david-avfc

How does that guy know that or has he just made it up??

I think Duran has a lot of potential and could become a really top centre forward in a few years. I would rather we keep him and develop him into a top player, but if Chelsea offered us £35m+ giving us £20m profit in 12 months on a back up striker then that would probably be considered good business

https://m.bild.de/sport/fussball/borussia-moenchengladbach/borussia-moenchengladbach-geheimplan-um-florian-neuhaus-und-ao-tanaka-86876882.bildMobile.html Not clear how credible the link is, but would make sense as a cheap option to replace dendoncker

I hope we don’t get rid of Duran, I just don’t think there are many better alternative options for the number 2 striker role, limited to a well past it “experienced” player like Ings, someone proven to be not quite good enough in the PL like Ihaenacho, or an unproven player from a lesser league like Samatta was. Sticking with a high potential up and coming youngster like Duran doesn’t seem any worse than any of those options.

It’s been mentioned fleetingly that we are close to the limits of foreign players, there’s a maximum of 17 in the PL squad (and 17 in Europe based on non-homegrown definition), we currently have 16 or 17 already so it makes sense to look at a few more English players which might be one of the reasons this lad has appeared on our radar out of nowhere, as we would struggle to get any established PL English players at a reasonable cost… it’s a gamble but he only has to be better than the perma-injured Traore for it to make sense as long as the fee isn’t silly

Yeah it looks odd although I think the figures are as per the official accounts. But it would be for the accounts 2 seasons ago and we’ve had two big price hikes since then, and that season I think was the first back from covid and a lot of fans had vouchers from the cancelled games in 2020, which maybe had an impact on the revenue figures

That view only works as a very short term FFP fudge, the £15m still gets deducted from the P&L accounts eventually through the annual amortisation cost. £15m for a 21 year old who isn’t a guaranteed starter in the championship seems odd to me when we’ve recently sold players of similar profiles for much less. It’s a surprising link to be honest, presumably the club have identified something in his game which stands out as being a particularly good fit, just hope their judgement is nailed on as it’s a lot of money for an unproven championship player.

Gabby would be **** if he was still playing

Not too sure on this one - 13 starts and 12 sub appearances this season, if he’s not a guaranteed starter in the championship at the moment it would seem like there’s a lot of development to go in order to be of the level required. The first glance on whoscored stats he looks OK but not standout, although I’m sure the club have seen something in him, but just seems on the face of it a bit of an odd gamble

I think you’re getting the under age (U21) B list rules the home grown player rule muddled up. The U21 B List allows any number of players to be made available, they have to be under 21 at the season calculation cut off date, and have been trained at the club for at least 2 years. The homegrown club player rule is part of the 25 man senior squad, a minimum of 4 players need to be homegrown at the club, that means they must have been trained at the club for 3 years prior to turning 21 (or by the end of the season of their 21st birthday). Kesler Hayden I think qualifies for both, he only turned 21 a couple of months ago and is a homegrown player. He could either go into the senior A list (as it’s currently not full due to not previously having 4 homegrown players) or the B list for U21 players, it makes no difference in practice this season. Tim Iroebunam qualifies for neither, although he’s the right age he hasn’t been at the club for 2 years (he was loaned out) so he’s neither a B list player or a homegrown player, he has to go on the normal player list (he’d be a homegrown country player but that irrelevant as it’s already well covered across the squad). You might be thinking of Kellyman, who joined in March 2022 and therefore will have gained his required 2 years for the B list in March 2024, but it depends on when the squad lists have to be submitted (i.e. if it’s submitted in advance at the end of the Jan transfer window then he probably won’t be eligible). If Chambers was de-registered for the squad (i.e. we sold him or just didn’t want to use him) then that creates 1 space for a non-homegrown senior player which could be either Tim Iroegbunam or Kellyman (who was listed as a senior player in the Hibs round), or someone else entirely, and also Kesler can also go in too as an extra player either as an U21 or homegrown senior player.

