Shaun Teales Moustache

I've seen a couple of people mention Homegrown as a consideration for transfers, so I looked into the details. The rules for the PL and Europa League appear to differ slightly in that the Europa League requires 4 of your HG players to have actually been trained by the club. Since I think we only really need to do much work on the squad if we make Europe, I'm going to go with those regulations. I'm also assuming Steer (Out of Contract) and all the senior guys out on loan will be sold\loaned again. We have max 17 spots for non-UK trained players (currently 5 free spots) We have max 21 max spots for non-Villa trained players (currently 3 free spots) (Euro squad only) Ramsey and Sinisalo (and Archer if not loaned again) will be over-21 next year, so will occupy 2 (or 3) of the over 21 club trained spots, but all of the other youth players who would reasonably be in contention (except maybe Finn Azaz at a massive push) will still be U-21, as will Duran, so won't count against the squad. Since we're probably not going to sign Grealish\Chukwuemeka\Siegrist\Sarkic, if we sign any additional players beyond the 3 open squad positions, we would only be able to use them in domestic competition. SUMMARY Basically the Homegrown thing isn't a big concern as long as we're not tearing the whole squad down. We shouldn't sign more than 3 net new non-HG players (i.e. Over-21 Non-HG signings minus Over-21 Non-HG outgoings). If we sign more than 5 non-HG players, we definitely need to sell some non-HG players (like Olsen and Traore, arguably Bailey who are among the most likely to leave anyway). We should sign some talented 18 year olds if possible, as they would eventually qualify to fill the club trained spots in future. Duran was born a month too early .

He only attempted one pass as well. That's the 4th time in 6 games that he's had single digit passes (counting 0 as a single digit). He has been averaging less than 10 passes per game over those 6 games. Ashley Westwood would have been embarrassed with that. I'm not writing him off by any means, because by all accounts, their manager doesn't want the midfielders passing the ball, but the level he's playing at and his impact on games at that level is light years away from improving our first team right now. Josh Cullen and Josh Brownhill are absolutely dominating in midfield at that level, and are not players that we would even remotely consider adding to improve our midfield. Emery will get a chance to evaluate them all in pre-season, but if he keeps any of them around next year, I expect it will be behind an entrenched starter, with experienced cover as well, in the hope that they can play their way into contention in training, and take advantage of any injury\cup opportunities. Any idea that he'll come back, and slot in ahead of someone like Dendonker is just crazy fan-talk (that's pretty common about our youth players on here). If we sign another CM, it will almost certainly be in his best interest to go out on loan again. Raikhy got opportunities with the first team during the World Cup break and is now being released. Emery knows how to evaluate players in pre-season\training without having to throw them in at the deep end to find out if they're up to it yet. He's a very exciting prospect, but people need to get a grip and realize the gulf in class between the bottom of the Championship and the top of the PL. Plus, he's still only 19. He'll still be very young to be playing CM in the PL in 2 years time.

I could see Dumfries working out well. Pretty sure he started out at CB, or at least played there a bit, and he definitely has the size, athleticism, quality on the ball and aerial ability that would be perfect for that position. There's a fair question about whether he's good enough defensively, but it's way easier to defend when you're already back in position, than when you're always trying to recover from being high up the pitch. He basically plays all of the right wing for Inter and the Netherlands. RB in our current system would be a much easier role for him, and with his athleticism, size and experience, I think he'd be well fit for it. Most of the suggestions are that we need a RB\CB to play there, but Ashley Young has shown how relatively easy it is to pick up the defensive aspects, when you already have the skills for the more difficult parts of the job. Most CBs aren't good enough on the ball, or agile\flexible enough, to play out there. Look how we targetted Dan Burn in possession in the Newcastle game for example. Also, if Emery sees a weakness that can be exploited by an attacking RB, like he did against Palace, he can change the approach without having to change the team. There's a bit of risk as to how he'd adapt to the position, but if Emery is happy with him, I'd be very excited to see what he can bring. He's always looked very good for the Netherlands any time I've seen him.

