JPJCB

He wasn’t terrible tonight to be fair. In fact he made a couple of passes which split the defence open and could easily have led to goals (the through ball to cash who then fired across goal). If those go in then we end up talking about the important contribution he made. He does have a maddening habit of playing flat horizontal balls across the middle of the pitch which are easily intercepted though . He needs to concentrate more in those situations

It’s all well and good to say this but we can’t rely on only 11 players all season. You’ve got to give others a go in the hope that they build confidence over time which hopefully tonight will do. The alternative is that we burn out in both the league and cups around march. Fwiw, I thought lenglet, Carlos, tielemans, bailey were all ok today

I don’t think this necessarily is how it plays out. After all the players/manager can’t see VaR. what I’m suggesting is that in circumstances like what happened re the Diaz goal, where the VaR officials have come to a clear conclusion but accidentally miscommunicated it, that it’s an entirely sensible outcome to just pull the play back and say that a major error has been made. Thats very different to the VaR officials reaching a decision which the teams/managers happen to disagree with. And for those who talk about negative precedents. Do you really think that taking the play back and correcting the error would have resulted in a worse precedent than what’s just happened? We now have a manager calling for the entire game to be replayed ffs

The fact is that in grand scheme of things you’re gonna get far more criticism for not intervening to allow a perfectly legal goal than interrupting a meaningless passage of play in the interests of the precious rule book. No common sense was applied

I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just stopped the game and pulled it back to correct the error? They act in the audio like pretending a correct goal didn’t happen is more important than disrupting a nothing passage of play

Just a small point but I’m not sure the bar needs to be this high for there to be a conflict of interest issue here. Presumably the Saudi league/UAE league are owned/funded by the respective governments and the referees are remunerated accordingly. Given that two clubs are owned by those respective governments it’s really not hard to see how a conflict of interest can emerge. “We’re not gonna give you any more work in our highly remunerative league unless you give our PL teams more slack”. Reason number 657 why governments owning clubs shouldn’t happen

I do wonder whether his form might drop off spectacularly from now given he’s basically won everything. He played like a man possessed for about 4 years because he was so highly motivated to get to the very top. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he slipped back to his more sporadic form from now given there’s nothing left to prove

I’d go with this: Martinez cash. Carlos. Pau. Moreno Luiz. Kamara mcginn Ramsey Zaniolo. Duran Still a very strong side but gives an opportunity for those returning from injury to get some minutes.I’d also like to see zaniolo given a run out in the diaby role it’s a shame that tielemans and dendoncker have been so poor when used as we could really do with resting Luiz and kamara. But after everton I really don’t think we can afford to swap either of them out. Hopefully we can take an early lead and allow some subs later on

The city fans now want rid now that doku has come on the scene who is far more direct

I could see him potentially being ok (if not spectacular) in a three person midfield in front of Luiz and kamara. That would enable him to use his stronger skills most effectively - I.e through balls and shooting. But that involves changing Emery’s entire system. He’s not press resistant enough to play in the double pivot and isn’t dynamic enough to do one of the wide player roles (like McGinn/Ramsey)

We signed him on a free so I suspect, even wages considered, he’s one of the cheaper transfers from an FFP perspective. So it’s difficult to talk about him in terms of bad value if he ends up little more than a bench player But it sticks in the throat that he’s in the press complaining about not playing. Bad player with a bad attitude

How’s he managed that when he wasn’t even playing?! It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s a bit of a petulant/nasty piece of work as that’s the second example in his career of getting a red card for effectively an off field incident

Not a great comment to be honest

Castore are a disgrace and the club are moronic for having picked these chancets rather than a proper sportswear brand

So weird. So castore are just paying to have their name associated with us and aren’t actually doing anything? Either way I’m more than happy for them to take the rough with the smooth in that respect and take a reputational hit for the shirts being shit given they’d take the upside if they looked good

The original villa website article said the deal was for Castore to “supply” kits which very strongly implies that they would be manufacturing rather than just designing them. It might be that castore then commission a third party to do the manufacturing but either way it’s on Castore to sort it out

Can anyone think of a better managerial upgrade in recent history? Literally moving from a guy who’d be lucky to manage in the championship these days to an elite world class manager

I didn’t think much of their analysis. It was like wright had never heard of him before today and at the end he described him as a “premier league striker worth looking at”

Chill out mate. He’s agreeing that benteke will get stronger but just arguing that he won’t necessarily get much bigger physically. if you look at photos of benteke at Genk when he was 17-19, he doesn’t look radically different to how he did later in his career

No matter the performance tonight, seeing people predicting a 4-5 goal win for Chelsea is absolutely pathetic and insulting to the team and the progress made under emery

Fair enough- I disagree. And worth noting that young never really came as close as grealish to solidifying his place in the England team as a left winger (albeit grealish still faces competition). He made team of the tournament as a reliable if unspectacular left back. Maybe you think young was the best left back in the world at that time as justified by his inclusion in that team. Again I fundamentally disagree. Andto the original point, I think top managers with 07/08 Young at their disposal vs 20/21 grealish would be more likely to pick grealish in their team (though the ideal would be to play them both). I don’t think young would get anywhere near this pep Man City team

If you think he had as big an impact playing for those clubs as he did when he played for MON then fair enough but I strongly disagree

This is bang on. Young was very good and I loved the guy but there’s no way he would have been as good/important in any other playing style than MON’s “get it to young to cross for Carew” style. I agree with other posters that young and Barry ultimately had more impact. But grealish at his peak was the best we’ve had for quite some time. As much as anything the fact that we all think he’s “underperforming” despite being a first team player in a side which has just won the treble speaks to that point. Young and Barry wouldn’t get anywhere near this Pep team

We can agree to disagree but at his peak grealish was better than each of those players from my perspective. In the 20/21 season we had one of the top 5 best players in the league playing for us and I don’t think any of the above reached that level. But I agree with you that we associate those players- or certainly young, Barry, Milner- with contributing to our success during a v positive period for the club. That’s sort of my point: grealish will have missed out on that kind of association despite the arrival of emery

The strange thing will be if the emery era results in memorable success for the club (trophies, European football/CL). Then grealish will be in this odd historical position as arguably our best player of the past couple of decades but of very limited significance to our success Im trying to think of a similar example with another player/club. Coutinho at Liverpool comes closest. Absolutely outstanding for a few years including under klopp but then left before Liverpool’s more recent success and so is sort of in a limbo position historically