NeilS

What a result! I didn’t expect that, and a clean sheet to boot. UTV

I would think they are back for pre-season training, aren’t they?

Totally agree. Mings is a massive loss for us this season, like you say with the vocal organisation and also when defending set pieces. I remember one particular game at the end of last season against Forest who had some big physical players, when ever Morgan Gibbs-White fired over a corner Mings met it and cleared the danger. I am certain that Lille goal would not have happened with Mings playing, he would have attacked that ball and cleared it like he did against Forest last season. I managed to watch quite a few home games in the run inand Mings was faultless in that second half of the season, I have never been as confident about us seeing out a lead as I was at the tail end of last season. So it is a massive loss to lose him so early into this season. I hope he can recover fully from this injury and we get to see a few more seasons from Ty.

Diego hasn't been as good as I would have hoped for when we signed him. To be fair He was hit with a bad injury in his first season with us, which was obviously a major setback for him and that was not his fault. I was cutting him a little slack earlier on this season as he would have been rusty after such a long term injury, but he now has quite a number of matches under his belt racking up over 2000 minutes so far this season. He looks to have the physicality and builld for the PL, but he gets caught out too often for my liking. I do wonder if he is someone we may look to move on, and get a younger player (mid 20's) in during the summer window.

I am happy to come away with the victory, although disappointed that we conceded late on. To be fair to Lille they probably deserved a goal, and they were unlucky not to score sooner but for Emi Martinez in goal doing what he does and a close offside decision going our way. I would say that Lille are easily the best team we have played in Europe this season, and We will have to play a hell of a lot better defensively in the second leg to progress. Both teams looked weak at defending set pieces though, and for us I believe this is where we massively miss Mings, I am certain that Lille goal wouldn't have happened with Mings playing instead of Carlos. That ball would have been attacked by Mings and cleared. With Matty Cash missing with injury we have been favouring playing Konsa at RB and Carlos in the middle, I think that leaves us weaker defensively as Konsa and Pau worked well together, but I am not sure what alternative we have at the moment other than throwing Kesler-Hayden into the fire. Finally, I am not sure what happened with the referee last night. He didn't seem too bad in the first half and was very even, but something changed at half time and in the second half he was very one sided in my opinion. He was happy to book our players, but no action when the Lille players committed fouls that were equally as bad or sometimes worse. How the guy who ripped Konsa's shirt off his back got away without a yellow, yet Douglas gets booked for a minor shirt pull minutes later I will never know. Also, Watkins was wiped out from behind with a barge in the back in the penalty box. How is that not a penalty? It is a mystery to me. I guess all of the decent European referees are not selected for the Europa Conference League.

Yeah, that was a minor shirt pull, yet the Lille player almost ripped Konsa’s shirt off his back in the same part of the pitch only 3-4 mins earlier. The only consistency the ref showed last night was that our players were bookable and theirs weren’t.

My guess is that we will be in for Mikel Merino in the summer. According to www.transfermarkt.co.uk he is coming up to one year left on his deal this summer, so may be available at a reasonable price, we were linked a while back, he is at a good age, he is sponsored by Adidas and he is capable of playing CM or CDM so will fill a couple of roles in midfield and cover Kamara up until Christmas when he is due back.

When Duran comes on as a substitute late on in matches he does like to throw in a sliding tackle or two from distance, and that worries me a little with him. It is why he picks up Yellow cards regularly, but you just need a slightly mistimed one and an eager ref may pull out a red card. When he has started matches in the European ties, he has looked more subdued in that respect so maybe he is just over trying to impress in a short time at the end of a match. I think that will come with experience and time working with the first team. Here's hoping for a thunder strike of a goal tonight from Jhon if he gets on the pitch.

Wouldn’t have been a goal if Watkins hadn’t persisted with that. Probably won’t get mentioned though and it will all be about Bellingham.

It could be argued that German team was one of the weakest they have had in a big tournament, and even then if Thomas Muller had stuck that one on one chance away like you would expect him to 99 times out of 100 then it could well have ended a different way.

I reckon Ireland was a protest vote that year, as we were universally rubbish that season. It was the pain of drawing matches to crawl over the safety line from Relegation at at the end. I had forgotten Sinclair, yes you are right bar a handful of matches he didn't light things up. But I never expected much from him to be honest, which is probably why I had forgotten about him. You are right, We were rubbish and heading towards the Championship thanks to Randy and Co. So it probably harsh to say no to any City players, if we were buying someone of top quality from City with a good attitude it would be fine, unfortunately they won't be letting those type of players go to us easily. Dougie they had to let go because of work permit isues, so we were fortunate to get in early with him. With Grealish I fear he will not have the hunger if he were to return here, he has achieved what he wanted to at City and I fear he would be coming back to see out his career here. We need players looking to push on and improve and give their all for the team.

