Monsieur Hazdazler

Hey, yeah to be honest with Konsa/CHambers I just tried to simplify the whole thing by putting one at CB and one at RB. Konsa has done great in that hybrid role when he's done it this year!

So considering the current squad/depth - players that are realistically part of the squad (bracketed players you would assume also could be). If we are thinking about wanting two players for each position the depth overall is ok: GK - Martinez, Olsen, Marschall RB - Cash, Chambers CB - Konsa, Pau, Carlos and of course Mings as a long term absentee LB - Moreno, Digne DM - Kamara, Dougie, Tielemans, Dendoncker (Iroegbunam) Wide Mid - McGinn, Ramsey, Bert, Bailey, Coutinho, Buendia as a long term absentee Second Striker - Diaby, Zaniolo CF - Watkins, Duran The long term injuries are tough because we have to consider what we do also when they return, not knowing how their recovery will go also. If we buy quality replacements now do we then have an issue to deal with down the track? I feel like we have a bit of a weakness in defence - another injury to either Konsa, Pau or Carlos and we are getting very light - I can definitely see us bringing in a right sided defender, whether that's more of a pure CB or RB/CB hybrid I'm not sure. Chambers is a capable back up, but even with him considered due to the Mings injury we are one short. I can see maybe a loan move here to cover Mings absence? Carlos seems to be getting back up to speed which is a real positive. LB - It seems pretty clear this is dependent on Digne and whether we can line up a suitable alternative. Sensible reasons to make this move but probably not a major stress if the right player isn't available. So would be 1 in, 1 out. DM - I feel like we are good here? Wide Mid - When Ramsey is back we are good in terms of raw numbers here. I guess the question here is whether Emery wants to move on Coutinho or even Bert if given the chance. Are we realistically going to upgrade on McGinn and Ramsey? That's a tough one. I don't want us to spend a wad of cash on a player who doesn't clearly improve us just for the sake of an extra body. I think Coutinho moving on would be fine, if Bert can stay fit we'd have 4 players covering two spots there with Buendia to return in the distant future also. Second Striker - Zaniolo looked handy and Diaby has been excellent... we are so much better in this position now than last year. CF - Watkins appears to be very physically robust, so bringing in a quality striker is tough because it becomes a bit like Spurs finding a back up for Kane in some ways, where Watkins is so clearly important to Emery and we need a pure back up. I guess up to Emery as to whether he sees Duran as capable. If Watkins did get injured, could we get by with Diaby for example as the CF and Zaniolo or Bailey alongside him for a period? Hard to say this one. I can see us making a move for someone within the forward line. Overall I feel like calls for 3-4 signings are probably a bit OTT, but you could probably stretch to 3 with a back up GK, covering defender for the right side and another attacker of some sort. I feel like as Emery has let Archer go with no replacement imminent, he may feel quite comfortable here unless a real step up in quality type of signing is available. It does seem based on rumours we may be after a wide attacker which i think would see Coutinho allowed to move and us becoming open to offers for Bert. I'm genuinely intrigued to see what we do in these final days - if we signed no one I'd still be fairly comfortable with the situation. I know there's always questions like 'what if Martinez gets injured' or 'what if we get another long term defender injury', but all clubs struggle when key players get injured, I'm not sure we can warrant a big spend to cover the potential of an injury when we have numbers in the squad already?

Thanks for the kind words! I would be more than happy if he re-signed and stuck around - that would be in the clubs best interests, as you say he is young with plenty of potential, and is already playing at a very good level for his age with international experience to boot. Him re-signing would protect his value and help us keep hold of a valuable player, as you say who can play in two positions and is tactically flexible. Ultimately though where I think the problem lies, is that with only 18months left on his deal we have to provide the platform for him to progress his career otherwise he simply will not sign a new deal, and we won't get the opportunity to keep him around for a few years. If you were Douglas Luiz and you were stuck behind McGinn and Ramsey (and potentially Sanson - very debatable) for your preferred position in the team, and you want to see your career develop in that particular role, you probably wouldn't sign a new deal until your playing time in that role changed. Certainly now he will be our first choice DM through until the summer, and we will almost certainly offer him better terms to try to encourage him to extend his contract. At that stage it will be up to him whether he wants to accept the higher wage to play in a position he doesn't really want to play long term, or be stuck on the bench fighting for his place - he may be ok with that and he takes the higher wage in the end which is fine and secures our position at least, but probably not best for his career. If he gets assurance that next season he will play further forward that might help, but ultimately in that situation he may just prefer to wait to see if that actually comes to pass, in which case we enter a risky scenario where he goes into the final 12 months of his deal and we lose a significant sum of money if he leaves on a free. I think the stage is set for a situation where we let him go in the summer to protect our financial position if he hasn't accepted a new contract - ultimately he's a good player but isn't first choice for us in his favoured position, and our recruitment team will fancy they can get a more specialised DM who wants to play that role - that will probably impact the financial package he is offered as well. It's a fortunate problem to have because Jacob Ramsey has come on so well it's added an extra layer of competition in that role.

