jackbauer24

This is all.

Whilst they certainly would strengthen us, I still don't think it's enough or even the priority. We have a very soft core and with a midfield three of Ramsey, McGinn and Luiz we are going to struggle against a lot of teams as we lose the middle of the park both offensively and defensively. Coutinho Watkins Buendia strengthens our attack. Cash Konsa Mings Digne marginally strengthens our defence (possibly more strengthens attack). But no changes to our midfield mean there is no engine in our flashy sports car. You'd think Gerrard of all people would identify this quickly and have a solution. Let's hope Purslow and Co are on it.

I love Cash but he has zero competition for his position. Bring back Guilbert and let's give him a proper go at fighting for the position. Improves both players. We don't need to spend money in this area particularly, there are several other priorities.

You can't afford to go slow anymore. Building with a young team is lovely and all in fantasy land but realistically you need four or five top quality youth players in the first team for that to work. Have a handful that pull us up to 10th, 9th, 8th etc and the good players in the squad get impatient and go looking for that top 4/6 challenge. Then the promising players and outstanding individuals get picked off by bigger teams anyway and the club stagnate, financially sound but not really moving forward, always building for the future. Or you go full force. You get to the top by outspending, within FFP, all those around you and gambling it works. If it doesn't, you quit or go again and again until it does. If and when it does, then you have different problems. You get decimated by big teams who come and take all your big stars (a little like Leicester) and you rebuild wisely or you invest badly and plummet back to midtable. Or you keep spending and spending to become that big club. Then, and only then, can you start signing young cheap players for the future because you can send them out on loan and cherry pick the ones who make the cut. Man City have a few decent homegrown players because they have a thousand youngsters on loan while their multimillion pound players bring them success. If there has been a change in the transfer strategy I hope its because, rightly or wrong, they've realised you can't always build for the future. We need the success first which is slightly ridiculous scenario but it's how football works now. Brentford are admirable but unsuccessful. Man City etc are vultures but successful. You have to choose what you want Villa to be and that's modern football in my opinion.

I am one of Davis' biggest critics, the idea that he can ever be a Premier League footballer is laughable to me. However, I watched today and he didnt have a bad game or anything, yes he was a nuisance and he even held the ball up reasonably well. You can't say he was embarrassing or anything... BUT, I'm afraid my view hasn't changed. He doesn't offer anything other than being physical. He doesn't put himself in the right positions, he doesnt play the right balls, he makes the wrong runs. I really doubt he'll score many goals at Championship level. He won't get many assists, he's hot-headed and he's injury prone. Today, he was largely ineffective but didn't hinder Forest as his role was as outlet. Put him in a game where they are being a lot more attacking and his deficiencies become even more apparent. Being a nuisance, and holding the ball up does not make a footballer. He's miles off that and even today's game demonstrated it's the absolute basics that he struggles with. I get the feeling he's relied so long on his physicality that he has no clue what to do against players with any positional sense and he then just has to go looking for the ball in dead areas and playing short passes to midfielders. And we all know his finishing skills are awful. So what level is he? As a striker, League One. Maybe not even that. OR, is it worth reviewing his position? Big, physical with a bit of pace when needed, that's old school CB. Again, not Premier League in a million years but maybe Championship. I could see him being similar to Hause who is also that level. As a striker... The game has moved on in the last twenty years since the big physical striker was effective - you need so so much more than that.

Researched... ahh, OK. I'll edit... Elsa is hottest drawn character that was drawn for children and not for adults....

The Hotel Inspector - Alex Polizzi. Might be a power thing... Elsa is the hottest drawn character too... although honourable mention to Elastigirl and Jasmine from Aladdin.

My view is that these days any big signings for Villa are fairly quick. You get some drawn out transfers but they are generally lower league/ less in demand players. Larger names all feels a bit press and agent manipulated when it drags on and Villa aren't (currently?) of the size we normally benefit from that. I get the feeling this will join those ranks and he'll be pulling on a different shirt by the end of the transfer window.

Luiz falls firmly in to that category of players who is good enough, normally, for where we are, shows glimpses of promise for greater things occasionally but often has games where he's painfully poor. He is massively inconsistent. So if he is sold then I won't care and I'll wish him well but I suspect his career will be fairly mundane. If he stays I won't be disappointed and will hope he gets a lot more consistently good. But I doubt he'll ever be a Champions League starter.

Targett - loads of effort, no talent at all. Traore - loads of talent, no effort at all. Trez - I really think bans should come inforthat type of simulation. Disgraceful and stupid in the world of VAR. Hause - Great in the air, shit on the ground/positioning If we have any desires to improve or creep in to Europe, those players shouldn't be anywhere near our team. That's not to say others were good. Luiz was particularly poor, Ings offers little other than pot shots. But, ultimately, we are a weak side. Physically and mentally we can not cope with pressure. So 2022 starts well...

Having an opinion is part of being a grown up. Strange. But anyway, where do I base my post purely on the last half of the current football match? My opinion, based on his career here, is that he offers us less than El Ghazi and Trez despite having marginally better ball juggling skills. I apologise for having a different opinion than you but an adult accepts there are different views. And currently I don't think there'd be many takers for him at all.

Personally I think he needs selling while we can still get pennies for him. He is sublime for 1% of the time but is a liability for the other 99%. It just hasn't worked. He just doesn't work hard enough, his decision making is atrocious and he's still only about 1% as good as he thinks he is. El Ghazi and Trez may not be as good when they're all at their best but they will offer way more for the other parts of the game and actually try to work rather than sulk. We are not blessed with enough quality and depth to cater for Traore. He needs to go.

