Only2McInallys

I think he has been an very underrated for us .He cost I think 1 million I have always liked his attitude.

He had a very good partnership with Snodgrass in 18/19 season and was always making overlapping runs which helped create space for others.Lets not forget he provided the cross for El gazi in play off final.He is probably the best at crossing at the club at the moment.

We often overlook consistent performers and only realise the contribution they make when they leave.I think Taylor(although not as good)is similar .Taylor has been excellent defensively recently.  

Having players like Elmo who cost very little always the club to spend more on other quality players.

For me we over achieved in the championship to get promoted.Leeds and WBA had far better teams than us and were consistently at the top.What was our highest position that season 5th?

So we weren’t that great then we signed 12 players many from leagues abroad who were mostly young .What could go wrong with that policy?

Biggest mistake in my mind that has been mentioned here was to get some free transfers and loans from players with premier league experience and add some quality signings to that.I think Purslow is obsessed by signing players young players who will have sell on value.I look at Rodrigues for Burnley he is getting on but I think he cost 5 million that’s the kind of signing we needed.

We are paying for the short term vision of Xia who left us with a weak squad.Our academy hasn’t been able to pro vide some cover in certain positions and that meant we had to buy more players .

As a Villa fan I have often felt blessed.My first full season ticket was 1980 -81 and the following few years were fantastic.Then we got relegated .Graham Taylor came along and we became a major force again .

The play off win last year felt very special almost like a rebirth,I know this season hasn’t worked out well but we are in a better position than 4 years ago.

Villa are about highs and lows.But when the highs come you have to enjoy them because it probably won’t last.

Villa park is without doubt the greatest stadium in English football and when we win there is something almost magical about it.

I remember going to Villa park in 2016 the year we were relegated playing really badly and losing to Bournemouth and I think it meant we were mathematically relegated .After half time the Holte end began singing “we shall not moved etc” and I realised this is how true fans react,it’s easy to get carried away when your successful but sticking with your team through thick and thin even when your team is shit is what it means to be a true fan.

We have an incredibly loyal fan base,if we were playing in League 2 we would still get 30,000.

There will be good times ahead,I don’t know when it will be but when it comes it will feel fantastic.

That was the worst penalty decision I have ever seen(since palace away)I have never seen a penalty given when the attacking player deserved a red card.

Thing that shocked me the most was Gary Neville justifying it (previously I had always respected his opinions)

We  played well for 27 mins had 3 or 4 good chances but after that incident we were done.

I thought Taylor ,Hause and Konsa did OK.

Is Mings shit ?No .Did he make a mistake ?Yes

Is Grealish playing poorly ?Yes.He is trying to carry the weight of the team on his shoulders and he can’t cope.

Crystal Palace is must win.Can we win ?If everybody just thinks positively for a few days we can .I am not sure who is going to score for us but it’s possible .

We can have conversations about how shit all our players are when it is mathematically certain and we can sell all our players and buy another 10 -15 new players because we know that is certain to be successful.

We are paying for the atrocious transfers that we made in our first season in the championship.We spent a huge amount of our parachute payments on total dross McCormack, Kodja,Hogan,Tsibola etc .I think about 50 million was wasted.

Bruce then had to recruit players for low or minimal transfer fees who were mostly coming to the end of their careers Whelan Jedinak etc or fill the squad out with loan players Axel,Abraham .

That effectively left us with no stable collective core we could add to when we got promoted.We had to create a brand new team and as we see some of the recruitment has been poor.

Has a premier league club ever signed so many players at one time before and been successful?I can’t think of any.

We look solid defensively but weak in attack.We had a number of good attacking positions but seemed to lack belief that we could score.

Can we stay up? Yes we need Watford to not beat Newcastle (assuming they will beat Norwich)and we need to beat Palace.

Offensively we look weaker than any Villa team for many years and I think that is due to poor recruitment strategy .I think there was an obsession with recruiting young players with sell on value .Purslow suggested that loans were not good business but last year Abraham and Azel were brilliant for us and got us promoted .We needed some high quality loan signings to help the hugely inexperienced squad.

It’s us or Watford for the last relegation spot.

Their next game is Norwich so expect them to get 3 points.So after we have played Man U and Liverpool (not expecting much there )

we will be 4 points behind them with much poorer goal difference.

They then have Newcastle and West Ham which are difficult to predict.

We are going to have beat Palace and maybe draw with Everton to stay in touch.

The more I think about it the less I think it’s possible.

They say Prince Andrew is the Queens favourite child- it makes you wonder what the others must have done.

Andrew has a new defence against that disastrous interview he did - it wasn’t him being interviewed he was in Pizza Express at the time.

4 minutes ago, TRO said:

What signs of stability do you see?

