OxfordVillan

I think Emerson at Chelsea might be a very decent player to give Targett some serious competition at Left Back. I think he’d be obtainable in January, isn’t going to play much at Chelsea, and could be tempted to come to Villa and join a couple of his Brazilian compatriots. 18 months left on his current deal.

Dele Alli would seem a busted flush, there’s having a dip in form and then there’s doing next to nothing for two seasons. On the positive side he did perform well for two seasons, so I guess you couldn’t call him a flash in the pan, either. I think he has to play in an attack minded side, so perhaps he’s disjointed under Jose? Whatever. I don’t think our most pressing position is an attacking midfielder, we have a more urgent need for a defensive midfielder. Rome wasn’t built in a day, if we have another couple of transfer windows that bring a similar amount of success as the summer 2020 window then we’ll be right on the heels of those top 5 or 6 clubs. It becomes more difficult the closer you get. Those top clubs will try to obtain our best players, they’ll also do all they can to disrupt our obtaining of better players.

I agree completely with the need for a different type of DM, more physical presence and athleticism.

Given that I’m not the clubs chief financial officer, no, I can’t categorically be certain that Villa have money to spend in January. That’s why it’s a belief, not a fact.

I think there will be significant money available in January if the right player is obtainable. I don’t, however, envisage the type of quality we’d want being available this particular January window. We’re still at least 2-3 players short in areas that need improvement. We’ve no serious depth at CF, someone to challenge Watkins and push him to greater heights. LB remains debatable for me, I still don’t think we’ve enough athleticism there. And then there’s the RW/RF position that needs improvement, I’ve not seen too much from Traore that makes me think he’s the long term solution. So for me it’s CF, RW/RF, and LB that are required, priority in that order.

Spot on. Hopefully it’s a part of the learning curve and is a temporary bump in the road, but the team definitely look like they have expected to score against the perceived lesser clubs. And that has resulted in defensive mistakes that have handed those teams some simple goals. So I believe it’s a mindset issue that should iron itself out with a bit of time.

Put simply, Trezeguet is of very little use in games where we have a lot of the ball. He’s a player for when we play against the top teams and need the relentless energy. As we’ve known for a long time, Trezeguet should, generally, be back up at best. That’s why we bought Traore.

Come on Dean, Trezeguet has to be hooked. Combined with chances missed last week we cannot afford to have a player missing so many opportunities

In fact I’m looking to replace Trezeguet & Hourihane.

Not the game for trezeguet today, we need to replace him.

1pt would be a decent return from this fixture. Let’s not go crazy chasing win and lose this game.

Targett has just had an awful half of football. There are games when you look at him and he just looks like he doesn’t fancy it, not up for the physical challenge. Let’s hope he gets a strong message at the break to up his game.

I’m a bit torn on this game, not sure how I’d like us to approach it. I’ve thought that we need to get back to showing the same desire for a clean sheet that we displayed at the end of last season and beginning of this, maybe not press so high? But then I’ve thought that this is West Ham, David Moyes. They’re big and physical, look to win games with power from set pieces and breaks. And so I then think we’ve a better chance of getting something if we play in their half, press them higher up and try to keep set pieces into our box to a minimum. They have some height and power in Soucek, Ogbonna, Rice, and Haller. And they also have pace out wide with Bowen and Fornals. Ive decided I’d bring Grealish infield to replace Barkley as our ball carrier in the West Ham half, I think he could get Soucek or Rice booked early as they’d target him. Grealish can also find a pass through the middle, and I think that’s where this game will be won. I’d keep Trezeguet on the right, probably give ElGhazi a go on the left, think he gave a decent performance off the bench last week. I think we have a decent front 4 diamond that can be quite fluent and interchangeable, we just need the guys sitting behind them to be disciplined.

I think there’s a reason why we’ve looked relatively defensively sound against the likes of Leicester, Arsenal, Liverpool etc, and yet conceded for fun against Leeds, Southampton, and Brighton. And I think that reason is a mindset, an underestimation of an opponent. An arrogance, if you like. So it’s our approach to certain games that results in us shooting ourselves in the foot, rather than individual poor performance. It seems to me that the game plan in the home games against “lesser” opposition is to go out and attack, attack, attack.......which I think is proving to be naive and wasteful. We need to be careful that we don’t waste a fantastic start by throwing points away where we ought to be getting something.

I’m inclined to agree with what you say, it would take a very good player to become available to dislodge any current 1st teamer. Not impossible, though. Let’s hope we have a favourable run with injuries etc.

