JPJCB

7 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Get the **** out of it, TAA missed, rice did absolutely nothing 

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 

4 minutes ago, ozvillafan said:

Right culprit, wrong rat.

It was Saka at Arsenal. Who'd have thought?

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 

1 hour ago, RicRic said:

Amrabat no chance, if i didn’t think he was nowhere near good enough for them at the time of signing then he's not good enough for us… not sure how players like that are ending up at United but im all for it … at the moment Cash, zaniolo and as it stands JJ are our weakest points in the team so we should be looking at bringing in someone for at least one of those positions

But…but…didn’t he tackle Mbappe once in the World Cup? 

2 hours ago, turnbull said:

Language barrier? Nobody can understand the Scouse clearing in the woods! 

I don’t know what you mean…

1 hour ago, PaulC said:

Yes but the other two games we should really win without him.  So not all bad really and he gets a rest.

Also, Manure’s main (of many) weakness(es) is their non existent midfield so it’s not quite as bad as losing him against a similarly ranked team but with much better midfield (e.g spurs, Brighton)

22 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

In fairness @Vive_La_Villa, you asked the question. 

Then this -

So what is the optimal amount of time that an injury has to be for you to consider it an issue? 

You must see that your argument is nonsense? By your rationale a team can “count” themselves unfortunate for a month long injury to a player but can’t feel likewise for a season long injury.

“Sorry Jurgen, Salah is out for 6 months. Don’t worry, could be worse, it could have been a fortnight.”

I seem to recall Van Dijk being out for months and it being used as an excuse for Liverpool’s woes. Are we not allowed that?

I don’t think we have to remind ourselves EVERY game that those two are injured, but like I say, you did ask the question.

“Tell us then Pep, how bad is the injury to Haaland?”

”we’ve got the medical report in and it’s the worst we could have all feared: a 24 hour stomach bug. It’s a tough one but we’re all here for Erling and we know he’ll come back stronger”

”and what about KDB?”

”oh that’s just a broken leg. I’m sure he’ll shake it off within the next 18 months and we’ll be happy to see him back”

3 hours ago, kurtsimonw said:

Their "crisis" is a bit like Man Uniteds. More or less a perfectly normal season, but disappointing in Europe.

They’re having a worse season in the league than last year though where they were in the top 4 consistently all year. Plus their CL performance is worse than they’d have hoped. Unless they win a domestic cup this season will have at best been treading water for them at this rate rather than progressing which their owners may be unhappy with 

Just now, Vive_La_Villa said:

Thanks mate. Guess what, we might struggle tomorrow because Mings and Buendia are out.

I thought it was your bed time?

3 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

**** me are people dumb or just trying to get a reaction from me? We all know Mings and Buendia are injured. The club planned for it. Are we really going to start using it as an excuse for tough games? 
 

I  give up with some of you lot. Goodnight. 

See you later mate- you won’t be missed 

Schar goes off injured. Howe will claim it’s terrible luck but it’s a hamstring injury and therefore just as likely caused by him overworking his players 

5 hours ago, GlobalVillan said:

Garth Crooks using his team of the week to attack Villa I see. Including only one player from a team that beat the top 2 over said week, and using that paragraph to make a snide remark belittling us. Nice.

The fact neither of the CBs got in there despite keeping two clean sheets against arguably 2 of the best teams in the league is criminal 

7 hours ago, KevinRichardsonsMoustache said:

Superb summary of what’s going on. Thanks for writing it so well. There’s an essay for someone to write in this whole fiasco.

Reminds me of this:

 

Such a relevant clip- thanks for sharing. Even if VAR has removed the point about them only taking decisions in 5 seconds, it’s done nothing to remove the pressure that they face or the risk that if something goes wrong their names will be trashed in the media - arguably it’s made that worse 

13 hours ago, oishiiniku_uk said:

Lineker started the piece saying something like 'I really don't like VAR and I feel guilty for having advocated for it.' But VAR didn't change anything, only upheld the ref's decisions (which were correct). So the conversation was already slanted towards 'VAR has screwed Arsenal again' even before Wrighty went into his diatribe. 

I thought the whole discussion was a microcosm for how we’ve ended up in the mess we are now with officiating.

The media relentlessly focusses on refereeing decisions in their punditry- they literally cannot resist talking about them even when there’s far more exciting things going on in the game. And, as shown by linekar above, a lot of the time the pundits themselves don’t even know what’s actually going on. And so we end up with an endless cycle of refereeing needing to “improve” even to the extent of pilots coming into advise VAR officials (which sounds like a huge waste of their time) and it’s all driven by pundits who have barely a braincell between them 

12 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

They just have hardly anything on the bench to change things, Wilson is back on today after two months out but he'll probably be put on too late to change it.

They still win pretty much all their home games but away from home they're getting exposed playing the same team week in week out.

The big question is how their squad is so dogshite after all the money they’ve spent 

I used to think the big (positive) difference between him and Bailey was that diaby was far less selfish and would inevitably pass at the right times while Bailey ran down blind alleys.

I actually think that selflessness is becoming a weakness of his game. Too many times when he’s got yards to burn in front of him he becomes ponderous looking for a pass rather than driving on 

1 hour ago, May-Z said:

Part of the BBC report...

"Villa defended with discipline and intensity, ultimately benefitting from a late VAR call to stay third, one point off Arsenal in second place..."

BS. It was rightly handball that the ref gave in real time. The only thing we 'ultimately benefitted' from was the ref making the correct decision.

They just can't help but choose phrasing that takes away from what we do each game.

Whoppers.

Aside from anything else we didn’t “benefit” from that call to “stay third”. If they’d given the goal the game would have likely ended in a draw in which case we’d still be third but with a 3 point rather than 5 point gap on city.

Youre right that it all feeds the narrative that we’re desperately hanging on by our fingertips to stay among these dizzy heights 

8 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

He is absolutely not overated lol

I’ve got a city mate who doesn’t even think he’s city’s best player (Rodri and KdB both better) and yet he’s finishing second in the ballon d’or. That suggests to me he is overrated by the broader footballing world 

2 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Shots never count towards xG if they're ruled as offside.

What usually happens in the situation last night is, despite the save, the flag would go up and the ref would blow for the offside. If that happens then the shot won't count towards stats.

The situation you're describing, where the linesman HASN'T flagged but the goal may have been ruled out afterwards would be a very small proportion of scenarios (and, theoretically, would have still happened pre-VAR)

Indeed- thanks for the patronising explanation! 
 

My original point was that the situation you refer to at the end of your post happens to be the exact relevant one in this case 

24 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

It wasn't given as offside so it counts as a shot

I know the stats technically do that but it’s not actually a fair reflection of the game. Had Haaland scored, it would have been ruled out by VAR for offside so it was an attempt on goal with no value/chance of success

Theres a more general point here in my mind that other teams’ XG/shot stats are potentially systematically overstated as theyre more likely to include chances which would have been offside given our high line. The Chelsea game this year comes to mind where the MOTD highlights included a load of chances which would never have counted had they gone in