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VillaFaninLondon

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Posts posted by VillaFaninLondon

  1. Absolute farce that this sh*t is even on the agenda, given the players we have, but we are definitely a relegation candidate at the moment. 

     

    3 points from 4 games and we haven't even played a top 6 side yet, Bournemouth, Wolves, Everton and Leicester have all had harder fixtures than us.

     

    The club needs to act NOW, if they don't fans need to protest loudly at every game, this is a complete mess. We cannot go down given the investment in players and wages which should see us in the top half at a minimum not where we are now. The owners risk undoing all the good they have done here by continuing with this nonsense.

  2. 17 minutes ago, useless said:

    It seems like there's a big recency bias type thing going on, if we'd have made our signings in the last few weeks there would be no complaints about our window, rather oppositely there would be a lot of excitement, and there would be less suggestions that the teams around us have had better windows, people only saying other teams have had better windows now because their signings are more recent so there's still more general hype around them, whereas the hype around our signings has died down.

     

    We've barely made any signings mate. We've literally added 2 first team players to a team that finished 14th and one of them is out for the season. Ergo, we are one player stronger than we were last season. 

     

    Wolves had added three first team players to a team that finished 10th, West Ham have similarly added 3 first team players to a team that finished 7th. Newcastle have only added 2 like us but at least one of theirs hasn't got injured and there are many signs they are actively still looking to strengthen unlike us. They again also finished higher than us last season. 

     

    The only sides to have had poorer windows than us that finished above us last season are Leicester and Brighton.

     

    I'm surprised at the level of positivity in this thread in all honesty, if we had had such a strong window and were so much better than last season then why are so many posters predicting we'll lose on Saturday to an average Crystal Palace team?

    • Like 1
  3. 4 minutes ago, gwi1890 said:

    I take you prefer last minute deadline day transfer?

    My preference is to sign the players we need to take us forward, I couldn't give a t*ss when they are made. Earlier is better but I doubt Wolves or West Ham are complaining.

     

    We've needed a CM all summer and we still don't have one. Luiz's contract is still up in the air. Our CB signing in the summer is out for the season and no one knows what is happening with his replacement or whether we'll even sign a replacement.

     

    After all the spiel everyone was giving it that we would make more quality signings 2 months ago, well they've turned out to be right so far haven't they? But no doubt they'll say the club tried but just couldn't get the players, when there's absolutely no evidence that that has happened.

  4. 2 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

    Clearly??? Are you for real mate. Let’s just wait to see who else we sign before making such statements.

    Tick tock, the clock is ticking. Only been 3 months since we made a major signing but carry on believing if it brings you comfort.

    • Haha 2
    • Confused 1
  5. 11 minutes ago, paul514 said:

    True, but we do have four other centre backs one of which was only added in January.

    I look at points not places, this squad is capable of 60 points year on year. The board have funded that and if I were them and it was spend 10-20 on another player or spend it on a manager replacement I know which I would do.

    With a top manager we could probably achieve that or close to it but even then I'm sure a new manager would want some further investment in certain areas (like CM, CB and ST). Plus the only proven top manager on the market is Pochettino and they haven't appointed anyone of that calibre since buying us so unlikely they would be able to do so now when we aren't spending very much.

     

    Let's hope they don't waste time waiting for Gerrard to come good then given he's had nearly a year now, surely they should know if he's any good by now seeing as most of us can.

  6. 2 minutes ago, paul514 said:

    They haven't spent 100m but we have spent around 50m bringing in about 35m maybe 40m

    So you might say look how low the net spend is but that wage bill keep rising, wage bills KILL transfer budgets boards can hand out.

    NSWE may have had a plan all along to spend a truck load of cash and then scale back net spending when we are receiving decent fees for players leaving which wasn't the case when they brought the club.

    It wasn't that different last summer when you consider the fee we got for Jack.

    I wouldn't have purchased Carlos or Coutinho personally and we must have only done so based on Gerrard's wants.

    Of the 50m spent, half was on Carlos who is now out for the season. Doesn't seem to be a contingency plan either. 

     

    We'll see where we end up this season. I sincerely hope I'm wrong and we finish 7th-10th, but sadly I think we won't be much or if any better than last season and then there will be a lot of questions that need answering from the club. 

  7. 2 minutes ago, paul514 said:

    I read that and just think this is the manager not the board.

    I don't rate Gerrard but he hasn't actually been backed this summer in fairness. We were led to believe in April/May when Gerrard said the fans will be excited by the summer targets but it's been far from an exciting window.

