Enda

I don’t think a flexible 3-4-3 is out of the question either. Could you imagine if we added Torres to our back three, Tielemens to our midfield, and Chiesa to our front line? Massive improvement.

Emi Konsa Mings Torres —————————————Moreno Tielemens Kamara Luiz McGinn—————————Ramsey Watkins That formation there doesn’t work, it has obvious problems, but some variant with more protection on the right could be what Emery is thinking.

Down with this sort of thing.

Give us your best prediction on the state of play 12 months from today!

I literally quoted lines from our financial accounts

Our wages were £119m for the financial year ended May 2022 not including social security costs, the same amount as the previous year, but 27% above the prior year. There has been significant wage growth since the Championship days. Back to that £119m. Allowing £15m for admin staff and youth players, that leaves £2m a week for the first team players. I haven’t seen Kortney’s wage slip but I would very very surprised if a senior player who had a contract extension was getting less than 1% of the wage bill. That would be £20,000 a week. Football Manager, for what it’s worth, puts his wages at £35,000 a week. That seems about right when the total wage divided by 25 players is an average of £80,000. No way is he on £8k imho.

He’s on at least £20k per week. At least.

There’s been discussion about nuclear weapons on this thread, and there was consensus that Putin would not use them. Joe Biden doesn’t necessarily agree. I’m on my phone here so can’t do a fancy link, but the headline of this Reuters piece is: Biden says threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is 'real' https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-threat-putin-using-tactical-nuclear-weapons-is-real-2023-06-20/

Hi @limpid, thanks for the prompt reply. It is the same issue. It was previously once a day for me. This was easy to ignore and not enough for me to annoy you about. Now it is after every page refresh which makes the site very hard. Unfortunately it’s not as simple for me as “turn off Adblocker” because it’s the whole browser. There’s no extra Adblock option here. I’d have to totally change browsers.

For me, using Brave on iOS, it is now coming up after every page click.

No. He is struggling in the Spanish second division. That tackle ruined his career, and he is absolutely miles and miles off the pace.

I think we will need to, and therefore Emery will, have tweaks to our formations next year. Otherwise teams will figure us out and we’ll be too predictable. For example we might go more 4-3-3 with Tielemans as an 8 and Luiz and Kamara slightly more defensive minded.

The truth is somewhere in between us. Deliberate and violent conduct is a red, as you say, and we agree that’s not a fair description of what Mings did. However a tackle that endangers the safety of an opponent, or uses excessive force or brutality, is also a red.

For Gakpo, he got the ball. It was a foul, and a sending off (dangerous play is a red card), but it’s a hell of a stamp if he manages to gets ball and man in one go. Seems more likely to me it was a very heavy challenge that caught the player.

A little tournament of Premier League friendlies in the US. Build up the brand over there.

Much of muchness imho. If I were you I’d do DC and make the Villa match a part of seeing the White House and visiting the Air & Space Museum and all that. Gives the kids a big memory that they will associate Villa with.

He’d be a starter for about 8 PL teams, and a good squad option for another 8 (including us). Would not blame him one bit if he wanted to leave for more minutes. We’d be lucky to keep him around.

Back when he was League 2 with Plymouth, Conor mentioned his ambition was to play in the Premier League one day. Some rando laughed at him on Twitter and it clearly hit a nerve. Fast forward a few years, and Conor is now an integral part of a Villa team that’s just won promotion to the PL. How does Conor celebrate? He whips out the phone, goes on Twitter, and solidly rubs it in the rando from years ago’s face. Petty, yes. But Conor had to graft to make it professionally, he never forgot what he had to do, and the level of determination he has will be very useful when transmitted to the U16s. Welcome back Conor.

We’ll need to add a second strategy/formation for next year though. Otherwise teams will catch on and we will be too predictable.

He has 45 goals from 187 appearances. That’s 1-in-4 consistently over five or six seasons. On top of his assists. He’s an excellent footballer, not a bang average one.

Bingo. Barnes’ defensive statistics could easily be explained by managerial instruction. I believe Watkins did something similar this season, easing up a bit on chasing every ball to conserve energy for when it counts. It worked out well for him. Barnes would track back more if Don Unai told him to. The Lucas Critique, innit.

Good post, but I think you’re underestimating how much variance there is over the course of a season. We had a remarkable, belter of a season with Don Unai. But teams will start to figure us out, starting on Day 1. We were lucky enough with injuries. How many points did Ollie win us in that purple patch? How many wins would have been draws had he been a bit off the pace or, worse, injured? And then we’ll have the Thursday games. That will cost us 5 points anyway. All in all, I’d be very happy if we had some decent cup runs and a 1.75 PPG in the league. I think talk of coming 5th etc is very premature.

Not at all, on the other thread I was reliably informed that Barnes is only worth £15m.