NeilS

12 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Saw this as well, aside from this there are a couple of " fans " who pipe up with it every time we lose or have a bad patch.

One bloke said " Yes... The pattern does seem to be emerging now ".

I had to tell him that the " pattern " is that we were 16th when he came.in, 7th last year and are now competing for top 4.

I really hope we don't become Arsenal TV types with more success

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.

54 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Diverting from the awful officiating in England, there was also a furore in Spain yesterday resulting in a red card for Bellingham.

The ref blew his whistle as a cross was played that Jude headed in.  
 

I don’t see anything wrong with what the ref did to be fair.  I hate this notion that people think the ref should let a chance play out before blowing for time.  If the time is up the time is up.  Looking at the clock on the clip it was about 2 mins over the allotted injury time.  I do understand the immediate frustration on the part of the player but Madrid acting like they’ve been robbed?  Nah.

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.

20 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

Luiz should have been sent off, so lets get that right. 

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

13 minutes ago, bcarpet said:

bloody hell, I'm in a queue to get onto the villa ticketing page to get the tickets for this one.

Yeah I had the same happen to me too, I have never come across that on the OS before. I must admit it caught me by surprise seeing that come up and I feared the worst.

I managed to get hold of a couple of tickets for me and my Dad up in block A2 though after a short wait. I hope you had success getting hold of tickets as well?

21 hours ago, allani said:

Ok (and please bear in mind my other very positive posts on Ollie today!!!).  I think there are two areas where he could improve and become an even better player.  (1) His touch when coming towards our goal rather than when going towards the opposition goal is at times a bit more heavy.  (2) When he's got his back to goal against a more "agricultural" defender he's not strong enough to hold them off and he's not quite cute enough to win enough free-kicks.  I'm not expecting him to throw himself to the ground all the time - but he gets fouled an awful lot more than the number of free-kicks he wins suggests.  I thought he did much better against Fulham and Forest where he seemed to present his case for being manhandled a little better and ended up winning a few more decisions.

But he's improved massively since Emery and his coaching team have arrived for sure.  Pretty confident that whatever records he doesn't end up breaking this season he'll be challenging and beating next season.

On point 2, I 100% agree. Prime example was the recent home match against Newcastle. He was being manhandled and pushed from behind all game, trying to stand his ground and shield the ball unsuccesfully. The referees are not giving him anything unless he goes to ground, so he needs to be a bit smarter and less honest for himself and the team. Hopefully as he becomes a higher profile player in the league, the referees will look more kindly on him.

My thoughts after watching the highlights. It looks like we have found our attacking mojo again and could have bagged a few more goals, albeit we looked a bit suspect at the back.

The defensive frailties I can understand with the injuries we have in the back four. Hopefully Torres and Konsa will be back together soon, and I can start being more confident about our top 4 and Europa Conference League challenge.

Just now, Talldarkandransome said:

Anyone know why Clattenburg might have been at VP yesterday, saw him at New St after too

I think I read that he is working with Forest as an advisor. 

Just now, Jareth said:

Are Ajax good these days?

They were awful at the start of the season, but I think they have had a mini resurgence since sacking their manager. Hopefully we can beat them, won't be easy though.

I seem to remember his career started to go downhill not long after the Head & Shoulders advert. Up to that point he was quite highly rated, then his stock kind of plummeted not long afterwards. Could shampoo in the eye responsible for his howlers?

12 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

No, on Diego 

 

 

Jeez, I have not seen that. That is almost up there with the Spurs lad pullinhg Helenius Shorts down to his ankles. Still, nothing surprises me any more. I have more chance of winning the Euro Millions than us getting awarded a penalty against Man Utd.

It looks like it was an interesting weekend for Chrisene in a new role for Blackburn Rovers, he was learning a new role and played his part in a good win for BRFC. It sounds like he started the game on the LH side of a back three, and did quite well before moving into his more usual spot as a wing back. This is the position I remember Gareth Barry started off at Villa. It is good to see he appears to have earned enough trust to be starting games regularly for Blackburn, hopefully he will play a lot of matches between now and the eand of the season and keep on improving.

Chrisene starts at LCB

The stand-in coaching team of Johnson and Lowe fielded in a three-back formation, with natural left-back Ben Chrisene starting in the left centre-back role. He later moved further forward upon the introduction of Connor O’Riordan, but it was a steady display in a new role for the Aston Villa loanee.

His efforts were recognised too. Lancashire Telegraph reporter Elliot Jackson handed him a 7/10 rating for his display, writing this:

“Adjusted well to playing left-centre-back. Moved back out to wing-back after the reshuffle. Looks to be growing into Championship football.”

2 hours ago, Adam2003 said:

I mean the simple fact is he’s probably our fifth-choice centre back, and while I don’t think he’s very good I don’t remember us ever having a better fifth choice. The issue has been him having to play so much

Yes very true. We have had far worse players as our first choice pairings at the back in recent years not naming any names cough, Richards, Lescott, Cough. Lenglet is a decent player, and I am going to put it down to lack of understanding with teammates.

