Laughable Chimp

43mil. If you want to compare in terms of money spent on the first 11 each team fielded on there it would be 85mil for Villa, 17.4mil for Sheffield

You know I was gonna give some credit to Smith for actually subbing Wesley out for once. Then he goes and shits on it by saying he was forced due to a knock on Wes.

5 points is the bare minimum from the next 3 games I feel. Any less and I think genuine questions on Smith's ability to keep us up has to be asked.

Suprised no ones said anything in this thread. No bones about it he was very poor this game. I don't neccesarily mind as long as he shows this is a one-off. The bigger problem I think is that it really highlights how much we rely on him. We don't win games unless Jack plays well. But at the same time, we don't necessarily win all the games where Jack plays well either.

I have to disagree with El Ghazi and Trez. I think both have shown enough in our squad at the present moment. El Ghazi has 3 goals and 4 assists and Trez has 3 goals and 1 assists. Those are decent numbers for a team at our level for wingers.

Yeah, same here with me. My gut feeling is these players should be good enough to at least keep us from being relegated. I just don't think Smith actually knows how to get the best out of them.

If we lose all 3 of them we're pretty much odds on favorite for the drop lol. Like, you don't lose against the bottom 3 teams in the PL in a row and not be the favorite for the drop.(I know they might not be the bottom 3 as weeks go on, but the point still stands, they're arguably the 3 weakest teams in the PL right now other than us).

Well we have Southampton, Norwich and Watford next. Seems like a season defining run of games there. If we fail to win a single one of these, I think that would probably make undoubtedly one of the favorites for the drop. Problem is those teams aren't gonna roll over as easily as I feel some of us think they are. Watford looked good against Liverpool and if it were not for horrific finishing, could've definitely at least gotten a draw. Southampton have 2 wins in the last 3, could possibly be 3 wins in the last 4 very soon. Norwich have just drawn against Leicester, the team that beat us 4-1 just last week.

I think Smith should go if we get relegated or are far adrift. I'm sorry but I don't share the sentimentality people have of him here for taking us up through the playoffs, at least not enough to justify us completely going back to square one again. Not saying I think we will get relegated yet. But just in response to the posters who think we should stick with Smith no matter what.

I mean, he wasn't good but no one in the midfield or attack was today. Best thing I can say about him right now.

Wesley with a 47% pass completion percentage at half time

Nice to have a first half where one of your centrebacks doesn't give you a near heart attack at least once.

I call bullshit lol. Rivaldo and Ronaldinho aside from by you haven't even been mentioned in this thread once and no one in this thread has ever compared Wesley to Ronaldo like you claim they have. There's a search function to check.

Man, now Watford having so little goals compared to their expected goals make sense. The team are horrendous at finishing. Otherwise, they're not bad.

I think I'd rather Smith put an actual useful sub on the bench rather than put someone there just for show and to "avoid a disgruntled player in the camp"

1)Ah yes, this just sounds like another excuse for Wesley. Now its he's not 100% for each game, he's just tired, that's why his scoring record is crap. 2)I edited it in the earlier post. Brighton have also played against all of the top 6. 3)Wesley and Maupay have similar amounts of quality and quantity of chances to score from. Both Wesley's and Maupay's expected goals are around 6, the excuse that Wesley doesn't get enough good chances compared to Maupay doesn't fly.

I really want to make another point about minutes per goals but at this point, but I'm not sure why bother anymore. Anyway, Maupay 192 minutes per goal. Wesley 344 minutes per goal. Not in the same league with each other. I don't want to keep bringing this up, but I'm just sick of the "but he has 4 goals" argument. He's played almost every minute of all 16 games for us. Many strikers who've scored more goals than Wesley in the league have played hundreds of minutes less than Wesley, some have barely played half the time Wesley has. Not to mention Brighton have also played against all top 6 sides. Not sure why us playing them in a 7 game period is relevant and somehow excuses Wesley's scoring record. It might if you're looking at his scoring record for only those 7 games, not if you're looking at in terms of all games played so far which we are.