I think it's cowardice more than corruption though. If they give a decision against one of the top teams, and it ends up being wrong, it'll be replayed on TV for months. If it ends up costing them the league or whatever, they'll be dragging that footage out again, and highlighting their mistake. If they give a wrong decision against a smaller team, or a team that's in mid-table, it mightn't even make the highlights that day, because there's no "story" for the media to sell there. So, if they're not sure on something, they'll often err on the side of the big teams. I'm certain that a fairly high profile ref retired early, and said almost exactly that in an interview when he quit, but I can't find the interview.

If Gravenberch is available, we should try to get in on that. A gem in a big bucket of gems at Bayern.

It's not specifically a problem with Cash, but it's a problem with the entire first team that we're too small, and that shows up when we're trying to defend set pieces. Cash is the most logical player to replace to improve that weakness. (Konsa too, but replacing the current 2nd best aerial threat offers less scope for improvement). Getting a taller midfielder in too would be great, but RB is the most logical. Cash has been doing perfectly fine in that role, so he doesn't need to be replaced at all, but we need to make improvements somewhere, and that is a position that we can address a clear weakness in the team, and probably not even at a big cost. Cash is probably worth 30m+ because he has the abilities that most teams look for in a modern full back - the ability to get up and down the pitch all game. But we don't use that most of the time. What we primarily need is a guy who is good defensively against wingers, good in the air and good in possession, especially under pressure. Cash has been doing fine in that role, but we could definitely find someone with those specific strengths, and we could possibly even turn a profit whole doing so, as there is more of a premium on Cash's strengths than those of the type of player we're looking for. People have mentioned Konsa for that RB role, but Konsa's limitations on the ball are already obvious at CB, and would be more of a problem at RB. The RB needs to be very comfortable on the ball. One of the reasons Young has been so good in that position despite not being a natural defender is that it's comparatively easy for him to play there compared to the wing. He has way more time on the ball, so it's easy for him. It would be the opposite for Konsa. He'd have less time, and he's already not progressive or ambitious enough on the ball as it is. We could keep Cash as a backup/attacking option, but I've already argued that that seems a massive waste of resources. Our budget will have limits, so keeping a high earning player whose resale value is at it's peak is just bad business. We could get someone cheaper and with potential there, and even that would only be needed if KKH and Young are not in contention for that role next year.

Signing 6 new players and still starting Konsa at RB is not quite as bad as when Steve Bruce signed 11 players and brought Chris Samba on as a striker, but it's still negligent imo. Especially when you're apparently playing the Welsh RB as a striker as well.

PSG have a buy back clause with Simons and Barca are supposed to be very interested again too. His agent has been pimping him about since he was a foetus, and right now he's just adding zeros to his value by playing in a league way below his level. The only way he signs with Villa is if we get Ron Atkinson and Nii Lampteys agent involved again.

Might even be worth hanging on to Meatball to complement them tbf.

For the 3 players from the bottom 8, I don't like many of the strikers or RBs, so Paqueta, Rice and Collins would be my 3. I think RB is the easiest upgrade to the first team, and the second striker is the most important, but I think Rice and Paqueta are a much bigger upgrade over Ramsey and McGinn than we could get at any other positions from the bottom 8. Neither are happening, but it's a hypothetical question anyway. Collins might actually be a good target for us this summer if we sold Konsa. Great on the ball, very good in the air. More mobile than a guy his size has any right to be. Very similar to Mings in a lot of ways actually. Not sure why the Wolves manager doesn't fancy him but he'll be a top class CB imo, and could even do a similar role at RB as Dan Burn at LB for Newcastle. Wouldn't fancy him against a nippy little winger, but CB would be his primary position anyway.

Fair enough. If you reckon we can make 40m off guys that we couldn't give away last summer, then we surely won't have to worry about FFP. If you reckon you could broker some of those deals, I have a 20 year old Ford that won't start that I could use your help with.

