JPJCB

1 hour ago, Don_Simon said:

How do you know how much alcohol he drinks?

If you were asked to pick out who you thought might be the biggest drinker in the squad, who would you choose: the guy who drinks for 72 hours straight at the victory parade and has to be carried out his front door to the next event, or someone else? 

22 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Jordan Henderson is 33, hasn't played in a good league for five months and had his debut for Ajax delayed while they tried to get him up to fitness.

Next week, Gareth will be attending Socceraid to check on the fitness of Jack Wilshere.

 

Gareth Southgate spotted at Sunday league match checking on a potential partner for rice in midfield 

9 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I understand the impulse to feel annoyed about this, but at the end of the day you won't find really any unbiased (ie, non-fans) pundits/experts/blowhards who will tip either us or Spurs to actually win it. 

I agree. Getting ready for the next phase though where spurs are included in the discussion and we aren’t. If we’d not won against sheff united then I’m almost certain that would have been the narrative. ATM were acting as a boundary line: anyone above Villa is in a title race; anyone below Villa is in a Europe race. We could be joint on points with 3rd and 10 points above 5th and that would still be the narrative 

7 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Certainly is. England call up by the media a bit premature though. Who's he gonna replace, Bellingham,  Foden, Grealish etc etc.

Now that he’s a deeper lying centre mid he’s got more chance of getting in. He’ll be competing with the likes of Gallagher, Henderson and Phillips to play alongside rice. And to be fair, based on current form you’d pick him over any of those

I’m speculating on a not very fun subject here but the greenwood thing seems like one of those situations where she probably does love him despite him being a piece of shit. She posted that clip of him and nearly ruined his life and then probably felt guilty subsequently and wanted to stay with him hence the collapse of the case against him. Maybe money was involved but i could imagine that not being the driving factor 

Doesnt change what the whole world heard on that recording clip and fair play to Bellingham for calling him what he is. Just a sad situation that these types of relationships exist with shitty men who are abusers 

11 hours ago, Spoony said:

I slagged him off when he was poor and all that stuff came out of him wanting more time (because I’m a fickle, naive, impatient Villa fan).

Ive learnt my lesson these days. I think he’s superb. Say it quietly but he’s better than Buendia…

To be fair, he was poor when played as part of the double pivot- and his inability to play there has caused us a bit of a problem given we basically have no depth there if Luiz/Kamara are injured.

Fair play to him though for his performances in a more advanced role. Without wanting to hint at agreeing with delphinho(!) his main value add to the squad has been as a Buendia replacement 

If La Liga fines him for this while doing next to **** all about the racial abuse of players like Vinicius then it will tell us a lot about the values of that league. Bellingham should be looking for a way out 

43 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

He’s only scored 3 goals this season but 2 were great goals and the third a great finish. I wonder how much service he gets and what his general play is like. 
 

He’s xG is 3.03 which basically means he has taken the chances he has got right ?

Agree we would most likely sell him again though. 

That XG also implies he doesn’t get into positions to score very frequently. Maybe that’s down to not getting chances but it’s a very low number even for a relegation threatened side 

Would love to hear Danny Murphy’s opinion on this 

if alonso is in the running why not this guy? 

Overall this is good for us. Klopp was arguably the best manager in the world at getting more out of players than they have on paper. Liverpool aren’t a money bags club and him leaving makes it more likely that emery’s villa can displace them regardless of who they get to replace him 

I’m not defending Gerrard by any means but sanson’s first year with the club coincided with smith and he did barely anything in that time. And as others have pointed out, he could have stayed with Emery but decided not to.

Theres plenty of other players who have more of a right to complain about Gerrard- mings, Luiz, Buendia to name a couple 

5 hours ago, gwi1890 said:

The agenda is Unreal . Ollie sitting there on 14 goals and 10 assists 

Edit- misread original tweet 

46 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Anybody see him move the ball about a metre to the right when he took that free kick. He even wiped some of that foam stuff on the grass where he moved it too. Wouldn't have scored from the original place, proper cheat.

As for being a gambling addict, he never was, just gets him off a hook a little, as it's supposedly mental health related.

He said afterwards in an interview that no one would be talking about him moving the foam/ball if he hadn’t scored. Yeah, obviously mate.
 

He’s not the brightest is Ivan 

Ashley Williams (who in general is a decent pundit) arguing that it’s forest’s fault that the toney goal didn’t get disallowed because they didn’t complain about it. Since when are those the rules? Either it’s breaching the rules or it isn’t and if it’s the former then VaR has ample opportunity to rule it out  

Watching MOTD and arsenal’s second goal involves Jesus clearly obstructing the palace goalie on the corner in question. Does VaR check it? No

Meanwhile a month ago Ramsey does a similar thing to the Sheffield united goalie and the goal is disallowed despite the goal coming about a minute later in a different phase of play. Make it make sense.