     

    The investment in the stadium etc is all well and good if the first team is performing, but we haven't even finished in the top half for 11 years now. Three seasons back in the top flight and our highest finish is 11th. You can't imagine a 50,000+ stadium will sell out if we are languishing in the bottom half every season, although to be fair to the fans they have showed incredible backing even last season when the stadium was selling out every other week.

     

    Every else is pretty much immaterial aside from investment in the first team, that is what will bring success on the pitch. Academy investment is great but takes time and it seems we always sell our best Academy players anyway (Grealish, Carney).

  8. 2 hours ago, villa4europe said:

    if we were going the way of everton wouldn't that mean that we spend £200m on man utd cast offs this summer?

    if Lange thought mctominay is the answer to our midfield problem then id be worried

    I don't think that's the point he's making. Everton have spent money badly, as have we. We haven't got full value out of players like Bailey, Ings, even Coutinho for his wages is underperforming and not done much of note since March, Buendia is on the bench most of the time so we aren't getting full value out of him, Carlos now injured so that's another 26m potentially down the drain. 

     

    But we also have a stupidly imbalanced team, the bulk of the money we have spent is on the attacking side of the team and that's the reason we aren't getting the best out of those players. We haven't invested enough in CM for instance and we think Ramsey and McGinn are the answer. We haven't spent big on a CM for God knows how long, the last time we spent anything on CM was Sanson in January 2021 and before that it was summer 2019 on Luiz. Neither of those players are even getting in the team now. Other teams have invested loads in this part of their team like Newcastle and Leicester and Wolves and yet we keep spending absolutely nothing on it and accepting what we have. 

     

    Everton's owners are now not spending. Our owners are not not spending either. Net spend has been zero the last 2 summers. No tangible links to anyone suggests they either don't care about strengthening the squad further or they can't because of FFP or maybe a bit of both. 

     

    Our aim is supposedly to push for Europe this season, finishing between 7th and 10th. How on Earth do they expect to achieve that without any further investment? The best we can hope for is to be around where we were last season which is atrocious. The reason for this is the league is insanely good now (just look at who Wolves are signing and they finished 10th last season). There are also teams like Brighton and Leicester not spending but they both finished a fair few places above us last season and are managed and coached far better than we are.

     

    We're a real mess, we really are. But keep pretending we're not if it makes you feel better.

    • Confused 2
  9. 2 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

    I asked you who you think the club are and why they want to screw us? I’m not trying to win an argument or even start one. 

    Fair enough. Well we all know who the club are and who they are run and owned by. Businessmen essentially run football clubs and ours is no different. Ours have more wealth than the majority of the league as many of here like to go on about. And if we are not improving the team enough to fight for positions they claim we want to get to, thereby raising the hopes of the fanbase but failing to achieve them, then it will be the fans that suffer.

  10. 8 minutes ago, John said:

    The bigger club yes, but we weren't the better placed club for much of the 50s, 60s and early 70s though. The Dingles will never be happy, they harp back to the days of Billy Wright, when they won for fun and much like Newcastle (until their Saudi cash arrived) struggled to accept that those days were long past. Currently Wolves are having their best run in the league for about 40 years and are mid-table competition for us, this season unless we go again in this window. I agree with you that we need to, if we are going to be comfortably top half this season. I think the owners (on the quiet) share our opinion too and I can see us signing 2 or 3 quality players, before the window closes.  

    I hope you're right mate, I really do. Trouble is many have been saying this since June and it hasn't happened (other than a backup LB on loan).

    • Like 1
  11. 1 hour ago, DaveAV1 said:

    Just out of interest, who do you think the club are? Secondly what possible motivation would they have, whoever they are, to screw us either now or further down the line?

    Well you could quite clearly ask the same questions to Wolves fans or Leicester fans who are complaining about their ownership despite far more success than we have had in the last 5 years. 

    On your second question what are you on about? I’ve not spoken about owners’ motivation, of course there is no motivation to screw us over (intentionally) but I’m sure Lerner didn’t intend to screw us over when he lost loads of money during the 2007-09 recession and then decided to run the club on a shoestring leading to us being an embarrassment on the pitch. 

    I’ve really liked what these owners have done so far but I also really quite liked Lerner up from 2006 to 2011. Owners unfortunately have to continually invest, especially when they say they have ambitious plans and when they are presiding over a team that finished in a very lowly position of 14th last season which no one was happy about (slightly different when compared to, for example, Liverpool having a quieter window after finishing 2nd last season or even Leicester who finished 8th). 

    Anyway, make of my comments what you will. I’m sure you’ll find a way to spin them any way you like. 