I read somewhere Brighton's valuation on McAllister was 150m. Not that absurd when you look at what Chelsea paid for Fernández, and MacAllister is better and PL proven. Don't think he's worth that to any team in the world though. Apparently they're pretty open about their valuations of all their players, and they'll sell if the valuation is met, but won't budge below it even if the players want out. Hence the crazy fee for Cucurella.

Of course it's an issue. FFP is financially THE limiting factor on our transfers (if we play by the rules). The owners are billionaires who are clearly invested. But they can't just throw 300m at the team this summer, even if they wanted to. Chelsea did it, but that is still a massive risk for them, even after they've been playing the system for years by stockpiling young players, and UEFA have also since changed the rules to further prevent that. Villa don't have that history of investment and depth to do that anyway, even prior to the rule change. And that transfer window still might absolutely ruin Chelsea, even with their billionaire backer and massive glory hunting global fanbase. Just because we're not looking at a hard 5m Doug Ellis budget doesn't mean it's not an issue. We're already going to sell most of the guys you've named if we can, but realistically how much do you think we'll make off them? I would bet selling Konsa would vastly exceed the fees of all of those players you've named combined. Aside from Chambers, who won't attract any kind of fee, they were all for sale last year and only attracted cheap loans which have been from decent (Nakamba) to terrible (most of the rest).

If Smith gets the Leicester job long term (presumably he just needs to keep them up for that to happen), I could definitely see him going for Konsa in the summer, and I think that'd be a great opportunity for Villa. The Ings sale showed that they definitely need to balance the books for FFP. Emery said before they sold Ings that they didn't intend to sell him, and he has said since that they will definitely target another striker this summer. Ings would definitely have played a bunch if he had stayed as well. They just had to do the deal because the financials were just too good not to (and maybe European football looked reasonably unattainable at that point). The reality is that if we're ambitious, we'll be pushing FFP to the limits, and that means doing deals where there's good value for guys that are not going to start. We signed Diego Carlos for 30m as a ball playing CB (and he's older, has no resale value until he plays regularly again and has a much higher pedigree than Konsa). Mings is our best ball playing CB and has been by far our best defender and has just signed a new contract, so neither of them are going anywhere. Chambers has been preferred to Dendonker in midfield, has filled in pretty well at RB and has also played well at CB. He was badly exposed by the best attack in the league at CB, but in general, he's been solid, so that kind of return and flexibility is about as much as you can hope for from a 4th choice CB. Also, no one is paying 1/8th of Konsa's market value for Chambers. If we were to make a solid profit on him, it would open up the doors for multiple other moves.

I had a look at the historical transfers at the clubs Emery has been at to see if there are any common themes (data from transfermarkt and excluded his first club which was a complete outlier). He will obviously have worked with a DoF at most of those clubs, but would have definitely still had a strong say in the transfer approach. A few of the things I noticed for any other stats nerds: Over 17 seasons, he has signed 132 players - 30 Free Transfers, 20 Loans, a further 7 Loans which were later made permanent, and 75 signings for cash money straight up. That averages just under 8 players brought in per season. His busiest season was 2007 with Almeria, when he brought in 14 players. His busiest transfer window was 2013 with Sevilla, when he brought in 13 players. He has never signed less than 5 players in a season, but he has signed exactly 5 players 5 times (including a season split between Spartak (4 in summer) and Sevilla (1 in winter)). He rarely signs players in the winter windows - 88% of signings were in the summer. Villa's 2 winter signings match his record number of signings in a winter window. 42% of his signings have been from Spanish clubs, 13% French, 12% English, 7% Italian... Less Spanish dominated than I expected. He has only signed 6 players for more than 1 club (Diego Alves, Grzegorz Krychowiak, Giovani Lo Celso, Dani Parejo, Denis Suárez, Adil Rami). However, he has managed 8 other players for more than 1 club, but only signed them at one of the clubs (Éver Banega, Vicente Iborra, Carlos Bacca, Bruno Saltor, Nicolás Pareja, Álvaro Negredo, Serge Aurier, David Luiz). He has also managed 7 other players for more than 1 club, without having signed them for either club (Raúl Albiol, Hedwiges Maduro, Alberto Moreno, Paco Alcácer, Jaume Costa, Emiliano Martínez, Calum Chambers). Unsurprisingly, his favourite position to sign is Center Midfield - 32% of his signings have been either AM, CM or DM. Only 10% of the players he signed were listed as wingers (and looking at some of the names, a lot of them are not really wingers either - some I'd class as AMs and support strikers). 16% were Forwards (mostly CFs), 32% Defenders (15% CB, 9% RB, 8% LB), 10% Keepers, which all ties in pretty closely to the primary formation he has been using at Villa so far. My takeaways from this completely not useless exercise are that we will definitely, with 100% certainty, no shadow of a doubt, absolutely, positively: Sign 5 players in the summer window if we don't get Europe, and up to 8 if we do. At least one of the 5 will be a free transfer and\or loan. Two will be classified as Central Midfielders (AM, CM or DM). At least two will be from La Liga, and another from England and\or France, with the rest from elsewhere. If anyone suggests a transfer window that doesn't align strictly to those rules, I will immediately classify your opinion as nonsense.

