DJBOB

King shit.

Diego with no one pressing him can really ping it around. It’s when he’s getting pressed that he becomes a bit shaky.

It won’t make national waves for a while but a potentially crucial day today in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the legislature is allowed to uphold a 15 week abortion ban and thus pass a 6 week abortion ban. In turn, they also allowed a vote for allowing abortion to viability to be added as a state amendment. The threshold is high - 60% of voters need to approve it. But in a state that Trump won by 2.3% in 2020, a veritable landslide for Florida’s standards, will the single amendment swing it enough the other way on what has been a slam dunk for Dems? Maybe not at the end of the day, but will cause Trump to spend more money than he really needed to in his “home” state.

Bank holiday and too much time on my hands. Konsa home vs Burnley yellow - protesting a decision that should have been a corner to us. Konsa away at United yellow - yellow for taking down Garnacho on the counter Konsa away at Brentford yellow - yellow for the goal fracas after Watkins scored Konsa home vs Fulham yellow - booked for time wasting Konsa home vs Brighton yellow - yellow for a late challenge 2 yellows for bad challenges and 3 yellows for dissent/time wasting - makes sense now.

There is something to it, especially when you look at who's challenging them. Zaniolo and Duran - in particular - are comically silly the way they get yellow cards. Some of the individual numbers are astounding too. Rice at CDM with only 3 yellow cards. Dias with 0. Szoboslai with only 1 yellow in 23 fouls. Then again - if you look at the profile of who's competing for those tackles - it might just come down to the physically able players winning the ball more often while our smaller players have to really put in a challenge to get the ball, and as a result - get an abnormally high amount of yellow cards as a ratio to fouls. Makes sense that you see certain kinds of players on opposing teams too with a decent yellow card ratio too - Mac Allister and Endo aren't known for being bruisers but have to cover a lot of ground in the middle of the park. Bernardo Silva isn't winning a lot of duels soon but is asked to play in the center a lot. So it might just be your point @TRO - Villa are a lightweight team in general and get more yellows because we have to be clambering or hacking the other players to win the ball.

Got caught up in all the edits. I agree - Palace need a few results but should be fully on the beach for our last match. Brentford will be a tough one no doubt. Bournemouth similarly might have nothing to play for by the time we play them. Whereas Forest and Burnley still have a chance to escape.

Spurs run in is not significantly easier than ours. We each have to play Liverpool/City/Arsenal/Chelsea Differences are we play Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton, and Palace They play Forest, Burnley, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Palace

Put in a calculator where we beat all of Liverpool/Arsenal/City and winning every other match but drew against Chelsea. Even winning the 6 pointers would be tough as the rest of the sides have relatively easy run-ins.

I think there's certain positions where quality is needed (CDM and fullbacks) but it wouldn't surprise me if we were in for 1 or 2 players like Dewsburry-Hall that can play multiple positions. We've seen this campaign how effective that can be when the injuries and fixture lists start piling up.

His versatility is something Unai would like. He's played a variety of LM/RM/attacking mid for LC. Given the constant injuries every club faces when in multiple competitions, that kind of versatility is priceless (compared to say Diaby or Bailey who can only really play in 1 or 2 positions). I wouldn't be surprised if we were in for him but price will be a big factor I would think.

He'd be interesting see as a ball carrying wide midfielder in Unai's system. But with JJ, Rogers, Bailey, McGinn, potentially Diaby at times - it'd be hard to see where he would fit in. Could play in the double pivot but he's already a light lad as is and the defensive side of his game isn't a forte.

I wouldn't necessarily be overly Spanish focused. Since Unai and Monchi have taken over, only Pau and Moreno are Spanish. Lenglet is from La Liga. Zaniolo (though he's a previous Monchi transfer), Diaby, Rogers, Kosta, Gauci, Tielemans, Sousa are from a variety of backgrounds and leagues.

I don't think there's anything overly sinister. There's some questionable foul to yellow card ratios. I'd be interested to see what situations Konsa got 5 yellow cards to 11 fouls for example. But can we really say Zaniolo and Duran aren't deserving of the yellow's. Duran in particular has been on the edge of 2 reds just off the top of my head. Arsenal and Liverpool have some questionable ratios but can be mostly explained away with the exception of Gabriel and Rice but I don't watch enough Arsenal matches to specify why. And in fairness - Villa are the second most fouled team in the league behind Spurs. Additionally - Villa opponents have the 5th most yellow cards in the league as well. As much as the conspiracist in me wants to say otherwise, our player discipline is really focused more on certain positions (fullback) and the chaos twins accumulating 12 yellow cards between them despite being being 17th and 18th in minutes played.