I am so incredibly bored of reading about CASES. Sensationalist crap about tens of thousands of cases and exponential increases etc etc. Who f'in cares?! Hospitalisations barely moving (especially considering cold snap) and deaths remain stable. Still, deep in to this pandemic, no data on whether deaths are with or because of covid (or even contributing factor). Yet this is conspicuous by it's absence in news reports now as it's not as headline grabbing. This really feels like it's forever now, and people have just accepted it through the belief it somehow makes them self-righteous. I've got my jabs, I've taken the precautions I'm supposed to, data shows nothing is actually happening and yet football is cancelled within hours of kick and talk of strict lockdowns. Fed up.

Quite clearly Photoshopped!

Statistically this must be up there for a ridiculous anomaly. 5 times in 20 years in a pot of 61 other teams. Surely the odds are astronomical of that happening?! We get them 25% of the time...

There will ALWAYS be new variants. So there will ALWAYS be a period of uncertainty over how significant they are. So is this what it will be like ALWAYS now? Still, no one has explained where the exit is. I don't care about masks. I do care about expectations to be jabbed (I am double but where does it end?), never being confident events/holidays can go ahead in case there's a change in regulations and the over bearing influence and excuse for corruption by politicians. If this really is it forever... I can hand on heart say I don't want to carry on. It's depressing for everyone but I struggle in good times, this feeling is beginning to feel inescapable.

Don't normally post in here but last two films I've watched at the cinema are polar opposites of each other in terms of my extreme reaction to them. Bond. Sorry, 'Craig' as it might as well be called. Self-indulgent destruction of a legacy. That isn't Bond at all. Left cinema absolute fuming at the film, the actor and the disregard for the past and future of the character and the franchise. Was angry for days. Ghostbusters; Afterlife. After Bond I was nervous but WOW. A love letter to the first film and just done so so well. Didn't overdo the kid angle, great nods to the past, excellent story and sentimental to just the right level. I really fail to see how it could have been better. I left buzzing and still am! In summary; Bond Bad, Ghostbuster Good!!

I can't defend a single outfield player, but I'm not sure where this belief Ings is better than Watkins has come from, both in this game and this season. Both are awful, clearly not enjoying the system and putting in relatively minimal effort. However, I think Watkins is doing far more running, getting far more involved or at least trying and has missed no more than Ings opportunity wise. Today he was awful again, few runs in the second half, few passes or hassles and not much else. Did anyone see Ings do anything?! Invisible. Don't mix up talent from last years star struggling in a new system with a new signing that's done nothing bar an overhead kick this season. I think we should go one up front again, but that man should be Watkins.

Going on shout formation is one thing, but that also doesn't excuse the lack of effort, quality or temperament. Awful to man, again Martinez aside. Mings and Targett are particularly horrific, one thinks he's gods gift to CBs but slashes at every ball, the other can't read the game, can't cross beyond the first defender and doesn't like any pressure. Then you've got midfielders on completely different wavelengths and two strikers who can't be bothered because of the formation or whatever. Horrific from minute 1 to minute 50 or whatever it ended up being.

Is anyone really surprised by that performance, never mind result? What separates good teams from average teams is consistency. And we are arguably the least consistent team in the league, being Champions League one week and barely Championship the next. It is a complete lottery as to our performance levels. So many bad performances from a host of players today; Luiz was World Class last week, this week he'd have been hauled off in League One clash.

If, by the clubs own admission, Bailey, Buendia and Ings were brought in to replace Grealish's output, then we have not actually made any progress from last year if we don't buy further players. Today was abject, but even that aside it is clear we are weak in a few areas - especially midfield. We are very weak as a team, the centre backs lose a lot of battles and the midfield can't hold the ball up at all. We do get pushed aside by teams like Watford because they are physical and press - exactly the same as last year. If we're not going to invest in the squad further, then I'm not sure there is a real desire to improve rather than just stand still/consolidate our position.

I share the rolled eyes that a number of people who see this thread appear every few months! Badge is fine, it's copyrighted, it's suitable for digital age, it looks fine monochrome occasionally. The whole circle thing annoys me as we've had a shield as a badge for about 90% of our history. Think we had 'prepared' on our badge longer than we ever had a circular badge. Rather just leave it alone than spend quarter of a million pounds or whatever the ridiculous amounts these firms charge for giving us a nominally changed badge.

And that crypto company get slaughtered on Trust pilot where it's listed as a scam! Just wondered who they were... won't be using it!! Lots of sponsorship companies for shirts to shoelaces is great, but the big money comes from over-inflating other incomes. All a FFP illusion.

I've suspected that might be the case before. If Jack wasn't 'one of us' it would be a legitimate question in my view. I think Grealish is an exceptional ENGLISH talent which gets him noticed... but Buendia looked just as skillful, more hard working and more tenacious (not grumpy!) in a much poorer Norwich team. I think come the end of the season people might genuinely wonder which one is better. Only issue is we're back to ONE player of that level, would have been amazing to see a couple in the midfield.

My issue with Dean Smith is I've never seen him adequately deal with Plan A not working. And basically Plan A was get the ball to HWSNBN. This season is basically one big Plan B. So it's sink or swim time. Could Terry be back by Christmas?!