I’m not sure position will be so vital going into January as the Premier League is looking more like the championship this season, where 2 or 3 wins will propel you up the league table. It’s likely that we could see teams sat in and around 11th/12th in January that are still within striking distance of the top 4, certainly top 6. I just think it’ll go deeper this season

Agreed. Still needs to be the right quality player/players, though. I’m confident that if that player/players are obtainable in January, and Villa are in a position to challenge, then our owners will get it done. Where would you want us strengthened in January, and possible names?

I don’t think it’s so much that the teams you mention are badly under performing, more like other teams have closed the gap after teams like Man City and Liverpool have peaked at a very high level that cannot be sustained by anyone for too long. Man City absolutely peaked when pipping Liverpool to the title in 2018/19, and Liverpool’s title success 2019/20 was their peak. I honestly don’t see how either of those title winning teams can be bettered/improved, we’re talking about teams that accumulated 100, 98, & 99 points when the average since the mid 90s has been 87. So we’ve had 3 or 4 seasons of exceptionally high points totals. With other clubs now able to retain top players (because they can pay much improved salary’s with the TV money) the gap of recent years is being shrunk. I think the “big” clubs are finding it increasingly difficult to pluck the better players from premier league rivals, and so they can’t just nullify a rival by nicking their top players. In the past that’s exactly what Man City and Chelsea did to clubs, poaching their best players to derail them.

We’ve an impending problem with Douglas Luiz and Manchester City. Ever since post lockdown football I’ve had no doubt that City will come back for him by activating the buy-back option, and I’m certain that’ll be the case in January. I don’t know exactly how the option works, but I assume it has to be dependent upon whether the player actually wants to return? I can’t imagine any player being forced into a move he doesn’t want? And that would have to be our only hope of retaining Luiz, that he’s happy where he is and can see there’s good times ahead.

If, come January, Villa find themselves in a league position that makes top 4 eminently possible, then adding one or two players of quality could be just the boost required to achieve it. I’m sure that the people in charge now recognise that and wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the MON or Gregory eras, when not adding quality ultimately lead to falling away from the worthwhile places. It wouldn’t be easy, January never is. But it’s possible. And I’m confident that plans are already in place for 2 or 3 possible scenarios going into January, because we’re run properly now. As to our most pressing needs? At the moment I’d probably say we’re doing rather well and everyone is proving well worth their place, it’d take a really top player to come in and compete to shift any of the current starting 11. I think most of us would agree that the right sided forward position could be improved, though we’ve yet to really see anything of Traore who has been brought in to improve that, so we have to be careful to not overload the squad. So perhaps we have to be looking to improve our backup players? ElGhazi is prime to be upgraded as I think he is our only viable backup to Grealish on the left, and he consistently disappoints. So if we were to lose Grealish to injury etc then the fall in quality to ElGhazi is huge. You’d probably say the same thing with Watkins/Davis. So in the absence of the availability of a real gift of a player in January, I think we’re looking to upgrade a couple of backup players. And the positions where the biggest drop off in quality exists are CF (Watkins to Davis), LF (Grealish to ElGhazi), LB (Targett to Taylor) and DM (Luiz to ?). So for me I’d be hoping to get in improved backup to Luiz and Grealish if we were limited to two January arrivals.

It’s unfortunate where Heaton finds himself, but that’s how it goes in sport sometimes.......and in life! The way the season is panning out I’d like to see Villa play their strongest lineup as often as is possible, and that includes FA Cup games. And so unfortunately for Heaton I’d really want to be seeing Martinez playing in all games, his distribution in particular is way above Heatons and is proving integral to our counter attack capabilities, and he is generally much better with the ball at his feet. He’s simply a better all round goalkeeper. Sorry Tom.

Tactically we got it wrong. Very wrong. We weren’t creating anything and looked like conceding chances to most attacks against us. That we conceded to a couple of class free kicks means nothing, we came in 3-0 at HT and deservedly so. We then went 4-0 down in the 2nd half and Southampton took their foot off the gas. By all means you take the positives out of the game, but to try and brush the negatives away as just freak bits of world class play that cost us the game would be delusional. We lost the game because we were atrocious for the 1st half and Southampton eased up for 30mins.

I’ll throw this out there in a slight defence of Watkins; he seems to have stopped making the runs he was making in the first 3-4 games of the season, and I do wonder if that is related to not receiving the ball from Grealish when it’s been the glaringly obvious pass to make on 3 or more occasions, ie I do think Grealish is trying to do too much

Well he couldn’t have had less. I am seeing a horrible pattern develop where favourites don’t get subbed