babyblue

44 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Does he realize his team has been relegated?

I think it's more a comment on the fact he's been turning down contracts for several years now. We were 2nd in the league and he was turning it down, finishing 5th twice and winning an FA cup and turning it down. 

To be turning down contracts then, on the presumption you're going to end up at something VASTLY better, it's an odd move to end up somewhere lower than he was when he was turning down his contracts. 

But... I think it says more about his form in the last few years if he does end up with you. He's been horrendous, a player who can pop up with a bit of magic for sure, but good god he's not been close to he was form wise during his loan. 

Just now, Dale said:

If our illustrious coach hadn't fallen over, he'd have likely delivered their first title in decades. He did well there until he didn't. 

A three year shelf life is better than 6 games

Is it when he leaves you in such a shambles and worse off than when he took over. 

15 minutes ago, Zero7 said:

I'd go Rodgers, He's a top coach, really improves players and will untie a dressing room

Hoping that's intentional, if you mean unite... he's thrown every player under a bus, they hate him. 

15 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

It's 3 years for each club since Swansea. And apart from Liverpool he has been successful in all of them. And has a over 50% winning percentage as a manager, and is not yet 50.

We were great for a year and from that point onwards it's been a slow unravelling. He demands control and removed good club men from key positions, installing his own men and everything starts going to shit in those departments. He throws players under the bus left right and centre. 

We've done well thanks to individual brilliance from players like Maddison, Tielemans and Vardy and not his tactical ability. The football, outside of the first year has been utterly woeful. 

I hope to god you want him, it will save us £20m.

1 minute ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Would you swap him for Gerrard?

I'm not a masochist 

10 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

No doubt we have had a word with him.

He knows what happened to Parker, he wants the sack.

Odds are on its this man next for us.

And all Leicester fans will rejoice. 

The guy is a Grade A c***, who takes zero blame for anything, throws players under the bus to save himself. Has the tactical nouse of a frog, couldn't sign a good player if it bit him on the arse. 

Be warned, his shelf life is very very short. 

10 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

imagine how Leicester feel, not been that long since they won the premier league.. still feels weird saying that.

Second we sack the self serving hobbit in charge there will be a big upswing, have no fear. 
 

If any of you want him as manager, stay well clear of the poisonous dwarf.

5 minutes ago, PaulMcGrath_5 said:

Good post. Hoping we can follow in a similar way to Leicester in the next few years.

It just needs belief in your plan and the courage to stick to it. That's been one of the most admirable things since winning the league, the owners decided how we wanted to go about things and despite ups and downs they stuck to that blueprint.

You look at someone like Everton, huge investment all over the place. But it was as clear as day they didn't have any sort of plan of how they wanted to play or what their recruitment strategy was. Going from passing managers, to counter attacking managers, to long ball managers. Buying young players but not giving them time, buying old names and too many players coming down the football chain (from clubs like Barca) rather than getting hungry players on the up. They've wasted a huge amount of their owners money and money from player sales of their best players, and have nothing to show for it. 

11 hours ago, ChicagoVillan1983 said:

All these comparisons to Leicester. But what’s being strongly missed is the wealth of our owners… we don’t need the Jack money to reinvest. We are going to spend that money anyway. When FFP was somewhat real, sure. But we all know that’s out the window now the big clubs are in trouble across Europe…

If i own a Da Vinci, I could for sure sell it and buy several Picassos... But going from several Picassos to one Da Vinci is next to impossible because no one wants to sell one to me, EVEN IF I HAVE THE MONEY.

 

You know our owners are also mega rich? Unless you are paying people £200,000 / £300,000 a week, I'm afraid players are going to want to go. I can't see you doing that any time soon. 

15 hours ago, MarkLillis said:

of course the point is if they keep their better players they would have finished top 4.....

Kante, Chilwell ,Maguire Mahrez have all finished in the top 4 and played Champions league football with their new clubs since they left Leicester.

We had Chilwell, Mahrez, Maguire in the same team and finished mid table. The issue is here, players heads get turned and when they do performances drop off. Chelsea made Chilwell their best or second best paid player, silly money. And obviously offered him an opportunity to win stuff on a more regular basis, of course heads will be turned for that. 

Selling players isn't an issue if you do so smartly, rather than say a Southampton who lost their entire team in the space of two windows. You can't plan for that, we tend to buy a player with an eye on the fact someone in that position will be going a bit down the line. Also, if you hold on to them all, people will just start running down contracts to get out and you end up losing money. Players and agents will see you as awkward and could avoid joining a team who refuses to provide a pathway upwards. 

We don't want to sell our better players, but we're realistic. The reality of it is, there will always be clubs ahead of Leicester or Villa in the food chain, so you just embrace it and work around it, with the aim of becoming a Dortmund in the premier league I suppose.

We can't compete with oil money, so you have to be smart. 

1 minute ago, Keyblade said:

We say that, but I don't see Leicester in any hurry to sell Maddison and Tielemans and co. despite the rumours every summer. They sold Maguire because United came in with an absolutely absurd offer, as well as the fact that it's a lot easier to replace a CB.

We aren’t in a rush to, but ultimately if we get a bid and the player wants out, they are gone.

5 minutes ago, GENTLEMAN said:

Sure, if it comes to that. It becomes about milking every inch of the transfer and moulding the narrative.

