MotoMkali

3 hours ago, TRO said:

yeah, I remember where he come from Fleetwood.

Its funny, I always rated him before he got famous....early days at Leicester.

He has the qualities like,when I watch Sheff Utd as a team .....that Bubbly effervescence in his play is engaging.

back to Freddie....I was amazed at the stats your declared....but i do like him, just his height makes him a target for lumps.

He is very athletic and gets up well to win the ball especially from goal kicks. He does struggle when he can't get a running jump though but engels and mings need to be winning the ball before the attacker can get to it. 

46 minutes ago, turvontour said:

So against Man City, Spurs, Arsenal and Liverpool we have won the first halves of those games a total of 3-0, and lost the second halves a total of 11-1. That's bizarre, right? Does it tell us anything, other than that we're garbage at closing out games?

It tells me we are too passive in the second half. Are out of energy and reactive rather than proactive when making subs. It is a massive flaw what was the point in bringing players on against City after the 2nd goal. You could tell we had gone into a fetal position yet Smith didn't attempt to shake it up by bringing on a sub. Put Anwar on and hourihane for mcginn and we would have had some energy. We waited until we conceded and we conceded straight away after as well. It was essentially pointless. 

7 hours ago, Laughable Chimp said:

1-Passes isn't the right stats for it if you're looking for how many times Wesley actually has hold of the ball. Whoscored measures the "posession" which I believe to be a more accurate measure of this. In the previous 3 PL games, Wesley had had an average of 1.4% possession of the ball out of the whole match. Aguero averaged 2%. Aguero got 2 goals in an assist in these 3 games. Wesley has had neither. 

I still don't think possession is a particularly good measure of the quality of service anyway, but I still think its better than passes Wesley makes.

2-We only got one goal in the first half of the Arsenal game, so trying to say that our style of play in the first half is what contributed to us scoring 2 goals eventually is odd. Plus, they weren't even an alright team for most of the game considering they were down to 10 men yet we still were pretty much on the backfoot for the second half in spite of it.

3-This whole, Wesley doesn't get enough good service argument is weird to me since Davis seems to be doing significantly better whenever he's subbed on for Wesley at actually holding up the ball. This has happened several times whenever Davis has got on the pitch for Wesley. Did the other players magically get better at giving the striker the ball each time? Honestly, our service may not be the best but its increasingly starting to appear as if he isn't able to do much unless he gets the highest quality of service, just look at the goals he's scored so far, they've all been very close to the goal and were provided to him with great service.]

Just had a look at the Wesley goals so far again. Arsenal and Norwich's second goals were both tap ins, set up for him on a silver platter. First Norwich goal didn't have great service, just the Norwich defender **** up so the cross somehow ended up right in front of Wesley and just outside the 6 yard box with only the keeper to beat. The Everton goal was a masterful ball by Jota that Wesley picked up and credit to him made the right run for, and he ends up again just outside the 6 yard box with only the keeper to beat. Of course he needed to be in these positions to score the goals and I give him credit for being there, but the quality of service that was provided for Wesley in almost all these goals have been top notch. The problem is that he doesn't seem do anything of note with the ball, much less score if the service is anything less.

Couldn't find it on who scored so it just tallied up times the relinquished possession of the ball through passing or through other means. His goals have been tap ins but when he gets the ball to his feet he makes good decisions with it. Like when he played guilbert through for his cross to grealish's goal. We need to be a lot better at finding his feet because the way it is right now he is already on the backfoot if he wins the ball at all and it will likely cause him to lose it.

2) I made a mistake regarding the arsenal goal sure but for the first 55-60 minutes we were the much better side and we didn't resort to hoofing it long once we did we slowly lost control of the match and gave ground to arsenal.

3)When keinan comes on we have been chasing a goal in probably all of his appearances so instead of hoofing the ball long to him like we do for wesley for 70mins we actually play nicer football and allow him to get into the game. For example Davis averages as many passes as mcginn does over a full 90 minutes. This shows a couple of things 1 mcginn isn't getting the ball enough 2-Davis is getting the ball in good positions from his teammates where he can quickly and easily move the ball on. I don't really remember any long balls whilst Davis is on the pitch though I am sure we have done some whereas for wesley I remember him chasing 3 or 4 long balls that he has no hope to win per game.

