's of course.

As for Coutinho. Played for a contract then went off the boil. Like god knows how many times I saw Hendroe do around contract renewal time.

A bit harsh as all reports say hes taken a massive wage cut. If he only wanted money hed stay at Barcelona and the go to some obscure league like mls or Saudi arabia 

5 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

I think the manager needs to give him more minutes on the pitch. Persisting with Watkins is clearly not working.

Play Archer or buy a CF and send Archer on loan.

Watkins has 4 competitive games since Gerrad left, 2 goals and an assist, I think it's a bit early to be saying "persisting with" and "clearly not working". 1 goal and 1 assist in two Emery games (against manure)

5 hours ago, MaVilla said:

i get your point, but i dont think thats entirely true.

Brighton spent 71m on these 8 players, from 1m to 18m (Cucurella - 18m, Mitoma - 3m, Caicedo - 5m, Trossard - 16m, Bissouma - 17m, Mac Allister - 8m, Gross - 3m, Lamptey - 1m)

we spent 83m on 7 players as follows: Traore - 18m, Wesley - 22m, Nakamba - 12m, Trezeguet - 10m, El Ghazi - 9m, Engels - 8m, Jota - 4m.

i know which of those two lists i would prefer.....in hindsight, and its not like most of our signings listed above were "exciting signings".

 

I think the point made was kind of what you are alluding to without knowing it. 

When fans stop supporting players, the players tend to lose confidence, resulting in them at best stagnating their development.

Our fanbase would not allow for players like caicedo, mitoma, trossard and mac callister the time and support that they need in order to develop. 

5 minutes ago, messi11 said:

I'd take Watkins over Ings, Calvin Lewin, Toney, Wilson, Antonio

In the cross bar challenge 
 

Dud you know he has outscored all of them in the prem the past two and a half years (toney will most likely overtake him) and assisted more that any of then except for antonio?

Impressive stuff

27 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Signing a backup of equal or similar quality to your first choice is near impossible unless you're prepared to pay over the odds in wages like City do.  What left-back in his prime and as good as Digne is gonna come here and sit on the bench?  Augustinsson clearly isn't good enough, but we probably didn't have many options, it's either that or a youth player who will sit on the bench and wait for his chance or an old-timer looking a few more years at the top like Young.

Signing backs-ups with equal quality can also affect players confidence, for example signing ings when we had watkins seems to only have caused issues for both of them, one is not match fit, neither seem comfortable.

Augustinsson was a cheap gamble who doesnt seem the have worked out, the situation is by no means a catastrophe 

And there were a bunch of people on here calling this guy slow... He's going to be a big player for us

This (and the brentford game) shows that the idea that we needed a total rebuild was BS, we need some fixes here and there but not a total rebuild

7 hours ago, Ingram85 said:

They clearly aren’t playing for the manager and have no idea what it is he wants them to do (does anyone). I think they see through him, have realised he has no idea what he is doing so are doing enough to stay out of serious danger while making it obvious that the manager needs to go. 

Summary: They are underplaying to show up Gerrard. 

Just my opinion. 

I dont  personally agree with this, i do feel like a majority of our players are putting in shits every game and are really trying. Its just they have no idea how to play in his "system" and are clueless on what to do

I think the risk in firing Gerrard is that most of our players seemingly really rate him and like him, might create a backlash. I would sack him today though

1 hour ago, Tom13 said:

Goals per minute is a lot more useful than goals per game also.

By my own calculations, which most likely are not entirely right. Watkins goals per minutes is better than Davis's

48 minutes ago, danceoftheshamen said:

To be quite honest I have always liked Keinan and knew there was a player in there once he had a run of games. He finally got that at Forest and helped them to promotion. He now looks like a very good Championship striker with potential to develop into a very good bottom half Premier League one. His finishing is coming on now, unlike Watkins who appears to be going backwards in that regard.

 

A bit harsh on Watkins, Watkins had a better goal per game record last season in all competitions than Davis did, whilst playing in a much stronger league, for a team that was struggling, whereas Davis played in one of the best teams in their league. I guess it would be interesting to see and compare their xG etc. 

3 hours ago, R.Bear said:

I still keep seeing posts like "with the players we have". What players are these? Our forward line is one of the worst in the league. Watkins can't finish, Ings is anonymous every game. Bailey has been shite, as has Ramsey. McGinn hasnt had a good game in years. We have some decent players but it seems Villa fans are overrating this squad to the extreme. We should be doing better yes but people need to take a moment and look at who we have actually got.

I know everyone is going to blame Gerrard of course but this isnt as good a team as people think it is at all, especially with the injuries right now.

I do to an extent agree that we have a tendency to overrate our players.

But the players you mentioned, Watkins has shown he can score goals in the league, Ings is one of the most consistent strikers in the premier league for the past many years before he joined us, (they are both former England internationals too) Buendia was in and around the Argentine national team, Coutinho needs no explanation, Bailey was one of the highest rated young winger in the world before he came here and so on.

The players are certainly not blameless but not one player has shown improvements under Gerrard and we should be doing better with the players we have. Not to mention that the more players Gerrard has signed, the worse we have looked.

10 minutes ago, AshVilla said:

Potter will be available soon.

I was surprised to see Potter go to chelsea, a squad that is falling apart (for their standards), meddling owner who reportedly wants the team to play with a four back, which they haven't bought players for (their transfer dealings have been abysmal and without any planning whatsoever) whilst Potter seems to prefer 5 backs. Wouldn't be surprised if his time at Chelsea is a total fiasco.