Who knows if Barnes would be able to play the position Bailey is being asked to play though? Bailey looked pretty good for us when playing as a more orthodox winger, the few times he has played there for us (e.g. the Brentford game, and a couple under Smith). He just hasn't been able to play well in the more advanced roles he's been pushed into. It's a very different position, and one that he doesn't really get to use his strengths. You see him further back the pitch and he can dribble past guys easily because there is so much more space. It's way harder to do that in the position he is playing now, which limits his effectiveness. His confidence is obviously shot at the minute which really impacts your ability to score, as we've seen with Watkins and McGinn as well. I think we'll sign someone to play that position, but I'd be wary of thinking we can just plug in a winger like Nico Williams or Harvey Barnes there and think they can do better. Kolo Muani is obviously out of reach as PSG and Real Madrid will probably be after him, but he's basically the prototype of what we need there I think - a guy who can play wide, but also has the physical attributes to succeed in more condensed areas too. Also, if Barnes was as productive against every team as he was against Villa, he'd be up for the Ballon D'Or. There are so many of those players like Long, Ings, JWP, Ihenacho, Barnes that seem to have career days almost any time they play Villa.

Contract figures from here: https://www.spotrac.com/Premier League/aston-villa-fc/matty-cash-50107/#:~:text=Matty Cash signed a 5,cap hit of £4%2C160%2C000. The previous wage was reported elsewhere after he signed as well. He was among our highest earners when he signed, which I always thought was bizarre. I don't see how you can bring up Dendonker and still miss the point about value dwindling while a guys sits on the bench. Cash has been playing, so his value has been increasing or at least maintaining. Dendonker has been sitting on the bench, so no-one is going to pay more for him now than when we signed him. Dendonker has 30 caps for one of the top teams in world football over the last few years. We got him cheap because his contract was running down. 13m was good value for a player of his pedigree. But no one is going to pay that for him now after playing about 6 hours of football all year. Same way that if we wait until Cash has been sitting on the bench for a year before trying to sell him, his value will have dwindled massively. If we sell Cash this summer, it would probably be at least +20m towards FFP. If we sold Dendonker, we'd struggle to break even and would probably make a loss. Emery rotated right backs in much different situations. At Villa, we've only seen him use an attacking RB once or twice, because we're not as good relative to the league as almost every other team he's managed in the past. At Villareal, he was way more defensive against the top teams and in Europe and changed it up completely against the bottom half in La Liga. If we ever get to that level that we regularly need an attacking RB, we'll need someone much better than Cash at that anyway.

