Villa Stu

3 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

It will be interesting to see if we bring in a couple of players on free transfers. 

We’ve been credited with an interest in Belotti, Ginter and Kamara in the past and all are available on a free this Summer. They also play in positions where we need to strengthen. 

Add a couple of transfer fee signings in on top of that, like Bissouma and Madueke and you could have a very ‘cheap’ Summer (wages/amortisation aside!)

I think this Summer is going to be really exciting. For good or for bad!

Add coutinho and a backup keeper and that’s near on a perfect window

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

Well, we'll see I guess, I'd certainly be disappointed it we let him got for the £4-5m that some people have mentioned here.

 

I agree completely. We need to get much better at squeezing as much out of other clubs as we can. Liverpool are masters at this but even clubs like Leicester and Southampton tend to do very well selling players, whereas we seem to almost give players away for peanuts

1 hour ago, MotoMkali said:

That's what we were saying about ramsey last season. And Chukwuemeka has made a greater impact than ramsey did last year this year. He's had a great assist against Norwich and he played a big part in ramseys goal against united as well. 

Almost scored against Man City too, but a great save kept him out. Needs to do that more often which I’m sure will come with experience 

3 minutes ago, Jareth said:

TBH, I can see Traore, Bailey and Ings actually wanting to leave, due to game time, and Buendia must be thinking if he wants more than to be a sub if Coutinho signs permanently. I agree they can all do a job for us but if they're unsettled then we are better off trading in - and going big in areas where we need to.

That’s fair, if a player wants to leave for game time as long as we get a decent fee. I still wouldn’t want to sell more than 1 or 2 of them though. Bailey has just come back from injury and hardly played for us. We may see him getting more game time over the last few games and traore has been injured all season pretty much too. Buendia I wouldn’t want to leave, he will play a massive part for us

25 minutes ago, Jareth said:

I've got a theory - we will sell most of Dean Smith's biggest signings. Ings or Watkins, Traore, Bailey, even Buendia could go - handing SG a budget of £150mill - £200mill to reshape the team in his style. 

Those players would make a decent front line and could still offer us something, whether that’s starting games or being solid competition. All have a part to play so letting them all go would be madness. Letting 1 or 2 go wouldn’t be too bad but for us at the minute it would be better for us to get players in that would compliment the attacking players. Someone like Rice (unrealistic) would transform our team and we would be getting more from the players you have mentioned. We need 2 players to improve our starting 11 and maybe 1 or 2 up and coming players to cover and add competition such as at lb.

The players we need to be prioritising selling are the fringe players and some of those out on loan, obviously excluding some of the highly rated youngsters 

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

Interesting. I always thought Johnson was more of a wide player tbh. He'll be playing in premier league for someone next season.

I think Johnson is a wide player, but he has been filling in upfront whilst grabban has been injured. I can’t say I watched them before Davis went there apart from the Arsenal game. To be honest I hadn’t watched any championship games before Davis, archer and JPB went on loan

20 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

Forest are playing 4-2-3-1 aren't they...don't think Davis has started upfront at all with Lewis Grabban if he's still there.

Grabban is injured, Davis has been playing upfront with Brennan Johnson. They have played a 3-5-2 when I have seen them mate

2 hours ago, Reivax_Villa said:

We have a team that is 13th - 9th

We are lacking physically and aerially.

West Ham were the better side because they had a blend between physicality and and technical ability.

We need some steel in the middle of the park, even up front we need some height. 

Just to add to this, we need to do better against teams when we have a lot of the ball and/or they sit back. This could have helped turn some of the losses into draws or wins, just recently there has been Watford, Brentford and Newcastle that have sat back and we have struggled to break them down, even yesterday we had quite a lot of the ball but struggled to make too many clear chances especially for the majority of the second half 

I think we are handling the situation well. He is still part of the match day squads, before his injury he was getting minutes here and there and he has been praised by gerrard on a couple of occasions in his post match interviews.

Its important for us to keep managing the situation well, whether he wants to stay or not has not been declared but if we want him as part of our future then we should keep having him in the match day squads and give him some minutes here and there. If he does say at the end of the season that he wishes to leave then we shouldn’t stand in his way. All of the youth players will see that there is a pathway to the first team and if they wish to leave we will not block them. This makes us an even better prospect for young talent in the future by showing them we will not force their hand.

Anyway, hopefully he stays and kicks on next season in a similar way to Ramsey this season compared to last

1 hour ago, paul514 said:

Those two would probably be great in a double pivot.

It’s amazing how a few bad results can change everyone’s opinion about the squad, a few games ago there were people hoping we could push for Europe, now after a bad run none of the players are good enough. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and review where we are. We finished 11th last season and sold our best player which set us back massively, when this happened people were saying they would take mid table again. We have had new signings that need time to settle, buendia being a prime example being written off to now being one of our better players. We have been unlucky with injuries especially with Nakamba 2.0, he is a massive loss to us at the minute, this can’t be overlooked as a massive turning point.

We are not far away from where we want to be. A few new faces in- cb, dm and cm and get everyone back fit and we are in a much better position.

1 hour ago, Sulberto21 said:

I’d much rather have Djed Spence instead of Lampety. Though lampety is very good.

Yeah agreed. The young lad looks a real talent. I would be happy to have him here. One to keep an eye on for sure.

3 minutes ago, RichiBoi11 said:

And it's from a guy with 360 thousand followers, and a blue tick. Don't do that to us!

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

Why did we bother recalling kesler if we going to loan him again?

Bit strange and harsh on Swindon where he was doing really well

Test him at a higher level

1 hour ago, Jas10 said:

 

2 hours ago, jacketspuds said:

That's fine. Arsenal can give us £80m + Nketiah for Watkins.

Or £60m without Nketiah

15 hours ago, alreadyexists said:

I think he would schlotter in to the beck line very well. 

Anyone else read this with Sean Connery’s voice

1 hour ago, TRO said:

The team isn't poor...its just poor at being hard to beat.

our offensive play at times is pucker....we have failed to score only three times in 20 league games this season, while keeping only 5 clean sheets...we kept 15 last season.

I didn’t mean our team is poor now, I think we are not far at all away from being a real top force and competing for the top 8, I was comparing our first season back in the premier league with monchengladbach this season which is why I said about grealish. 

1 hour ago, Peter Griffin said:

Yeah, but I think a DM would have more influence on a team that playing poorly to a Jack style player. It is easy for a Jack to get isolated in a poor team but a worldie DM should be in the thick of things

Yes that’s a fair point, not always the case if a team is so poor though, but you would at least expect a player of his “hyped” ability to influence results more. I have no idea about Zakaria, only what’s been put on here, Facebook and Twitter. I would prefer us to go for bissouma as he is more likely to hit the ground running than a lot of the other names mentioned

35 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

If he is that good why are they in a relegation battle . 

 

I haven't really seen this guy play and I was excited when we were linked. The PR behind him is very good. But the more I read about him the more I want to steer clear. If he is that good and is only 7m then why haven't a big team snapped him up

Why were we with grealish? 
 

I'm not trying to stick up for him by the way, I can’t say I’ve seen him play, not that I recall anyway. I am just pointing out that it’s not down to 1 player not being as good as people say, it’s usually that the team are poor but doesn’t mean the player is

1 hour ago, jacketspuds said:

Now that Tuanzebe is off, maybe we could move for Lingard on loan to support with our attacking midfield challenges.

Could work mate, he could raise the standards of other players like he did last season at West Ham 

11 minutes ago, paul514 said:

Davis has gone to forest on loan.

Hopefully he does well so we can get a good fee for him in the summer.

Probably got injured signing the dotted line