6 minutes ago, ozvilla28 said:

You can't say it's not common pattern through or isolated incident look at Sanson ,Traore and the Mings situation 

Wasnt mings just dropped for one game (where they even explained that he had a knock?)

Traore got a few opportunities and did nothing

With sanson and guilbert i suspect the situation is as simple as they arent good enough, been asked to find new clubs and told they wont feature but havent left because of their wages

In these situations I often think, what does Gerrard stand to win in this situation. If Guilbert is as good and professional as people on here make him out to be, then what does Gerrard stand to win by isolating him? 

Not fan a of Gerrard, dont rate him, but he and everyone around him are not complete idiots

21 minutes ago, Zatman said:

He played 25 games and Elmo 18, seems to be a myth on here he was Elmo backup

Guilbert didnt play in 8 of the last 10 games, altough this was also injury relatet

Did this guy not lose his spot to elmohamady in his one season with us, or am I remebering it wrong? 

Him and Sanson are most likely just simply not good enough, pretty simple stuff

44 minutes ago, burchy said:

I was never a fan of Potter’s possession based tactics previously as it was boring to watch and not overly affective. The few games I watched they just seemed to pass it side to side in defence without any forward momentum but I guess he was missing players in the final third at the time. 
 
I admit he does have something about him though so have warmed to the idea lately. Would love Poch here but if we could get Potter I think he’d do well. 

I think he’s got a bit of John Gregory about him, the way he just goes about things, his way, without pandering to the media. I think we could do with someone like that, knows his stuff but is no nonsense and takes it to the league with no prisoners. 

Gerrard has some of the above qualities, except the ‘knows his stuff’ bit, that’s the problem

I would absolutely love Potter here, I believe he has huge potential. But as you are alluding to, there is absolutely no way that our fanbase would be patient enough for Potter ball, he is obsessed with possesion and doesn't mind playing at a really low tempo. 

He forces poor footballers to play possession based, our fanbase would never be patient enough and accept our players learn and adapt to his style. Let alone accept Potter ball. 

to let him develop the players, let alone accept his playing style. 

36 minutes ago, John said:

You are 100% right that Fergie was much more experienced, but I cited him to show how close he came to being sacked, before they eventually had the success, that they had with him at the helm at Old Trafford. SG did well at Rangers in a comparatively short space of time and demonstrated ambition by taking our job when it arose, rather than staying up there, where as you say it had become a two horse race, albeit after having been a one horse race, before he took over at Ibrox. Our job was never going to be easy and it wasn't going to be a quick fix, as early results might have initially suggested, could have been the case. It is however, more than disappointing that we have had such a poor start to the season, although he hasn't quite had the rub of the green with the Carlos injury and has felt the loss of Michael Beale more, than probably even he had anticipated. He needs to add quality to the squad and to sort things out on the field, he needs time to do both, but time is a precious commodity, that seems to be fast running out for him to achieve both of those goals.  

I'm a bit caught up on this part. 

Since NSWE joined, we have been on an upwards trajectory, it stalled a bit in the last full season under Smith, followed by a horrendous start to the next season. We hit a little bump, but were still progressing overall. 

Was there need for a quick fix, or any fix at all? We had a young'ish squad with potential, we just needed someone to get us back on track and continue our progression, we did not need a fix. 

It's worrying, that all though I understand Gerrard's arguement that we needed quality, that with every quality signing he has made, we have actually regressed

5 minutes ago, thabucks said:

Does one bad managerial appointment mean he should lose his job - look at Levy’s record - 

Hoddle. Santini, Jol, Ramos, Redknapp, Villas-Boas, Sherwood, Pochettino, Mourihno, Espírito Santo and now Conte a fair to say a mixed bag … 

Im worried because of his history with other clubs, as well as it seemed 100% like Henry was his first choice when he hired Smith, and henry is a disaster of a manager

We knew what we were getting with Purslow, he's proven to be really good at the commercial stuff but useless at footballing stuff. Surely after chelsea and liverpool and now us, he sees that too. 

Stay with what your good at and let footballing people make footballing decisions

6 hours ago, paul514 said:

As pointed out in the FFP thread we aren’t anywhere near FFP thresholds or in danger of breaking the wage limits coming into play for FFP soon.

I seriously struggle to believe that, we have been premier leagues top 5 spenders the past 4 years, whilst only receiving Grealish money. Pretty sure adding digne, ings, coutinho, carlos, Kamara in the past year, all players on easily 100k plus, whilst having a bunch of deadweight we cant get rid of, will definitely be testing our wage limits. I am though no expert and am yet to read a reliable report on our current state

5 minutes ago, paul514 said:

It doesn't have to be to replace mings at all Carlos usually plays left centre back anyway. It could be a defender who plays RCB.

As for our wage structure exploding, it's in the top half of the table of wages spent.... so what?

Right now, we need to replace Carlos, as he'll be our for a long time.

I have no idea what our wages are relative to other teams, I'd be surprised if there are many teams outside the top 6 who spend more than us (I found one random list, where we are 8th, surrounded by two clubs that are skint). Doesn't matter though, as our wages spent should be relative to our own income, not what others spend, which most likely isn't the best of the rest yet, I am certainly unaware of any lucrative commercial income or anything other  massive incomes we currently have.

The amount of money we have spent since promotion has to be in the top 3 in the premier league I'd guess. All well looking at how much we have spent this summer, sadly in the real world, money spent in the past counts too.