david-avfc

I love FBref stats and the insight they provide, but sometimes it’s the basic stuff which provides the most insight. Last season he made 29 appearances in the league, but only 13 of them were starts. So clearly there’s a mismatch between these stats and the actual impact he has on the first team. My assumption would be that coming off the bench regularly leads to some distortions of the per 90 data. Hypothetical example 1 dribble in a 10 minute cameo against a tired defence = 9 dribbles per 90 which is the best in Europe, and in reality is completely different to a player who completes 9 successful dribbles in one game. Not saying he’s a bad player or anything, obviously he’s got a lot of talent but extra context is needed for the stats and in this case it’s probably over exaggerated some of his positive attributes.

Most of them are as bad as each other tbh

Yet he only started 13 times I only know a little about him, very rapid, good dribbler and high potential… but is he the finished article? Judging by 17 league starts in 2 years probably not, unless he’s just reached the tipping point very recently Would assume Diaby is more of a solid bet as he’s been a proper first choice player for Leverkusen for 3 seasons now. With the inconsistencies of Bailey, Coutinho, Buendia, Traore I’d rather go with Diaby

Nah it’s clearly legitimate, he’s gone through the effort of setting up an anonymous twitter account and has even gone on to google images to get a generic picture of a famous footballer/manager for his profile picture, that’s the hallmark of credibility right there

Yeah he was so good at Atletico the manager didn’t want him and then sent him away on loan, where he was so good Chelsea didn’t want to keep him when his loan expired

I’m sceptical of Felix, he was poor at Atletico and poor at Chelsea. We would just be signing him off of his reputation which is always a recipe for disaster, especially when he would be a mega earner and would probably cost a lot as Atletico need to recoup some of their wasted costs on him. He also fell out with his manager which is hardly a good sign of a player with the right attitude Maybe it is genuinely a case of “not fitting the system properly” and Emery can get him firing again in our system. But usually players who can never fit into a system eventually the penny drops that it’s a problem with the player not the system (which incidentally has been very successful for Atletico)

Actually thought Sancho was really underwhelming whenever he played for England even before his move I don’t think we’re interested nor do I think he’s available either

Only 17 years old, looks like he could be a real prospect. Would be great if he could be given some cameos off the bench this season especially in the cups

Bogarde looks like an interesting player, for a natural centre back he looks incredibly comfortable on the ball

He just won a penalty. I think he’s looked better than Aaron Ramsey on the other side. His problem though is he seems like a winger who wants to hug the touchline, not sure that’s what Emery wants

This is why you need proper scouts and analysts to cut through the hype and reputations of these players and just see the players for what they actually are. The bizarre thing is we apparently had it with Lange and the gang but then decided to start signing players on reputation at the whim of billy big bollocks Gerrard who wanted to take over recruitment despite barely knowing his arse from his elbow

But to save £5m we’d then have to buy another left back and pay them PL wages which overall costs a lot more than £5m, and we’re still stuck with the same problem a year down the line. Think it’s a case of sell him or utilise him. Hopefully a PL club makes the same mistake as us and buys him off of his reputation without any closer inspection.

The sold him to Southampton when the man Welsh man took over and then lost every game

Rubbish, look at all those players faster than him. Why isn’t he top? Monchi out.

Fabrizio just tweeted confirming the Diaby links, looks like it could happen

Ooh a totally obscure reference which I actually got! Very exciting

You make it sound like no player has ever moved from the premier league to the championship. Davis isn’t good enough at Villa so he needs to move, if wages are an issue we’d presumably be happy to pay him a few hundred thousand to push him out the door. Championship players still earn millions of pounds a year so it’s not like he’s moving from a high end PL contract to minimum wage at Sainsbury’s (despite what some might say is his level). With his injury record if he has a contract offer for 3 or 4 years he’d be stupid to not jump at the chance.

How much can we realistically demand for a striker who got just 7 goals in the championship last season and has such a terrible injury record? A few mil at best

FFS I was gripped then, what happens next??

We’ve been linked with Diaby, Williams and Barnes, similar players in terms of being quick and direct, but we’ve also been linked to Goncalves and Asensio who are clearly more creative playmaker style of players. I don’t think Emery is the type of manager who would attempt to sign players without really understanding how they’d fit into his system so the fact we’ve been linked with players with such differing profiles kind of suggests we’re maybe in the market for both types and two wide players will be coming in, either to play together or to provide different tactical options.

Now it’s finally been confirmed we’ll have to find something else to complain about - any suggestions?

The problem is the squad sizes are limited, in the PL it’s 25 players which is fine and what we’re used to, but in Europe it’s effectively 21 standard players + 4 club homegrown players. So in practice we’ll end up with more games, but a smaller squad! There has to be some tough decisions who stays and who is sold, I think Traore is firmly in the latter category as he’s currently 3rd choice in his preferred position of right wing and we’re presumably looking to improve that area further

To be fair he probably would have looked like a donkey if we’d signed him to play for Steven Gerrard

I’ve seen that image from Google search before but is it actually correct though? The “1970’s” one (before my time!) I thought was from the 90’s, unless it was used by the club much earlier and then resurrected later on? Surely someone on here would know that for sure? A Google search for Aston Villa kit 1970 shows we had a completely different badge on the kits at that time (the blue lion in isolation with AV), so if that one’s wrong then I don’t think this picture can be trusted with the two really early ones

It was so obvious what they were aiming for with the survey to be honest. Yes it was deliberately biased and designed in a leading way, that was poor from the club, but it’s pretty naive to not have realised all the questions implying new premium areas in the holte end were going to lead to expensive corporate / private style areas in the holte