Mark Albrighton

Apparently Targett has had his medical, according to my mate currently doing the villa park tour.

I would describe it as either a very big village or a very small town....they seem to be sticking thousands of houses there so it’s expanding. Probably due to it’s relative closeness to Telford. Not as picturesque as, say, Ironbridge or Much Wenlock, but it’s decent and convenient. Quite a few pubs, we were in 5 of them last night, but could have chosen from 3 or 4 more. As such I feel terrible and will spend the day recovering. Managed to get drunk enough to pluck up the courage to ask for a woman’s number though, so will spend some of the day contemplating how I will now proceed in making an idiot out of myself.

We’re operating in a market where Man Utd are paying £50m for a right back with a single season under his belt. I’m not getting too hung up on £14m - £17m.

Fulham supposedly tried to buy him for £15m last year, Southampton apparently wanted £20m. Not dissimilar to the Mings situation we appear to find ourselves in now. So inflated all these prices may be, but they’re at least pretty consistent, it suggests the numbers aren’t too ridiculous.

Now that is a surprising revelation about, well I assume, Martine.

Maybe if he felt that Reo-Coker was particularly asking for it that day he’d be inclined

Birthday beers tomorrow in Shifnal with a couple of mates. Nothing too crazy - have a bigger get together planned for next weekend, a joint birthday thing with another mate (really just an excuse to go out, catch up and have a few drinks). Tomorrow will be the warm up. Sunday, recover and maybe paint a few doors/other jobs around the house.

In reality I don’t think people are as far apart in their views on Bruce as they appear. I think most agree he did some good here, pretty much everyone agrees he got a fair bit wrong. The nuances of it all are where there’s an issue. The signings under his tenure were hit and miss (putting it simply I make it about 12 “good” ones and 10 “bad” ones....there is some wiggle room for either side). If a few of the bad/seemingly unnecessary signings didn’t cost so much and Bruce hadn’t pleaded poverty at every available opportunity, people wouldn’t be as quick to criticise him. As for results, it’s not that surprising to see his time here divides opinion, the form we had under him was very Jekyll and Hyde. You can look at the results in order and see, first 12 games in charge brought in 24 points, the following 9 brought 2 points. The 8 games after that we won 7 and lost once, followed by a stuttering end to the season after that promising run. That was just the first 6 or so months. The following season had similar all or nothing patches of form. Unfortunately the start of the season just gone, Mr Hyde was very much in charge. I have the impression he’s well thought of at Hull and Small heath - probably a bit less so now at sha. He’s not well thought of at Villa & Sunderland. The other clubs he’s managed, I don’t know, probably not there long enough to have a good idea. It’ll be interesting to see where on the appreciation spectrum he ends up for Wednesday.

From the limited amount of research I’ve done, he appears to be the one who was most successful, by a fair distance. I was really just on about the most recent former manager who has had a bit of glory after leaving us.

Only found out today that there’s a completely different ending to “little shop of horrors” to the one I watched as a kid. It’s shaken my world view.

Not really. If you went further and asked who was the last Villa manager who left us and went on to have genuine, tangible success elsewhere, it’s even more of a struggle. Tommy Docherty maybe? Won the FA cup in 1977 with Man Utd after leaving us (admittedly he had been relegated with Man Utd before the cup win).

Yep confirmed by Forest.

Just skimmed through this thread and I can’t see any mention of “The Day of the Jackal”. Fantastic film.

Ah memories, like the corners of my mind.

I couldn’t give a flying **** about who’s a bigger club. It’s one of the most embarrassing conversations that’s had by supporters of any club, in my opinion. But if a club, such as ourselves, who pride ourselves on our “history” have it pointed out that most of our honours have been achieved when colour photography was but a pipe dream, then Newcastle United who pride themselves on their attendances will have their general locale in relation to other clubs pointed out to them.

Think we essentially sold Ayew for Taylor + cash didn’t we? Player + cash deals aren’t that frequent, but it feels like we’ve been involved with our fair share of them.

Edit - Beaten to the council cuts the grass once a year joke.

In terms of performance relative to cost, Elmo’s been one of our best signings since being in the Championship. I think he’s going to feature regularly in the match day squads next season.

In fairness, elsewhere on this site useless has posted an article that linked us with a move for El Ghazi back in 2016 - under RDM. Now who knows who suggests what signings, did the manager spot him, was he recommended by an agent etc. But factoring in the Kalinic deal that went through three years after we first tried, with basically no senior management still at the club from the time of that first attempt, it does suggest that there’s some sort of portfolio of potential targets that is kept on file, looked at by the management team and finalised and approved by the necessary people. Anyway, nice goal Elmo.

No idea how good this Wan-Bissaka is, but £50m is a hell of a lot of money for a player who has played one full season in his career. It’s transfers like this that make the debate over whether we should pay £15m or £20m for Mings seem insignificant.

Yes that is a fair point, their ages would factor in. Look at it this way, last summer Bristol City were happy to let Joe Bryan leave for £6m. We know they were happy because of their celebratory tweet when Bryan completed his move to Fulham. Fast forward less than 12 months later and their centre half is now valued at £30m. Now I don’t know if this fella is any good, I don’t watch Bristol City play. But I’m wondering whether his stock is indeed 5 times as much as Bryan’s was last year.

How much do you think we would have demanded for Chester out of interest? I’d be surprised if it would have been much higher than £10m-£12m. Likewise Kodjia. I’m using them as examples as, along with Jack, they were probably our most “sellable” players.

It’s not meant to be an extensive look at how good Butland is. One of the notable selling points of Etheridge that was being quoted when we were being linked to him was the number of clean sheets he amassed last season, despite Cardiff’s relegation. Zatman suggested that Butland performed poorly in Stoke’s relegation season, so I wanted to see how he compared with Etheridge in that regard. An attempted like for like comparison on that stat alone.

For rough comparison purposes - Etheridge played 38 games last season, conceded 61 goals and kept 10 clean sheets. In the season stoke were relegated, Butland played 35 games, conceded 60 goals and kept 6 clean sheets. Last season, Butland kept 18 clean sheets from 45 appearances which was the third best in the Championship (Henderson at Sheff Utd and Randolph at Boro had 21 and 19 respectively).

I’d like to think so, but I think as someone has mentioned, the right to light for the houses on the Witton Lane side might be an issue.