Laughable Chimp

18 minutes ago, Tom13 said:

You don't get the most assists in Ligue 1 being as useless as some in here like to make out he is. Very sad he didn't get more game time.

When did he have the most assists in ligue 1?

2 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I’m probably the only one that thinks we should avoid this player. Bad vibes.

Nah, same here. Especially if its anything close to the 40m being reported

5 hours ago, KAZZAM said:

Couldn't he had got 'better' loan than the championship? 

I mean Balogun struggled in the championship and now has 10 in 17 while playing for reims in Ligue 1.

Balogun has Seemingly 'overtaken' a stagnated Archer in development now. 

Does Archer have much else to prove in the championship? 

Honestly, yeah. He only had half a season in the championship and he wasn’t that good. Could definitely do with proving himself further.

For example, you say balogun struggled in the championship? He had a goal or an assist every 150 minutes in the championship. Archer had a goal or an assist every 200 minutes. 

21 minutes ago, AvonVillain said:

No chance Digne hangs around for me now. Can't imagine he's the kind to soldier on quietly in the background either.

He’ll be 30 by the end of the season and will still have 3 years left to go on his massive contract. I can see him just sticking around and be content with less gametime as his career winds down unless we try and force him out.

Which we shouldn’t be doing anyway. I’ve been far from the biggest digne fan but after the investment we’ve put in him he really should be kept around in the squad in some capacity. I was critical with how gerrard was all too happy to get rid of some players for shiny and expensice new ones instead of trying harder to make it work with the ones he already had and I’d be critical of emery for the same too. 

13 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Why not right now, sorry? What's going on?

All anyone ever wants is immediate quality. Obviously. Why wouldn't a manager want immediate quality ever?

It costs more, and just like any signing, isn't guaranteed to work. This is the point.

What do you mean? I'm interested.

I'd say his coaching is more important than his "wide scouting network". 

Digne and Coutinho have been a huge waste of time and money. I'm really sorry you thought they wouldn't be, and won't change your mind despite evidence being there for all to see.

Changing your mind as evidence changes is a really good habit to get into.

People have been saying all kinds of stuff about emery recently that I’m pretty sure is made up. Like they imagine what traits their idealized manager has, and then apply them to Emery. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a quality manager. But I’m sceptical about the sheer breadth of claims I’ve seen people make about him and all his positive qualities.

9 minutes ago, bobzy said:

 

His "history of issues" included a training ground bust up (they happen) and apparently joining in too enthusiastically with a local band during a warm weather trip to Dubai.

Hardly the greatest of crimes.

He got into an altercation with the current marseille manager too.

22 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

Worth noting he’s probably going to cost a small fortune. £35m+

 

Nah, this isn’t 2020 anymore. You’re looking at 20-25 for him.

Honestly, I don’t want to be too much of a downer on this but Arsenal let him go for only 10m for a reason. I don’t expect him to even make are starting 11 over Luiz and Kamara. Probably good rotation option though

On the left back being more adventurous and the right back being more stay at home tactic that emery apparently likes to use, if he is going to reuse it here, I’m sure he’s not so rigid about it that the roles are stuck to these positions.

Like, there’s no real difference between the left side and the right side of the pitch. If the players he has at right back is better suited to be more adventurous and the left to be more defensice, surely he isn’t going to force them to play ill suited roles or just bin them off and get new players?

2 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Villa have the second highest average squad age with 27,7 years. Not that many are over 30 that's true, there's 9 of them which seems a fairly average number or slightly above average. 

Damn, wasn’t it just last year when we had one of the youngest squads?

26 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Agree to an extent that you can make the manager responsible for the transfer policy but you still need the sporting director to manage the process

Got no issue with emery saying he wants a left back who plays in a certain way and has a certain skill set and he knows this guy from his experience... But he still then needs lange and his team and people who fall under his umbrella to organise everything that goes with it

I'd have have an expectation that emery walks in to langes office or the head of recruitment's office or the chief scouts office and says he wants moreno and one of the three already knows who he is

But the whole idea that the manager chucks a name out there and then everyone else goes away and does the scouting the data analysis etc etc is how we're always told its set up anyway, the whole committee thing where names come from all over

I'd like to know how we go about lessons learned and stuff like that, the scouts who picked out Bailey for example, wheres he now? We decide Bailey isn't good enough and we need a new winger, are we sending the same scouts out? How do we gauge success or more importantly monitor and improve on failure? Cos at the moment to me it seems like our youth scouts are brilliant and our first team scouts are **** terrible

My guess is that Lange, Purslow or whomever aren’t actually involved much in choosing which youth players to sign. They don’t know who the hell these kids are, so they just leave it up completely on what the scouts say is a hot prospect and must be signed.

That’s not so much the case at first team level.

31 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Would anyone be interested in Füllkrug? He’s 29 so perfect age for us, and not too expensive going by that tweet. He left pled decent for Germany in WC.

Yes. Currently joint number 2 in the scoring charts in the Bundesliga. His all round stats look good too. Heavily involved in play. Good in the air. Been good for at least 2 seasons now, albeit last season was in a lower division. Might not be the best defensively is the only concern aside from his age.

