JPJCB

I’d be fascinated to see what’s happened behind the scenes to get him to this level. His entire mentality has changed. Before, even beyond his lack of confidence taking players on, he also had terrible decision making. He’s now very reliable in not giving the ball away. I can’t think of a player who’s transformed for the better in such a short space of time 

How thick does he have to be to use an account which he’d publicly been so heavily connected with in the past?! 

On 18/02/2024 at 19:04, Follyfoot said:

Apparently, us and Spurs are looking over  of our shoulders fearfully at the Manchester United charge for the Champions League

Some say Bayern Munich are only wobbling due to the fear that a rising Man Utd will build on their momentum, win the PL, fly away over to Germany, win the bundesliga and take all Bayern’s trophies.

Tommy Tuchel wakes up in night sweats with Scott Mctominay’s face in his dreams. Don’t believe me? Just ask Gary Neville 

On 17/02/2024 at 15:31, Rds1983 said:

Don't forget his signature move of body checking a jumping defender so that they fall dangerously. 

 

Yeah fair enough- I’d forgotten he used to do this and it’s despicable 

5 hours ago, rjw63 said:

You must have missed the many times he “wins” penalties with his “clever” play (as SkyScumSport put it).

Fair- although the hatred is better directed at the rule makers that allow it than the players that exploit it 

Why does everyone hate Kane so much? He seems like a fairly ordinary bloke to me, is objectively a very good player (and largely through hard work rather than innate natural talent) and has been refreshing as England captain compared to some of his predecessors 

They need to cut this guy loose. There’s so much good feeling at the moment on the pitch and all of this unrest on the commercial side is a needless distraction. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Chris Heck isnt expendable at best 

8 hours ago, MrBlack said:

That he'll get a longer ban than a player dishing out racist abuse would get is just so football. Protect the rapists, ignore the racists. 

Neat slogan- you should start a campaign.

Id love to see Bellingham tell La Liga to do one and force a move out of the country if that happens 

57 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

My point is plenty of good managers aren’t proven at certain things. It doesnt mean they’re not good managers. 
 

Pep isn’t proven at doing well with non world class players. That doesn’t mean he’s not good, or that he couldn’t. It just means he’s so good at getting the best out of very good football teams that he’ll probably never need to manage a team of non-world class players. 
 

I happen to think there’s every chance Pep would be an excellent manager regardless of the squad at his disposal. But I guess we’ll never know. 
 

It’s very similar to the argument that Messi isn’t the goat because he only ever played for Barcelona for most of his career who were a world class team. He doesn’t have to go and play for Stoke just to prove himself. He’s good enough that he’ll never have to do that. 
 

Plenty of managers have managed squads like the Man City and Barcelona squads and not even had a fraction of the success Pep has had

I think we’re agreeing on this. For example:

”Pep isn’t proven at doing well with non- world class players. That doesn’t mean he’s not good or he couldn’t”. I agree completely in fact in the original post you took objection to I said he was outstanding and arguably the best of our time. 
 

“I happen to think pep would be an excellent manager regardless of the squad. But I guess we’ll never know”. Again I agree- exactly as you state here, my point is that he’s unproven in those circumstances 

8 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

And we’ll never know if Alex Ferguson could take a non league team up to the championship, or if Zinedine Zidane could save Sheffield Utd from relegation.

Indeed- although my example is somewhat more meaningful as it’s discussing a broad category of management where Pep is unproven (getting the best out of non-world class players). I don’t know if Ferguson could take a non-league team up but I do know that he won the league with the likes of rafael, Tom cleverly, Phil jones and others of mid-low table quality 

My view on this is that Pep is clearly an outstanding manager and arguably the best of our time. But he does remain unproven in situations where he doesn’t have world class players immediately at his disposal. People are forgetting that he finished 3rd in his first season in England. It’s not to say that he couldn’t do what say Klopp has done having spent much less money, just that it’s unproven. By the same token I’ve no idea whether Klopp could take City to the level of dominance that pep has done had he the same resources 

Is it possible that we could play a non-CM in the kamara role to shore us up a bit in there-e.g I could imagine Torres playing there, or maybe Moreno? 

26 minutes ago, ozvillafan said:

It looked bad and he lunged, but not enough for a red. A yellow? Yep.

More concerning, though, was when Maguire had McGinn bailed up on the sideline. All over him, but McGinn turns and is away - despite Maguire literally grabbing both arms to haul him back.

Ref gives a free kick (advantage would have been better - McGinn was filthy at the decision!) and a stern talking to.

Laughable.

