NeilS

Haha, a little off topic but this thread reminds me of a rare away trip that I went to back in my younger days. I will alway remember how bad the seat I had in the away end at the old White Hart Lane back in the early 90's, it might have been the year we ended runner up under Big Ron. I arrived for the match just in time for kick off thanks to my Spurs supporting mate and his Dad and Brother forgetting their tickets and having to turn around. When I sat down the first thing I saw was that a pillar blocked out the entirety of the goal at the other end of the pitch. No mention of restricted view when I bought the ticket, I can only think they weren't obliged to mention it back in those days. My memory of the game was Nigel Kennedy was sat a few rows in front of me, and the game itself was a drab 0-0 so I didn't miss anything, which in hindsight was probably for the best as I needed a lift home afterwards with my mate and his family.

I can't imagine any of the restricted views at VP are as bad as that. Modern Stadia are far better now with the pillars all gone.

2 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Maybe

But then also maybe the highest non gambling sponsor offer we had was £2m per year less than what we have now

The reality is we have to whore ourselves out

The other reality is when people say "why can't we have cadburys or land rover as our main shirt sponsor?" these guys are more interested in being man utds official chocolate partner than they are our sponsor

£2m a year more is utds official Nigerian fruit juice partner, we can't turn it down

Its bollocks, we all know it's bollocks but that's where football is now, the **** gutter

Its not worth blaming purslow or heck for putting us there, the sport put us there

I knew we were screwed when I saw an article about 5 or 6 years ago about Man Utd's official tractor partner, and before that there was their official Noodle partner.

I wonder if the only reason we didn't move Olsen on this summer is because we see Viljami Sinisalo coming back from his loan next summer and taking the back up keeper role next season. Hopefully we don't pay for that decision too much this season, and manage to qualify again for Europe next season so we have the same volume of matches to play so we can give Sinisalo more minutes on the pitch next season.

2 hours ago, alreadyexists said:

So long term, we terminate the contract and get another supplier for next year… but what are the short term options?

Last years kit seems an obvious one, but, are there legal reasons why we can’t? Not least everyone who bought a new, now defunct, kit?

Or do they re manufacture a couple of hundred shirts for the squad to use for the rest of the season which look the same but actually perform?

I think the only short term option is the bottom one on your list, and that Castore work 24/7 to manufacture a new variation of this years kit which performs better on the wicking of sweat. This should already be happening, and I imagine the press releases are people asserting pressure to speed up this process. It sounds like concerns were voiced during pre-season, and the club are running out of patience with Castore to get this sorted.

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

There is nobody. Emery is elite and going nowhere. The ones that turned are just a bit challenged. Nothing we can do about it. 

We as a fanbase would have to be foolish to chase Emery out of the club after a slight setback, don't be an entitled idiot like the Arsenal fans who chased Wenger and Emery out. Remember what we had not that long ago under Gerrard, and where we are now. I know that I feel far better about our team and future than I did one year ago today and that is down to Emery and his backroom team.

We also need to remember our plans for this season were thrown into turmoil with some very bad injuries to Buendia, Mings, Ramsey and Moreno before the season even got going, which means we are currently going through the learning process again of new players learning their new team mates and the system. Give them time, I am certain Unai will get it right.

The Europa Conference League is probably our best bet of silverware this season, but that is not a given by any means. We need to take it seriously, not underestimate any opponent, put out our best team, and need a little bit of fortune to win it.

The two domestic cups I would love to win, especially the FA Cup, but recent history shows that they tend to be won by the same few teams year on year. That is partly why last nights defeat hurt, but not as much as last Thursday for me.

Hopefully we can get a decent fee for him and turn a profit in the summer. He doesn’t fit our team.

2 hours ago, Tom13 said:

Where on earth can I watch the highlights?

If you want to punish yourself:-

Awful defending all round.

9 minutes ago, avfc1982am said:

I'm just of the opinion that whilst Mings is out and Torres is trying to settle, add in the fact we've looked defensively frail, we shouldn't be tinkering with the defence for a while. At least until we find some defensive form of sorts. It's early in the season, players are not over stretched at the moment so we need to settle the side down before going heavy on rotation imo. 

Agreed 100%. Get off to a good start, then rest your players when you are feeling comfortable.
 

It feels like as a team we have regressed defensively back to where we were in January. The injuries to Mings and Moreno have contributed to that. I do feel we will get better again once the team gels again, but they need to play together to do that. I would have kept the back four as Digne, Pau, Konsa and Cash for last night to try and gain that time together. Lenglet and Chambers could have come on after an hour if all was going well.
 

The number 1 rule in Europe is to silence the crowd early on, we did the opposite and gave them something to shout about in the first few minutes.

I feel this is Unai’s first big error. He will sort it out though, so I am not too worried.

1 hour ago, Tom13 said:

Shouldn't be starting for us in either position IMO - very poor in both.

Agree, he is not good enough in reality. At his best he is a lower level PL player/upper championship player. He is a useful utility player off the bench, but should not be starting games for us.

I felt this is our best chance of winning some long overdue silverware. I am deeply annoyed we have changed half the team and messed about with our he defence in such a tricky first away tie. I am not against rotating, and understand the necessity, but 5 is too many changes to the starting line up in my opinion. All is not lost though, we have just made our job harder going forward and have left less room for errors from here on. Still annoyed though!