But, I do not believe you can compare Grealish to Kante, Mahrez, or even Chilwell. If this was Konsa, Emi, McGinn or Watkins I would agree. Honestly, this is a unique situation.

I appreciate that, but players have left their boyhood clubs before.

I mean he’s still young, he could move and win everything and still come back in his prime if he wanted to after 4 years somewhere. 
 

It is just his choice, like Kane. Do you stay and not end up with a haul of meddles or go and win things.

Of course you can win things, of all fans we should know that. But it’s bloody difficult and far from certain. 

2 hours ago, av1 said:

Same bet applies mate 

If he had two years left I’d take you up. With a long time left, Villa can play hard ball and keep him even if it upsets the player. But it’s just delaying what’s usually the inevitable.

14 minutes ago, av1 said:

When this broke an hour so ago everyone in the office (all non villa fans) were trying to wind me up, I offered to take an even money bet with all of them that Jack would stay - sadly none of them took me up on it.

There is no doubt in my mind that he’s staying. We couldn’t replace the player with £100m, we couldn’t replace the commercial value, or the image selling him would portray.

You would have to be idiots to even entertain the idea, and thankfully the people now running our club are certainly not that. 

We've been through this enough ourselves recently. No matter how ambitious you are, or what you can offer, players want to play at the very top and win things regularly. We've won the league and FA cup recently, have billionaire owners, great facilities and pay good money... but if a big clubs, bid massive money, players will by eyeing that up. There is only so long you can fend off offers like this, that is the reality. 

It's down to the player, if he wants out then in the end you are better off just cashing in, because the second he's looking elsewhere they will lose an edge. The key is using that money wisely, it's not about replacing HIM. It's about improving 3 or 4 areas, so that you improve as a team. 

Losing Kante and Mahrez was massive and we've never replaced them as players. But we replaced Danny Simpson with Ricardo, Okazaki with Maddison etc.

Be nice to see a player say no, I want to stay at my boyhood club. But it's a rarity. 

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Both Leicester and Wolves play this game by nature - they sit and then counter - it looks like that's something Leeds will struggle with.

 

We’ve gone back to countering this season due to all of our injuries. We’ve not been a counter attacking team for over two years.

11 minutes ago, villaglint said:

No idea what to expect on Sunday but it's a long time since I went into these games against the top sides and thought we've every chance of getting  a result. 

If we don't get a few of these back injury free we're in trouble. 

Ricardo
Ndidi
Maddison
Praet
Evans
Soyuncu
Fofana
Amartey

(Getting excuses in early)

10 hours ago, It's Your Round said:

What’s happening with Maddison? Is he still injured or do you think he’ll play on Sunday?

Not been fit since end of last season, can play 20 minutes without breaking down again. Be lucky if he plays. 
 

We are threadbare so not expecting much!

On 09/10/2020 at 16:52, villalad21 said:

Leicester will be a good test to see where we stand.

Tell you what. If we blow them away, media will have to start taking us seriously.

We have a bundle of injuries, so I wouldn't get carried away. 

You remind me of us when we got promoted. Clearly got the makings of a good team, but somehow need to find the right combination of ingredients for it to click. We nearly got relegated with that though, it was only the signing of Huth and going three at the back that made it all click and the rest is history. 

Finding a mobile striker who can finish would be top of my list a the moment, you created problems (not sure how much of that was our new system, which gave so much space to overload out fullbacks). But without a reliable striker to get on the end of them, I can't remember Wesley even being close to getting on the end of anything. 

5 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Oh dear lord. 

Match of the day instead of Quest 

You wait until Jenas starts talking out of his arse about you and you'll be thinking of the good old days on quest. The standard of pundity on everything but Sky is the absolute pits.

Been very impressed with this lad second half of the season when I've seen you play. Him, Jack and McGin all stood out

3 hours ago, mjmooney said:

We say that, but look at Wolves. With the right buys, we may surprise even ourselves. 

Wolves went up with 23 more points and a team clearly far too good for the league, with an agent sending players far too good for them in their direction. You never know, but I wouldn't be looking at Wolves and thinking that could be us next year. It will take a good few years to get your squad up to the right level.

Congrats by the way.

23 hours ago, DCJonah said:

I can live with it to an extent. Dwight yorke, barry, milner, benteke, young etc.. we know when a player is too good for us. While that hurts, you know money can be reinvested to try and improve and bring in new players. 

The thing that makes me angry with jack, is that this won't be the case. We will be selling him to just make the accounts better. 

That's how most teams survive now sadly. Getting value for money (buy low, sell high) and producing your own talent is top of the agenda as the money keeps people going.

7 minutes ago, AndyM3000 said:

Ashley Young had 1 year left on his contract and went for 17m to Man Utd and that was when we weren't dealing with silly transfer fees like we are now. Grealish has a lot more potential than he did and he's been playing in the worst Villa team I have ever seen, Young was good but had a lot of help from star players around him.

Grealish is easily worth 25-30m and it's not even close. Spurs paid 30m for Sissoko and 15m for Llorente.

All three you've mentioned were premier league footballers, Young had proven himself at the in a top 6 premier league team. Llorente played for a team who had zero financial worries, it's nigh on impossible to force a premier league team to sell like teams used to, because they don't need the money. Spurs went in to panic mode for Sissoko and bid that on the back of some great performances for France that summer.

I just feel the odds are stacked against you in terms of getting the sort of fee you think he's worth selling for.