Laughable Chimp

I'll put my name in the hat and say Grealish will go for 50m if we go down or he doesn't go at all.

What's wrong with playing 2 up front and hitting long balls? The intention there is obviously to have Davis be the target man and have Samatta play off him. That's not inherently a bad strategy. The problem was imo that none of our attackers had the belief nor motivation that they could push through Wolves's defence. We ended up passing it sideways where it became an ineffective cross or passed it backwards which led to more long balls forward.

Its not the tactics here that's the problem imo. This time it seems like there's a lack of belief in motivation in the final third. And with each loss we take, that's not going to improve.

Nah, he needs to be out now. I'm not letting go of the PL that easy, but we are definitely going back down with Smith at the helm.

Yeah, he has to go. I think he's finally crossed the point where results have become unacceptable.

Oh my god what is with these deep free kicks?

He was playing on their left wing against us. Left midfield technically. Although both him and Ritchie ended up concentrating their attack on our left hand side so it looked more like he was playing right wing.

I'm sorry but we're currently a low level PL team. You're suggesting we're culling players who do not have potential to become better than a low level PL player because apparently we're aiming higher than that. That's just absurd considering we're barely hanging on to the PL as it is and those players we cut could very well end up being very useful to us if we dropped down to the Championship. They'll still be very useful to us even if we do stay in the PL. How can you argue that the academy are being ambitious of the future when we're starring down the barrel of the Championship? So all we've end up doing is just cutting a lot of potentially useful players because we're trying to be "ambitious". Now, what I think is the far more likely scenario here is that the players we have were simply not good enough. And I don't mean good enough for some hypothetical future where we're apparently higher up the table than we are now. I mean, they don't even have the potential to play for us at our current level. It just seems like a bit of mental gymnastics to try and twist this scenario into a positive when the negative scenario of this being a bad crop of academy graduates is far more likely.

The 50m pound rumours actually came during the Summer I believe, so before he even played a minute of PL football. Which further suggests that it was bullshit.

Man, I have no idea how you actually managed to spin the fact that our academy graduates are failing to live up to the promise into a positive. They're not just good enough for where we want to be(which at this rate might be the Championship). They're straight up not good for us right now, full stop. If they were, they wouldn't be let go at all. I'd be very surprised and quite livid if they let go of one of these players because they didn't think they will develop beyond a low end PL player. **** hell, we bloody need a low end PL player right now, and we sure as hell would benefit from one if we go down to the Championship.

1-The only team I can see paying that money for Grealish is Man U and I don't think they're as interested as Grealish now as they were back then. If we ask for minimum 80m, we'll end up keeping him. I've seen some Man U fans who think they'll be able to get him for no more than 60m which highlights the gulf in how much they expect their club to pay for Grealish and what we expect them to pay. 2-We overpaid for Mings, which seems to be what everyone aside from some Villa fans seem to think. I really don't see anyone coming in and paying him 35m even with the higher profile. He's proven he's a decent centre back at this level but surely nothing more. He's also 27 so other clubs aren't exactly viewing him as a guy who's capable of improving much more. For 35m, I just don't see any club spunking that kind of money on a decent centreback who's not got much more to improve. 3-The 50m rumours were bullshit and his stock has fallen since then. I'd be happy if we get 25m for him but his main suitor, again Man utd probably aren't that interested in him anymore. If these are the minimum we're asking, we'll just end up keeping all of them. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing in the end is another issue though. I think we can get 10m for El Ghazi alone. His stats are better than a lot of people give him credit for. He's also relatively young. Trez will stay, no one will want him unless its like a Jota deal where he's bought on the cheap as cover. I'd still rather keep them both for the Championship.

Impossible question to answer without being able to exactly quantify the difference in quality of the forwards and the difference in the amount of chances. If the question was something like, would you rather have forwards who scores 10% of their chances, but only get 5 chances per game. Or forwards who score 5% of their chances but get 20 chances per game. The answer is pretty clear.(Its the latter). If you don't exactly specify the numbers, its a dumb question to answer as everyone will have different ideas of what exactly is the gulf in quality between the hypothetical forwards and the hypothetical amount of chances they get.

Its almost impossible to isolate the effect of the manager from the player on the field. As a result, we can't claim that these players are simply too crap for this league and its not really the fault of the manager as for most of them, they have never played in the PL before without being under Smith to use as a point of reference(not that that would be necessarily a good point of reference). On the other side, we can't really claim that these players are better than they are showing for us right now by pointing to past performances.

How is that anywhere near his normal level of performance?

Interesting stat to note. I know xG is a bit of a controversial point to bring up, but I've been following the xGs in our games for this season. xGs are just a measure of the quality and quantity of chances a team or a player has by the way. In the past 3 matches we've actually had a higher xG than the opposing team, meaning we've had the better chances in the game. Yes, even the Chelsea game although that one I feel is a bit controversial because of the fact that they counted both of Hause's shots.(Both of Hause's chances, the first one that was parried and the follow up where he scored from were so close to the goal that by themselves put our xG up really high but you could argue you should really count that as only one chance instead of two separate chances). That said, the reason why this is interesting is because you would have to go all the way back to November of last year against Newcastle to find a game where we had the higher xG or basically, the superior chances in a match. Its not a coincidence that we went the 15 games after the first Newcastle match with an inferior xG and now go 3 straight games with a superior xG. In fact, our xPts(which I won't get into here) actually says we should've gained 5 points. How is that possible considering the lucky nature in which we've seemed to get through the last 3 games? The answer is our finishing these past 3 games has been absolute dogturd for one reason or another. That's our real problem right now in actuality. Finishing. Our defending, whilst not good by any stretch of the imagine is certainly better than before. We've been able to create more chances than the other team in our games. So the final piece of the puzzle that's missing is finishing.

Yeah, okay calm down there a bit.

If we go down, Hourihane won't be a squad player for us. He'll be a starter. If we couldn't recruit enough CMs to permanently displace him from the starting 11 in the PL what makes you think we'll be able to do that in the Championship?

He has a hard job, but he's capable of more than he showed out there. He's always the most closed down out of anyone else but when on form, he always finds a way to shine. Sorry to say, but he really hasn't done so in the last 4 games or so. And its pretty noticeable due to how much we rely on him.

Been off form for a couple of games now, even before the restart.

My position on the players has been the same as its always been. I think they're better than our position actually shows, and I reckon most will go on to become at least capable PL players for some other teams if not us eventually. Manager is holding us back

We are going down

We're gonna stay up boys

He really is more of a Heskey type isn't he? I think he's very useful but I'd rather not play him as a sole striker.

He's a good boy, he dindu nuffin.

I just found out Ghazi means warrior in Arabic. So Anwar El Ghazi could be translated as Anwar the Warrior