JPJCB

I saw someone (might have been Tifo?) mention another relevant factor on this that because we tend to score early in games this season it means that much of the game is spent absorbing pressure meaning our xGA is higher and xGF is lower than might be the case if we were spending all game searching for a goal

chill out a bit mate My point was that there are plenty of people on twitter offering far more insightful anyalsis than pundits in real time. They don’t have “more time”: they’re watching the same game as me and you. Your point seems to be that it doesn’t matter who’s on screen they simply don’t have enough time to say anything of interest tactically. Managers up and down the country must be in a pickle knowing that there’s nothing they can say of value at half time to their teams because they simply haven’t had enough time to analyse it. Of course it’s possible to have people on who can provide tactical insight in real time. You’re just not gonna get it with the likes of Micah Richard’s etc.

That’s a bit downbeat. There are plenty of people on twitter with tactical analysis background breaking down the game in real time. The problem with TV is that they pick the ex players, most of whom have nothing between their ears- if they did they’d be managers, not pundits. They need to start getting more people in the mould of Michael Cox or the Tifo bunch who actually know how to look at/explain tactical points in the game

Yeah I think arsenal are mentally weak so the dynamic you describe could well play out. Plus they’ve gone through a slump despite having few injuries- if saliba gets injured again, or odegaard, then they’re done. Spurs and Utd on the other hand can genuinely say they’ve been unlucky with injuries so should revert to a higher performance level going forward

Bold prediction but it’s the new year so I’ll do it. We’re gonna finish third. That’s based on us continuing our 2023 form through the rest of the season which would see us with 80 points and would have resulted in a third placed finish in each of the last 5 seasons other than one (when it would have resulted in second). This is how I reckon it will finish: 1. Liverpool 2. city 3. villa 4. Spurs 5. Arsenal 6. Utd 7. Brighton 8. Saudi FC 9. West Ham

Konsa for me- has stepped up as a leader in mings’ absence and performed very solidly including a significant number of games out of position

He’s been better than I expected but with two caveats. 1.) Every single time I saw him for city he looked absolute dogshite- absolutely miles off the level of the first team so I’m still unconvinced that he’s actually as good as he appears for an average Chelsea team. 2.) it’s a pisstake that a couple of good appearances for one of the “big 6” gets you an England call up and he should be having to prove himself more before getting to international football. All in all though he’s benefitted from the move

Palmer is exactly what the facts show he is- a decent, if not spectacular, player in a mid table team. It just happens to be the case that the team in question is Chelsea and as a result people assume he must be brilliant and he gets England call ups when actually it’s really not that difficult to standout in their very average first eleven

Rice looked like he slipped there. Did they overwater the pitch?

I don’t know why you think this is such a laughable view? Yesterday was a big big game that we bottled at least partly due to a very poor performance from the player we’re discussing. It seems really odd to me that you wouldn’t take that into account in the value of a player. Before yesterday I didn’t think Luiz would go missing in big games. Now I think it’s quite possible that he could. Now of course that needs to be balanced against his performances to this point, but your view amounts to saying we should just ignore what happened yesterday entirely

The missing piece of logic there of course is the suggestion that Luiz is worth £100m in the first place which is the thing we’re actually debating. If you assumed he was worth closer to £70-£80m which might be fairer value since he’s had only 12m playing at the top form he has been recently then signing a CM to replace him doesn’t look as difficult. Not easy by any means but if we’re going to be part of the big leagues which is our aspiration then we have to be in those races. Hopefully if we have CL football it makes it a lot easier. I note as well that the structure of your argument would basically apply regardless of any fee that we received for Luiz. If we received £500m for him we’d still face the exact challenges you’re talking about. So your argument isn’t “don’t sell Luiz because he’s worth more to us than the fee we’d get for him”; instead it’s “don’t sell Luiz because we’ll never ever be able to sign a replacement in any circumstances”. That might be true but is overly pessimistic and just isn’t sensible in an FFP world. To take grealish as an example, I think most posters today would say we’ve done ok out of that deal but very few would have on the day of the deal itself. £100m is a hell of a lot of money

You’re right the second argument is stronger. I haven’t fully abandoned the first though. There are plenty of situations where the buying club overpays for a player whether that’s stupidity (Chelsea going for caicedo) or a title aspiring side feeling they are the missing piece of the puzzle (arsenal going for rice). It would obviously depend on the exact situation which is the case. But I don’t think it’s outlandish to say that we could get a player as good as Luiz or better for a monetary equivalent of the third most expensive player in history. This initial debate started because people accused a fellow poster of having a kneejerk reaction by saying that selling someone for £100’ might not be a bad idea which is just bad logic to me

