Laughable Chimp

I’m unsure what this guy’s actual position is. He’s seemingly played almost everywhere in midfield this season. Yet at the same time he also has a few games as a centre forward

22 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

You say that stat as if it was a negative. You realise that puts him in the top 30% of full backs in the League this season for expected assists. You however quote the percentile of the SCAs because that helps your point. Selective removal of information like this shows your point is biased as you are not showing the full picture.

Also this season under Gerrard has to be the worst attacking output this club has seen in the league ever surely.

Going on the 365 days and not just this season gives us the stats for Digne in his time at Villa. A time at Villa under one of the worst managers we've had in our history. 

I didn’t selectively quote stats. I quoted the exact same stats you did originally lol.

Anyway, the expected assist stat being in the top 30 percent is kind of true(I suspect we’re looking at slight different stats here). Its just, even being in the top 30 percent isn’t necessarily that impressive since he’s still averaging 1 expected assist every 10-11 games. That’s what I wanted to point out.

You want to know whats the average expected assist per 90 for a full back? Its 0.08. Digne’s is 0.09. There is practically no difference. Its just there’s a lot of full backs who have those numbers as well so technically he’s in the top 30 percent.

for some of these stats, its only when you get to the higher percentiles where there is a marked difference. Like Digne is also in the top 20 percentile for goals scores. How many goals has he scored this season? A grand total of 1. Its only true because most fullbacks are on 0 goals. That’s a meaningless stat and certainly doesn’t suggest that Digne is a major goal threat.

59 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Oh for sure. People for some reason are having a go at Digne when his attacking output is still very very good. He's like top 20% of all Left Backs in top 5 leagues for assists, expected assists, shot creating actions. Our left hand side is a little defensively weak because we've our attacking FB in Digne with an attacking 10 in Buendia playing in front of him. Ideally Digne needs McGinn there or JJ who are experienced in covering the full back space. 

Similar to the Cash / Young experiment on the right side. I can fully see Digne and Moreno in same team and I think we could often see it with a substitution where one comes on to play LM etc..

We all like how Cash and Young are competing on the right. We now get that on left as it seemed clear to me with Digne starting all the games Emery didn't rate Augustinsson at the level of Digne

 

This stat is for the past 365 days. When people are having a go at Digne, they have in mind since the start of this season. And since the start of this season, he has

0 assists.

0.09 expected assists(or 1 expected assist every 11 games).

1.53 Shot creating actions, which would put almost in the bottom 30 percent of all full backs in the pl this seasons.

I have no real issue with his attacking output last season. I actually thought he did well for us last season. But its not really relevant to the current criticism of him. These stats also put into perspective just how much his attacking output has dropped this season.

28 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Isnt the transfer fee rumoured to be about 20 million. I imagine he will probably be loaned back then in our first team in the summer

I’d say its probably more 1 and a half years before he starts to join the first team. He’ll get at least a season loan in the championship first.

9 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Gavi at Barcelona only has 2 goals and 7 assists in 49 La Liga games. Would you describe him as a wonderkid?

Main difference is Gavi is even younger and doing it at a higher level. Big difference between La Liga and La Liga 2.

And from what I've heard of him from Barca fans, his performances haven't been amazing for them either. Pedri is the proper wonderkid. And Ansu Fati before his injuries.

Don't really know what to make of this one. 3 goals and 6 assists in 55 laliga 2 games doesn't exactly scream wonderkid. Then again, he's only 19 who knows what his potential is.

Either way, he surely isn't going to be part of our first team set up for a while. Almost like a late academy signing.

9 minutes ago, WallisFrizz said:

I get the impression that Villa are more agent driven than data/scout driven. The fact that Moreno was linked with Forest last summer makes me think his agent has been touting him around the PL clubs. 
Weston McKennie is another who clearly gets touted round by his agent and we are always “interested”. 
The Joao Felix rumours were similar.

It seems like there is an element of who do we know is available and looking for a move in this window with our signings rather than any long term scouting. Must be hard (and frustrating) to do long term scouting though when your manager keeps changing.

Even before the Lange days. The numerous signings  in the Belgian league suggested we had a link there.

4 hours ago, TomC said:

Coutinho: Overpaid based on performance here, but not based on what he was paid before he came here. You can argue that we shouldn't have brought him in, but that's what it took.

Donck: A little high but I wouldn't call him a money drain. He's been solid since he got here. Knock about 15% off and he's about where I'd expect compared to the rest of the team.

Olsen: Agreed.

Chambers: Quality cover for the price. He's cheaper than Bednarek and the only players below him who are regulars are McGinn and Konsa. Can't call him a money drain. Should play more.

Sanson and Guilbert: Money drains because we don't use them, but not grossly overpaid. They're near the bottom.

Emi: Not sure which you were referring to. Dibu is pretty well paid for a GK; he wasn't a Copa America and World Cup winner when we signed him. Bueni is a little lower than I expected but not out of range.

Konsa: What a steal. Grossly underpaid.

McGinn: I'm surprised that he's that low, but he wouldn't get much of a raise based on this year's performance.

Players you didn't mention:

Digne: Highest paid player in the squad? No thanks. Worth maybe half that at best.

Mings: Underpaid. Should be ahead of at least 4 players paid more than him.

Kamara: Now we understand why he signed here. We paid. Will probably turn out to be worth it.

I do wonder if Mings and McGinn are lower because they've been here a while and signed long-term contracts before the current round of PL inflation. The last TV contract put a lot more money into the clubs.

 

 

Pretty sure Konsa's salary hasn't been updated with his new contract. His newer salary is closer to 70k

5 hours ago, ender4 said:

Which ones do you think are wrong?

Luiz of course because they probably haven’t updated for his new contract.

Olsen is very confusing.