Thing is, I honestly think we've been scoring goals in spite of him, not because of him. Hard to prove it considering he as you said has played so many minutes for us so its really mostly conjecture at this point. But still, the team doesn't even try to pass to him anymore in the final third and actively avoid him. I just can't believe someone who the team treats like that is really contributing all that much to our attack

Vs Burnley, Vs Brighton, Vs Liverpool, Vs Newcastle

I feel like the amount of sitters El Ghazi has actually missed is overstated. The only one that to me, qualifies as a sitter is the one he missed at Leicester. You can look at the difference between expected goals and goals as a measure of how clinical our players have been. In terms of chance conversion, El Ghazi's goals talley is 0.89 lower than his expected goals, which is not good but not that bad either. Trezeguet and Grealish have a higher goals talley than expected goals talley which means they've actually been doing well in converting chances. Its Wesley who has by far the largest difference between his expected goals and goals stat at 2.05 which suggests he's been doing the worse in converting his chances.

No, just no. You cannot compare Kevin de Bruyne who is a midfielder who's primary game is about making assists in terms of goals with Wesley to say Wesley has been ookay at scoring goals. That is just wrong and just allows you to paint a false picture of how good a player is. If you want, you can compare their goal or assist ratio together because you take into account both. That would but KDB at 94 minutes per goal/assist. Wesley's is somwhere in the 280s I think. Again, not in the same league. I added Firmino into my post earlier via edit. I forgot to include him. Lastly, yes obviously the forwards who are lower down the list are more likely going to be playing for teams higher up the league, because by virtue of their good goal scoring their teams are gonna be higher up the league, The list below has most of them. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/torschuetzenliste/wettbewerb/GB1/plus/1?saison_id=2019&detailpos=14&altersklasse=alle However, this doesn't excuse Wesley as our entire team still does get chances to score and Villa last I checked were creating a lot of the chances in the league. Edit: Hope nobody saw that mistake.

Ah yeah, I think you're clearly reaching here the moment you tried comparing a centre forward to midfielders. Who the **** compares Wesley to the likes of Kevin De Bruyne in terms of goals? KDB is an assister, he's not mainly a goalscorer as shown by the fact that he has 8 more assists than Wesley in the PL. Now okay I concede, that you did name a couple of forwards in that list but now I will list all these players in terms of minutes per goal. Wesley 344 minutes per goal Roberto Firmino 317 minutes per goal Jordan Ayew 303 minutes per goal Sebastian Haller 298 minutes per goal Now there's a massive gap about here Anthony Martial 193 minutes per goal Riyad Mahrez 165 minutes per goal Gabriel Jesus 145 minutes per goal Alexandre Lacazette 132 minutes per goal Lys Moussette 118 minutes per goal. As shown here, he is absolutely no where near the likes of Martial, Jesus, Mahrez, Lacazette and Moussette so comparisons to them are silly. In fact, the only players who are comparable to him in terms of goal scoring ability are Ayew, Firmino(who has 3 more assists than Wesley) and Haller but I think there's argument to say there's concern on the form of all 3 of these as they aren't playing to the PL standard either, especially Haller who should be doing more considering his price tag(Sorry that is a terrible minute per goal ratio for a 45 million pound rated forward). So again, comparing players to other players who are underperforming and using that as argument to say Wesley is playing okay is silly when its entirely possible they're all playing like crap at the moment. Edit: I forgot to add Roberto Firmino.

I mean, he wasn't exactly playing against the most quality opposition on his debut. I heard he was shakier in the more recent England games.

I remember back when I used to lurk that VT was a pessimistic place. Lets all agree to go back to being pessimistic please so that there's less bickering going on.

Limiting it to just the top 3 seems a bit unfair(especially considering they've only played 2 of the top 3). Surely when we're talking about stronger teams than us, it would be more than just the top 3? If you include the top 6 Sheffield has manaaged to draw against Man United, Wolves and Chelsea, quite impressive. If we're looking at the top 10, they've beaten Crystal Palace and Arsenal as well as drawn against Tottenham, in fact they've played almost everyone in the top 10 and out of the top 10 only lost to the top 2.