  12. 1 minute ago, Zatman said:

    We gave Kalinic away for nothing as he said he would only move to one club who couldnt afford him

    So the point still stands. We did it with him so we could feasibly do it for Guilbert and Hause too (whose transfer fees combined were only slightly more than Kalinic's)

  13. 8 minutes ago, Zatman said:

    in FFP you cant just give players away for free or as little as possible

    Yes you can if they cost very little. See Kalinic as an example who cost us 6m and we gave him away for nothing to get his wages off the books.

  14. 3 minutes ago, Rustibrooks said:

    Some context for us vs Wolves, they had a decent squad upon their promotion in comparison to ours. They’ve been helped by Mendes, how many championship teams can you name that can pull a Neves signing off the way Wolves did. 
     

    I think when they got promoted it was kind of expected that they’ll do well when they came up. When we came up we barely had players similar to Forest. 
     

    With the Nunes deal, I think it’s taken Wolves a long time to convince him. A lot of reliable reporters mentioned that he was not that interested at the start of the window. I think he was hoping a top 6 team would get him. I think if anything with that info we have, it shows we need to be patient with things and just see how the window pans out. 
     

    I like to be positive and optimistic but doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what is happening, I’m just not writing the summer off yet when we still have time to do something.

    Yet you still had numpties phoning up Talksport saying how Mings was better than Van Dijk and how we were gonna finish 4th 😂

     

    The point still remains though. We should at least have similar expectations to Wolves as a fanbase. We're almost a mystery as a club, we seem to still think we're this massive club because we had success over 100 years ago but when one of us starts calling out the club saying it needs to do more to catch teams above it we get accused of being unfair, disloyal or having too high expectations. 

     

    We all want success, but there are many who just seem to want to bury their head in the sand and blindly follow the club despite red flags very clearly showing. Maybe they are satisfied with us doing absolutely nothing for 40 years since 1982, I don't know. I don't think being calm helps, because it allows the club to think it can continue with things as they are without taking any action and that will only screw us over further down the line when we have another disappointing season.

  15. 27 minutes ago, Made In Aston said:

    Gerrard has said that we are after another midfield number 8 and has praised the owners for their support. I don't see how you have come to the conclusion that we aren't bringing anyone in and the money isn't there.

    We can't just sign players without offloading others, as there is wages FFP to consider. That is probably the main reason why it has gone quiet rather than a lack of commitment from the owners. 

    We keep hearing that but about half of the clubs in the league have bigger squads than us. Guilbert and Hause could be cut from the squad relatively easily as they cost us very little, could almost give them away for free like with Kalinic. Likewise with Steer who clearly won't play here. That would cut our squad to 24. El Ghazi similarly we could sell for cheap as he didn't cost much and has been here a while, or we could at least send him out on loan again. Traore, Sanson and Nakamba would be harder to sell but are decent squad options and with a squad of 23 we could easily buy another CM and CB. 

  16. 7 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

    I mostly agree with that, it is a tough call though. However, before the transfer window opened it is clear that the people at Villa decided that a CB was the priority position, hence they spend 26m on one and not on a CM. To go and buy a CM now ahead of a CB would surely require them to reverse that decision. 

    Surely they could just buy both given we've barely spent anything this window. 

  17. image.thumb.png.687cceda9ebda7a484c9a6f4c80060f8.png

    Read a snippet from this BBC Sport article all you guys having a go for complaining: Wolves - who have finished 7th, 7th, 13th and 10th since getting promoted (far better than we have achieved) - have their fans complaining from lack of activity despite now signing Collins, Guedes and Nunes. Those are three first team signings they have made since last season after finishing 10th (4 places higher than us) compared to us making two (Kamara and Carlos) and one of those is now injured for the season.

     

    We have always been a bigger club than Wolves, yet their fans have higher expectations than us for some strange reason and demand more from their owners (who by the way have done an absolutely outstanding job over there) yet we get accused of being ungrateful for what the owners have done thus far this summer despite regressing last season by three places and so far having done very little to rectify that poor finish by not investing sufficiently in the playing squad. 

     

    I'm sorry but that is just bullsh*t. We're all here to debate the club and I know you all hate negativity on here, but there's a clear distinction between negativity and reality and the reality is we are in for a poor season if we don't bring any more players in to improve the side. 

    • Like 4
  18. 15 minutes ago, dukes said:

    This thread is depressing, not for the lack of serious links to new players, but more so for the attitude of some of our fans.

     

    How anyone can accuse the owners of a lack of investment is beyond me. 4 years ago we were practically bankrupt and now in 2022 we have signed Digne, Kamara, Coutinho, and Diego Carlos surely everyone can see that those signings simply wouldnt have been possible even under the last manager and we couldn't have even dreamt of them under the last owner.