I liked Smith Rowe a few years ago but he’s barely played for 2 years, a combination of being injured and out of favour. It’s a hard situation to read, a move could reignite his career or it could be that he was just a flash in a pan and he’s already on a downwards trajectory. I’m not sure we’re in a position where we need to or would want to take the risk.

This is a bit of an odd one, £7.5m isn’t that much nowadays but those smaller transfers all add up eventually, it’s a lot to pay for a development project player. I’m not too sure how easy it will be to integrate an 18 year old defender into our senior set up, the trend recently has been to get rid of youngsters rather than developing them in the team but for the outlay there has to be a pathway lined up. Hopefully we’ve pulled out a gem, I’m more intrigued than anything else.

I’m so confused right now

For anyone who wasn’t around in the 1980’s they will have no first hand connection of that badge at all. It’s been over 30 years without the circle badge so that’s a lot of fans who have only known the shield shape, to say the round badge is villa and anyone who associates the shield badge as villa is wrong, is a wrong thing to say. Personally I don’t really care about the shape of the badge. The shape of the badge doesn’t define the club, despite the obsession some have with the circle badge. If we have a great round badge then great, if we have a great shield badge then great. The problem is the current circle badge looks like a cheap knock off of the old badge and not everyone wants that (although some do), it also doesn’t look original and it’s similarities have been understandably compared to other club’s badges. Unfortunately the old Lerner badge is a poor design and the proposed new badge doesn’t solve those issues (but based on the fan mock ups it easily could do) - they’ve missed on open goal not changing the colours from yellow & blue to claret & blue. A bad design is a bad design regardless of shape, the quality of the badge is more important than whether it’s round or shield-shaped.

If we don’t have plastic fans where has the “30,000” on the waiting list come from, because they certainly weren’t there when the upper trinity was shut in the championship

Looks like the lion is in the process of peeling off

Sanson is contracted until 2025, unfortunately. Hopefully we get some money for him, otherwise its £15m completely down the drain, amazing when you step back and think about how much money is pointlessly thrown around in football

The monochrome versions highlight the main problem with the main Lerner badge… the colours

The new leaked one has all the problems of the Lerner one plus the additional baggage of the farcical 2 year process. It’s no wonder people don’t like it. Add to that it looks like a low quality fan made badge design from about 10 years ago, too. But the round badge is honestly a 5 or 6 out of 10 effort, which is better than the 1/10 new one, it’s not bad but it’s not particularly good or distinctive either. There seems to be a slightly obsessive view held by some that the badge has to be a circle even though for the majority of villa’s existence, they haven’t had a circular badge. There is so much potential to create a far better badge than either the new one or the circle one. I just don’t get why after all of this they’ve basically gone back to the Lerner design. Even the fan made versions of the new one look far better than what they’ve come up with. If the new leaked becomes official then unfortunately it could easily become 3 badges in 3 years.

I didn’t think there were any MLS badges that bad

I get why they'd want to get their protections in early but really you've just got to admit the club has made a bit of a howler by inadvertently leaking the new design. They probably didn't expect fans to go hunting for this stuff, but for whatever reason someone looked it up and found it, I guess that's not the club's fault but that's what happened so it's turned out to be a misjudgement on their side. Not that seeing the badge early is the end of the world. But realistically the chances of a member of the FAB stealing the design and trademarking it in advance for their own gain seems pretty slim to non-existent, I think there are rules on bad faith TM applications, and besides you'd never be able to register the badge without infringing on all the existing trademarks the club already owns in the first place.

He's a tidy player, I like him but presumably Arsenal would want to bump up the fee and considering his recent appearance record it would be a gamble whilst giving money to one of our direct rivals

Since when did villa lose £275m in 2021? The official NWSE accounts show £0, -£37m, & -£99m in the last 3 years Looks like someone is playing make believe with the figures

From what I have read from the FAB, they feel stitched up by the (non) consultation process to the extent that some of them have complained to the FA

The left one is perfectly fine (apart from he made the lion too big), moving the text to the bottom seems like an own goal turning an OK badge into something that looks a bit off. The middle one is the best.