I don’t think there was going to be a situation where we let him go without bringing in a DM, wasn’t really ever an option I considered us taking. It seems pretty clear now the deals weren’t available so we hold station until the summer and try to convince him to sign a new deal to hold his value. Assuming is he dedicated to the idea of playing further forward I think now we are stuck with him not signing a new deal and we have a weaker summer position, but there’s no way the club would let him go now without a new DM coming in simply to generate a higher fee for him.

I think some of the fan narrative around Douglas Luiz has probably been one of the biggest irritants of this transfer window for me, especially on twitter which is not exactly the best platform for adult debate anyway. It seems like you either rate Douglas Luiz and want to keep him, or you think he's rubbish and want to sell him. Obviously you may be in one of those camps, in reality there's a massive middle ground. I rate Douglas Luiz, I think he's a good player. He's a good distributor of the ball and keeps the game ticking over nicely when in the DM role, he's a solid defender without being exceptional in that role. The problem that I have with Douglas Luiz and why I'm not against selling him is that he's not an exceptional 6 - he's a solid 6 capable in the role. He may well be an exceptional 8 but we've not seen much of him in that role for Villa. From what I have seen of him, I'm not convinced that his ability to pass the ball forward or create chances, or carry the ball forward are particularly strong compared to others we have at the club. McGinn (forward passing) and Ramsey (ball carrying) excel at those two elements, and Sanson has shown really strong abilities in his limited appearances to press and carry the ball forward as well. So would Douglas Luiz get into our team ahead of either Ramsey or McGinn? I'd hazard a guess he probably wouldn't unless one of them picked up a knock and he got a chance, but then he's also fighting vs Sanson for the place, who Gerrard has shown faith in by giving him opportunities. If Douglas Luiz isn't our ideal 6 then we have to take one of the following routes: 1) He signs a new deal and contends with McGinn, Ramsey and Sanson for those spots in midfield, while providing cover at DM if we bring in someone new there. 2) He doesn't sign a new deal and we can't get a new DM in, so he stays until the summer playing DM. 3) He leaves now and we sign a new DM, with Chambers acting as back up in that role. The problem with option 1 is that he likely won't sign a new deal if he's not getting on the pitch, the problem with option 2 is that we end up having to offload him in the summer for around 15-20million, or lose him on a free the following summer because he wants to play further forward and we can't offer that. In my opinion the clearest and cleanest option is number 3 - we get a good price for Douglas Luiz at 30million plus which is invested in an out and out DM who improves that position (not because the new arrival is simply a better player but because he's a better fit for the role). We still have McGinn, Ramsey and Sanson to contest the two number 8 roles with Carney offering cover there also (although I see him as more of a 10 in our system). If we can't make that work, we have to hold him until the summer and accept we take a reduced fee there as he's unlikely to sign a new deal. From a business point of view, taking a good deal now makes a lot of sense - it doesn't make Douglas Luiz a bad player or mean we are desperate to get rid of him, but simply it's the smart thing to do.

Good stuff today, Arsenal aren’t quite the team they used to be but they’re still decent and we controlled the game well and managed it well. I was quite critical of our game management against Southampton when protecting a 1-0 lead, we lost control of the game and were lucky to not concede in my opinion (not to play down some of the quality defending the players put in late in that game as well). This time around with Nakamba on the pitch shielding the defence, and making earlier proactive substitutions made a big difference...Trez for Traore early on, and withdrawing Barkley made us a lot more solid and it’s what I thought we should have done vs Southampton. Unsure if Smith reflected on it, looked at the data and knew he needed to adjust his approach or he just read this one differently, either way well done Deano. Great response from the poor performance mid week as well, just what we needed. Do we think Barkley was annoyed with his performance, simply wanted to keep playing or some other deeper issue? Strange to see him so irritated but he’s not been great recently. Thought Sanson might get a run today but Ramsey is proving himself to be a good option in his cameos. I don’t mind a new player being bedded in slowly, but he’s going to need a chance at some stage!

It does but it doesn't mean we can't try to mitigate it. For perspective we gave up 3 out of 4 of the biggest chances Southampton had on xG in the last 20minutes or so, all excellent chances (per xG over 0.3 which is a very very good chance), that doesn't include Ings offside finish which was marginal. Prior to that we'd only given up one decent chance which was the Cash handball, then a load of low percentage chances. Worth noting as well though that two of those chances were from the same set piece where shots were blocked from both Adams and Stephens Of the 11 shots we conceded in the box, 7 of them were in the last 21 minutes, and the vast majority of Southampton's xG total was from 69th minute onwards. I understand fully that we've got the result, so clearly it was the right call, but when the game goes from being fairly even, to massively in Southampton's favour during the second half, with their best chances coming at the end, it shows we lacked control of the situation. Yes we defended with bodies on the line, but if we do that every game more often than not we're going to concede. We barely created a chance in the second half, which just as much as the chances conceded showed we were struggling down the stretch. Traore did very little and isn't a defensive asset, so even if he wanted to keep the midfield 3 the same, why wouldn't he switch to Trez? As noted before, I love Deano, fully in support of him, but everything but the scoreline points to a lack of action contributing to potential goals conceded. He's frequently shown that his use of the bench isn't perhaps what everyone agrees with, I'd love to sit down with him so he could explain it to me so I could be on side with it. Ultimately, he doesn't need to justify anything to me and he's paid the big bucks for a reason

I disagree, we achieved that partially through heroic defending and some good fortune. We shouldn’t be aiming to rely on a few millimetres in an offside call, because that could easily have gone against us.

