Laughable Chimp

Haaland? Think he's way above what we can reasonably hope to get at the moment, no chance in hell we're getting him.

I mean, if you're using that as the standard we've conceded two or more goals in 11 out of 17 games this season. Hardly that much better.

I feel like that game was an anomaly for Norwich. Just prior to facing us they scored 3 goals from 7 shots against Man City. Sometimes you get games where you get lots of shots yet fail to score, and sometimes you get games where you have few shots and score many. May not really suggest anything deeper, its just that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Not sure what short term fix is actually available for us in January. Most of us the guys who scored double figures in the PL last year would cost at the very least 30m, most more than that if they were even willing to sell to us in the first place.. Are we really prepared to spunk that kind of money in January? The ones who don't cost that much are old and there's no guarantee they could repeat their form here. So its not like we have much of a choice. Its Either 1-Spend big money for an established PL striker 2-Go for a formerly prolific striker who is out of the first team in a top PL team. 3-Another moneyball punt on a striker from a foreign or lower league. None of these options feel that great to me.

I don't think tiredness is the issue with Mcginn though. Its an obvious thing to explain his loss of form but I really don't think its as simple as that. Also, would I sell Mcginn for 50 million? Yes, definitely. Probably would've said yes even back in the summer.

Well yeah I agree, I think it was an above average performance. But it was not a 9.0 performance at all which is really my main point on what whoscored suggests it was. Its not that I don't think we should not count goals or assists its more I think we should not just look purely at the amount of goals and assists. How the goals and assists were scored should be taken into account as well as well as the rest of his play. Edit: Looking at his rating more closely, it seems whoscored added a 1 to his rating per goal and a 0.5 for an assist. I'm not gonna suggest that we should remove a 2.5 score from his rating because that's silly, he did well for the goals after all. But are the goals and assist really worth that much in context with his actual play?

Whoscored gives massive bonuses for goals and assists obviously but imo, that doesn't really give a full measure of how good someone is in a game. I mean, can't you think of at least one scenario where a striker plays like absolute dogshit for most of the game yet somehow comes out of the game with a random tap in goal? I don't think that automatically means he played well the game but by whoscored's system that merits an automatic 7 rating at the very least. I don't think Wesley did anything that impressive in the Norwich game. He put in 2 tap ins that were put on to him on a silver platter and his assist was a basic pass to Douglas on the edge of the box that he proceeds to curl in from long range. Not saying he played badly, but It was definitely not a performance worthy of a 9.0, especially considering the missed penalty.

Is there any player you actually think is shit and that's that?

I thought Hause actually did try to play out the back at times, but he still cleared it out much more than Mings usually does.

A bit funny to me considering the reactions here to the 50m pound rumours back during Summer. I thinki most if not all said that they wouldn't sell Mcginn even for that.

Yeah but I wouldn't think the top brass would react any differently if such a situation were to come to pass even if that were to change. Sacking Lambert that season was definitely the right move as it arguably saved us for that season. If the board are more competent now than before as some people here would like us to believe, than I would expect the same to happen to Smith if it would come to it.

Uh, pretty much every player out there who isn't playing in the top leagues currently would join a newly promoted top league club if they could. As well as players who are on the fringes of their team in a top league club. Yeah they're not the best players, but there's definitely gems in there that can be found that's why scouting for us is so important. We're not even going for average though are we? Battling relegation is not the average for a PL team, all our players don't need to be that good if that's our goal. And we're only getting that kind of price if we shop purely for average first team players in the PL which we aren't doing. As evidenced by the fact that we only ever actually paid 20 million or more for 2 of our players yet I would think our squad has a lot more than just 2 average level PL players. Is Heaton not at least an average keeper despite not costing anywhere near 20 million? Is Engels not an average defender? We don't need to pay 50 or 60 mil for a good PL striker, we need to pay that money for a good, young and established PL striker. Young is important, which is why no one is gonna spunk anywhere near that money for the likes of Pukki. And established is the other important one, because if you're comparing the market values of players who have already shown their worth in the PL, they're definitely gonna be way more expensive. Their value ges inflated because of it. That doesn't mean you have to pay that amount of money to get a player of that quality as you can definitely get good strikers for far less than 50-60 mil, you just can't do it on a young, established and good PL striker. We had about 8-9 positions in the first team to fill. The rest were backups we didn't need to pay a lot for.

We still don't need to spend 240 million pounds to replace them is my point. If you have to spend that much, than you're not spending very well.

I mean, Lambert signed a contract extension in September 2014 and was out by February 2015.

