Godders

I am also genuinly interested in @mykeyb reasons for reaching this conclusion. Adding to what Stevo has said, Bruce has proved time and again that he gets teams promoted from this league, most recently last year, so I'm also genuinely interested to understand what has changed in 10 months to suggest that next season, Bruce could be the "wrong man in charge" if priority number 1 is promotion.

I dunno. It doesn't necessarily sit right with me logically that a certain style of play will work in one league and not another. I suspect the main reason why there doesn't tend to be one-touch, tiki-taka style football in the Championship is because to play that style, you need players with an exceptional touch, exceptional technique, exceptional decision-making abilities and exceptional vision. Really, you need exceptional players. These players will naturally rise to the top of the game. So while we may get lucky and have 2 or 3 or 4 in the squad at one time, it would be very difficult for a Championship club to keep hold of them for any reasonable amount of time to be able to build a squad capable of playing that style- those players will head off to the bigger Prem/European clubs before too long. Especially since that's the style of football that seems to be en vogue.

If you're talking about Fulham, don't forget we play them so really we should be looking at it like we'd be 4 off them with 4 to go... At the moment I think we should be looking at Sheff Wed as the benchmark. We could well be 6 points off them with 5 to go on Saturday night

MON's glass ceiling with us was 6th in the Premier League and a spot in Europe. If that's what one dimensional, counter-attacking football gets you, then I, for one, am all for it. Only then would we need to worry about whether or not it's good enough to get us into the top 4/Champions League.

No, but I'm sure we could get a chant going "30%? You're having a laugh" Followed by "You don't know what you're doing!"

Us Villa fans are a strange bunch, I'd hate to think what opinion visiting supporters to this forum have of us. We're top of the form table, we've one of the best home records in the country, and we're on our longest winning run in God knows how long. Villa fans: "But we're not winning in the right way!" Our new owner has splashed the cash and made sure we've secured the services of some of the proven best players in the league. Players who, judging by the transfer threads, most here were excited to see come in. Villa fans: "Our squad is rubbish. These players aren't good enough for us!" The club takes pretty swift action to sack an underperforming manager, despite him only just being appointed and having a Champions League title under his belt. In his place the club employs someone who has been promoted 4 times out of this league, someone who knows exactly what it takes to get out of here. Villa fans: "The manager's a dinosaur. Tactically inept. We really should have gone for (insert name of inexperienced manager here) who got (insert name of rubbish club here who won a couple of games about the time we were looking to replace RDM) playing progressive football." I'm nervously excited about the game tonight because I want us to the flicker of the playoff dream alive. I can't remember the last time I was nervously excited for a Villa game! And don't forget, we have a flicker of hope for the playoffs still, despite effectively giving the rest of the league a half season head start after the effect of our 2 awful runs. As TRO always goes to great pains to point out, we're a work in progress. We're only just starting out on this journey. If we're going on these sorts of winning runs this early into it though, I can't wait to see where this journey ends. I'm firmly strapped in and readily looking forward to the roller coaster that's ahead of us.

My old man's a spurs fan. I just asked him "would you mind Spurs playing boring, long ball football if it meant winning the champions league?" his response was "we could field 11 goalkeepers for all I care if it meant we won the champions league". Turns out some of them would trade for the right price.

Yes, you are exactly right. Most here seem to be able to grasp that the most important thing to be a good team in football is to score more goals than your opponents score against you. Some though seem to think that having more of the ball is more important.

Well done. Cracking argument. Almost has me coming round to your way of thinking. Just to put this one to bed though, I was interested in exploring exactly how much of a relationship there was between possession and league points scored. So I've looked at the data for the Premier League, Championship, La Liga and Bundesliga and plotted points per game (to allow for the difference in games played between the teams) and average possession across the season. I then calculted the coefficient of correlation (if you're not aware of what this is, it shows how correlated one set of data is to another. It ranges from 0 to 1 with 1 being perfectly correlated, 0 meaning there is no relationship at all). For comparison I also did the same with goal difference per game as well. The findings: Possession vs PPG = 0.534 GD per game v PPG = 0.900 So while there does appear to be some correlation between league success and possession, there is a far greater siginficant correlation between goal difference per game and league success. If I were a football manager, statistically it seems I would get far more success concentrating on getting my team to concede less goals and/or score more goals than I would be getting them to keep more of the ball. It seems Steve Bruce may actually know what he's doing, despite you wanting a more possession based game.