When wesley comes deeper we are better but as it is the tactics make him stand as far away as he can and rely on the off chance someone actually plays a ball to within 10 yards of him so he can be in position ice the ball starts falling. 

44 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Just Scott Hogan excuses mk2. 

He's gotten the ball plenty, but he rarely manages to do the hold up play well. Davis pulled up the midfield more often in 45 minutes than Wesley has done in 10 matches. 

In 85 minutes of game time per game wesley averages 15 passes. He also does the equivalent of lose the ball 5 and a half times per game meaning he receives the ball about 20 times per game and you expect me to believe he is getting the necessary amount of service to flourish as a striker. Mcginn gets the ball 35 ish times per game as well which is really low for midfielder.

We clearly need to work on getting the ball to our best players more consistently so they can have a bigger impact on games. And get the ball to just everyone more consistently so they can do anything. I don't believe aguero would have scored more goals for us this year than Wesley has because we aren't providing our striker with the necessary service for him to much of anything. In the Norwich game wesley was dropping deeper we were playing more balls to his feet players were running past him creating space for him and everyone else to operate in but we haven't really done that again since then. The arsenal game we did it in the first half which is why we scored twice against an alright team because we played to Wesley's strengths which allowed everyone else's strengths to come to the fore.

I'm tired of everyone scapegoating wesley and hourihane. It wasn't hourihane fault trez's ball to him had a little to much pace on it so the keeper was on him when he got their and it isn't wes's fault we keep hoofing the ball to the general vicinity of the defender furthest away from wes yet we insist it is wes's fault that he isn't winning the ball. Maybe look at Heaton and how he has completed onkly 53% of his passes. What about mings. We got lucky with mcginn running in on opening day helped by wes's excellent ability to keep sanchez away from mcginn aide from that it was a poor ball not close enough for wes to win it and without an excellent run from mcginn the ball would have easily been picked up by Danny Rose. 

23 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It really isn't and that's obvious to anyone. 

He might get there, but saying he's good at it 

Delete

23 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It really isn't and that's obvious to anyone. 

He might get there, but saying he's good at it now is just taking the piss. Genuinly makes me wonder if you have seen strikers that are good at 

Delete

20 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It really isn't and that's obvious to anyone. 

He might get there, but saying he's good at it now is just taking the piss. Genuinly makes me wonder if you have seen strikers that are good at it. 

When he has got the ball he is good at hold up play and finding the right pass. The problem is we aren't giving him the right balls for him to do it. We either need to be more accurate at finding him with our long balls (unlikely) or we should pass the ball to his feet which worked very well against Norwich and arsenal in the first half.

20 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It really isn't and that's obvious to anyone. 

He might get there, but saying he's good at it now is just taking the piss. Genuinly makes me wonder if you have seen strikers that are good at it. 

When he has got the ball he is good at hold up play and finding the right pass. The problem is we aren't giving him the right balls for him to do it. We either need to be more accurate at finding him with our long balls (unlikely) or we should pass the ball to his feet which worked very well against Norwich and arsenal in the first half.

20 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It really isn't and that's obvious to anyone. 

He might get there, but saying he's good at it now is just taking the piss. Genuinly makes me wonder if you have seen strikers that are good at it. 

When he has got the ball he is good at hold up play and finding the right pass. The problem is we aren't giving him the right balls for him to do it. We either need to be more accurate at finding him with our long balls (unlikely) or we should pass the ball to his feet which worked very well against Norwich and arsenal in the first half.

22 minutes ago, TRO said:

Hey!....ElGhazi is 6'2 and Trez 5'11

now I know its not the be all and end all.....but your comment is questionable, if you don't mind me saying.

Agreed ridiculous to suggest trez is built better for a striker

20 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Maybe that's why I said physique and not height. Just a hunch. 

El ghazi weighs 12kg more than trezeguet is 3 inches taller and is less fat. El ghazi weighs 90kg for comparison wes weighs 93 kilos. 

2 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:

He's played his best football for us in the Prem since moving to the left of a front 3 so I can see why Southgate would compare him to them.  I don't agree with it and it's harsh on Jack but I can only see it as a good thing as he has had a recent injury and is also motivated to put in even more great performances.  Still plenty of time to get in there before the euros. 