Meanwhile MOTD’s analysis focusses almost entirely on how arsenal’s set piece coach is a genius because he’s taught players to obstruct the palace defenders on corners leading to free headers. (No danny Murphy in sight of course)

9 hours ago, maqroll said:

Lee Hendrie does this as well, he really does. He does it so often it becomes distracting to the point where I'm thinking less about the game and more about when he's gonna say it next. Obviously used for emphasis, but it's kind of lazy. It really is.

This is the best post I’ve read today. It really is 

What have they even spent that money on? As this season has shown, their squad isn’t even that good. Fair enough Guimaraes, Isak, Tonali. But Who else has been warranting such big sums? Harvey barnes?!

1 hour ago, MaVilla said:

 

I know somewhat off topic but the first goal shows everything that’s special about Kamara. The way he deliberately holds on to the ball longer  than you’d expect and engages a defender before feeding Moreno…just class 

6 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

This. Unfortunately, we’re seeing revisionism whilst he’s injured. Gerrard and Emery have both preferred Bailey when fit and Bailey was dreadful for the most part in the last couple of years. With Diaby/Tielemans here, he isn’t going to get much of a look in, in that no. 10 role and he isn’t physical or quick enough to play as a wide midfielder. Ramsey, McGinn and even Bailey will play that role.

Given the clamour to sign Zaniolo (who is just as average as Buendia), I’m not sure where people think both will play. I get it’s a squad game but I fully expect another couple of attacking additions before next season starts and I just don’t see Zaniolo or Buendia featuring much.

Our core midfielders/attack will consist of:

Watkins
Diaby
Tielemans
Kamara
Luiz
Ramsey
Bailey
New
New

IF we get those two ‘New’ positions right with genuine quality, that is one hell of a selection for a front 6. Doubt many of you will be talking much about Buendia/Zaniolo if we do. 

(I’m assuming Duran will be sold). 

Not sure about that. I seem to recall emery liked a front 4 of McGinn, Buendia, Bailey behind Watkins at first and then Ramsey in for Bailey toward the end of the season.

Youre right that diaby being around makes it more competitive but the signs in pre-season were that Buendia was preferred to Bailey. My guess is we would have started the season with Buendia and McGinn on the wings, and diaby behind Watkins.

Whats changed in the interim is that Bailey’s form has astronomically improved - he’s probably benefited most from Buendia not being fit- and so buendia’s chances of getting in the side are lower than pre-injury. But it’s wrong to say that Emery didn’t like him last season 

10 hours ago, Kiwivillan said:

Linesmen must love us. I've never seen them so busy. Guy was flagging Boro nearly every attack late second half including free kicks lol

We must make their lives easier. We’re so bloody good at the high line that they may as well flag whenever an opposition looks as if they’re in behind 

On 05/01/2024 at 14:08, MotoMkali said:

It's worth pointing out that because of the way we play our xGA will always be higher than our actual goals against because there will be tight offside calls that aren't called on the pitch but when going to VAR would be disallowed. For instance one of Halaands shots vs us in the city game was offside and it was worth something like 0.8 xG when measured but in actuality it was worth zero because he was offside. 

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

10 hours ago, useless said:

No it's not bloody downbeat, I don't expect great analysis from TV pundits, it shouldn't be expected in the time they have, if you don't like it then just watch the game instead of taking notice of what they say.

People on twitter have more time to take in the game, so of course if they know what they're taking about they can offer greater analysis, but if you put them on the spot during game or moments after it's finished their input wouldn't be as interesting.

The people on the TV are essentially there to offer the most basic of description and to be entertaining in some way

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.

14 minutes ago, useless said:

People seem to havet this strange fantasy that pundits should offer amazing and insightful analysis, you're not going to get that they have a few moments to speak and they're watching the game live or they've just watched it, they're never going to think of something particularly interesting to say, truth be told because there isn't actually much of great depth that can be said in those moments, we're watching the game for ourselves so we know what's going on.

I don't understand why people take so much notice of it, I watch games and don't bother with all the 'analysis',

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 

4 hours ago, picicata said:

Interesting as I was just thinking about this myself and came the conclusion that Man City and Liverpool will slowly break away from the group leaving ourselves, Arsenal and Spurs to fight it out. That left me wandering if the disappointment felt by Arsenal to see a title challenge disappear so early might affect them so much that they (relatively) fall apart. You obviously came to the same conclusions that I did.

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