Delphouneso

I can only assume if we're appointing Ayestaran our next step will be to activate Ganso's release clause then pick up Keisuke Honda on a free in January.

2 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

without sounding like a total dork, as i dont bet at all ever, how certain(ish) is 4/9 odds?

Amorim was 10/11 odds or something 2 days ago?

 

You can't really attribute probability to odds in a market like this, there's such low liquidity it doesn't take much to turn the odds upside down. As an example tonight's West Ham game has around £200k matched on the Betfair exchange, compared to this market having about £3k matched in total. Markets like this can be heavily influenced by insider knowledge as well, in a way football results can't really.

What is interesting is that he dropped from almost double figures in some places yesterday to as low as 3s this morning without much in the way of news, everything since then - and his current price - has just been a reaction to that (and Twitter guff).

Emery's odds coming in fast, is it just VTers betting on it?

Amorim doesn't really play with wingers, but that doesn't mean he doesn't play with width. 

One thing that I keep seeing being mentioned in relation to Amorim is his infectious personality, charisma, and approachability, and watching Sporting last night it was interesting to see his players run straight over to him after they scored. What was evident today - as well as during most of Deano's reign - is that we've got a bunch of players that would probably be described as the type who 'need an arm round the shoulder', players that respond to encouragement and need to feel loved, rather than the more disciplinarian approach we're led to believe Gerrard had. Amorim might be just what we need to bring back the feel good factor at Bodymoor. Or he might not be. Who knows.

scenes when the players reveal Deano gave the team talk via Skype.

I actually thought he might fluke a decent performance or a win tonight and manage to keep himself in a job for another week, but **** me this is awful. 

Won't profess to be an expert on either but Poch quite often played a 3-4-2-1 with Spurs which I think would really suit our current squad, Emery's favoured 4-4-2 doesn't exactly fit with what we have and we could do without another squad overhaul.

One thing that does worry me is a lot of our current problems seem to stem from abandoning our plan, our idealogy, transfer policy etc and handing the keys to the kingdom to Steven Gerrard. @OutByEaster? recently made the point that our next head coach should be a part of an ongoing plan, top cog in a well-oiled cog machine, rather than having free reign over all things AVFC. 'Moving heaven and earth' for Poch doesn't sound like we're about to tell him to stick to our plan. But then it's Poch, so.. you'd be mad not to right?

8 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

One of the greatest unsolved football mysteries will be how we were playing like this, and what happened to Gerrard-ball. We haven't seen this for nigh-on 10 months. 

 

Might have something to do with the no.10 in that video spending most of those 10 months on the bench.

edit: nvm, you're right.

4 minutes ago, May-Z said:

So at Swindon and MK Dons he trained well but suddenly he's Billy big and decided to not try?

Nah. Excuses from the manager. 

So you're saying we need to deal with their manager?
 

6 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Sorry, but you seemed to be missing our captain and talisman, John McGinn.

This is OT but I think Ginny is suffering from Mason Mount sydrome at the moment. He's a good player, but he should've been dropped a while ago and the consequence of him not being dropped is fans reactions becoming unnecessarily toxic. Southgate did the same with Mount, both managers probably think they're protecting the player but the reality is you end up just hanging them out to dry.

I think this is probably the shape that allows us the most round pegs in round holes with our current squad. Wouldn't mind seeing us try it post-Stevie.

44 minutes ago, TRO said:

I would tend to believe, when he is statisfied, the defensive side of our game, has gained sufficient confidence to defend, stoutly,  then he will branch out, and play a more expansive version....which is precisely, what he wants to do, and has said so.

We had 15 clean sheets in the 20/21 season. Targett started every game, Konsa and Mings started 35 and 36 respectively, and Elmo even started 8. Third most clean sheets in the league.

Gerrard has added Digne to that back four and Kamara in front of it and has achieved 7 clean sheets in 35 games. How long are we giving him just to sort the defence out?

5 minutes ago, TRO said:

So how do you account for the past, which is reality?

Again, that's not the point he was making.

The stats suggested Brighton were creating lots of chances but poor finishing meant they weren't converting those chances in to goals, hinting that if they improved their finishing the goals would come. I'm assuming @Pinebro's original point was that we're not creating many decent chances (we're 19th in the league for xG) hinting that no matter how good our finishing is we're still going to struggle for goals.

2 minutes ago, TRO said:

Lets take a look at Reality, as opposed to prediction.

You're completely ignoring the point he was making though, the prediction has become reality.

1 minute ago, sne said:

Said it before, our style is like if someone skimmed the Liverpool under Klopp wiki page but thought it was too much text and settled for: Liverpool play with attacking full backs 

It's the Gareth Southgate approach to coaching. 'I've seen so and so coach do this so I'll try and imitate it without really knowing how or why it works'. Though I think with Gerrard it's even more basic than that because he himself has said he just has the vision and it's his coaches that are tasked with implementing it.

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

Yep, as a general rule if your xG is higher than your xGA for the season, you're doing alright. We're on -3.5 for the season which isn't great.

We're also 19th for total xG, which would support the idea that aside from anything else the football is **** dull.

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

Was Purslow only seen as really shrewd because for the previous decade we were so horribly run?

There's definitely an element of this, and it was certainly nice to see our CEO on tele defending the club and sticking it to the 'big 6' too but I think he's undoubtedly done some good, though it's always hard to decipher exactly what a football CEO is and isn't directly responsible for.

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

I think since Grealish left he has been dreadful, his ego was damaged and trying to make up for it. Is absolutely no way Ings was a Smith signing and was a complete panic buy maybe Bailey too but at least is a wide player

Agree with that. The club seemed to get a lot of praise for keeping that deal quiet yet it always seemed obvious the reason for no one knowing anything about it was because it was a last minute panic buy to appease fans after Jack left. I still believe Buendia was signed to play alongside Jack rather than being a replacement too, but that's pure conjecture on my part.

I'd rather Bertie's inconsistent madness than Bailey and Coutinho's consistent non-performances.

Crazy that this was ever signed off on, guy's only 27 proven to be effective at PL level and we'll be lucky to get a fee for him now because Stevie didn't fancy him. Not to mention it left us with one (injury prone) wide player in the squad. It's up there with Bruce loaning out Elphick.

1 minute ago, Bazmonkey said:

If luiz can play as an 8...id like to see this

        Kamara     dendoncker

Buendia        luiz      coutinho 

                     Ings

Probably not the thread for it but there's zero pace in that team. At least one of Ollie or Bailey should be starting every game.

what the **** Dougie.