He's playing his best football there because we now have a competent attacking right back and it allows us to have conor in the team with him who is probably our biggest threat for goals and assists aside from el ghazi who is more inconsistent. 

3 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think your first paragraph has validity and creedence something my season tiicket holding wife has been barking at me, all season.....much yo my dismay, because, I love SJM as do all fans, including opposition fans.

Having played the game back......I have to concede she and you, have a point.

Mcginns work rate is his greatest asset and his biggest weakness. In the first half it makes him one of the most effective players on the pitch. In the second half he is tired a lot slower and lazy with his tackles. To me a lot of the challenges he gets booked on come in the second half where he has gotten there late and follows through because it is easier rather than chasing after the ball. It also contributes to him burning out later in the season where he picks up more and more cards like when he got suspended after 10 cards. I also think he picked up 2 cards in the games jack missed in the 10 game run because he had to work harder. 

4 hours ago, villalad21 said:

I believe these bunch of players are mentally weak. When players come at them they lack bottle and hides in their shell. They get scared, stops playing and resort to hoofball.

I don't think it is mentality issue it is a fitness issue and a tactics issue. First and foremost is mcginn. Once we get to 70 minutes mcginn should be off the pitch. At this point he can't run and it leads to the opponent easily keeping possession in our 3rd as he can't close opponents down. We also lose a lot of movement from our full backs at this point and certainly helps in keeping us pinned back. 

2nd you are right we are playing hoofball but that happens half the time with us even when we aren't on the back foot and that is unacceptable. The way I see it we have a couple of options. First we need to utilise the full width of the pitch. Our wingers should be on the bylines when we win the ball in our third so that if they get caught with the ball it will end up out for a throw in 9/10 times. This will give us a breather and let us get back into shape. On top of that it will let us break quickly if the wingers aren't tackled and will force the opposition back. I also think wes needs to drop deeper between the midfield and the centre half's and drift out wide this will mean if someone picks him up they are out of position allowing an easier counter for us. If not he is in free space and we can more easily keep the ball rather than just hoofing it which only succeeds at getting one of their centre halves to collect the ball and play it back to a midfielder.

6 minutes ago, Philosopher said:

In the long term Jack is mixture of primarily a 10 who can defend like a number 8. The current wide position is more of a temporary solution as our wingers have been underperforming and we are still trying to establish a style of play and make the team a cohesive unit. 

For me Trezguet is our best winger (because Jack is not a proper winger imo). He has struggled with his final ball / finish, which I feel was more about nerves. He first touch is bettered only by Jack, his pace is the best and his dribbling is bettered only by Jack. For me he should be picked ahead of El Ghazi and Jota everytime, it's only a matter of time before his end product eclipses El Ghazi. 

First of all el ghazi is way quicker than trez the only player in our squad who might be quicker is guilbert. It is funny how you mentioned confidence because el ghazi is clearly lacking it right now as he isn't really attempting to take players on. On top of that el ghazi has better end product and is a threat from outside the box which is important as it forces players out of position trez simply isn't. Finally el ghazi is a year younger 4 inches taller and only weighs a little bit less than wes. If Ghazi can learn to use his strength better and be a little more effective in the air el ghazi would be among the best players in the prem. For me this is far less of a stretch than trez suddenly developing finishing ability and the ability to score long shots on top of all the crossing he needs to learn.

I think both can be good premier league wingers but el ghazi is better at the moment and simply put has far more potential in the long run. 

The difference is we have played 4 of the 6 hardest teams we will play this season and lost in the last 15 minutes against 3 of them. And 2 of those games we could have had a penalty and VAR didn't check it.

In the next 8 games (to the halfway point) Newcastle play us, Crystal Palace, Burnley, City, Southampton, United, Sheffield, Bournemouth.

We have wolves, Newcastle, manure, Chelsea, Sheffield, Leicester, Southampton, Norwich (Watford so we have played every team once would make it fair).

So we play the 3 of the same teams assuming we get the same points as them from united, Sheffield and Southampton. I presume 4 to 7 points for both teams and will go with 5 each. The other 5 I'd say both Newcastle and us have one game which we don't have much of a chance of getting a point from city and Leicester so we remain on 5 points. We play each other so we should presume a draw (although I think we should be favoured for that game) so we are both on 6 points.

