ChicagoVillan1983

We bet a decent amount before the flop on Coutinho.

We get to fold our had after a nasty looking flop for us, but we live to fight on.

That's gambling - which is a massive part of signing a new player.

Sometimes you just have bad luck...

Pau shouldn't have been playing big minutes yet - unfortunately he's right in the thick of things.

I'm sure the (exceptionally savvy) team took the best deal on the table and decided that was better than keeping him.

Seems like decent business to me.

14 minutes ago, TRO said:

We don't have to question UE for that performance

He'll be doing that himself over the next 2 weeks.

We all know, and he knows, things wasn't right.

This…

Stupidity and overreaction to the loss on here today is something else.

We don’t need to change everything because of Liverpool or Newcastle games. Unai has it.

Of all the business we’ve done I have to concur with the Guardian of how much the sale with buybacks illustrate where we are as a club now.

Our academy is so strong that we’re able to sell players for significant fees that slot immediately into decent Championship clubs or crappy Premiership clubs. AND that our squad is so strong that these players have no chance of getting decent game time without leaving.

But we also are smart enough to not just dump them, we have the option to buy them back.

We’re absolutely in the top 4 teams in the league in terms of how we manage our business.

I think if he could have stayed fit we’d be singing songs about the lad for a long time. But sadly that was a big if.

Take the get out of jail card and move on.

Excellent window. Not worried about the forward line - we have depth and we’re scoring goals for fun.

Can’t believe Zaniolo hasn’t been brought on.

Emery out.

Did Zaniolo assist?

2 hours ago, macandally said:

What the hell are Chelsea doing?

Proper basket case, thinking players on 8/9 year contracts are actually going to be motivated to play for their wages.  They must think they have found the golden goose! 
 

Pochetino is decent, but I don’t think that Bohly idiot is helping him! 

Pretty simple. They buy every midfielder in the the league and then teams have to play a 5-0-5 formation against them and they clean up…

Love how fickle we are on Digne and Bailey!

16 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

Are we confident he’ll pass his medical with no issues?

If he doesn’t then we don’t want him.

Diaby to Chelsea for 150m at the end of the season.

2 hours ago, MaVilla said:

fact is, 90%+ of our youth players wont make it here.

A large part of our youth system is to develop young players, then sell them off for financial profit and to help the club grow financially, with the very, very few actually making it in to the first team squad.

It is what it is, if a youth player is good enough, they will (usually - failing mistakes) get in to the squad, if they arent, they will be loaned/sold to benefit the club.

I get the impression that some people think our youth system is solely there to develop players for our first team, it isnt, it is part that of course, but its also part cash cow to allow us to benefit from selling young players who are good, but not quite good enough, for pure profit to help the books, which then helps us sign better players.

If we can rake in 20-30m a year (or more) in youth product sales. or through that and loan income, it will seriously help our bottom line, then if the odd one of them actually makes it with us, thats also superb.

 

 

And they don’t have to. I think most people miss that. Youth is for:

- Buying a bunch of lottery tickets and giving them the best chance possible of becoming a star by having state of the art facilities and training

- If the lotto ticket doesn’t hit, sell them on to clubs below us to help with FFP

Selling a Ramsey, say, for 14m is not a failure at all. Same with Chuk for 20m.

For me he gets the benefit of the doubt as a brand new signing for the new season.

3 minutes ago, Monkeypuzzle said:

He was a couple of years ago, but in today's crazy prices he'd be between £60-£80 million at least. Look at what Brighton want for Calceido, who is nowhere near as good. £40 million isn't enough for Ward-Prowse apparently. It's what McTominay and Fred are valued at. Our current squad is worth a fortune in today's market.

 

Caceido is young though - big premium, W-P wrong side of 25.

45 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

How do you sign a black shirt? 

Don't say 'Oswald Mosley'. 

With a white pen m8. Innit

Probably just making it clear that we have a hard limit on Diaby and aren’t playing silly games on price and will walk away.

2 hours ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

VT has gone to s***

 

Too much success from Emery. Emery out.

People arguing that world class player A is marginally worse than world class player B.

Remember the good old days when we actually had something real and worrying to debate about.

1 hour ago, brommy said:

If Pau's on honeymoon it's clearly at Villa Park (see photographic evidence above) so why would he then need to travel to England?

Romano is as clueless as Villareport!

He’s taking her on the lash around the mail box, and will stuff her with a chip butty at the end of the night.

9 hours ago, mikeyjavfc said:

I don't really understand this transfer. We all laughed when Chelsea paid £20m Chukwuemeka but we seem to have paid c. £18m for a player totally unready for the first team.  He is young so he has time on his side but I fail to see how we arrived at £18m for such a raw player, who will probably spend the first 18 months of his contract on loan or not seriously being considered for the first team. He has 6months under his belt now of Emery coaching so hope we can see something from him soon if this is going to work out. This is giving me Fabio Silva vibes, albeit he was double(!) the money of Duran.

You’re not buying the footballer he is now, you’re buying the option that he will turn into an excellent world class footballer in the future.

The idea is that you find enough of these opportunities that you get lucky on one of them. Just because we paid 18 million and he for some reason turned out to be a total dud then it doesn’t mean it was a bad call. Maybe you only get back 9 million for him.

You have to judge transfers like this at a total program level over a substantial period of time. It’s like picking stocks -  not every single one is going to hit and make money. But if you know what you are a doing and buy enough of them at the right prices (and don’t put all your eggs in one basket) then you’ll come out good in the long run… It’s just math.

Just now, turvontour said:

It's a fair point. But you could probably have said that about half of our last 10 signings. 

Come to Villa, wait a season, simples

53 minutes ago, TheMightyVillans said:

Arsenal probably going to sign rice and timber for about 150mill combined and we signed Tielemans and Torres for combined 35Mill

To go from top 1% to top 0.1% that’s the premium you have to pay.

Can’t believe signing Pau Torres is even being mentioned seriously… We’ve come so far!

Just scrolling a few pages to catch up.

Even people’s arguments this year about why a certain existing squad member is bad or why a certain signing would be terrible seem so much more positive this year than any time I can remember. 
 

Basically all the speculation and opinions are entirely worthless because we all know Emery will make us better whomever he brings in the door.