MSvillain

Locatelli who is the golden boy is having a bit of a shocker in comparison, to my eyes anyway

I can see someone in the thread is fuming bielsa got outmanaged by Eddie howe 

22 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

 Better than Grealish easy. 

Grealish must've watched that performance tonight and thought 'i used to be the one doing that' 

11 minutes ago, Woody1000 said:

According to Simon Dobson on Twitter (a football journalist with 33.4K followers)

“Bissouma is Aston Villa’s number one target after Digne. Gerrard wants him as soon as possible and believes he would improve the team massively. Brighton convinced he isn’t leaving but every player has a price.”

So our number 2 target?  

Someone prior has referenced the Ryan Kent example, who is by trade a winger but was played by gerrard in one of the number 10 roles 

8 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Apparently in advanced for Bissouma now.

Source: " Trust me bro ". ( Twitter and FB people who are usually reliable )

Don't play with my feelings like this

9 minutes ago, Lochheads twin said:

Jas, balancing the books and the squad is common sense. It’s hardly being ruthless as we are not casting the out on the streets without a bean to their name.

we need to be a bit more mature about our attitude to former players. As a crowd , we seem more spiteful than most in them welcoming back. A few deserve a less than warm reception but most did their best for us.

Trez is the sort of player where there will be days when we would want his hard work and defensive protection on the right. The disgraceful dive apart, he has been solid team contributor who has chipped in with vital goals and assists as we “stabilized”. Very unlucky with injuries.

If we can improve on him, great and we do need make decisions on which of the 4 wide players we should move on. Looks like AEG first  but Traore and Bailey whist being the most eye catching seem fragile.

Exciting times ahead. UTV

 

 

We should always be able to get £10m+ from the likes of galatasaray/fenerbache for trez too 

8 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

After Calvert-Lewin is he their best player?

Defo top 3 incl. Richardson 

We also have Chrisene who is is only 17, I believe plays primarily as a LB and is one of our highest rated youngsters so Digne could bridge that gap

2 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Literally one low tier Spanish newspaper said it, repeated by another and a Spurs fan tweet account mentioned it.  No credible person has said it, even disputed it on the original tweet (Sky dude), we have seen it no where else.  It’s a BS rumour, making very little sense and not mention by anything or anybody even half credible.

Added to that we don’t know what or how the buy option works.  From just a fee agreed which we can convert but need to agree terms with Coutinho to terms agreed with Barca and Coutinho and only us convert at our option.  We have no details apart from a “buy option” which is a little ambiguous.

Agreed, sounds like bullshit to me 

52 minutes ago, Anything11 said:

Why would spurs have anything to do with it? People are suggesting that we went to those lengths to negotiate a deal just for Barcelona to agree it with someone else. Seriously?

Finally some sense!

What's supposed to have happened; Daniel Levy just dialled in on zoom "yeah lads if villa don't take him, I'll have second dibs, how does that sound?" 

2 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

We sign him on loan now for 18 months and he receives his 380k a week. In the contract we have an option inserted that we can trigger a permanent move to Villa in 18 months time at X £££ per week. In 18 months he will be a free agent as his Barca contract will have expired. This will stop Countinho leaving for another club on a freebie. If he is outstandingly successful with Villa, he will have a queue of clubs wanting to sign him and we wouldn't want a bidding war

Makes sense

1 minute ago, Peter Griffin said:

The key is that Villa gets the option to force Coutinho to sign permanently at the end of 18 months rather than let his agents do the rounds with a free agent that just scored 20 goals  and 25 assists in the previous season and a half

I'm genuinely a bit lost, will we negotiate a perm contract with him after 12 months? 

3 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Seems like the club has completely flip flopped with their recruitment strategy.

Very bad sign.

This is the Everton trap and is the wrong way to go.

Warning: Do Not Feed The Troll

19 minutes ago, AvonVillain said:

That's what was said about Sanson.

yeah and that definitely crossed my mind when typing, but I still think the overall idea makes sense, especially if its a 20/21 year old from a foreign league

2 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

He's going to have an absolute field day today.

He looked in absolute agony on the bench after being subbed vs. Norwich, not sure he will feature today...

6 minutes ago, hippo said:

Personally I'd stick with what we have for this season. You don't get much in the Jan window. 

The top 4 isn't gettable now - and unless we are talking major signings I can't see anyone propelling us to the top six.

Getting someone in and settled for next season may be of value, on the whole though agree with not signing anyone for the sake of it but a DM would definitely be on my list

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

I think he's created a few chances and in spells has been superb. But I just don't think its enough. I don't think he's shit, I don't think he'll be a failure of a signing. I just don't think he's done enough so far and I'm sure he'd probably agree. 

The way he reacted when he got subbed I'd tend to agree with the final sentence 

1 hour ago, HalfTimePost said:

Cheikh Doucoure may still be in the cards though. Less convinced he's a better option than Nakamba now though. But if competition for places is what we're after - and with Marv out long term - a competitor may be exactly what we ordered a d a great buy

Marv's got about 6 years on him though tbf!

4 minutes ago, thabucks said:

Ruben Amorim has done amazing work so far at Sporting … 

£25m release clause, which may put us off..

AVB was at the Web summit in Lisbon last week and was at a resort 2 hours drive away with his family as of 2 days ago according to instagram, for what it's worth 

3 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

If we are going to be disposing of Smith then I would like to think we may have approached a club about their manager if we are avoiding the 'out of a job' crowd.

Yeah gotcha, I know you get some inside info from time to time so didn't know if that was the case here 

Did I read this correctly in terms of we are discussions with a club re their manager?

Edit: meant in response to @AvfcRigo82

10 hours ago, Peter Griffin said:

They have in their arse spent shit loads of money. We are like Man City in spending compared to Brighton

Can you expand on this point please, I'd really like to see a chart of man city vs villa vs. Brighton? 

Based on Ashley Preece's description of 442/4222 I imagine deano is replicating tuchels tactics, which can be extremely fluid in-game