MotoMkali

10 hours ago, Kiwivillan said:

I'm glad you're not manager 

Son suspended

Dembele bought by Chinese club weeks ago

Wanyama injured hasn't travelled and expected to be sold before window closes

I haven't kept up to date with everyone else's windows with what we've been doing. If Son is out then I think we have a really good chance at beating spurs. I would still be worried about sissoko because of his pace and strength plus their new defensive midfielder as well. 

2 hours ago, Genie said:

The guy has been a manager for 30 years, but a comment he made that "goes against the grain" of the VT transfer police is null and void because he left his role as England manager for non footballing reason...

I bet if SAF were to agree with Sam that would be rubbished too, because he suggested Alex Mcleish would be a good fit as manager, he knows nothing also.

Yeah but he is as good a manager as Steve Bruce. Big Sam is just Steve without a broken nose. If you want Steve Bruce's transfer policy back you can go and support Newcastle and when they get relegated you can come crawling back and apologise. 

3 hours ago, Genie said:

I am still staggered at how closed your mind is. That there is more than 1 way to do something. That someone has a different view. We haven't even kicked a ball in the premier league yet but you're completely closed to the fact that we've pulled off a series of master strokes. Open your mind to other possibilities. 

You're selling your opinions as facts.

You're labeling differing opinions as stupidity.

Sadly your opinion doesn't make sense. Of the players that we released only 2 were even close to good enough for championship football adomah and whelan. Of those 2 we have found 2 suitable replacements for each of them. On top of that both of them were liabilities in games against the top teams in the championship whelan because he was too slow and adomah because he was crap. 

Maybe we could have stuck to 1 player at each position and not brought in konsa, trezeguet and nakamba. But then if we got an injury we would be playing elmo right wing and hourihane at defensive midfield which he is no more than a 3rd stringer for (he is good enough as a backup in attacking roles) 

3 hours ago, Wezbid said:

Bullying? Give over. It's just that multiple people found some of your comments somewhat baffling and gave you reasons as to why. If you post something that goes against the grain then people are going to respond. The fact that many people have responded just suggests how against the grain your view is. It doesn't mean bullying. 

Yeah on here we are a nice honest thread. We only bully SGC and Delphiniho

Engels is the starting CB with mings konsa and Hause are young and potential signings. Plus I reckon only Engels, mings, and Heaton (wesley too but he is young so...) have wives or serious partners and are much eless likely to go out on the piss so they are more likely to hang out with each other and form a good bond.

Then it is Luiz over nakamba for me. Against spurs you don't need a hard tackler you need to keep the ball and someone to nip in and draw alli's anger (known to have a temper and get carded) which I think Luiz would be best at. Winning the ball and taking it past him and drawing the free kick. 

Then for me it is Jota vs Trezeguet. I would give trezeguet a slight edge because he is quicker and stronger and can support guilbert/targett with spurs' fullback. And he can get back upfield for the counter. Plus it allows us to bring Jota on when the defence is tired. Which will benefit jota more because it will give him the extra yard to get past the fullbacks.

The player I'm most worried about is son because I think he is spur's best player followed by sissoko/wanyama/dembele as they are large strong and fast midfielders who may be to physical for Jack and mcginn. Sissoko specifically because I think he can run with mcginn and is fast enough to recover if Jack gets past him. 

1 hour ago, hippo said:

I totally get @Genie point. 

But I really don't think we had an option. The only player I would have maybe kept on would have been Whelan.

We could not keep AT and TA - most of the others weren't even in the team towards the end of the season. What loans we could make permanent we did - we haven't really sold anyone who cut it last season.

My hope is that if DS can whip a team of players he didn't choose into a promotion winning team - then hopefully a team of his own selections will be good enough for a least 4th bottom (personally I think we will do much better than that)

 

Not to be rude or anything but I would not have kept whelan. He was one of our main reasons for Conceding last year. He was so slow that when he closed a player Down they could easily pass around him with 2 players and they would have a clear line at our defense. Plus he had 2 or 3 crap balls in him per game which could screw us over. Nakamba and Luiz are both superior options and if hourihanes been working on his positioning then he would preferred as well. 

2 hours ago, Genie said:

By Genie, you mean the approach most managers take in the Summer. Incidentally Big Sam said similar didn't he. Ah he's probably shit and a dinosaur so forget that one 

I didn't know big Sam had a burner account. It does explain a lot though

7 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Maybe so but I don't think we're going to base business decisions off of sentimentality any longer.

I also don't think we're going to be a retirement home for the walking wounded any longer.

So whilst morally - you're right to say what you've said, I don't think we'll be entertaining such a notion.

I think it is the smartest business move to keep Chester. Would another player push through the pain to try and help us win if they know we won't take care of them after that. I don't think so. I would happily pay Chester out to the end of this contract and then give him his current contract halfed until he is 35 and sign him as a coach. 

2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Its a serious issue and doesn't get the attention it deserves. 

Hopefully Marvellous can be an ambassador for the problem and finally help the world be a better place. 

In my opinion we really need to give him some AID regarding this. We need to be safe about it. I think to draw attention to the fact that he is an ambassador we should buy him a HI-Vis jacket

13 hours ago, MaVilla said:

Oh that's a pity.

You don't work with the boaty woaty things by chance do you !?!

