DakotaVilla

5 minutes ago, Tom13 said:

Very simple view. If a defender is winning you more points than he's losing you because of excellent passing, why is one more important than the other?

Totally agree. Also football has moved on. At the highest level, you can’t have the luxury of having any player that can’t contribute to the attack in a significant way anymore - and that includes goalkeepers. 

It’s a very realistic outcome that we could have champions league qualification all but confirmed by a week on Thursday. 

Mings would play instead of Carlos in this current set up and it would be a huge upgrade. 

4 hours ago, duke313 said:

Didn’t we just scrape by FFP? Obviously we had no room to sign those positions without making a major sale. 

We bought one of the highest rated youth prospects at RB in Europe in January. We gambled on defensive midfield but equally I suspect we were unable to agree a move for one of our top DM targets. We will obviously reinforce there in the summer but profile again is likely to be a high potential youth player or maybe an experienced pro on a free. 

We don’t have to worry about Man Utd. Due to goal difference they now need 4 wins and a draw to pass us. 
 

That leaves t-h-r-e-e games of wiggle room. They literally have to win every single game left including games v Liverpool and Arsenal and hope that we lose nearly every single game remaining. It’s pretty much statistically impossible based on how both teams have played to date this season. 

It’s also very likely he has no real inside knowledge of our PSR situation. That info is about as sensitive as it gets and the club won’t be sharing it with a young reporter pup like Tanswell. 

He was in a similar situation last season I think and managed the disciplinary tightrope very well. Just needs to avoid anything silly. 

We don’t have to sell a first team player in the summer unless anyone is ITK. 

It’s likely our spend in the summer will be limited though. 

Basically they **** up his screw in the foot and will have to do it again. I’d be **** livid, if I was him. 

Just now, VILLAMARV said:

Some of us have got this at least

And then he rubbed his arse in your face and pretended he never played for the club.

Not a single positive thing has ever happened in my lifetime when a Villa player has played for England. 

1 hour ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Minor quibble but 1995-96: 4th in the league, league cup winners and FA Cup Semi finalists  for me is still a benchmark- am not sure Conference League tops the League Cup, especially in thatbera of the 90s when it was taken seriously. 

Fair point but champions league qualification would be a huge difference between the two seasons. For me, a European trophy would always have more prestige than the league cup but appreciate others may feel differently. Either way it will be a standout season

This is getting silly now. We will finish a minimum of fifth. Hopefully four wins will be enough to get us fourth. 
 

If we get the extra champions league spot then that means we can fully prioritize the conference league semi finals and final which would make us huge favorites to win that trophy. 
 

A trophy and champions league qualification would be our best season since we won the European Cup and the best thing would be that we all know that Emery is just getting started. 

Assuming Ramsey is still not fit the big question is who plays to support Luiz, McGinn and Tielemans in midfield. Do we go with Zaniolo or Rogers to match physicality of Brentford or do we play our own game and go with Diaby. 
 

I’d probably prefer to start with Diaby as he could win us the game as per wolves. 

From what I can see he played well despite the pathetic defending in the wall. He’s playing a very important squad role when you consider his goals v west ham, performance v wolves etc. Helping to manage the absence of Ramsey. 

Yep. No sense at all in risking it all when the upside was one point v city and we’re not in the title race versus prioritizing 3 points v Brentford and winning the first leg v Lille. Absolute no brainer and Spurs gifted us the opportunity to take the “free hit” with their draw v west ham. 

We may well need his physicality against this dirty Brentford team

2 hours ago, Tom13 said:

Every game is winnable, should have started.

Some games are far more winnable than others. No point in risking it all for 1 point v city when we only have to win 4 games v Brentford, Bournemouth, Chelsea and pick up a win somewhere else. Emery’s the very accomplished and successful professional here and he made the call on his 20 years+ experience at the highest levels.
 

He’s made it abundantly clear through this selection that our aim now is to secure champions league qualification (I suspect he doesn’t really care if it’s 5th if we get the extra place) and to win the conference league. 

1 hour ago, Tayls said:

What does this mean? 

That penguins like cornflakes for dinner. It’s complete bollocks. Especially when you consider that under our winning run at the end of last season we pretty much always lost on XG. 

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

Only once in our last 7 PL games have we won on xG. That was against Forest. Unlike the season up to that point where we were winning games on xG and on scoreboard

We will be found out soon if we don't improve our performances. 

Fortunately games are won on grass not in excel. They should invent a meaningless stat that defines “grit” as you’ll have seen plenty of that in recent games. 
 

The ridiculousness of xG as the king of stats is shown by the wolves game. They had one chance and apart from 20 minutes we totally controlled that game barely getting out of third gear at times. XG would tell you a very different and incorrect story though. 

Most of the players live in Bahrain and commute due to the more relaxed rules there. For 500k+ week tax free for 3 to 4 years I think he’d be absolutely fine. 

Some wishful thinking going on in this thread. Jack’s transfer was the rare deal that worked for all three parties and all three would do the same deal again 100 times over.

Jack will make over 150m from the deal (including the endorsements he’s since signed) and will get another mega deal no doubt when he leaves for Saudi or whichever club can afford him next and he played a key role in winning the treble.

Man city won the treble and marketed the crap out of Jack. They’ve made a lot of their outlay back in commercial deals and shirts etc.

We were desperate for the money in hindsight and had to sell or we would have had severe PSR issues. 100m was a kings ransom and allowed us to rebuild. 

Good luck to him but we probably couldn’t afford him back even if we wanted him and the reality is that there are better value deals to be done.

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Might be silly but I'm actually excited to see how we approach the game without Ollie.

I expect Duran to be thoroughly fired up ( Hopefully not red card levels ).

Opportunity for a few of them to really step up and be counted!

He has unfinished business against City .. let's hope this time that scorcher goes in!

It’s going to be a thunder bastard of a goal or a red card or maybe both. The footballing equivalent of a bag of revels. What’s not to like!

26 minutes ago, GlobalVillan said:

@DakotaVilla is doing exactly that. 

Totally moot conversation as it’s not going to happen and the hall will fall into disrepair in any case considering how broke the council is.