When the facts change, I change my mind? Is that tricky to understand? Much the same as you I was unconvinced by Doug for a long time and it’s the last 12 months that he’s proved me wrong. Even now I don’t think he’s a bad player by any means but last night showed me that he isn’t a leader. When the chips are down you want players to step up and want to get on the ball and take control of the game- the opposite of what Luiz did. Apparently it’s kneejerk to say that I now think accepting a £100m fee for him- a fee that would make him the third most expensive player of all time- might not be a bad idea. Ok then? Im less pessimistic than you are about our ability to find a decent replacement. We found Kamara for a free transfer and how much would you say he’s worth now. Or we could spend £50m on two very very good midfielders (if not as good as Luiz) which would solve our depth problem in that area

It was Martinez that created the conditions for a situation like that to happen with Kamara. Kamara was naive but I genuinely believe that could have happened to a number of our other players caught in the melee- it was pretty innocuous. If you were out with your mates and that happened you’d be blaming the idiot friend who kicked it all off not the one who did something as minor as what Kamara did . What’s worse is that Unai knew that it meant trouble and was desperately trying to drag Martinez away (not Kamara) to which Martinez was pathetically fighting against. He needs to realise that being a moron who causes trouble isn’t the same as having a winning mentality

I think the point is that with £100m you could buy a player just as good or better Aftwr last night I’ve moved more into that camp personally. Luiz hid all game which was shameful. For me our highest priority position for a big signing is now centre midfield since we’re thin on the ground there anyway (only Kamara and Luiz are starting XI quality) and they could both do with decent competition

Really? The reason we lost is lack of control of the centre of the pitch. Jacob didn’t offer much but he didn’t do any less than Bailey in that respect. This loss is on Luiz and dendoncker who failed to show any kind of control and his all game. If we’d played the same but with a peak Ramsey we still would have lost. If we’d played the same but with a peak Luiz then we wouldn’t have

Shameful shameful performance and simply laughable we think he’s anywhere near a £100m player. He hid all game which is just embarrassing. If I was Emery I’d be livid

Didn’t play great but he’s not the reason we lost

Really **** pissed off with that tbh and it’s the first time I’ve rated an emery performance as a “poor”. Manure’s one strength is playing on the transition and we allowed them to play the game that way despite being in the lead for most of it and being in a position where we should have been able to absorb pressure. There’s a mitigating circumstance that we’re missing both Kamara and Torres (the loss of the former by that Brentford red card is turning out to be a big big miss and something that Martinez should be throroughly embarrassed about given his role in it) but still the gameplan needed to be to drop deeper an absorb their press which we didn’t do. Conceding three goals to these lot is an embarrassment. Martinez- 7- I don’t think he can be blamed for any of the goals konsa - 8- Motm- the only leader on the pitch carlos- 5- looked positionally suspect on a few occassions lenglet- 6- not terrible considering but lost the ball in dangerous positions digne- 6- was fine but Moreno outshone him when he came on dendoncker- 5- decent in the tackle but contributed to lack of control luiz- 3- ill drive him to arsenal myself on that performance. Numerous occasions teammates looked for an option in the middle and he was nowhere to be seen. He was being marked closer than usual but made no effort to move into space. The opposite of leadership mcginn- 5- looked good every now and then on the ball but influenced the game too little. Should probably have been dropped a bit deeper once our lack of control in the game became apparent ramsey-4- I’d drop him for diaby based on current form and ease him back in via cup matches Bailey-5- similar to McGinn. Decent when on the ball but influenced the game too little watkins- 3- didn’t do anything of note which isn’t really good enough for a striker with his ambition

I cannot believe how much Luiz has hidden in this game. So many times when a player has tried to look for a pass into the centre of the pitch and he’s just nowhere to be seen

Both the “second eleven” players (dendoncker and lenglet) have been very good considering. And great to see them create a goal. Manure rely on playing on the transition and so it’s frustrating that we’re not exercising more of our possession game. We need to see a bit more from Luiz

The whole narrative around rice has become silly. Arsenal were statistically better last season at this point and their only big money addition has been rice so why haven’t they’re significantly improved? He’s not performing badly by any means but £100m should be getting you a player that transformatively improves your team (a la Van Dijk at Liverpool) and he simply hasn’t done that

Ah right you are

Didn’t mings do something similar to salah a couple of years ago? Slid in and go the ball and then because of salah’s movement and mings’ momentum clipped the man after?

I do think there’s a lack of people paying attention to what Emery has actually done. Neville there talks about us finishing top 4 in the same way someone who’d not watched football for 18 months and then was asked about us finishing the top 4 would- “oh it’s Villa who aren’t a traditional top team so probably they won’t finish in the top 4 but wouldnt it be nice if they did” If you look at what has happened under emery where we’ve been consistently a top 3 level team in terms of points per game, plus the fact we already have a head start, it’s gonna take a relative collapse in our form under emery for us to drop out of top 4. From that perspective I’d be “surprised” if we didn’t finish top 4 at this stage