    This isn't football manager, signings take time, and theres lots of other teams after similar players. We basically now want a ball playing centre back, a number 8 and a centre forward....practically every team in the league would like to add those players.

    Surely one thing we all should realise now is that with Villa there's hardly ever any speculation about actual signings because the club does everything under the radar. 

    I think today we just have access to too much information (even if most is made up), i wonder how fans like @VillaFaninLondon and @nick76 would have coped when all we had was ceefax and teletext ?

     

     

     

    Of course we get accused of being negative.

     

    It's not about the signings that have come before, which I was happy with and gave credit to the owners (though I did think they were a bit short term - Carlos, Digne and Coutinho are all 29/30 and coming to the end of their careers).

     

    I know we've come a long way, that's why I'm frustrated and p*ssed off that we seem to be taking a backwards step after finishing in a very disappointing 14th place last season. Also, out of those signings you list, Carlos is out for the season and may never get back to his form of before and Coutinho and Digne have arguably been more disappointing than really taken us forwards and are probably going to regress now given their age. Only Kamara has actually looked to have really improved us.

     

    You also fail to mention that we earned 100m from selling an Academy player, plus 20m from another Academy player, and signing those four players for a combined 68m means we are still 50m in profit. This excuse that we have to be sustainable and can't spend any more money despite having a very weak CM and an injury to a new signing at CB clearly doesn't add up.

     

    Also, you list all the quality players we have signed, look at who Wolves or Leeds have signed since promotion despite having less wealthy owners than us, being smaller clubs traditionally, and spending God knows how long down in the lower divisions, far longer than we ever did. We're not a unique case yet our fans seem to think that everything is hunky dory all the friggin time because we nearly went bankrupt a few years ago and we're ever so lucky. That was then, this is now, stop harping on about the past!

  19. 21 minutes ago, Awol said:

    You think those players would improve us, but does our recruitment team? Any player we want will almost certainly have the option of choosing a team with European football at some level.

    What players in the position we need (6/8) have been signed by clubs who we’d expect to finish above, and are clear upgrades on McGinn and Ramsey? Nunes to Wolves is clearly based on a long-standing business relationship that we don’t have with a fairly dodgy agent. Any others? 
     

     

    Have you been following the transfers of other clubs?

     

    Right, I'll name them then (6s and 8s):

    • Palhinha (Fulham)
    • Onana (Everton)
    • Auoar, Freuler, Mangala (Forest) - three players!
    • Adams (Leeds) - debatable but looks good early on
    • Doucoure (Crystal Palace)
    • Nunes (Wolves)

     

    Go back to January you can add Guimaeres to Newcastle who at the time were in the bottom 3, yes they had money but if we'd been willing to invest on him we'd have got him. Probably could have got Bissouma before he went to Spurs too seeing as an offer was obviously made but below Brighton's valuation.

     

    And actually the excuse that Wolves can get any Portugal player they want is rubbish, they wanted Palhinha and he ended up at Fulham, Wolves fans were not happy.

     

    The only teams that have had worse windows than us are Leicester and Brighton, maybe Bournemouth but they haven't got any money, a small stadium and non-wealthy owners. Comprisons to them are stupid and they've still bought a player I like (Senesi).

     

    All of the teams that finished above us last season could quite feasibly do so again unless we take action soon. I don't understand how so many of you are so relaxed. We could even get worse if we're not careful.

  20. 3 minutes ago, Awol said:

    Worth pointing out that Citeh is owned by a country, not two wealthy businessmen. Comparing their unlimited ability to spend in the pre-FFP era to any other club trying to improve now is daft, imo. Chelsea were similarly bankrolled by Putin’s bagman so could spend crazy money, and even Newcastle can’t do that now because the Premier League closed the door behind Citeh.

    I think out owners will spend on the right players who can both improve the first XI and are willing to come to us. They won’t hose money up the wall on players who don’t improve us, just to pad an already bloated squad.

    We need to have some patience and see where we are at the end of the window. 

    They've already failed to sign players who would improve us, some of whom have gone to newly promoted clubs, so that argument doesn't stack up I'm afraid. 

  21. 2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

    I think we need a new midfielder 

    After that it's all Gerrard for me, he has to do better with what he has

    New midfielder and now a new defender. Probably a striker too but that's far too much to expect for a club like Villa who always fall short of what they need.

     

    I agree on Gerrard but they appointed him, if they're going to fall on their sword with him it's going to be another season the fans suffer.

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