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KentVillan

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Everything posted by KentVillan

  1. Thought Cash was one of our best players today. The “mistake” for their winner was just a taller, stronger player getting their head on a great cross. I don’t think a different RB would have stopped that goal.
  2. Thought it was hilarious, and at the time it was an equaliser. Couldn’t give a **** what Utd fans think about literally anything
  3. Correct take. Unai can walk away with his head held high. Tactics and team selection were fine. Issue was poor execution from individuals at key moments. Ref was also very inconsistent, mostly in Utd’s favour. Don’t want to blame him, but it gave them a slight edge. They know they got lucky today. Reassuring for me in some ways, in that recent losses have just been terrible performances. This one felt more like one you can take a bit of confidence from, going into the Fulham game.
  4. https://amp.marca.com/en/football/manchester-city/2023/06/16/648c64e5e2704e6a9f8b460a.html That’s his own teammate saying “he always takes advantage when he has days off”. And then a more direct answer to your question. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10487383/amp/Manchester-City-England-star-Jack-Grealish-turned-away-bar-drunk.html This was in Feb 2022, not celebrating anything in particular afaik. He was dropped for this I believe, or possibly it was a previous incident. I mean come on, use your eyes and your common sense. The stuff that gets reported in the media is when there’s photo / video evidence that makes it online. To call all of this guesswork is delusional
  5. It’s more that to stay in the top flight into your late 30s you need to be extremely serious about looking after yourself, to an extent that would seem unhinged to your average punter. There’s no sign at all that Grealish lives that kind of life. Nowadays even one night a week on the beers is disrupting your training / recovery enough to put you at a disadvantage. The fact Grealish was caught on a heavy bender mid-season (a few days before a match) to the point he wasn’t even allowed into a venue, and was then dropped for a game … in his late 20s … doesn’t point to an elite level of professionalism. I’m not saying at all that his career is just going to nosedive, but I think he is going to find it increasingly difficult when he turns 30, and will either have to make some lifestyle changes or lower his ambitions. More of a Rooney decline than a Gazza decline, if that makes sense.
  6. Those deals will also dry up if he stops getting minutes for City and England.
  7. Maybe not, but it’s pretty obvious he drinks more than your average top flight pro.
  8. I know through an ex Villa player that he likes a very regular drink throughout the season, and parties fairly hard in the off season. Not saying he’s the wild man sometimes portrayed. I don’t think the Gazza, Merson, etc comparisons are at all appropriate. But to retire in your late 30s, you usually need to take extreme care of your diet and nutrition, and he definitely isn’t living like that. That’s part of the charm, though, and he’ll still be a decent player into his early 30s I’d imagine, unless he picks up a bad injury. A few on here engaging in spiteful wishful thinking.
  9. And you can view this as “punishing the press”. ie when we have Konsa and Pau in the side, high pressing us is a huge risk, because that’s what they want the oppo to do. It just creates more space for us to progress the ball. But with our current lineup, the oppo get much more return on that high press, with a lot less risk. Suddenly the dynamic of our games against the better sides is we look panicky and under pressure for 90 mins. That wasn’t happening before, even though the tactics were largely the same. It’s a personnel issue in my view. Although maybe Emery could experiment with playing tighter and deeper for a few games while we wait for key players to return. As the Shef Utd game showed, against weaker oppo, the tactics still work well. I think it’s more in these Man Utd / Newcastle / Chelsea type games where the personnel change has turned winnable games into big challenges.
  10. Pau isn't just a progressive passer, he's incredibly press resistant. He's the CB most comfortable with being pressed, turning out of trouble, and then springing an attack. It's no coincidence IMO that losing him has made teams more confident pressing us. I feel like you're equating press resistance with being defensively solid and hard working. For me it's the ability to keep the ball under pressure without panicking, and play good progressive passes. That's what scares teams into *not* pressing. When you lose that passing quality at the back, the risk/reward of swarming the defence changes completely. Earlier in the season / last season, teams that tried to press us were getting punished, because Unai was really the master of humiliating the press. I think he's lost some of the players (Torres, Buendia, and now Konsa) who really helped him achieve that, and the central midfielders, who are also instrumental in this tactic, all look knackered atm. One mistake I do think Unai makes at times is not rotating key players off early when a game is clearly dead (in either direction). That may be something he needs to consider. We're all haunted by the MON season where we just ran out of gas. I don't think Unai is that type of manager, but he may be overworking certain players atm.
