david-avfc

55 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

Didn’t think he was that bad at all, looked to have something about him at times, really not seeing what all the detractors are ripping him to shreds over.

Yeah he was one of our better players in the first half, some people need to throw their toys out of the pram whenever we drop points though so it’s obviously all Morgan Rogers fault this week 

3 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

Always feel more confident when he plays ahead of moreno, even though i rate moreno

Moreno has been disappointing  this season but similar to Ramsey, I think coming back from injury half way through the season it's just so difficult to get back up to speed. Digne has been excellent though, fair play to him 12 months ago many were wanting to get rid of him (myself included), but he's starting to justify his millions of pounds per week in wages

4 hours ago, lapal_fan said:

If you watch the extended highlights, you'll see Zaniolo run from about 25 yards, after starting pressure Romero at CB.  Also, LB's/RB's should be following the runs and midfield "pass" the runner on. 

Moreno steps up to tackle Porro instead of letting Zani go for Porro and him go for Kulseski or whatever he's called. 

By the time Zani "stops trying", the ball is 5 yards ahead of him.  He shouldn't throw his arms, but he did his job, Moreno didn't do his. 

We play that way on the right too, the RB goes with the runners, the helping midfielder goes to the ball. 

This is just men wanting to tack blame on something to fix a problem that isn't there.  

Sounds like a lot of excuses to be honest. None of the players covered themselves in any glory yesterday, Zaniolo included - he ran around a bit, great, we still lost 4-0. 12 touches and a pass accuracy of 25% in 40+ minutes on the pitch, he was as bad as everyone else. 

Hopefully Champions League brings in a load of extra cash and then we can get by with some wheeling and dealing around non-core players

I don’t agree that Luiz is so easily replaceable, he is a top quality player hence the potential high transfer fee, and he’s crucial in how we play and progress the ball centrally.

On 28/02/2024 at 20:39, VillaChris said:

Has he even been named in any squad, he's certainly not in our european squad and not sure if we named him in the premier league one.

Chambers wasn't named in our euro squad either which is interesting call given how congested April could be and we needed a half out of him at the weekend. With Kamara and Donk not around either it's going to be an issue if we progress through Europa and we don't have two CBs available at any one time.

No he’s not the PL squad and we left 3 squad places empty which lays it out pretty clearly where the club stands on this issue. 

I don’t believe he’s been “strung along” as some have suggested, the writing has been on the wall for a long time as he was loaned out last season and there was a big dispute when we refused to take him back at one point, and then he was never registered in any squad this season even as a back up of last resort.

Ultimately he kind of brought this on himself by signing an extension under Gerrard when he was clearly right down the pecking order. A bad decision by the club to deliberately waste money keeping an unwanted player and a bad decision by the player to deliberately waste his own career

29 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Another badge better than ours to add to the list.

Is it good? No.

Does it have to be to be better than that blue smudge we have? No.

Looks like a knock off Ajax badge with the minimalistic black and red circular design on a white background 

21 hours ago, HKP90 said:

He moved to Turkey because he had a falling out with the management, not because he was rubbish.

He was sent to the Coventry of the Mediterranean.

I thought he fell out with the fans more than anything, and that’s because they thought he was rubbish for ages, and then he fell out with the whole club. It seemed like he was treated poorly and especially considering the injuries he’d suffered. 

We took a gamble on him based on his successful spell at Turkey, sometimes these things work and sometimes they don’t. But perhaps in hindsight buying a player based on 10 good games in the Turkish league after several seasons of injuries and poor form is probably not a good idea. £5m for Philogene Bidace or £5m+ for Zaniolo for one season, unfortunately it seems like the club has dropped a clanger. 

He seems like a decent enough guy, hopefully he resurrects his career somewhere eventually. You can see he has talent but trying to rebuild his career in the intensity of the PL just isn’t going to happen from what we’ve all seen of him so far. 

1 hour ago, Mazrim said:

Not many, I know but some players are ready at 18. He's equally good going forward and in defence, tall, fast as ****, has a good range of passing and composed. It's pretty much every you'd wish for in a fullback and although the Serbian League maybe uncompetitive, he's come up against big players in the Champions League and looked at home.

I'm just saying this guy is much more promising than I initially thought - to be fair I knew little about him - and he may well be in the starting XI sooner than you think.

I think the Serbian lad will be loaned out or kept as maybe a 3rd choice initially, unless he really impresses in pre season

If the plan was to use him in the Prem next season I don’t think we’d have wasted the opportunity to bed him to the club for a half a season or to loan him to a higher level. That’s just a guess though, could be totally wrong. 

On 19/02/2024 at 18:53, villa4europe said:

Our wage bill is €223m a year?!

So let's say with the players out on loan we have a 30 man squad 

That's an average of €7.4m per year per player, or an average of €143k a week, or £122k per week, or a complete load of utter bollocks 

Players don’t just get paid on salaries though, they get a huge amount of money through bonuses - performance bonuses, signing bonuses, loyalty bonuses, image rights etc.

For example Mbappe’s contract at Real Madrid is reportedly €15m wages per year and €150m signing bonus plus image rights, so the wages are less than 10% of the total package. Villa obviously won’t have anything as extreme but goes to show there’s a lot more to player contracts than the reported wage.