Most of the others seem correct?

After doing some digging, I think what happened is Olsen's guaranteed salary is 50k. The extra 30k is bonuses. I'm guessing its appereances bonuses in case he ends up becoming first team keeper for us. Hence 80k on sportrac.

I never really liked the DoF approach. If you sign a manager, you try and sign the player he wants. Other people shouldn’t be able to force the manager to sign other players that he doesn’t really care for. 

Whilst yes I recognize there needs to be limitations on a manager’s spending, that can still be accomplished without a proper DoF. 
 

Several things I noticed from his stats this season.

His assist rate is really high. He has the joint highest assists of any defender in la liga this season.

He loves to dribble. Has the second highest attempted dribbles our of any defender in la liga this season. Probably has a lot of pace.

Pretty well rounded stats otherwise.

I don't want to keep banging the drum, but it really is an absurd signing when you consider the wages he's on. He's not even a bad player, he's just no where near worth the money.

I really think this is a case of a player once being really good in the past, but had been slowly regressing in quality and was a shadow of his former self by the time we got him. But we still seemed to think he was at his peak of his powers and once we knew he was available, we threw all the money we had at him. 4 year contract? No, problem buddy. Gerrard and Lange must've thought we were getting a world class level left back to have done that.

It makes me really question our scouting and its far from the first player to make me do that. Thankfully, Gerrard is gone but Lange still being around worries me.

I don’t think he’ll be gone. We wouldn’t get anyone to take him on anyway. I don’t see us throwing the towel on him so soon after investing so much in him. Moreno will probably come in as his backup at least initially.

4 minutes ago, messi11 said:

Tier 1 confirmed. 

 

Only 12m pounds? Now this deal is starting to make more sense to me.

I think Ings has been quite disappointing last season, but he's been quite good this season when he's played. He has 4 goals in his last 3 league starts for us. He's just not favored over Watkins.

18 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

Striker incoming now, surely. 

Quite excited tbh.

 

Welcome back, Keinan Davis

Just now, The_Steve said:

There’s no way we are paying Dendoncker £90k pw. Website gotta be wrong. 

The Dendocker salary isn't verified by them tbf. Digne's is.

23 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

Stop it. Nobody knows his wages. 

His salary has been verified at 160k per week  according to Capology. 

https://www.capology.com/player/lucas-digne-34170/profile/

Don’t really see the point of this? We already have Augustinsson and Young as backup lb. Why do we need to spend another 15-20m euros on another backup lb? Especially one at his age.

This feels like signing Lucas Digne all over again.

10 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Here you go:

Wolves - Goncalo Quedes - €32.60m
Leeds - Daniel James - €29.10m
Everton - Alex Iwobi - €30.40m
West Ham - Pablo Fornals - €28.00m

Leeds and Everton didn’t even finish midtable last season. And James and Iwobi are flops, they are players who never should’ve cost as much as they did. 
 

i don’t know much goncalo quedes but I do know he only joined wolves this season so he wasn’t involved at all with wolves finish last season.

Fornals still cost about 4 million euros less than Bailey did.

What’s your point here? Because yes, these clubs have bought some players in around that fee. They aren’t the norm though, most of their players do not cost this much when first purchased. Some of the ones that do are often labelled as flops. Their expectations for them were likely higher than just to develop into midtable players

I want to push back against the idea that 30 million euros only gets you a midtable winger. I don't think any of the wingers that were playing for the clubs that finished between 7-10th last season cost as much as Bailey did.

We can't be expecting that players should only be as good as how much we paid for them. Yes the sky 6 are stupid with money but you can't really compare finances with them. Almost every other club in the league are operating more efficiently than them with how they spend their money. They purchase players relative cheaply and are able to grow their asset. That's why for those clubs that finished between 7-10th, none of their wingers cost more than 30 million when they were first purchased. They eventually grew to possess that value later if at all.

The problem with our signings is that, you really cannot say the same about many of our players. Most have stagnated in value, some have regressed. And unless we are going the route of paying stupid money like the sky 6, we are never going to close the gap this way. In other words, if we purchase a 30 million player, we have to expect that we will eventually get a 40 or 45 million player or more and that has to be the case with most of our signing.

What makes us unique is that we actually do have significant financial firepower that we can potentially do even more than these clubs that finished in that 7-10th region and I think its easy for us to lose sight for that. How can we claim that 30 million only gets you a midtable winger when these clubs are spending less money on cheaper players than that but are still able to finish in those positions? Brighton's transfer record is significantly less than that. We need to learn to spend our money better and expectations for our signings need to be higher than just "well we get what we paid for". Because if we're getting what we paid for, we're doing it wrong,

fbref records the xG of that chance Bailey missed at 0.64.

Understat has it at 0.29.

39 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Also Bailey cost us £25m not the £30 people seem to keep quoting. 

We've signed a lot of players at that price. 

Mings, Ings, Watkins, Digne, Carlos, Wesley. Buendia was over 30m. 

Most of the links i can find say we signed him for 30

10 minutes ago, thunderball said:

Thank you  

Interesting. We still own Traore dont we? 

I think Duelefeu would go some way to helping out.

We do. The thing is, he doesn’t seem to be doing all too well out in turkey right now. He has 1 goal and 0 assists in his last 14 games according whoscored and he may have even lost his starting position. Its either that or its a fitness issue but we don’t really have any information on that.

Maybe his style of play just doesn’t suit the league, Trezeguet’s numbers in comparison have been much better so maybe its a league that favors lots of workrate. Or maybe he just hasn’t fully recovered from the multitude of injuries he suffered last season.

At some point last season, Cash stopped crossing the ball like he usually did and instead looked for a ground pass to a player running towards the penalty box. Wonder why he stopped doing that because it looked more effective than his usual wayward crossing.