Half expected Gary Charles to pop up at right back

I’d say when you can see the team getting overloaded and looking tired, it’s not making a sub for the sake of it to try to preempt the game going against us. At 75mins onwards we were struggling, we got exposed a few times and lacked fresh legs and adequate cover in front of the defence. McGinn and Douglas Luiz worked hard but you’ve got to help them out. We were simply lucky to not concede at the end there, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have both faith and belief that Deano is the right man for us but also have an open conversation about an area he seems to struggle with as a head coach. He will be doing that, it’s what he does...he wants to improve and I hope he looks retrospectively at his decision making today. Barkley is playing basically as a second striker in this system with McGinn and Douglas Luiz as more of a double pivot. If those two are getting tired and we are protecting a lead like that then surely sacrifice Barkley, bring on Nakamba and switch the system slightly to protect the defence. Then utilise someone Trez with huge work rate to provide both defensive cover and a counter attack threat. As it was we left Barkley on playing basically up front and exposed the tiring double pivot. Not the players fault and I can understand Smith wanting to keep a threat on the counter as well but we have to be proactive and not reactive...last game against Burnley we only reacted with subs when things had already gone wrong...fortunate it didn’t happen again today. Again, Deano is the man for me, love him, but he needs to take a look at his approach today.

We’ve absolutely got away with it though, by a whisker. We invited pressure by leaving tired legs on the pitch and were fortunate. I don’t think McGinn off was the right sub anyway, Trez and Nakamba for Traore and Barkley around 75 would have been sensible to bring on cover for the defence and work rate late in the game, plus a 3rd sub to time waste and break up play at the very end.

Nakamba for Barkley was the obvious sub though not McGinn. Switch the midfield set up around and we probably don’t end up in that situation. Was absolute madness to not freshen up.

Absolutely got away with one there, we defended well but very fortunate with two VAR decisions that went our way. We’ve had marginal offsides so I can be happy with that but I’d have been furious about the handball if I was a Southampton fan. love Deano and completely support him but it was painful to watch that game drift away from us with a lack of subs. We needed to do the Nakamba swap with Barkley much earlier, we looked ropey in that area from about 75mins and it nearly cost us. We were about as lucky tonight as Burnley were the other day, so I guess our week has evened out.

It would be easy to be critical about a lack of creativity and so forth, but that’s probably harsh on Sheffield United. I thought it was an excellent 3 points and here’s why: - Historically we’ve not played well against them going back a few years. They’re an awkward team, extremely well drilled and hard working, and when you have that with 3 at the back and 3 in midfield, you’re always going to get forced wide and struggle to create. - When we went a man up their plan was straightforward. They went to two deep lines of strong, well organised physical players with one lone striker. They forced play wide and let JOC and Basham in particular deal with the aerial balls. With a front 3 of Grealish, Watkins and Trez we were unlikely to win those balls anyway. We probably could have focused on sending the balls into the box hard and low, but then you’ve gotta get through a congested area. Basically it was always going to be very difficult for us to break them down and our shot maps and shots on target vs shots taken shows how effective their defensive unit was. - Last season against ten men a couple of times we didn’t even look like we had a man advantage. This time we looked more composed, relaxed and controlled. Aside from the penalty they didn’t really threaten us. Interestingly their pen was from one of their CB’s being on the back shoulder of our full back which is classic Sheffield United really. - Cash, Martinez and Watkins all looked good. Cash was solid, Martinez just looked superb and Watkins put a good shift in...his movement got us the man advantage and while it wasn’t his busiest game, you have to view that in the context of how busy their penalty box was and how little space he had. We will see more from him. Superb addition. - Once we had scored and they had to push out a bit we created a couple of potentially very good chances. Watkins had a nice curler just over and Grealish had the deflected effort, that with a slightly better pass from Watkins he can hit first time and likely score. If you want a fairer reflection of our likely attacking style and output for this season honestly I think the last 15/20 mins is probably more representative. I think anyone here being negative about our performance just simply isn’t taking into account what we actually had to play against, sometimes you just have to credit the oppositions qualities and organisation and move on. If we were Sheffield United fans we’d be praising how organised our defence was and how well we shut them out. Can’t have it both ways! Last season we probably don’t win that, instead this year our new keeper saves a penalty and we score from a set piece. Fine margins that we weren’t the right side of last season. Given that was our first league game of the season it was a good start and will be a good confidence booster. Hopefully we see McGinn back to his pre lockdown form sooner rather than later, and Traoré makes an impact.

Apparently he’s lacking match fitness so I wouldn’t expect a start today. Perhaps in the cup later this week?