After that we have wolves, Chelsea and norwich/Watford (your choice) which I would expect us to pick between 4 and 7 points again so I will go with 4 as both Chelsea and wolves are ahead of us but in my opinion we could beat both. Newcastle have CP, Burnley and Bournemouth some of the tougher teams in the division and I think would be lucky to pick up 3 points. So we will probably be in similar points by the halfway point but we will have a far better goal difference. And I could easily see us 3 or 4 points ahead of them. 

3 hours ago, Laughable Chimp said:

But the thing is, he isn't even showing up half the time. Tell me, how many PL games do you think Wesley has actually done at least decent in? For me, its only been the 3 games so far, the games he's scored in(I'm just gonna take people's word on the Everton game since I didn't see it myself). I'm not saying he needs to score to have a decent game, but the rest of his contribution has been generally so poor in games where he doesn't score that he just doesn't have decent games when he doesn't score. Maybe at a stretch the Liverpool match although I'm not entirely convinced since despite being pretty dominant in the air for once, he had 0 shots and was generally ineffective, albeit I don't think its entirely his fault considering how hard it was for our team in general to hold on to the ball in that match. But its basically 3 or 4 out of 11. That's not even half the time.

I disagree the games he has been best in he played deeper and we were passing to feet more. This is a tactics issue and currently I don't think Dean is getting the best out of him. His goals have come from slipping in behind the defence which we aren't taking advantage of when we are out wide weostly play high looping crosses that the defenders easily get on to. Most of our goals have come from relatively low crosses which aren't intended for the head but for volleys or tap ins. Furthermore these types of crosses are more likely to force a mistake from the centre half through a clumsy touch either with ball ending up at a players feet or in the back of his own net. We have scored 5 or so goals from these balls totalling nearly a third of our tally this year. This would play to Wesley's strengths better as well as it let's him use his strength to hold off the centre half and either finish himself or let a player behind to get it like with mcginns disallowed goal against Burnley. 

2 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

The thing is Norwich and Brighton also had 20+ shots against us.

It is a glaring issue that it's so easy to get past our midfield.

That was because we were for more goals so both mcginn and hourihane were in poor positions defensively. Mcginn especially needs to be better at getting back into position after a run hasn't panned out so we can recycle more easily. With him doing what he does now not only does it leave us exposed if we lose the ball but it makes it a lot harder to switch the ball as there is a massive gap between our left and right flanks where mcginn should be. 

49 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Man, its good to finally be able to post on this site instead of just lurking and all.

Anyway, I looked up Wesley's expected goals stats for the past 3 games, and he's actually number 7 in the list of Villa players. Grealish, Mcginn, El Ghazi, Trezeguet, Hourihane and even Davis have a higher expected goals talley in the past 3 games than our current top man. Davis has somehow accrued a higher expected goals talley in a total of 30 minutes of time in the last 3 games than Wesley has had in 241 minutes of the last 3 games. Now, that's not to say Davis would actually meet that expected goal talley since his finishing is crap but its still pretty interesting how low it has been and highlights how unlikely Wes was to score in those 3 games even compared to other Villa players.

If you include the last 5 games, which includes the famous Norwich game, then his stats jump up considerably, so much so that Wesley is number 1 in terms of expected goals which really highlights how much that Norwich game did to improve his stats in general. If you increase the scope to include the last 10 games and all games in the PL so far, Wesley is shown to still be comfortably number 1 in terms of expected goals too. I checked his expected goal talley in that individual Norwich match, he was expected to have 2.62 goals in that one match, which makes sense when you consider how many goals he actually got and the missed penalty. But his actual expected goals talley throughout the whole season aside from this match has actually been at around 2.4. In short, Wesley's expected goal talley in the last 10 games if you discount the Norwich(but including the Everton match where he also performed admirably) is less than the expected goals he accrued in that one singular game, giving him a goals per game talley of less than 1 out of 4 without the Norwich match and 1 out of 2 with the Norwich match. 