Honestly, I remember you disagreeing with me on this but this is exactly the kind of player that I said we should take advantage off. These late bloomers that never got their big break for whatever reason. Fullkrug has spent a decent amount of his career in the lower divisions and never played for a big club. Only now he's been able to show his quality but because of his age, normally most people wouldn't care. Had he not had that world cup showcase, most people who don't watch the bundesliga wouldn't know he is. We can get these players for relative cheap

13 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Whilst I can totally appreciate what you are saying I think another way of putting it would be that we are being patient. I too think that at times, especially the last two games that there has been too much sideways/backwards passing, but I guess what we are trying to do is retain possession whilst trying to carve out an opening. The trouble has been that our creative players haven't off the back of this patient approach threaded through too many defensive splitting passes or that the likes of Bailey haven't gone down the wings or got in behind and put in chance creating crosses.

As disappointed as I was with yesterday and with the first half against Wolves I can at least take solace in the fact I can see what we are trying to do under Emery whereas under his predecessor I didn't have a clue.  Yesterday we had 80% possession, against Wolves just under 60%. With that amount of possession you'd think we would have carved out more chances than we did but the trouble is the players that you'd expect to - Coutinho, Buendia, Bailey are all off it at the moment. 

I wouldn't expect Emery to be throwing the baby out with the bath water though and wouldn't expect, or want, him to rethink what he is trying to implement. Given the limited time he has been here the fact he has made us a side now able to keep possession much better is some going. Off the back of that possession and patient approach though you clearly need your creative players to provide those moments and create those good chances. If those within the squad can't then I am under zero doubt they will soon be replaced.

I am confident we will get there eventually but it will take a lot more work on the training ground, two or three transfer windows and there are likely to be a lot of in game hiccups and disappointments along the way.

I don't know if people remember, but this isn't really any different to how we were under Gerrard at the start of the season. We had a lot of posession, just couldn't carve out any chances for whatever reason.

21 minutes ago, Zatman said:

What do you think you get these days from a 25 million signing? Wesley cost 23 amd Chukwuemeka 20 million

Morgan Gibbs White with his 2 goals 2 assists so far will cost up to 42 million

All of those players cost that much because of their potential and may have still been overpriced regardless.
 

Brighton and Brentford have never even paid 25m or more for a player and look at wherr they are. Fulham have only paid that fee for 2 players in their history and none of them are even still with them.

Most clubs outside the big 6 only have 1-2 players on their squad who cost that if at all. Don’t try and tell me that 25 million doesn’t get you anything when the majority of the starters in the league don’t even cost that much.

with the money we’ve spent, our players should be good enough to get us between 7-10th. But they’re not even that good are they?

58 minutes ago, Sulberto21 said:

He has much more pace and is probably more suited to our new manager’s tactics. 

Wasn’t this the exact same thing people said when we replaced Targett with Digne last year?

15 minutes ago, messi11 said:

I'd happily drive Cash to Chelsea for £25 mil

 

 

I'd take 20 if they offered it.

I don't think its a lack of awareness from Dendocker. He just makes an absolute mess of his first touch.

On one hand, I feel like we shouldn't have our keepers make these kinds of short passes in case of scenarios like this. There was a longer pass available to Olsen on the right that he could've made.

But at the same time, Olsen isn't exactly the best with his feet so maybe he told specifically to lay the ball off to the closest player. This worked fine when it was Luiz or Kamara, not so much Dendocker who also isn't the best on the ball.

6 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Double post

5 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Said before En-Nesyri fits into that profile, look at how he scored v Portugal in the world cup and he has had decent scoring seasons in La Liga and still mid 20s.

He's worth a go as we're not really good at finding breakthrough players in early 20s compared to many other clubs. At least with Kamara we've shown we can pick up a developing player in 23-25 age bracket so that's probably the best bet for upfront unless we just replace Ings with another experienced striker.

Mate, I’m looking at this guys stats now and he has the stat profile of a poacher except he doesn’t even score goals most seasons. Can’t pass, can’t create, can’t assist, can’t dribble, can’t finish and never even touches the ball.

31 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

And why would Maguire come here? It's funny, our fans are turning our nose up at him, but he'll have to think he's good enough to be playing for clubs in european competition. He's nearly 30, he's not joining here for "the project", he's probably got one more contract in him

Close to 0% chance of this being a story based in fact

He'll actually get gametime here.

18 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Maguire was very good for a Leicester team that won the PL, right?

Hence Manure pay a massive fee for him and the pressure is on, he hasn't really fitted well with them either.

I don't believe for one second Villa are in for him.

However I think he is a good player and the criticism of him is unfair, he's always done well with England.

I like him, people just jump on the bandwagon with him. Sheeple do these things....

Maguire wasn’t part of the Leicester team that won the pl.

The xG for that game was something 2.7 for us and 1.8 for them.

Weird game that for a lot of reasons. We benefited a lot from the deflections that allowed us to score goals we shouldn't have but at the same time, we also missed some good chances. 

I thought being good on the ball was supposed to be one his better attributes. I know a hull city fan who keeps talking about how its one of his good points. Pep wanted him to join City too, and I doubt he'd want someone who was terrible on the ball.

Part of me thinks this is Emery overhauling the squad with his own players, same way Gerrard did last year. If true, expect to see quite a few of our previous players being thrown to the side.

If he comes here, he’s starting. No doubt about that.

9 hours ago, PaulC said:

why is  Dendoncker on 90k?  Hes just a squad player at best 

He was already earning about that much at Wolves.