This is why you don’t underestimate the opposition! It annoys me when people say we should rotate and rest so and so. Get the job done first, then rotate. We have made our life more difficult for this competition now. So frustrating!

1 minute ago, AstonMartyn88 said:

Since when has Nanny MacPhee been part of the Scotland set up?

I think he started work with Scotland at around the same time he came here.

Nice pass from Bellingham.

1 hour ago, Philosopher said:

Why isn't Haaland on this list?

The tweet has a total of 6 pages of candidates, so that is just one page of the candidates.

2 hours ago, Pinebro said:

At this point it's time to stop saying can't catch a break and come to the conclusion that this is just genetics and he is predisposed to injuries.

Yeah sadly it looks like his body isn’t capable of holding up to the rigours and physicality of playing professional sports. He is a big lad and that will put a lot of strain on his body especially in a sport like football which relies on explosive speed and turns. I had hoped a change of lifestyle and climate may work out for him. Unfortunately It is looking less and less likely for him now.

Poor old Kienan can't catch a break. It looks like his career in Italy has stalled before it has even started. Sadly I think the amount of injuries he has suffered during his short playing career show that he is unlikely to stay fit for long enough to build up his confidence and some momentum in his career.

Davis Injured

The Italian newspaper cover the situation on Monday, pointing to the statement released by Udinese regarding their new striker.

Davis has yet to feature for the Serie A club since his arrival from Aston Villa, and there was hope he could do so after the international break.

However, that will need to be put on hold due to a calf issue, where, ‘according to first investigations’, there is a fear that some muscle fibres ‘would have broken, caused by excessive stress’, meaning too much exertion.

It’s explained that this happened during some running drills ‘precisely to evaluate the physical conditions of the new arrivals’.

They point out the player certainly didn’t arrive from Aston Villa ‘in good shape’, and it was understood he would need a good month to get back to fitness.

This plan has now been ‘ruined due to this injury’, and they will now have to ‘evaluate the conditions’ of his left calf nearly ‘every day’, with the belief he could be out until potentially November.

I might be misremembering but think we were linked with Klinsmann and ended up with Fashanu, Klinsmann then went on to join Spurs.

Also, a strong link to Bergkamp from Inter Milan, ended up with Savo. I think we were linked with a young Pires , pre Arsenal as well.

Christian Vieri and Junhinho were strongly linked back in the 90’s, but again neither signed for us.

Ha, we use Corpay at work for our currency. It used to be Afex, but they were bought out last year or so. I might have to contact my reps and see if they have any free tickets going although I think we are probably small fry in the scheme of things now.

5 hours ago, ChicagoVillan1983 said:

Pau shouldn't have been playing big minutes yet - unfortunately he's right in the thick of things.

Exactly, the plan would have been to ease him in to the physicality of the PL. instead an awful injury has taken that opportunity away and it’s straight into the fire. 

53 minutes ago, ferguson1 said:

Conceding eight goals in two away games, albeit against two top sides, is a concern and will be for Emery.

We need to find a way to toughen up and become hard to beat again. We’ll do this against the bottom ten or so sides, but Emery needs to work out quickly how we should do this against the top teams.

What’s happened to defending with a back six and soaking up pressure like we did so well against Spurs and Brighton away last season?

It is a definite concern. I think Unai’s plan was to start the season with a very similar team to that that finished last season, while slowly integrating the new signings. Sadly that plan was scuppered over the summer with injuries to JJ and Buendia, quickly followed by Mings. Mings and Buendia being big losses due to the timeframes involved.

That has taken away the chance of gradual integration of individual players against the weaker teams, and thrown the organisation and understanding built up during the previous campaign out the window. Unai is almost back to square one with a lot of new players getting to know each other and their roles within the team. I trust given time we will see this improve again, but will admit it is concerning. We need Pau Torres to get up to speed very quickly now, and hope Carlos isn’t too badly injured.

It is concerning how poor we look against the better teams. Last year we have all bar Man City a game, Mings with his power and pace is the biggest lost.

53 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

Why did he come off? Is he injured?

Emery said that he mentioned some mild pain at half time, so they didn’t want to risk him second half. Hopefully nothing too serious. 

Martinez injury concern

I haven’t seen the first half, so will watch it back later. I am glad to see we put out a strong team for this one though, it means the job done and we can have luxury of rotating the squad a little more in the second leg now.

On a side note, it is good to see Ollie get off the mark for the season. Hopefully he will go on from here and bang a few league goals in.

1 hour ago, NurembergVillan said:

https://theathletic.com/live-blogs/transfer-news-live-latest-updates/jIBhhbQHDEL7/z3j1tThZSjan/

I have watched it back, and I am pretty sure that if he would have looked up, the ball would have gone behind for a goal kick. Sometimes you just have to put it in the right area at that speed.

Besides, I seem to recall him setting up a couple of similar goals towards the tail end of last season in the same manner. I remember Dougie and JJ scoring side foot finishes from Bailey pull backs in the run in on our charge for European qualification. I think it was the Bournemouth and Spurs matches from memory.

We had other similar goals from others players assisting as well, it must be Unai driven tactic. They are so hard to defend or save if the forward gets a clean connection.