Haha, how did I forget about Dougie sorry about that. To be honest though, I don't count Doug as a Man City player because he never played for them in a competitive match and spent most of his short time there on loan. I was thinking more along the lines of Richards, Ireland and Lescott via Albion they were all hopeless and a monumental waste of money for us. Dunne and Given were just ok, but not the best.

My concern with us re-signing Grealish is that we have never had much luck signing players from Man City. Would the hunger to succeed and perform at the top level still be there now he has earned his fortune and won his medals, I am not so sure. He is coming to the twilight of his career now and injuries are more likely as he enters his 30's. With the cost of fee and wages I don't think it would be a wise use of our funds. I wasn't keen on selling him at the time, but in hindsight I can see the benefits to all parties involved and we re-built on the back of a handsome fee from Man City. We need to think without involving sentimentality to make sure Aston Villa thrives going forward, signing Jack would be a sentimental signing harking back to what he was and not what he will be. I think it would be best to avoid this one.

Yes, it is nice to see us finally post some big sponsorship numbers to help us compete. It will be interesting to see what happens when the betting sponsors are banned from the shirt though, hopefully we will be in a good position to pick up some decent competitive non betting sponrship deal when that time comes around in a couple of years time.

Yeah, I don't go in for those predictor things at all. One game at a time is hard enough to predict, who would have thought we would beat Man City and Arsenal and then draw with Sheffield Utd. My outlook is to try not to stress about what different permutations may or may not occur durther down the line, and just enjoy being in the right part of the table for once.

I can't imagine Bosnich playing it out from the back, that would be really bad for the health of those Villa fans of a nervous disposition. I agree with you on this one. Bosnich was a great shot stopper and commanded his area and dealt with crosses into the box pretty well, but Emi is the far superior all round goalkeeper in my opinion and dare I say it the best goalkeeper for Villa over the last 40 years.

I am happy with a point away from home. West Ham isn’t an easy place to go to, so would have taken that before the match. That point could be crucial at the season end.

A tough draw, but you would imagine they would all be tough matches at this stage. I imagine it will be a nice away trip for those who travel.

He has probably been omited because he has only played a small amount of football over the last couple of months. He was looking like he is getting back to full fitness last night and made it all look so easy, fingers crossed he can stay injury free for the remainder of the season.

Great to see Buendia back training on grass with the ball. The next step will be training with the first team and an increase in intensity. I imagine he is probably at least a few weeks before he gets to that point in his rehab.

I have no complaints on the McGinn Red Card. He went in strongly and at great speed and totally mis-timed it. If he hadn't applied such force to the tackle he probably would have been given a yellow card fo a cynical trip, as it was he cleaned Udogie out. He has let us down on this occasion as we are now down to bare bones in central midfield for the next three games, which is a large chunk of the remaining games this season. We have to hope that Tim or Tielemans can step up to fill the void, or that JJ is back and firing again asap.

Before the season began, I was hoping for a top 6 position in the PL and a good run deep into, (possibly winning) the Europa Conference League. We are currently on course for my pre-season expectation, all while suffering three season ending injuries to key player, along with multiple other injuries throughout the season, which have really started to hamper us since Christmas time. The Spurs match was disappointing, but Spurs have the advantage on us at the moment due to having most of their squad bar Richarlison and Sessegnon fit and ready to play. I am pretty sure the most matches played by one of their players is Vicario the GK who has played roughly 30 matches all season, whereas I reckon McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Ollie Watkins must be nearing their 40th match of the season already add that to the team only returning late at night on Thursday and playing at lunch time on the Sunday. It was going to need a monumental effort to keep up with a hard pressing Spurs team. Let's not chase Unai off if we fall short this season, he deserves more time to build the squad which will allow us to compete on multiple fronts. Let's not forget that it was roughly only 18 months ago we were managed by a Scouse charlatan who was taking us back to the Championship. Stick with the team, they will need us to stay with them when the times are tough and they have given their all this season so far.

I have seen the video and he blew as the player went to cross the ball after a phase of play had broken down, so it looked fair enough decision by the referee in my opinion. They are not supposed to play on just because someone has the ball in an attacking area. I remember we had one disallowed years ago at Chelsea for same reason. Platt scored a worldie overhead kick goal, but referee blew half time whistle as his foot connected with the cross. Bellingham needs to accept the decision at that moment in time. Hopefully he will learn from that, and he won’t repeat his error when playing for England.

Ok fair enough. I will do my best Wenger impression and say I didn’t see that. I will have to watch back later on the highlights.

I am not surprised to hear Michael Oliver was bad, it seems like we rarely win when he is in charge of our matches. I feared the worst when I heard he was the referee today. So happy with the win, it was always going to be a tough battle against Luton. They are showing some fight and we stood up to it and got the win. It is not always going to be champagne football, you have to win ugly as well. Nice one lads. UTV