MrBlack

Just now, AvfcRigo82 said:

It's the poster that prompted my .gif reaction that you want to be telling that to pal.

Ah Yes, I was intending to, should have added their quote before my second comment. No offence intended. 

10 minutes ago, ozvillafan said:

Oh I get how this game works. I suggest a player and you shoot down the reason why they stayed with a club as anything other than loyalty or love. Here's some more, then:

- Tim Cahill

- Gabby Agbonlahor

- John Terry

- Mark Noble

 

Were the top two genuinely approached by anyone else? John Terry was at a team winning leagues and cups. Mark Noble is probably a good comparison, rejected Tottenham, although at the time they were finishing in 5th or below, so not exactly a massive guaranteed step up. 

As for Gerrard, it was almosy certainly the combination of death threats and money that changed his mind, with a bit of loyalty.

There are very few examples, but they do exist, and Grealish is very much an exception with his love for Villa. If we give him a GOOD reason to stay, he will, I think even if one if the very top teams come in for him.  If anyone other than a very top team comes in I dont see him listening regardless.

Edit: Odsonne has no loyalty to Celtic so this is way off topic...how did we get here?

5 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

Wow, what did that evil woman say to him? It's like she's laughing at his pain.

Also,  no sign there's anyone coming in means .... absolutely nothing.  There was no sign of most of our signings last year,  I expect the same this year. No need to cry until a week before the season starts and we have no signings. 

2 minutes ago, omariqy said:

My take on it is that Werder are doing everything they can to get RB to up their bid. Rashica has told them it's CL club or nothing. So these stories of Villa and him staying at Werder are being done to get RB to cough up finally. Even if Werder don't get the money they want a few £m extra is worth the wait.

I suspect the same,  but if RBL don't cough up enough, it then becomes a game of who folds first, if anyone. Does Milot strike to force an acceptance, does he resign himself to an alternative club and feel there's now too much bad blood between him and Werder,  does he accept it's not happening and play on. Do Werder give in to player power to avoid an unhappy player on their books,  will they need to if he's not a bad egg and the consummate professional.

Milot's contract ends 2022 (according to google), so I can see a situation where he stays at werder for another year and gets his (supposed) desired move next year with his asking price significantly lowered.

I can also see a situation where we persuade him to join us with suitable clauses, assuming RBL don't up their offer and Werder dont lower their demands.

And the above all assumes we're even interested in him and not just being used by Werder to up the sale price. Speculating, it's a funny old game. 

2 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

If we spend 20 million on a right back I’d actually be quite excited because it would mean the owners mean business and the spending wouldn’t stop there.
 

F**k biggie, f**k FFP and if you down with uefa,, then f**k you too.

Hadn't thought of it that way, good shout.  Spend it boys!

I have my doubts about him; the level of defending in the Scottish PL is, I feel, lower than Championship standard. That said, he is highly rated and we're limited on who we can buy in terms of wage demands, fee and general appeal versus the competition further up the table. 

We will have to accept that a gamble is pretty much all we can do this season and maybe Odsonne is the least "gambly" option we have. If the dubious link proves correct,  fingers are crossed he works out

6 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

As it stands we're well short in the final third even numbers wise.

We have two fit out and out CFs. One last scored a goal for us in 2017.

We saw last season at the start with Davis and Kodj injured at same time we only had Wes who had to play every single minute of every single league game which wasn't ideal. And then he got injured at Burnley and we have to play pretty much all of January without an actual striker upfront.

I'd say a prem club that gets itself into that state needs to buy two strikers this summer. It's alright saying we play just one upfront but it's not like we have great wide options so one can always play out wide for a bit e.g. Watkins and we also need to remember the schedule is going to be crazy so far more rotation will be required and we'll also pick up injuries like we did last season so need to be ready for it.

Watkins AND Edouard makes sense to me then you put Samatta on bench and see if that can get him going and Wesley will perhaps be back in November so he'd be another bench option up to January.

The season looks set to be very injury inducing, this is why it's key we don't release any existing first team players. They will all be needed at some point this season,  unless we buy 8+ new players,  and i'm very against that level of turnover.

Signing a striker (Edouard?) and a forward that can play across the front three (Watkins?) makes a lot of sense, and is really the minimum we need offensively.  A dedicated right winger on top would be perfect.  Throw in a CM and a GK assuming we don't keep Reina and that's your 5 minimum.

Ideally one or two more for me, with what we'll be allowed to spend from an FFP perspective, otherwise we're sacrificing quality and/or making too many changes in one season.

2 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

Here we go again.

Going to be another 150 pages for a journalist reporting speculation.

To be fair, the Reluctant Rashica thread was quite entertaining, but I am not sure it is a good idea to have a thread for every player we are linked to without any believable quotes.

Use to be when you saw a thread for a player it was because he had signed or was about to. You cannot say that about any of these threads.

I miss that excitement.

Agreed,  the restrictions on what basis you can create a speculation thread seem to have loosened this season. Thought these things used to get locked down within minutes of being opened

1 hour ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I'm going to wait to see what we do this window before I criticise what we do this window.

I will also do that, but caveat with the fact that we need at least 2 first team signings before the season starts,  which is a long time before the window closes

54 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

We signed Wesley on the 13th June last summer and Jota on the 5th June -  we're a little behind that schedule.

• That in normal transfer window terms, it's currently somewhere between the 1st June and the 18th July and it's possible it might be the 19th June.

Soooo, we should expect our first signing in 4 days. I get what you're saying. And that would make it ...Wednesday. Oh my!

1 hour ago, Rolta said:

I think it was from this. Notice the italics at the bottom! We were third lowest on that list because it was using our final season in the Championship wage bill. No surprise the other two lowest teams were the other two teams coming up from the Championship.