Stability, needs to be based on incremental improvement and that has been missing from his tenure this season......We are presiding over an absence of winning and it is becoming a habit, with no signs of changing......There is gradually developing a disconnect between manager and team.....that is a result in losing so often, belief evaporates and sadly, it is oh so difficult to retrieve......He has lost the reins and he has tried everything to get us back on track.

we cannot keep losing or not winning and call it stability, there is no alternative.

we need someone who is used to winning and can instill a level of aggression in this outfit.....a personality, that can inspire, motivate and drive us on.

I mean stability in terms of players.I think there are some good players who will do well in the championship.A new manager coming in is probably going to want to completely restructure the squad.We have done that 3 or 4 times in the last 5 years.Many people on here have demanded we get rid   players that ended up being good Lowton,Albrigton,Gueye,Traore etc I hope we don’t keep making the same mistakes.Buying lots of new players is no guarantee they are going to be any good.

We are struggling at the moment mainly because we lack belief we can beat the bigger teams.The defeats we suffered against Arsenal and Liverpool have had long lasting effects.Our squad is lacking talent in some key areas.I also think our main focus should be on avoiding relegation until it is certain.

There are some very optimistic/deluded  Villa fans on here regarding our next manager.

Poch??? Rafa who is on something like £12 million in China

Why don’t we go for Klopp he seems to doing well at the moment.

Dont know what the view on Dyce on here is  but  I would describe him an very skilled Premier League manager with limited resources who plays industrial football.His first season in the Premier league ....relegated with 33 points...sounds familiar.

For me with the huge turnaround we have had with playing staff in last 4 years we need stability .How many new players have we signed in the last 5 years?I would guess the number is very very high.

Stick with Smith.

36 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Every team has spent money on getting promotion, it's not unusual. We also spent a lot more money on our players in the Championship than Brighton, 17/18 and 18/19 were quieter and mainly loans, but in 16/17 we spent £60 odd million (mainly on dross).

When you look at what we signed in 16/17  it makes me want to weep

Cormack 13 million

Kodja  12 million

Hogan 9.5 million

Chester 8 million 

Tsibola 5.3 million

gollini 4.5 million

Bree 3 million

Elphick 3million

R delat 3 million

Its quite depressing

5 minutes ago, jim said:

I would hazard a guess they haven’t spent anywhere near what we have over the last few years. 

According to transfer market site

Brighton 17/18. 60 million net spend            

                18/19 80 million net spend                                                                              

                19 /20 70 million net spend

         Total net spend £210 million

Villa  17/18 2 million net spend

           18/19 17 million net spend

            19/20 143 milllion net spend

Total net spend £ 162 million

It surprised me when I looked into it.

14 minutes ago, jim said:

And little old Aston Villa spent £150m+ and already had Grealish conservative £50m and John McGinn £25m. What’s your point?

What Brighton have got is a cohesive system and  a fighting spirit, something we lack in both departments.

Sorry I forgot that we spent £140 million because it’s hardly ever mentioned.

Its just that Brighton have actually spent more than us over the last couple of years as have Bournemouth and West Ham.All of these clubs had the advantage of adding quality to established squads.

Its just an observation that I think is overlooked.We are not the only team fighting relegation who has spent a lot of money.

Let’s not forget this little Brighton team cosy quite a lot of money to assemble

Bissouma 15 million

Webster 20 million

Maupay 20 million 

Trossard 18 million

Propper 11 million

Dunk valued 40 million

One of our problems as Villa fans is we think we should be better than a club like Brighton even though they have become established in the premier league and have spent about 200 million in last few years.

Although I do have to agree they seem well coached.

8 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

The situation when we last went down was totally totally different.

We had an absolutely garbage squad for a start. Our squad now isn't amazing but it's a damn sight better than the one we went down with. We were filled with toxic, shit, old players. We needed a total rebuild.
Behind the scenes was a **** mess. We had no money, and had just been taken over by a charlatan who also had no money and nearly drove us out of business.

We were in absolute freefall and were heading the way of Sunderland before we thankfully managed to turn it around.

 

We are in a far far far stronger position this time than we were back then. It's night and day. You could drop our current squad into the Championship and it would get promoted. We'd lose a couple of players sure but we'd have a relative fortune to replace them with excellent Championship players.

 

I'm not scared of relegation.

I thought the team we got relegated with was terrible but on reflection we had some really good players Geuye,Traore,Gollini,Amavi Veretout,Jordan Ayew, Ciaran Clark(goodish) have all gone on to better things.

There are similarities with our side now,firstly recruiting 6 or 7 players from abroad and expecting them to gel together immediately is ridiculous.

Both sides lacked  real leaders with premier league experience.Add a couple of those kind of players and both teams might fared better.

There were a few players in the 2016 team that were toxic and were going through the motions which I don’t think we have in the current team.

We are in a better place and if relegation happens I think we can cope better in the championship without the need for a complete overhaul.