There was a incident near the end of the Cup match in midweek where on the half way line he passed it sideways and straight to a Chelsea player and put our back line under immediate threat. Thankfully someone stopped the attack from costing us the forth goal. I don't want to be harsh on Lenglet as it must be difficult coming into a team where the defence has had wholesale changes and no continuity, but he an Diego both seem to have a costly blunder in them.

2 minutes ago, villa89 said:

Why blue? Orange was the obvious choice. 

It is probably for the fans. At a quick glance Orange may get mistaken for Red on tv or in the ground, whereas with Blue there shouldn't be any confusion.

3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

The only thing that makes any sense in this idea is that it's being brought in to allow referees to more successfully influence games in the direction of those clubs that bring in the most TV revenue. 

When an idea only makes sense if it's a deliberate act of sporting criminality, then I think it's fair to say it's utter dogsh*t

These are my thoughts, we all know they don't apply the current rules equally at this moment in time. I can see it now, smaller team hanging on to a slender lead with 15 minutes left and player swears in frustration, referee takes any opportunity to send a player of the leading team to sin bin to allow the rich team an opportunity to get back into the game. Can you imagine the referee sening Bruno Fernandes to the sin bin in similar circumstances. I am not so sure. I don't trust the referee's today!

1 hour ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Got past the 3rd round of the FA Cup for the first time since 2015 before losing, over two games to Chelsea.

Still playing in a European competition in March.

We are rocked by injuries at the moment and He's only been here 17 months.

We are pretty much playing with both our 3rd and 4th choice centre backs at the moment following Konsa's injury, look at Arsenal last year to see how they fell away when they were impacted by injuries in central defence. We are pretty much starting from scratch with the back four that played last night, having one of Lenglet or Carlos weakens us, to have both who have barely played together at the back is going to make the team look disjointed. The passing out from the back has dramatically dropped in quality and that has impacted the team going forward as well. Let's not turn on our best manager that we have had in years as a result, stick with the team as the injuries will ease soon.

My realistic target for the season was top 6 and Conference League Win, we are still on target for that. If we can get a Champions League place then we will have done fantastically, but we shouldn't turn on the team or manager if we run out of steam.

Yessss! Nice one! What a great way to bounce back from the midweek disappointment with a comfortable victory. UTV

1 minute ago, briny_ear said:

I get the impression he gets downhearted when things din’t go so well, so Unai’s words are helpful and wise. he needs building up and encouraging, and a bit of patience. 

Let’s hope he doesn’t read Villatalk.

When he squared the ball in the first half instead of shooting against Newcastle on Tuesday, that said to me his confidence is low as the shot was on. He needs our support to get back to where he was at the beginning of the season, when he looked top class.

41 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

he was a free transfer  wasn't he ? 

That is how I remember it. Arsenal agreed to cancel his contract so he as a free agent.

I chuckled when I saw the links earlier. On the one hand we have Newcastle linked, who apparently are being hamstrung by FFP so why would they be shelling out £50m+ for JJ when they need to churn some of their own players to free up FFP headroom. On the other hand we have Spurs, who have been linked with a number of our players over they years going back to the days of Ashley Young Mk1 and more recently Emi Martinez. How many of them have they actually stumped up the money for and signed? I can't recall one actually happening, even when they had a simple tap in to acquire Grealish they still couldn't do it. So whenever I see Spurs are interested in one of our players I have no fear of losing them.

I don't think Ramsey will be going anywhere soon, and if pushed I would guess Douglas Luiz will be our next big name departure and most sellable asset for FFP. That is just a gut feeling based on the constant rumours linking Dougie to Arsenal and his contract coming up to two years remaining this summer. I think Emery and Monchi will have some ideas of replacements already in mind from La Liga. Hopefully I am wrong (wouldn't be the first time) and he signs a new contract this summer.

58 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Funniest thing about this dreadful article is that he is already cup tied if he moves

Exactly, he played against Boro in the third round. 

Its articles like the below that sucker people in and cause the fans to get paranoid and start slating said player. Ignoring the fact that unless I am going mad, Durán would already be cup tied from playing in the third round against Middlesbrough. Rule no.1 take whatever you read online with a bucket of salt, as a good chunk of it is rubbish!

Ex Villa employee says deal in the making

And King believes a deal for the 20-year-old could be in progress, but it would rely on a big-money exit from Stamford Bridge.

Speaking to Villa News, King said: “I think he could be out of the club, I think a deal is in the making. It’s not a long-term injury.

“If he played for Aston Villa against Chelsea, he becomes cup-tied, so he couldn’t play for Chelsea if he went there. I’ve seen it happen before.

If he wants to go then so be it, but we should make Milan pay so we make a good profit from the sale. I would say £30m upwards and sell in clause as a minimum.

He has shown some promise in his appearances for us, but it is too early for him to be a regular starter for us. when he has started in Europe he has been a bit hit and miss, and we cannot afford that in Premier League matches. He is not bigger than the club or Unai, so if he is causing issues then get rid.

However, this could all be BS so let’s see how things pan out over the next few days before we cast too many judgements on the lad. Let’s see if he starts today, if he does then I think that will speak volumes about how true this all is.

Such a shame, he just needed a pre-season to get his ideas fully across to the players.