JPJCB

Despite having been a critique of Watkins in the past I think this is basically right. He’s not quite elite in terms of goal scoring and he can be v frustrating at times with finishing and hold up play but his other attributes (stamina, off ball work, athleticism) are basically world class. He also has the helpful habit of never being injured!

This is the key point. Sport in general and football in particular convey soft power of a given nation. The PL does so for the Uk as do other leagues for other countries. We should be inherently against the rise of a league based in a country using it to launder its horrific human rights abuses

Frame this post and hang it in the Louvre. it’s a real shame that he slipped out of favour as I think he’s done far more for this club than the likes of bailey. Another negative product of the Gerrard era since I doubt smith would have frozen him out in the same way and it’s always hard to come back once you’ve been out in the cold

McGinn is standing off camera as a translator

The fees are v small particularly for JPB which suggests to me that the board are rushing a sale so that we can do some more business this transfer window with the FFP increased capacity. Even if JPB wants leave/have first team football ordinarily you’d surely loan him so that he can be in the shop window and fetch a higher fee next year. The only reason to sell now is if we want to buy now as well

While Everton are absolute dogshite, to an extent they are more likely to expose Torres’ weaknesses (physicality, aerial duels). It would have been interesting to see how he did for the full 90 had DCL stayed on. For those at the game, how did he fare while DCL was on the pitch? To an extent, I’m more worried about him against the likes of West Ham, Everton, forest than against arsenal, Brighton etc

I reckon he’s gonna be our top scorer this year. You can see how hungry he is to score each game

I’d go with: Martinez Konsa Pau Chambers Acuna (if signed) Kamara Tielemans Bailey Mcginn Watkins Zaniolo Retains a lot of core strength while rotating where we can reasonably do so without a drop in quality

Just watching the MoTD highlights of their game against city yesterday. Foden got loads of joy dropping into central pockets of space between their midfield and back four. Makes me wonder how much more of a fight we would have have put up had Buendia or even Ramsey been fit since their game is somewhat similar- that was a big part of how we thumped them at VP. Instead we had Bailey and diaby- who like to stretch the play- and McGinn who likes to come toward the ball so didn’t really have that gameplan

How is he not begging for a move to Saudi?! Surely it would be a dream ticket for him

When is Pickford gonna get called out for his aggressive and dangerous attempts to play the man in one on one type situations? Destroyed van Dijk’s knee a couple of years ago and nearly did the same to Watkins last season(?) and nearly knocked his block off today. It’s his moronic starfish style attack leap which does it- I’ve not seen any other goalkeeper come close to injuring other players that badly

“Oh crap! I shouldn’t have bet on my own game; Oh crap! I shouldn’t have made bets from a fake island; Oh crap, I certainly shouldn’t have made bets from a fake island in my own name!”

Pretty terrible timing for the holte suite to be out of action

You should send this to the FA as evidence

Tbf I think the zouma example was used to demonstrate fans still remember things rather than the level of abuse he will get. There are a subset of folks out there who were genuinely angry/outraged at what zouma did as cat lovers (me included!) but it’s gonna be nothing compared to the anger people have around what greenwood did. Itll be interesting to see what happens. Maybe posters are right that he’ll just live with the abuse and things move on. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it does start to affect performances given the likely degree

Comes across really well and impressive that his English is so good already

Completely disagree. At the time he was roughly our second most expensive signjng ever after Buendia and was seen as a statement signing by the board (see purslows replacing grealish video. He was £10 million more than we got for Chuk. That’s right: we got good money for Chuk. He was £10 million less than Newcastle paid for Gordon. That’s right: he was an expensive signing as well. I don’t really see what these examples prove?

Somebody earlier in the thread mentioned it was his other knee

That’s fine though in the context of needing strength for more games because of Europe/cups. If we can’t play chambers against the likes of Hibs then his career is truly over

I should really let this go, but the below quote from that thread is genuinely one of the most incoherent things I’ve ever read: “A team with such blatant tactical flaws will not make a dent in the Premier League this season when the quality is so high. They did last season because Villa have some top players that were badly mismanaged under Gerrard/other coaches + Emery is a good coach, but he ain't elite” To paraphrase: Emery’s villa won’t do well; well apart from last season where they did do well but that was only because we have good players and Gerrard is rubbish(?) and emery is quite good Ok then mate…

I found that thread completely incoherent (maybe you can explain what it’s trying to say)! It mentions some tactical stuff which sort of makes sense (emery likes to play a high line but does so inconsistently; emery’s build up doesn’t work at times because he needs better players) but then fails to discuss why exactly villa did so well last year (if emery had been in place from day one we would have reached CL places) or why Emery is particularly successful in cups (some rubbish about moments of magic meaning that tactics aren’t as important- ok fine, but that doesn’t explain why emery is uniquely good in cup competitions). He then says that our signings this year are of CL quality but emery will hold us back. Hang on a minute- wasn’t the problem with our build up that we don’t have good enough players- surely buying better players solved that problem. He then goes on to say that emery ain’t an elite manager which just seems bonkers given emery’s record and that de zerbi is miles better despite the latter having never won a major competition. Im all for criticism of emery but it needs to have an ounce of coherence first

The worse thing Ashley did was being from London. A cockney mafia is far worse than a Saudi one apparently

Presumably emery played a high line with villareal where Torres was his best defender? I’m surprised people are so sceptical it can work without mings given its emery’s system

As in Trezeguet? That’s a bit harsh- Trezeguet was genuinely very good off the ball and was excellent at pressing his opposition full back

Signing Laporte would signal to me that we think mings’s career at villa is likely over. He’s far too good/expensive as a stop gap for a year and assuming mings returns to full fitness we’d then be absolutely stacked in CB with 6 players 5 of which would reasonably expect to be starters Having reflected, I’m not convinced we need another CB. Torres and Konsa should be good enough for the first team and Carlos and chambers can step in for cup games. If we have the £20m-£30m (or higher) which Laporte would cost available, we should be spending it on a new right back/a forward