No, I'm afraid I don't. I didn't realise there was different kinds of possession depending on which teams we're talking about. I must admit I assumed that possession means the amount of time the team controls the ball, which as has been pointed out, doesn't on it's own translate to results. I think you may be falling foul of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here. Have you stopped to think about why the top teams have more possession? I would bet my bottom dollar that a not insignificant amount of the possession comes from the fact that the teams set up defensively when playing them because they expect a tough game. I.e. high possession is a result of successful performances. Not a driver of successful performances. A simple test of this is whether a top team playing another top team has the same amount of possession as they would against a lesser team. If it was style of play (i.e. what your suggesting, that a possession based game is the only way to get success in this sport) then Liverpool should dominate games against both Sunderland and Barcelona at Anfield. That wouldn't be the case though. Barcelona would dominate the game.

Think about what you're suggesting here. I mean really think about it. Consider a team that spends 90 minutes passing the ball between their keeper and the back 4. I've just shown you a team that likely averages far more than 50% possession a game. Have I just shown you a winning team though? Absolutely not. If the ball's not getting out of the defence, the best this team can hope for is a 0-0. Evey game. Possession stats in isolation means f**k all. So calling for minimum 50% possession at home is absolute bollocks. You, as well as all other Villa fans, would be up in arms if we became that team passing it around the defence in order to have more possession. Now consider a team playing the tiki-taka defenders. They could sit back for 15 minutes at a time, then nick the ball, leg it up towards their goal and carve out an opportunity. This is a team that will win with far less of the ball, because, importantly, they are the only team that has had the ball in a dangerous area. If you want to focus on possession then, a far more important stat to look at is the difference in possession in and around the opponents area. Not possession as a whole. Perhaps you could show us those possession stats to better support your argument that we need to control the ball better at home?

Man City were a solidly mid-table prem team when they were taken over. Their new owners spent silly money that summer. They finished 10th in their first season under new ownership. Mid-table. Zero improvement on previous seasons despite the money spent. Do you really mean to say that that 10th place finish has hurt them as a club? Because in spite of that first season with no apparent improvement in the league, I'd say they've kicked on to become one of the best clubs on the continent. Perhaps it goes to show that instant success, or lack thereof, does not necessarily indicate a bleak future of mediocrity or worse.

What, slowly heading towards a prolonged period of massive upheaval and uncertainty after being sold a bunch of lies by those in charge? I hope it's not like Brexit!

Fair enough. I'd much rather see us 7th playing horrible stuff, for the very simple reason that winning all the games we need to finish 7th shows that we're doing something right. I want my team to do the best that they can do, and in this sport that means winning games. At least until the FA introduce extra points for artisitic performance. You may not like it, it may not be pretty to watch, but you cannot argue with the fact that something in the grand scheme of things must be going right to finish 7th. And to do it consistently over the course of the season I would argue shows that Steve Bruce knows what it is. I'd take 7th over 15th any time you ask me, regardless of how we're playing football.

Not really I'm afraid: You're emphasizing performance over results here, so I'm taking that to mean you wouldn't mind seeing us relegated as long as we're playing attractive football But now, you want us to win despite how we're playing, so you're emphasizing results over performance.

Would you rather get promoted playing rubbish football, or be relegated playing beautiful football?

Genuine question JE, if we win tonight, would you be willing to concede that Bruce maybe shouldn't be sacked at the moment?

As much as I've had a fair bit of entertainment reading this thread over the last few weeks, it might be worth defining what you think 'decent' is. If only to stop some here defining decent as "consistently in the frame for the ballon d'or", and then using it as a stick to beat Bruce with for the next few pages.

Wow, what a difference 90 mins makes. 7.30pm on Tuesday and we're all chuffed with the business the club's done in the window. 10pm and Steve Bruce is a dinosaur, past it, with no clue and who won't take us anywhere. Liverpool are in a worse run of form than pretty much any other team in the country. I guess Klopp is also a washed up has-been with no clue as to how the modern game is played. Lets give SB the time he needs to get the new players on his (and each others) wavelength before jumping to conclusions.

Sooo... Any news on signings?

Possibly like this: +100% != +100%

If he signs today, I would expect the medical to be fairly soon. I would think he'd probably want to be at the game tonight, so would be need to be done at the Hospital this afternoon.

Who's the third in then? Taylor is in as part of the Ayew deal, and I'm assuming Hogan is one of the 99 or 95%, so who's the other? I don't think its Bedeau as I would expect the good doc to show that as a sale and loan back.

Gueye, when he joined, openly spoke about using us as a stepping stone to better things, and he played pretty well for us. If Hogan is hungry for premiership football, then when he joins us he'll be putting in the performances just as much as others in the squad I'm sure, both trying to get us promoted and to play himself into the shop window.

I wouldn't be so sure. Wasn't there talk of 3 teams when Xia took over- one to get us up, one to keep us up, and one to get us to Europe? That would suggest this is the "get us up" team and the changes will be rung where applicable once we're back up.