WooJung

You'll never get the best out of mcGinn if you play him as a 6 and that has been of Delano's primary limitations, he tried to accommodate as many of his best players even if it meant not being able to get the best out of them.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I really can only see us going with a midfield of a 6 and 2 8s, which would mean two of Ings, Watkins, Traore, Buendia and Bailey would be sacrificed. If we go for two 6s I can really only see Luiz and Nakamba there, but would McGinn work as a 10 in the prem?

On 13/11/2021 at 16:45, alreadyexists said:

I’d forgotten that Hause was done in the summer, I can’t see him getting a new contract so I imagine he’ll go to a Championship club as he probably isn’t quite PL quality to be fair.

 

Nahhh, if Burnley stay up they'll snatch him up, he'd fit their system perfectly. If they go down then I can easily see some newly promoted side go for him and it'll probably be great business for them.

To be honest I think he's one of the very few to come out of the game with any credit in the bank. Won the ball back several times and wasn't anywhere near as sloppy with it as he can be.

It says a lot when nakamba is one of your best players though...

3 hours ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

In my lifetime I've seen one French player who has been decent and that was Jordan Amavi.

The rest of them have been average or absolute shit.

David Ginola, Mathieu Berson, Jordan Veretout, Jordan Ayew, Charles N'Zogbia, Freddie Guilbert, Morgan Sanson, Robert Pires, Ally Cissoko, Didier Agathe.

Ayew isn't french but feel free to replace him with Rudy Gestede on your list

Overall good performance, he should've done better with his finishing though...

I feel he wouldn't score very highly on an IQ test

We got progressively worse with every substitution we made, if that's even possible.

If all he does is give away stupid fouls he might as well keep playing with the kids.

I know it was a difficult game to come on but that doesn't excuse stupidity, especially when that's your only contribution and you do it repeatedly.

25 minutes ago, Tom13 said:

 

The wonder Hause!

This is where I expect our opposition, whoever they may be, to come out in the second half much stronger and all our good work goes straight in the bin. 

We're our own worst enemies.

Looked like he can fight for a spot in the starting 11, which was very promising and still lots of room for improvement if you consider how little he's played in England.

We just need him to stay fit 

If Ross Barkley wins the ball off you you're obviously doing something wrong.

Jokes aside, looked bright

6 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

One thing I will say is, I genuinely don’t know why Nakamba is taking a penalty. 

I'd sooner have steer take it

What a performance

From the coin toss I had a feeling he'd miss, you could see how nervy he was which I wouldn't expect from a player of his pedigree

1 minute ago, thunderball said:

Decent account of ourselves. On paper they are stronger, they have home advantage, but we settled and now look the better team. Now watch us lose.

Not much of a home advantage when it's Chelsea, I could only hear the Villa fans singing all first half

I wish we started Watkins and had a stronger bench as if things go wrong I can't see improving the side in any way to turn it around, but overall I'm quite happy with the starting lineup

1 hour ago, Nigel said:

Chelsea have got a 2nd team good enough to compete in the league;  It will be a 2nd string, but not your average 2nd string!

We could give this team a good game but not without our big hitters.

I suppose we will see where our priorities are!

While that may very well be true, I'm not expecting their second team to be particularly gelled, which is a potential weakness we can exploit. We'll see what team we are going to field, it's good that we have enough options which allow us to field a strong side while at the same time resting many players you'd expect to start against United .

He has improved massively on last season, where he showed glimpses but overall didn't seem ready to be a regular starter in the prem. Well, he is now, and still lots of room for improvement. Feels like a new signing really.

You can tell he desperately wants his first goal and his decision making suffers from it at times, but that won't be a long term problem. 

I'd rather we played Young as an 8 and kept Luiz as a 6, I think that would have allowed us better ball retention,as well as set piece threat.

9 hours ago, KentVillan said:

I like Guilbert, but I think his reputation tends to improve every time Cash has a spell of bad form. It’s grass is greener syndrome.

When he was starting regularly for us I remember him looking weak on set pieces, drifting out of position, and diving in too often. His other defenders seemed to get frustrated with him, which suggests maybe he wasn’t listening to calls from the CBs.

Still a pretty decent player, but can see why maybe Smith feels he isn’t good enough to start, and doesn’t have the right personality to be a squad player. Realistically, part of what we love about Fred is how much he hates warming the bench.

I'm not sure that's the case, for the most part people who favour Fred realise he's not good enough to be our starting 11 but is adequate cover for Cash, has a similar playing style to Cash, and if we were to sell him we probably wouldn't get enough money to buy a suitable replacement.

Unless Dean thinks we already have a replacement in Young, Konsa or Tuanzebe, which seems to be the case.

That's where I stand on it anyway.

Trez gets a lot of praise for keeping us up in our first season back with his goals against palace and Arsenal.

While this is absolutely fine and I take nothing away from him, I believe Conor deserves as much praise for his goals keeping us up as well, as he scored the winner against Norwich on boxing day, and scored one and assisted one against Newcastle. That's also 6 points to which he played a vital contribution, but as it wasn't towards the back end of the season it gets hardly any notice.

Thanks for everything Conor, all the best for the future!

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

I think it'd be a real shame if he can't get a move in the next few days he's clearly so far down the pecking order he won't get a look in (and I don't object to that with some of the players in the side), but I guess it might just come down to wages? He did very well at Swansea last season so there must be interested clubs.

Worst case scenario, a championship club will take him on loan, I'm sure plenty of clubs would love to have him