Last published accounts showed total wage costs around £137m, there’s no reason to doubt that it could now be as high as €220m (£190m) if the club chose to blow the budget - would probably include the costs of sacking Gerrard + team and appointing Emery + team, big wages for new players and big signing fees for Kamara and Coutinho

3 hours ago, PaulC said:

What nonsense written about him yesterday returning. Neither will play again this season but hopefully be fit and raring to go for the stsrt of next season 

I like Fabrizio but saying the club had confirmed Tyrone was back in training when actually they’d just posted a photo of him doing gym work on social media and nothing else to it, is really poor for a reputable journalist like him

If it’s true then the senior executives need to be sacked for gross misconduct immediately - however I think there are still too many questions, the main one being why you’d release an anonymous letter to the fan advisory board to complain than going through official legal channels, maybe they have done separately but the letter doesn’t specifically mention that they’ve done anything about it and seems to be asking the fans board to do something

Shocking bad luck although at least he walked off the pitch unlike the horrible images of Mings up at Newcastle, hopefully that means it’s not as serious and the 5 month prognosis is accurate and he’s back for the start of next season 

11 minutes ago, Zatman said:

What? He has played about 25 times since then

Was saying before his injury he looked fragile also

I think it’s a harsh assessment considering he only played 1 game before his injury, I think most centre backs would struggle in their first PL game as they acclimatise to the intensity and physicality, and more so considering the poor setup under Gerrard with probably very limited tactical preparation. Since he’s come back he’s had some good games and some iffy games, considering his injury and now he’s firmly in the back up category I don’t think he’s ever going to pick up enough momentum to become a top class centre half again but is probably a very good 4-5th choice option (albeit probably 10x more expensive)

4 hours ago, gatecrasha said:

His continued absence from the team is killing is. He is the conducter of the Orchestra- without him we headless

We certainly miss him but I’d be cautious of lauding him as the one true savour, there are 11 players who should be pulling their weight also… although he should be a big improvement on Lenglet

3 minutes ago, Zatman said:

His first game under shithead vs Bournemouth he was all over the place. He lacked defensive awareness

You wrote him off after 1 game? Ridiculous.

5 hours ago, gilbertoAVFC said:

Gonna get slated for this but fans were utterly sh** last night. We were still in the game for a long period. Can't complain about costs when tickets are £20. Just don't get how absolutely flat it was.

Do think the tannoy blasting hardly helps and the very unauthentic pre-game build-up really irks, but it's really annoying when we just can't seem to muster any real energy as fans when we concede a goal or even two. It happens in football but you can turn it around. It's only consolidated our slow starts recently imo.

Happy to be told "the players need to get us to sing" but I'll never agree with you.

To be fair, it was a cup replay on a cold midweek night, arranged at short notice and then we went 1-0 down after 11 minutes, and it was clear after that point the players had one eye on the next game. I didn’t think the atmosphere was too bad, considering the circumstances 

On 03/02/2024 at 01:41, Tayls said:

I personally think Kamara will be off before Luiz. Got a feeling he’d go to PSG. 

If it’s a choice out of the two, I’d keep Luiz - he is so good on the ball and is the perfect link between the defence and attack for us, I think that’s much harder to replace. Kamara is a really good defensive midfielder but there should be other good defensive midfielders available 

Is this guy better than Chrisene? 

Ramsey is irreplaceable simply because we have no other players who help the homegrown restrictions and are actually good enough for the first team - not only would we be losing a good player but effectively it would be giving away an entire position in the squad. Add to that the intangible benefit of having a local lad who’s come through the ranks, and the connection that builds with the fans. I hope this one is a load of speculative shite and not true at all. 

As for FFP, there are other ways to make profits, a phrase I see repeated a lot with homegrown players is “pure profit”, as if it’s somehow different to making the same profit on selling any other player. The problem with casting homegrown players aside is if you’re going to replace them with just as expensive replacements you’re not really improving the long term financial position. 

51 minutes ago, Dale said:

Errrrm... Spurs, Newcastle and Bayern in for JJ. Would be useful for ffp, but you don't like to see this. 

 

Would be a shambolic decision and would be the first time in a while I’d genuinely question the direction of the club 

£15m seems a lot for a player who’s only started half the games in the championship this season, and that’s actually his best professional season so far

I understand the idea of picking up a few cheap “hidden gems” to bolster the squad, but for £15m this really feels like a gamble. The comments from people who have watched him seems to be more surprise than anything else… I’m just really not sure on this one at all, hopefully Monchi will be proven right in the end. 

I’m all for seeing youth development and we shouldn’t forget Tim has actually started a PL game for us before, which is a pretty big head start for the lad already.

My only question to Unai would be why hasn’t he featured more if this was the plan, he could have played in the last round of the cup for example, it seems like a waste. But that’s a side point, overall I’m excited to see what young Tim can do, a defensive mid who’s also comfortable on the ball, sounds perfect to be honest let’s hope he can develop with more top flight experience and elite coaching from master Unai

On 20/01/2024 at 17:24, Jas10 said:

If true, plenty of time to assess and make a decision afterwards… hopefully gets more of a look in and improves during second half of the season…

 

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