Wasn't Gana one of our most praised players that season tbf? I get the same feeling with most of our current crop. I think they're a talented bunch but Smith is failing to get the best out of them for some reason. Look at our relegation season and see who we paid the most money for that season. Gana, Amavi, Ayew, Veretout, Gestede and Traore and with the exception of Gestede all have gotten better than they were for us, some having more success than others. But for one reason or another, they failed to do that well for us when we had them.

The man manages Villa like I play FM. Which is probably why I'm super critical of him, because I know I'm gash at FM. Edit: Yeah. the recruitment strategy seems awfully similar to our relegation season where we brought in a lot of young players from foreign league to grow them as investments. That didn't work out too well for us obviously, the only real difference I feel is that this season our experienced PL signing is doing well for us which will probably keep us off the bottom but that doesn't mean it will keep us out of the relegation zone. Edit 2: Now that I think about it, its probably a similar reason why I'm super critical of Mings too. I used to play as a defender a lot(of course no where near the pros) and the mistakes he was making were making my blood boil and giving me near heart attacks because I feel no decent defender especially at that level should be consistently caught like Mings was on the ball. Now my criticisms of Wesley? No relation to anything my life, I just think he's **** terrible.

We got rid of Gary Gardner though him. I say money well spent.

I've not backed Smith for a while, I just don't think he deserves to lose his job yet. I'm not sure a loss to all 3 would be enough for me to say that he does deserve to lose his job, but it would certainly bring me very close to it. Like I said earlier in this thread, relegation is unacceptable. If we're a bit far from safety at any point in the season, he has to go. I'm not about to go watch another season of championship football with all our best players gone again, and ownership who will now very likely be more apprehensive about investing and a manager who''s just failed in his job the prior season. I think some people have fallen in the love with the idea of Dean Smith, boyhood Villa fan having helped us tremendously in bringing us up to the playoffs to be here in the long term and be a legend at the club, such that they are willing to let us go down with him just to give him another chance of fulfilling this fantasy.

I blame both. I think I'm allowed to blame or at least hate/dislike players for being crap, not just management.

I don't know why people look at scoring in the champions league so much. He scored 2 goals in the CL, and both goals against a Monaco side who gained only a single point in the group stage and were absolutely no match to any other team in their group that season.

Yeah, I'm convinced we need a better midfielder now. Wesley is crap, but at the end of the day our attackers are still scoring so its not that big an issue. I think the first choice defence of Targett, Mings, Engels and Guilbert are good enough to stay up. That really just leaves the midfield who I think are the root of our woes due to their inability to have any hold on the game and protect the defence. It isn't a coincidence that its the midfield that Smith has chopped and changed the most.

In theory, Luiz, Mcginn and Nakamba should have all the facets of a successful midfield aside from height imo. Nakamba as the destroyer. Luiz as the deep lying midfielder. Mcginn as the box to box midfielder and engine of the team. Attributes wise I think they have it in them to control the midfield, so why are they so utterly inept at it? Are they all just not very good, or is there something deeper in the coaching and tactics that's the issue. Starting Lansbury in midfield was just a desperate move by Smith. He knows neither Conor or Douglas are consistent enough for that third midfield role, so he throws on Lansbury in the faint hope he can maybe do better. Doesn't come off as predicted and Lansbury is the first one subbed off. What's more concerning to me is that it hints to me that Smith has no idea why his midfield isn't working. It hasn't been working that well for awhile tbf, its just its flaws were severely exposed yesterday because of our entire strikeforce having what I hope to be an off day for them. Sheffield are not a team that enjoy a lot of posession, so the fact that we let them have it all this game is concerning. One thing I did feel good about was our defending in the first half. It was good defending. Even in the second half I feel that the problem was less our defending and more the amount of times our defenders had to defend. This isn't an isolated thing, its happened before. Our midfield does nothing in protecting our defence and they ineivitably crack under the pressure. But I think in the first half they showed that they could contribute somewhat to the defence and crucially they did so without us being on the front foot for once.

So is Douglas, and judging by today's performance, most likely Lansbury as well. Its not like we have a lot of options there, especially if you're gonna drop Mcginn like some posters have been suggesting Smith do.

I wonder what the reaction would be from other "meaner" managers to our recruitment so far. Perhaps Smith is just too nice and willing to shoulder all the blame on himself for the recruitment, but its pretty clear to me that a significant amount of these players were not at all recruited to play Smith's system and Smith was instead forced to jam square pegs into round holes.

We don't need to spend 240mil pounds just to build a squad to stay in the PL for ****'s sake.