It's not simply a case of selling Cash and bringing in two RBs. It would be - buy one RB who's better suited to the defensive RB role, and sell Cash, rather than let his value dwindle while he earns 80,000 a week sitting on the bench. Beyond that, we currently have Young, Konsa, Chambers and KKH, so as it stands, we have adequate cover in the squad. A hypothetical second RB would be entirely dependent on some of those leaving, and unless we qualify for Europe this season, is probably more of a consideration for Summer 2024, by which time our situation might be much different. Young may get another year. If that happens, it probably means a 2nd RB wouldn't be needed and I would also expect that KKH would be kept around with the opportunity to compete for the position. If he can't beat out a 38 year old Young for minutes as the backup\more attacking option, he probably won't make it at Villa. If Young doesn't get another contract and Emery decides KKH isn't ready, only then would it be worth considering signing a second RB. And even then you have lots of options that would offer better flexibility, value and potential than Cash. There also were rumours that Chambers was told he could leave in January, and if that is true, he would need to be replaced, which would be another opportunity to add cover and competition for that RCB position without bloating the squad before we have European football to justify it. All this talk about signing Williams, Goncalves, Ugarte, Guendouzi, etc. We need to bring in some transfer fees in order to stay within FFP. Keeping a valuable asset, who would probably draw plenty of transfer interest, to primarily sit on the bench is just terrible business.

I do think we should outright replace and sell Cash. He's not a bad player by any means. He's unquestionably a Premier League standard right back. But his strengths are not used in the majority of the games he plays (the Crystal Palace game the only recent game he got to play his game). And the qualities we need in that position are just not his strengths. He's not great on the ball, he's not great against tricky or quick wingers and he's not great in the air. It's also not his fault that we're bad at defending set pieces, but his position is the one where we can make the easiest big improvement against that massive weakness. Also, we can't just spend without consequences, so the fact that he's a homegrown player with impressive Premier League and International experience means he's a pretty valuable player. So I don't agree with signing another player just to bench him. He's a good player that lots of good teams would benefit from. Just not suited to our primary system. We should be able to sell him for a decent amount, and reinvest that. The homegrown quota is a non-issue. You can have 17 non-homegrown, and Martinez, Mings, Watkins and Ramsey are core first team squad that are HG. Duran also won't count for 2 years I think, so that's the first and second team we don't have to worry about for years, before considering any academy prospects that we're clearly making efforts to bring through. We already have 5 free non-HG spots, and if we bring in more than 5 players, we definitely won't be keeping guys like Traore and Olsen (and in the longer term Digne, Dendonker, Coutinho, Bailey, Buendia, McGinn). It's a Champions League squad problem, and if we ever get to that level, Matty Cash won't be a factor.

I really like Buchanan as well. For me, Davies is by far Canada's best player, David second and Buchanan third. I think Buchanan is way closer to David than David is to Davies. He hasn't been doing that well at Bruges so far, but I think he'll be really good for a team that uses him right. Atletico Madrid would be a great move for him I think, although it's a bit of a stretch right now. Don't think he'd be a good signing for Villa though. Just not the right fit.

I've seen a fair few Canada games, so I'd say I've seen more of Larin and David than most on here. Larin is technically nowhere near PL level. He's big and athletic, so he scores some goals. But he's not a good player. Even at MLS level where he scored a bunch of goals, he looked very raw and based on his international performances, he hasn't improved much. He's a smaller Chris Wood. Even David, I don't really see any significant improvement over Watkins if any at all. If Watkins missed the type of chances that David missed against fairly shit opposition, Villa fans would have completely disowned him. Which a lot of Villa fans already did with Watkins. I wouldn't expect a better finisher with David. He makes some great runs, so he might get on the end of some better chances, but it's also possible we're not able to create those chances for him. For Canada, he's been gifted some great opportunities by some shit defences, and he takes only some of those chances.