You'd be surprised if after our summer splurge and new contracts for a few players it was even a little bit accurate.

 

We converted a few to full time contracts,  signed a few more, and probably had a fair few on promotion based wage increases.  That said, we're capped at how much we can increase our wage bill each season (thanks FFP), so it wouldn't be massively higher,  and definitely below most of the rest of the league

14 minutes ago, supermon said:

If he really has his heart set on Leipzig then probably time for us to move on, we need players who want to be at the club and play a part in our future. 

Can't see this happening any more

If he ends up here it will be because he wanted to. He is not being forced out his club.  Saying we should move on....we don't even know if we're interested in him in the first place, let alone whether we're not already looking at alternatives whilst awaiting a response to our enquiries.

The only quotes we have from source are that RBL agreed a deal with him,  but haven't agreed a price with Werder, so if that falls through (as is looking likely), what would you suggest he does ? Play for noone? Or move to a second choice.

3 hours ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

You’re saying that anyone in The Championship is below our station? We could quite easily end up there again next season. We only stayed up by one point last season, we are extremely fortunate to be playing in the Premier League and shouldn’t take it for granted. Smith has done well since he has come in for me and has earned a fair crack. The Premier League is widely acknowledged to be the best league in the world and rightly so for me. I think we have overpaid in the past for the likes of Kodjia, Hogan and McCormack to name but a few and I hope we don’t make the same mistakes again. We seem to have a plan in place and the people at the top say the right things to the press but whether they actually carry these things out is another matter altogether. We can sign players from non-league if they are good enough

Ok, maybe a small few are not necessarily below our station, but definitely none of them are above it. Agree with your last statement too. 

Maybe I'm missing your point, but I don't think anyone in the championship would refuse to come to us.  If there are better offers on the table for them I don't expect them to ignore them,  but I'm not sure there are any players in that league that will attract attention from the top teams with European football, which puts us on a pretty much level playing field with anyone we're likely to compete with.  We'll see i guess!

1 hour ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

Yes, why do you think I am not being serious? They are 2 of the best players in The Championship, there will be lots of clubs after them 

When we have a Brentford fan syaing there isn't going to be lots of interest in them, I fail to see how we could be aiming above our station. Signing anyone from the championship is below our station. We're in the Premier League. That's not to say we shouldn't buy anyone from there, nor that there is noone in the Championship that would improve our team. But,  saying they're above our station, having only ever played for a team outside the top flight, is bizarre.

Paying over the odds for them, on the other hand, is definitely not what we should be doing. And I am absolutely sure we won't given the leadership we have at the helm of our club. 

537 pages...

*538

40 minutes ago, Made In Aston said:

I've just seen the word OFF on his flip flop. He is definitely going.

Off-white... hyphenated so I think we're safe. Must mean he doesn't like Tottenham. 

Incidentally,  those flip flops cost over £100...

These reports of not exercising the buy back are hilarious.  Man City would only exercise it if they had a buyer ready to pay more than the buy back clause is. They cant exercise it to play him as he still wouldn't get a work permit for them, unless they pay him a wage that is way over what he's worth, and would destroy their wage structure.

If the situation arose where they did have a buyer willing to pay more,  there's nothing to stop us paying that (or slightly more) to man city instead to buy out the clause.

Next season may be different if he starts playing enough games for Brazil.

The clash with city could be resolved by moving it to a different Saturday and then having whatever was meant to be played that Saturday rearranged for midweek.  They've got options although why they wouldn't plan for this before releasing the fixture list i'm not sure

1 hour ago, TheStagMan said:

Yikes, just looked at the Rashica thread and it is on 99 pages as well.

So, this Samatta fella. Keep or sell?

 

*edit* Yay!

My work here is done.

Now you just need to edit that and say "sorry, double post". Question is, did Samatta get to 100 first?

Just on topic,  I'm still on the fence about this chap.  Looked promising pre lockdown, clearly something happened during it that made him lose a lot of his confidence, fitness, or sharpness (possibly all of the above and more). I will hold judgement for him until he's had a "proper" pre season, although does 4 weeks count as proper?

Hope he shows more of the prowess he was demonstrating in his first few games, and we'll at least have a viable scoring option from the bench if nothing else. 

20 minutes ago, TheStagMan said:

Bump bump. determined to get to 100

I saw the page count here and had the same thought.  How can a player we don't have get more attention than one we do that started most of our last 15 games. Does it say something about Samatta or more about Rashica? Or maybe more about VillaTalk than either.

Effectively.  It's not about Luiz and Is about a captain and its not contract related...

Just now, GingerCollins29 said:

That brad person has just said the news is about jack...

Calling it now, complete bollcoks whatever it is

6 minutes ago, Rightdm00 said:

Late to the crapping on The Athletic party but that article was pure trash.  Not a single quote, just pure speculative BS. 

Now I really want Villa to hand Jack a 6 figure per week contract.  The laughs we will get when the media's head all in unison. 

And yet they'll turn it around and say villa priced him out of a move and he had to reluctantly sign a new contract. They'll speculate, or just plain lie, that the new contract has release clauses galore so he doesn't have to suffer the same ignominy again next season... anything so they don't have to formally backtrack.  It's all crap and literally any football fan could write it.

Spoken like fact, when it's actually an opinion. Tailoring to the social media generation.

On 08/08/2020 at 14:21, Brumstopdogs said:

 

Not enough arse involved for McGinn

1 minute ago, MaVilla said:

"something" is happening, although i dont think we can be sure what that thing is......

I should have read the content of the last 10 pages before posting.