What I'm trying to essentially say is that whilst Wesley can be amazing for one game, he tends to have many poor games in between. I do think he is very wildly inconsistent in terms of how good he can be in a game but he is far more likely to be poor in a game than to be great in one. Now I know this is generally the consensus of him anyway, but I just wanted to analyze this from mostly a stats perspective. Are we really in a position where we can afford to place a striker who is going to score loads of goals in 1 every 5 matches(this is already a pretty generous ratio in my book considering he probably isn't going to be up against a backline as poor as Norwich's every 5 games) but be largely crap in those other 4 matches? And this is mostly from a goal scoring perspective as well, which is the main argument for Wesley, I too agree with the notion that he generally doesn't seem to do the other parts of the game all that well either.

Yeah but the thing is we are around the bottom of the league. We only need 13 wins for typical safety with 1 draw and we will probably get somewhere around that region with 5 or 6 draws. We'd only needs to show up half the time for us to win and I wouldn't blame him for his poor EXG in games other than Norwich. I think we need to play the ball to his feet more so he can get involved with play rather than chasing long balls that even on his finest day he has no chance of winning. In his best games we have played the ball to his feet or in behind rather than hoofing the ball where his strength is more of an asset than a weakness (with long balls he is more likely to foul because he knocks a defender over). 

You can see this from him having fouled the most in the league 26 times but he hasn't received a single booking when 2nd and 3rd have received 6 and 4 yellow cards to this point. 

2 hours ago, useless said:

Looking at the table we're losing too many games, only Norwich and Southampton have lost more matches than us, and at the same time we've won as many games as United in tenth place. Obviously giving away to many late goals, we've lost nine points thanks to conceding goals in the last ten minutes in the games against Spurs, Burnley, Arsenal, and Liverpool, doesn't matter the quality of the opposition it's something that needs sorting out. Need to start learning how to turn some of these losses into draws.

Draws don't keep you up wins do. If you end the season with 40 points you could have 13 wins and 1 draw and 24 losses or you could have 10 wins 10 draws and 18 losses. The point is as long as we win enough games draws won't matter. It would be nice to prevent losing points from winning positions but it won't be what decides our season. 

33 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

. . . but then we'd be toothless up top.

I'm not saying he shouldn't attack I'm saying he shouldn't be playing upfront and giving our other midfielders no options. He has been doing it less as the season progresses and didn't do it at all against Norwich. 

3 hours ago, Czechlad said:

Nope do not move Jack. One goal off a set piece does not excuse the 8 or so mediocre matches Trez has had for us. Moving Jack to wing got us wins, and we'd be stupid to move him back centrally where we struggled defensively. 

Have Trez as an option off the bench and pushing El Ghazi for a starting spot is great. But we cannot force him into the team. 

We would be fine defensively with Jack in the middle if mcginn sat deeper so we had link up play in the middle of the park and he could actually get back.

13 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Benteke never went to the ground unless it was a clear and obvious foul.

Wesley really need to get it out of his game.

The problem is Wesley is being fouled it is just light fouls which would go straight to someone like David silva or even aguero but the ref looks at him like he has gone down easy. 

1 minute ago, villalad21 said:

DS won't change his formation. We know this so why keep asking for it?

They aren't formation changes per say they are just variations. 4-2-3-1 is just 4-3-3 with 2 defensive midfielders and the wingers are narrower for example. Everything suggested stillivolves 433 just implemented in different ways. 

On 02/11/2019 at 21:33, av1 said:

Whilst I agree with the point, I think I'm beginning to form the opinion that it's just about understanding the league. 

Half the time he looks like he's genuinely dismanyed that he isn't winning a free kick, which leads me to suspect that maybe these type of decisions went his way in Belgium. 

I think he just needs to learn that this league is different. 

But as you also pointed out, it's probably confusing him even more that when he decides to dish a bit back he is deemed to be the aggressor. 

I still like the kid, he'll learn..

I think he just isn't getting anything from the refs. I didn't get to watch Saturdays game but in previous games defenders have gone through the back of him but he never wins it.

Premier league refereeing continues to disappoint me and I believe it is far worse than any of the championship games we played last season. 

16 hours ago, Keyblade said:

I'd drop Luiz and go back to our 4-1-2-3.

I would drop mcginn. Not because he isn't good enough but because he will burnout if he continues playing every minute of every game for me it is why he gets booked so often. And why after his 2 match suspension why he picked up 4 bookings in 12 games because he played all of them. Bring him on at 60 minutes for Luiz and he will score the winner.