I thought this was interesting, so I looked into it a bit further for Buendia and a few others. I compared the stats under Gerrard versus those under Emery (both only PL games this season, 11 vs 12 games, but all stats are per 90 mins). Gerrard's opposition was a fair bit easier with an average table position of 12.4 versus Emery's opposition's 9.8 based on the current league table (Gerrard's games included 2 of the top 5, and all of the bottom 5. Emery's included all of the top 5, and 3 of the bottom 5). Since Emery has come in, almost all of Buendia's volume stats are way down - touches down from 62 to 47. His Shot Creating Actions have gone way down from 4.25 to 2.53. Passes, tackles, carries, attempted take ons, blocks, etc. are all down. But his actual productivity stats are way up. Goals, up from 0.2 to 0.3. Goal Creating Actions up from 0.2 to 0.51, which would be good for 19th in the league (6 of the 18 players ahead of him play for Man City - the only players ahead of him from outside of the top 5 teams are Wellbeck and Mitoma). That's exactly the kind of productivity you'd be looking for from him. That would work out at around 8-9 goals and 14-15 GCA over a season if he played 75% of the minutes available, or 11-12 goals and 19-20 GCA if he played every minute. I think most people would be pretty happy with that. McGinn's stats have also followed a similar pattern - most volume stats way down, yet he has been way more effective. Shots down from 1.8 to 1.2, but Shots on Target are up from 0.4 to 0.5, because they're not all pot shots from distance. Touches, Tackles, Interceptions, Blocks, Passes Completed, Passes Attempted, Completion %, Progressive Passes, Progressive Carries are all down. Shot creating actions are up from 2.1 to 2.8. Goal Creating Actions are up from 0.20 to 0.78, which would be 4th in the Premier League this season, behind only Mahrez, De Bruyne and Foden. If he can add a few goals to his game again, he'll be back to his best. Ramsey's stats have followed a similar pattern - most stats are down, but GCA is up from 0.11 to 0.28. He could really do with a big game soon though, as he's getting left behind a bit. His 1 goal and 2 GCA all came in the Man Utd win. He hasn't been involved in a goal in his last 8 games. Even Watkins, who is clearly in great form, is touching the ball significantly less now (from 30 down to 25), but his productivity has been elite - from 0.10 goals to 0.62, from 0.29 GCA to 0.41. Nothing too unexpected there, but based on that, I don't think it's fair to say Buendia's "creative stats per90 have dropped" when you see the same pattern for the others playing in a similar role, and also look at the context of why the stats have changed in that pattern. For example, as a team, we are putting in almost half as many crosses now (20 per 90 under Gerrard, 12 under Emery), because peppering crosses into a 5'11" striker between two or three massive center backs probably wasn't that great of an idea. They may have been chances, but they weren't good chances. This is probably also a large part of the reason we are involved in way less Aerial Duals now (from 29 to 20 per 90), which is great, because aside from Mings, everyone else is pretty poor at them. We are passing it almost the same amount, but it's all happening further back the pitch where there is space, and then we're being incisive when we do move it forward. For me, that's all just down to the difference between a manager with a specific plan and instructions for each of his players, and a manager who just sends his team out and tells them to produce a bit of magic.

If Bailey had never joined us, he'd be near the top of the list of players we'd be looking to sign based on his stats at Leverkusen. A goalscoring winger with pace. He'd be perfect! That's the big risk with spending big on a guy like Nico Williams. He might not really be suited to the supporting striker role either. Bailey was more prolific than Williams has been to this point. On the flip side, if we wait until Williams has actually shown the ability to do that, we'll never be able to sign him (might be too late already even). Whoever we do sign, the same fans that are constantly denigrating Watkins/Mings/McGinn and have completely written off Bailey/Buendia/Coutinho/Dendonker and want to start Archer, Iroegbunam, three Ramseys, Luke, Stefan and Kobei Moore, and any Cowans in the academy, will immediately be on their back unless they score every time they touch the ball anyway.

Scuffed it compared to Steven Reid Any excuse to watch that again.

I agree. Mikel Merino, for example, looks a very classy player, but is 6'2" and has won the 4th most Aerial Duals among CMs in the top 5 leagues this season. 68.9% win rate. He would be a great addition if at all possible. We've conceded the 2nd most goals from set pieces this season. We've only scored the 14th most, which includes the direct ones. We need to add some aerial ability to the team. Carlos for Konsa will hopefully help. Right back and CM are the two other positions it makes the most sense to try and add to that.