This is actually somewhat of an interesting topic so I pulled some of the most prolific foulers to see what the ratio is for Villa compared to other teams. Our most prolific foulers according to fbref are: Luiz (40 fouls, 8 yellows) McGinn (35 fouls, 7 yellows) Kamara (35 fouls, 7 yellows) Cash (25 fouls, 6 yellows) Digne (21 fouls, 6 yellows) So about a 5 fouls per yellow ratio with Cash a little above 4 fouls per yellow and Digne 3.5 fouls per yellow. Standing out by ratio are: Zaniolo (21 fouls, 7 yellows) Konsa (11 fouls, 5 yellows) Duran (9 fouls, 5 yellows). By contrast - Liverpool: Mac Allister (40 fouls, 6 yellows) Diaz (39 fouls, 2 yellows!) Endo (33 fouls, 8 yellows) Jota (27 fouls, 3 yellows) Gomez (26 fouls, 5 yellows) Szoboszlai (25 fouls, 1 yellow) Gakpo (23 fouls, 1 yellow) Nunez (22 fouls, 8 yellows!) Arsenal: Havertz (35 fouls, 7 yellows) Saka (32 fouls, 3 yellows) Odegaard (25 fouls, 2 yellows!) Gabriel (25 fouls, 3 yellows) Jesus (25 fouls, 6 yellows) Rice (23 fouls, 3 yellows!) City: Rodri (35 fouls, 8 yellows) Walker (23 fouls, 2 yellows) Dias (22 fouls, 0 yellows!) Alvarez (21 fouls, 2 yellows) Silva (17 fouls, 7 yellows) In general - Liverpool and Arsenal have way more fouls along their forward lines but far less yellows. These are probably fouls on the opposition defenders when they press high that are rarely given yelows. Even then - Gabriel (the CB) for Arsenal only having 3 yellows for 25 fouls seems outrageous given he's a CB and same with Rice. Liverpool's midfield has a more reasonable ratio (Mac Allister and Endo) but their forwards get away with a lot of fouls with no yellow cards. City have a somewhat more normal ratio though Dias with no yellows is outstanding defending whereas Rodri has a surprising amount of yellow cards as well as Silva. So overall, Duran, Zaniolo, and strangely enough Konsa have a lot of yellow cards for us on very few fouls whereas the midfield and Digne have a more appropriate ratio in line with Liverpool and City's midfield. Where we seem to have a lot of fouls are our fullbacks whereas none of the Liverpool/City/Arsenal fullbacks besides Gomez and Walker are even near the top of the fouls list. This is probably a combination of our high line and how exposed we leave our fullbacks since we press so narrowly. It makes more sense when you consider Konsa plays RB regularly now and he has a high fouls to yellow card ratio as well. A combination of our high line - exposed fullbacks and the chaos twins (Duran and Zaniolo) means we get penalized a lot in comparison to the rest of the top 4. Tottenham, who also play a lot of offside traps - have a similar foul and yellow card ratio to us.

One thing that was pretty different than what I had seen before against Wolves was the way we changed our pressing shape after the first 20 minutes. Wolves had a pretty good spell to start off the match and we struggled to close them down in the first 20 minutes. We were playing our typical 442 mid block but Ollie and Diaby were getting nowhere near their CB's and the switch was on several times. Rogers and Bailey were struggling against Semedo and Alt-Nouri (not the first time he's impressed me). After the Watkins miss from the Tielemans through ball, we then shifted towards Diaby, Watkins, and Bailey pressing their 3 CB's and then Konsa jumping on Alt-Nouri with Tielemans dropping behind him to track Lemina. Nominally that's a mismatch but Tielemans did a good job cutting the pass into Lemina's feet and had Diego covering behind him. We started pressing them to the side and cutting off the switch which led to them playing 50/50 balls towards their young striker. Pau and Diego did a good job winning these duels and mopping up the second ball. The aggressive man to man switch paid off and was very proactive from Unai to wrestle control of the match.

I think in fairness - it was a lot of ground to cover. Moreno was very hesitant and tucked in a lot so that left Rogers with a lot of ground to cover both between Bueno/Semedo/Sarabia. When Zaniolo and Digne came in - Digne was far more willing to engage higher up the pitch with Zaniolo covering in behind. Then again - we were also leading at that point so the dynamics changed. I'd be interested to see how Rogers played defensively with Digne since Moreno is particularly out of form right now.

It's more of a complaint really in the stylistic approaches of Arteta/Klopp/Pep. Can't knock the results - best attack and defence in the league but Arteta sets out to grind these boring results with City, and at times Liverpool though they did tear them apart 3-1 in the second fixture. As a result - these matches aren't title deciders so much in that it's Arteta making sure that the other side doesn't get 3 points. I get it - it's just boring. Then they can beat up on relegation sides 5-0, 6-0 and etc. In a way - I guess I should compliment Arteta for his adaptability switching between the things he learned under Pep and then the things he learned under Moyes. But the end result is that these matches up are dull as all.

I mean it’s all well and good beating up the Sheffield’s of the league but his approach vs Arsenal and sometimes Liverpool has been one of abundant caution. He wasn’t always this way but has been far more risk averse lately.

Hate to say it but rather Liverpool win the title this year, Klopp wank fest and all. The obsessively risk averse way Pep and Arteta play are so dull. Not that it’s not unexpected, but at the end of the day - I’m here to be entertained. Pep and Arteta going 442, big and little combo, deep blocks and then set piece and corner routines emphasized are as dull as they were in the yesteryears of the league.

United are shit and won’t get 5th.

Fair play to him. Played seriously well as the more defensive cover of the double pivot. First ball to Watkins deserved an assist.

Big belief in Rogers

They could, but it's extra pessimistic to think that United will beat their season trajectory, fluke their way to 10 results while Villa lose against their season trajectory and fluke their way to getting a worse PPG than in Unai's whole tenure at Villa. It's not impossible and it is Villa but it's the least likely of scenarios.

They are 6th because they have picked up unlikely results. By almost every metric, except GA - they are midtalbe or worse A shocking 14th in goals for 9th in xG 12th in xGA Somehow 4th in GA - over peforming their GA-xGA by over 8 goals (Liverpool is the only other club in the same bracket) Allowed the 4th most shots in the league 12th in xGD. By almost every underlying metric, they're nowhere near 6th. Their spawny results have kept them in 6th, not the other way around.

United are shit and will not finish top 5.