Very poor

Why can other teams pressure us when we have the ball in defence but we can’t do the same to them .Why does it look like we have no midfield or attack.Why are we so shit at throw ins.Not sure Grealish is right man to be Captain,some of the on field decisions today at free kicks and corners were really poor.Why were Clelsea allowed to keep crossing balls in from the left.

Only small positives Luiz looking like a good midfielder,Hause and :Mings generally looking solid .

Very big game on Wednesday,maybe Newcastle will be on the beach after there win today.?

It looks to me we have improved defensively .Defenders were stopping crosses and our marking at set pieces has improved.This to me was essential for our survival.

It has come at a cost as our attacking play doesn’t seem as potent.

Overall a positive performance and if Davis could add a few goals to his overall play we can survive.

3 hours ago, MaVilla said:

To be honest, I am surprised how little I have missed football.

Actually got around to reading the book moneyball (and watching the film), what a story.

I just watched the film ,really good story.

I wonder if the people who controlled our transfer policy in Summer 2015 and last season decided to try it at Villa,where it hasn’t been quite as successful.

22 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Here are some starters for you, mentioned plenty of times in this thread.

1. In 2012 (Lammy review) 12% of the population in prisons was from the BAME population, against 3% in the general population. This is higher than in the US if you look at the figures. 48% of all under 18 inmates are BAME in the UK.

2. Stop and search statistics (google these - on my phone) show a bigger skew towards the targeting of BAME young men, especially in areas considered white and rich.

3. More recently statistics show that BAME minorities have been targeted, fined and punished harder than the general population over corona virus laws. 

4. Black people are less likely to carry drugs than white people, yet are disproportionately punished harder and more often than white people for the same offense.  

The list goes on and on and on. 

To me the justice system and how the police conduct themselves is where a lot of the resentment that black people feel emanates from.

The problem is that it’s not the laws that are wrong it how they are interpreted and acted upon.

How you change people with power with racist views is more difficult than changing laws.

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

Not only Irish independence, but that's a weirdly negative understanding of what republicans got out of the peace process as well. They gained a permanent involvement in government through power-sharing, the Irish government became more involved in decision-making relevant to Northern Ireland through the Good Friday Agreement, and connected but not in exactly 1997, they got a new police force that operated less like an occupying army. Those were not small wins!

All of those things could have been achieved without violence.In fact if anytthing the violence delayed the outcome. Most of the arguments were about disarming the IRA.

The IRA war was for the reunification of Ireland that will never happen until a majority of people in Nortern Ireland want it.Its in the Good Friday Agreement and its what they would have been told in 1972.

They were never going to win that war militarily.They were lucky they stopped when they did,I don’t think the US would supporting them much after the “war on terrorism” in 2001

.

9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Well surely the counter argument to that would be Irish independence? 

Good point.

Although Parnell in the 1880s introduced Bills in the Houses of Parliament that would have given Ireland independence  but through political manoeuvrings not unlike Brexit meant it never happened.

So everyone knew it was going to happen.

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Most protest action, from marches to civil disobedience to riots, results in no change at all. You have highlighted examples of riots that achieved nothing, I can highlight examples of marches that achieved nothing as well. That's no surprise.

What I find surprising, though, is questioning the *effectiveness* (as opposed to the morality or ideology) of the toppling of a statue last weekend. Given how little success almost all protest action has, that one act actually has had real perceivable consequences. Whether you agree with it or not, it was more effective than a peaceful march. Had a peaceful march taken place in Bristol last weekend, not only would we not have talked about slavery and the legacy of empire this week, but you and I wouldn't even know that the march had taken place.

Yes I agree that statue toppling did achieve something.

Look at Northern Ireland the IRA waged war for 30 years over 6,000 people died and what did they get in 1997 ?

An elected body ruled by Protestants .Ian Paisley was first minister.They could have had that in 1972.All the people that died in that conflict died for nothing.

Violence ultimately doesn’t solve things it makes them more complicated to solve.

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, they aren't.

I remember the handsworth riots in 1981,broad water farm 1985 ?Lots of brilliant Television pictures and many people felt things were going to change did it achieve anything. ?

If things get violent tomorrow and statues of Churchill are attacked I am sure some on here will be happy,I also think Tommy Robinson is going to be happy.

BLM has achieved a lot of good Will and many people are examining their behaviour but violence and aggression is not going to encourage racial harmony.

Why does racism still exist?Fear and ignorance mainly.

How do we eradicate it ?Not by going round tearing statues down.

When slavery was abolished after the civil war in the US many laws were passed to protect the rights of freed slaves.The only problem was that many in the Deep South just ignored them because they were scared about what might happen.

Winning the “hearts and minds “ of the minority in this country who still hold racist views is not going to be helped by tearing down statues of Churchill.A man many would agree held racist views but symbolised this countries defiance against the Nazis.If anything those people are going hold their racist views more strongly.

Peaceful dignified marches are the answer.