The worst one was Kamara being fouled about 5 times on the edge of their area, having the dignity to stay on his feet, and then getting nothing when he finally went down on the 6th attempt 

7 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

I think that was just a reaction to the late goal and what teams/clubs "feel" going to certain grounds. I mean look at our record at Everton since coming up when plenty of top teams get turned over there.

Man. United six points off Spurs so they'll be looking over their shoulder a bit aswell given they have a tough away run in.

Maybe but he started saying it before they scored their second. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it adds to this attitude that Utd are entitled to win the game 

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

Not sure what the feeling is of Gary Neville as a commentator but listened to the Sky feed on the river and thought he was fantastic. Spotted Kamara was badly struggling at set pieces against Maguire five minutes before we conceded and then he was mentioning Emery was going mad because we were slowing the game down when it was 1-1 and it felt like we were the ones going to win it.

 

He was good for 75 mins or so but then was practically tugging himself off toward the end talking about all the great nights he’d had at villa park. His comment that spurs would have preferred Villa to win to “keep united at bay” was also annoying 

The rapidity of his decline is only matched by the rapidity of Bailey’s improvement. Every time Diaby gets the ball he looks lost for ideas. At the start of the season his awareness was excellent and he looked like he’d be an assist machine. What’s happened to him? 
 

It’s like there’s some kind of leverkusen curse where only one of him or Bailey can be on form at the same time 

One of the main plus points today. He was involved in most things we did well. Sure he’s still a little rusty but he’s showing so much more drive and impetus than his previous appearances. He’ll be back to his best in no time 

3 minutes ago, AvonVillain said:

Grow up. From one extreme to the other.

 If you think that’s extreme then you’re just guessing “mate”

3 minutes ago, AvonVillain said:

What argument? It's a pure guess, based on a handful of stories of a high profile footballer in the hyper-sensitive 24hr media churn, in which you've extrapolated an opinion. None of us have the first idea about Jack's private life.

I don’t think we’re ever gonna agree on this “mate” but since you want to carry on. There are literally multiple new stories showing him getting blind drunk in his private life including drunk driving. But no you’re right, it’s just as likely that he’s living a priestly existence in a monastery in his spare time. We just don’t know! 

17 minutes ago, AvonVillain said:

It isn't an 'educated guess' though mate is it, how could it possibly be? It's just a guess.

Stop with the “mate” thing. There’s no point continuing this discussion 

1 minute ago, AvonVillain said:

It isn't an 'educated guess' though mate is it, how could it possibly be? It's just a guess.

Ok- step back, have a glass of water. Read the post. A guess would be me just picking at random. But my argument explicitly rests on actual evidence of high profile drinking incidents so is therefore educated 

1 hour ago, Don_Simon said:

Oh, so one big documented sesh because they won the treble, (or whatever they were celebrating), results in this...

... it's **** mental.

"Amount of alcohol" - we have no idea how much he drinks. 

"We know about for certain" - You're killing me!

Of course we don’t know how exactly much he drinks. But we are allowed to make educated guesses from numerous (not just one) high profile drinking related incidents throughout his career 

31 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Well, Man City are doing better. 

Without him in the team. 
 

Back to the original point. No one’s saying that if we couldn’t have grealish back for free it would be a bad idea (or if they are then I disagree with them). But the transfer and wage cost would be huge and he’d likely have not that much resale value by the time we looked to move him on at 32-33 (which is where the professionalism point comes in). Plus we’re already well stacked in his position with Ramsey, McGinn, tielemans, Buendia (when fit) all able to play there. I’d rather spend the money on younger options for the squad at CM, RB and striker. 
 

In any case given the cost constraints I suspect he’ll end up either in MLS or Saudi soon enough cause no one in Europe will fork out the £50m plus to get him 

9 minutes ago, tinker said:

Fair enough, footballs a results business and Grealish gave us them in spades 

Sure although we’re doing pretty well in that front without him these days 

7 minutes ago, tinker said:

Someone else, the one you don't know about or would never suspect, seen it time and time again,  big drinkers drug users are stealth like creatures.

Grealish is alot of things, foolish, naive a media magnet and he sells papers and gets hits. 

He's also, on his day, the best footballer I have seen at Villa Park, at times he was unplayable. 

He's not an alcoholic or drug user, he's just a very naughty boy . 

(I would have him back in a heart beat)

Sure although you can add to grealish’s list that he’s been caught in numerous drink related incidents in the past and said in interviews that he will always enjoy going on a night out.

No ones doubting grealish’s ability. But for some reason this thread has morphed into equating him with players like young in terms of fitness/professionalism and ignoring all the evidence in front of our eyes