*Boaty Floaty

3 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

So he never scored, only got one or two assists a year, but it’s Bruce’s fault he’s crap going forward?

Neil Taylor is shit. He was shit at Swansea and he’s shit at villa and he’ll be shut at his next club. 

The only blame Bruce gets is signing him in the first place. 

Scoring and getting assists isn't the be all and end all of attacking football for an individual player. He was starting left back for some decent Swansea teams. His style of play is best suited for possession based teams with a slow tempo which we are not. 

16 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

It’s a bit of a stretch to blame Steve Bruce for Taylor being shit. 

Taylor has never scored a club goal in his entire career as far as I’m aware.

but sure it’s all Bruce’s fault

Neil Taylor was never amazing 9n the front foot but he was passable he kept the ball and got 1 or 2 assists a year. He was never a threat but he also wasn't this bad.

I've got Grealish and Guilbert.

Luiz because I reckon he will probably get 6 and 6 and because mcginn will pick up a booking every other week and he is quite cheap. 

Guilbert because he should get a reasonable number of assists but I have van djik and matip ahead of him.

Yeah we really need to start producing good young players again. Even if we just sell them to championship clubs at least we would make some money in this market maybe 5-10 mil and occasionally we would get a player like Jack coming through. 

Taylor was good for Swansea but he got injured and then had Steve Bruce as a coach no wonder he isn't creative going forward. Him and Green got their confidence knocked out of them and now they are crap going forward. 

2 hours ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

There’s an academy topic thread, I would link it but don’t know how. I’d saying the academy is producing at the minute with the likes of Rushian Hepburn, Andre Green and Easah Suliman on the cusp of the first team squad. Jacob Ramsey made his first team debut last season is progressing well too, he plays for England u18s

Thanks it seems like Suliman and RHM Have been in the pipeline forever though doesn't it. 

I had a look around and did some searches but I couldn't really find anything on the youth team as a whole more just individual players.

So who are our most exciting youth players and who are we likely to see take the step up to the first team this season.

Also from other topics it is clear that we really want to loan out our youth players to play league 1 and championship football as youth football doesn't prepare them for the big leagues. I was thinking would it make sense to try and establish or purchase a B team to develop our players at.

If we purchased a team that just got promoted to league 1 I imagine it might cost around 5 mil and we could loan out our most promising youngsters to them to help us develop them. Don't know if this would be allowed but the FA but Brentford have a 2nd team many foreign teams like barca and real have them as well. 

6 hours ago, alreadyexists said:

Not sure, but perhaps some of their youth careers were around the same teams? Elmo is a few years older though, so perhaps not.

Sorry I was making a joke. The guy said you could only travel 100m in Cairo in an hour so...

11 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

This is true, but how many of the were set pieces? 

If lots of them are set pieces, we have Grealish, mcginn, Luiz, winning free kicks and probably wesley (apparently he got man handled a lot by the whistle wasn't blown) if he scores lots of free kicks then he would score a lot for us as well. 

25 minutes ago, sne said:

Guessing it's not Cairo as it takes about 1 h to move 100 meters by car in Cairo  

Yeah the reason why they are such good mates is that they were neighbours

3 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

You see, I don't think so. 

Spending money on players does not equate to getting a good football team. I am hopeful Smith gets it right, but at the moment I am certain we are miles behind them. They were the better teams in the championship, they by large could keep their core of players and relations intact and have some what added to that core with quality. At the moment I'd say the realistic person will have them in a better position than us. 

But that's an interesting point actually, what does the betting companies say about this? What's the respective odds for survival for the respective teams mentioned here?

Norwich and sheefield were not better teams than us in the championship they were better teams than Steve Bruce's villa and a villa without grealish. With Grealish we were better than them and we rested players against Norwich but we still dominated the game. 

In the guilbert thread someone posted our 6-1 victory over Sunderland and it reminded me just how good benteke was. If wesley is 90% of benteke then we are staying up and should be pushing for the top 6 spots considering Chelsea and United shouldn't be in them this year.

To me this signing suggests that not only do we want to stay up but we think we can make a cup run as well. I don't think any of the lower level Pl teams have as good a backup 11 as

      Steer

Elmo Hause konsa taylor

           Nakamba

Jota lansbury hourihane aeg

              Kodjia

Jota and aeg can be rotated I think them and trez will be alternating games throughout the season. Although I would prefer jota off the bench as he is versatile and able to give us Grealish protection. 

8 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

No he isn't.

The difference between the best players in the world and say the 150th best player in the world isn't that much. It just appears that way because them being say 10% better than a person who is outside the top 100 compounds with the fact that their teammates are 10% better and so on an so forth. If Grealish say played for spurs instead of eriksen then you would probably say Grealish is 75% of iniesta. 

Grealish doesn't have to win as many trophies as iniesta to be as good as him because that would mean Grealish's teammates would have to be as good as xavi, messi, Henry, Ronaldinho, eto'o, puyol, alba, Alves, valdes, pique, suarez, neymar etc.

Im sure iniesta also went out on the sauce quite a lot as a young player it is just we didn't see that much because we didn't have social media to report this. Grealish is now all about winning and I think that means he can eventually reach that level.

Also 1 quarter of the player iniesta is that is like league 1 or 2 quality Grealish is like 60% of iniesta.