  11. We were comfortably beating those kinds of teams not that long ago, and the main concern we had was that Unai's Villa couldn't break down a low block. Now it's that Unai's Villa can't deal with an aggressive press. Losing 4 first-choice defenders to injury + not having squad depth to keep Kamara/Luiz/McGinn fresh may be a bigger issue than Unai's tactics?
  12. I don't think regression to the mean is really the appropriate concept here. Unlike most teams who claw their way into Champions League / Europa League places in a single season, we have the budget to cement whatever level we reach. Yes, FFP is a major barrier to that, and yes, if Man Utd get their act together, that will make it significantly harder for challengers to stay there. But I think there's this slightly false idea that Unai is working devil magic to get these players performing at this level. Whereas the reality is that we're making big signings most seasons who significantly improve squad quality. In the last 4 seasons we've signed Watkins, Cash, Martinez, Buendia, Bailey, Digne, Kamara, Moreno, Duran, Tielemans, Torres, Diaby. Ok you might quibble on Cash and Duran, but in the main these are serious first team signings that have improved squad quality. We'll make more signings like that this summer. I think this club is on an upward trajectory, and this isn't a statistical blip. We're in 4th place with a massive injury crisis. If anything the regression to the mean is our best players coming back from injury, and us actually performing *better* than we are at the moment.
  13. Mings, Konsa, Kamara, possibly Digne You’re right, but arguably this is a squad depth issue rather than a transfer policy issue.
  14. Ferguson mostly criticised his players behind closed doors. He rarely called them out in media interviews. Post match interviews mean f all really. The players know they’ve stunk the place out, I don’t see any signs of comfort or complacency - just bad, tired performances. What does Unai gain from saying that?
  15. 4 matches in 13 days, and McGinn / Luiz / Kamara have started all of them, and either played full 90 or been subbed late in 2nd half. I don't think our rivals are doing that with their entire central midfield? You'd want to be rotating players in, but we simply don't have the depth. Tiredness is a natural consequence of that, professional footballers aren't superhuman. And I don't think any of this is on Unai really. Maybe he could have hauled a couple of players off earlier against Shef Utd. But mostly his selections make sense, given who's available.
  16. Well-run clubs don't sign many players in January. It's always been a seller's market. Just looking through Man City's transfer history over the last few seasons. The only first team players they've signed in a January window were Laporte (2018) and Alvarez (2022). They do almost all their business in the summer. FFP makes it even harder for us. If we overpay for players in January, we just end up with less budget to spend in the summer transfer window when there are more quality players at better prices available. And it's not even clear to me how much authority Unai has to demand signings.
  17. He’s dealing with an enormous injury crisis, and a lack of depth in key positions which means some players are starting to look tired. I think it’s as simple as that tbh. The teams around us have deeper squads. He has tried to rotate and sign depth, but it’s a work in progress. The knock on effect is that we’ve become more predictable, too. But again, not really Unai’s fault.
  18. He looks off the pace and frustrated - possibly done in by the injury.
  19. Despite all the worries about the defence (who weren’t good), it was our midfield that really stank the place out. Looked tired, not up for it, slow to the second balls, and too many missed passes. Very odd performance, not much fun at all. I thought the forwards (Bailey, Tielemans, Watkins… Diaby when he came on) actually played ok, unlucky at times not to get something. Didn’t think it was a foul for their FK, but great strike nonetheless.
  20. We've won games against decent sides with far shakier defences in the past, and we still have the best keeper in the world behind them, plus an amazing defensive mid partnership in front of them. Think we need to trust in Unai's ability to get them firing.
  21. Cash - Carlos - Lenglet - Moreno is a decent enough defence. Konsa will be missed, but talk of disaster / catastrophe etc is hysterical.
  22. I’m optimistic. I’d be more worried with a midfielder or striker, but I don’t think he particularly relies on a turn of pace (which is the main thing injuries tend to ruin) and he obviously looks after himself well. Plus he doesn’t have a lot of miles in those legs for a 31 year old. And he’s come back from bad injuries in the past. The good thing is we have enough quality at CB to not rush him back or overwork him.
  23. I think Emery is pretty limited in options at the moment, and tactically that makes him more predictable. If you’re an opposition coaching team doing your homework on Villa, it’s pretty obvious who’s going to be starting atm, and what the plan is going to be. That would be different with another starting striker or winger, with Buendia available to cause mayhem in midfield, with Pau available to spring attacks from deep, and so on. For that reason, I’m not sure much of the criticism is justified even though I completely agree we’ve dropped off badly in recent games.
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