John McGinn

[sir_gary_cahill]

6 minutes ago, Farlz said:

He was really poor again for me. Him and Jack not delivering on the heights of last season so far and it's effecting us. 

Agreed, they toyed with The Championship, give them time and they’ll come good, they just need time to adjust, it’s a big step up

[Zatman]

Currently he is our best chance of a goal

[VillaChris]

I think he's been comfortably our best player this season if you discount the CBs.

He's the most likely to get a shot on target, his passing is intelligent and love the way he puts in his backside Barry style for 50/50s. He usually wins the ball or a free kick.

For a box to box midfielder I'm not really sure what more should be expected. More needs to come from Jack in the final third tbh.

[ozvillafan]

For mine, there is a fundamental difference between McGinn and Grealish:

McGinn is more likely to create something for himself, while Grealish is more likely to create something for others.

For that reason I'd consider a midfield of Grealish, Nakamba and Luiz against Arsenal to give us better screening and free up Jack in a more attacking role.

McGinn from the bench later on.

 

 

[VillaChris]

Just play a diamond. Have Luiz holding, Marvellous and McGinn ahead and then Jack in number 10 role.

Very hard to justify picking three out and out attacking players for Arsenal when they're not producing much atm.

[KentVillan]

The good thing about McGinn is that when he has a bad game on the ball (as he did tonight), he is still always very good off the ball. Great tracking back towards the end of the game to deal with what could have been a dangerous break.

[bannedfromHandV]

Is anyone else thinking he looks a lot slower than last season?

20 minutes into matches he looks like he did last season 20 minutes from the end of a match. I don’t know if he’s been bulking up in the gym or something perhaps. He’s not half as effective at winning/keeping the ball right now, hoping it’s just him adjusting but he adjusted last season much more quickly.

[Dr_Pangloss]

10 hours ago, Zatman said:

Currently he is our best chance of a goal

Which is very concerning.

[Dr_Pangloss]

24 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Is anyone else thinking he looks a lot slower than last season?

20 minutes into matches he looks like he did last season 20 minutes from the end of a match. I don’t know if he’s been bulking up in the gym or something perhaps. He’s not half as effective at winning/keeping the ball right now, hoping it’s just him adjusting but he adjusted last season much more quickly.

I think it's a combination of being up against much fitter and stronger athletes but also his thinking speed has been exposed a little. Wanting too much time on the ball and not getting into good spaces often enough. I think he's still doing pretty well but it's clear he needs sometime to adapt to this level. Of course, this might be as good as he gets at this level, we just don't know, time will tell. 

[Mcginn-hibs]

He’s always adapted, same in the SPL. Took a little time but he always figured it out

 

[MotoMkali]

I hope in the next match mcginn plays much deeper. He has essentially been playing as a 2nd striker most of the time this season which leaves Jack, jota and El Ghazi very isolated when they are out wide. On top of that it makes it harder for us to pass out of defense as one of our best options has gone AWOL. If he plays deeper it will let Jack roam more and will open up more space in Midfield as he will have to be marked by another midfielder rather than a centre half.

He has been very good defensively but going forward aside from the occasional long shot he really hasn't offered much except for his goal against spurs. If he was firth back he could pikc the ball up when we are countering and drive at players but right now he is not as effective as he should be.

People have been complaing that Jack isn't playing well and questioning whether we can play both Jack and John in the PL. I think if either one of them should be dropped it would have to be mcginn (I don't think that should happen yet). I also wonder whether hourihane would make us more effective with out set pieces as right now they are all crap. 

[MikeMcKenna]

Interview in today’s Sunday Times with SJM

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/john-mcginn-interview-5s97vcngd (pay wall)

 

John McGinn: ‘I feel I offer something different to other players’

September 22 2019, 12:01am,

Premier League | John McGinn Interview

Hard-working midfielder had to wait for a shot at the big time but will fancy his chances of hustling Arsenal today

Forward thinking: John McGinn is enjoying playing a more advanced role for Aston Villa this seasonADRIAN SHERRATT

The thing about Clydebank, says John McGinn, is it sits between Loch Lomond and Glasgow, and that means you can go one of two ways.

You go “posh,” he grins, if you travel west to the loch and the mountains and pretty villages there. Or you go real if you head east into Glasgow. In life, McGinn always goes real. No Louis Vuitton wash bag for him, but one he picked up in a Glasgow store. And his car? He used a Football League scheme for players to purchase his, a Mercedes 4x4 with a towbar. Aston Villa’s squad thinks it is hilarious. They call him Eddie Stobart but, McGinn shrugs, “I’d never drive anything my mum wouldn’t get in to.”

Mum Mary and Stephen, his dad, are teachers and the biggest influences upon a 24-year-old who reeks of hard work and humble values, but the rest of the McGinn clan have shaped him too. It’s a big one. He has “50 or 60 cousins”, all of whom would knock him back down to earth were he ever to say or do anything flash.

His grandad, Jack, was chairman of Celtic and president of the Scottish Football Association and is a patriarch from whom he gets solid guidance. Then there are Stephen and Paul, his professional footballer brothers, and twin sister Katie who “would slap me silly if I ever got carried away,” says a midfielder who interested Manchester United in the summer and is deemed “super” by Jurgen Klopp.

After an article where he was rated at £50m, he was asked how much he would pay for himself and “£5” was his reply. He has not forgotten the periods in his life where being here — a flourishing Premier League newcomer and Villa fans’ and players’ player of the year — was very far away. An early hurdle arose when his school, St Peter the Apostle High, had no teacher to take the football team. Mary, who taught there and coached ladies’ netball, stepped in: “It was murder!”

When an SFA rule forbade youngsters playing schools football and for a professional club youth team, and John was at St Mirren’s academy, Mary intervened again. “She gave St Mirren an ultimatum — he either plays for his school and nobody or his school and you. We won the Scottish Schools Cup that year.”

Clydebank itself “presents its own challenges,” he reflects. “There was loads of football played. It’s all you really know from there. It was a brilliant place but the temptations of drink are common.

Deep thinker: McGinn possesses a social conscienceNEVILLE WILLIAMS

“At 15, 16, I’d be street-walking with pals. We’d go up the hill and I’d have my Capri Sun — they’d have Mad Dog [nickname for a fortified wine popular in the west of Scotland]. I was always driven to be a player and had training three or four nights a week, nothing was going to stop me. I had good people round me — even if they were on the Mad Dog,” he laughs.

He has a social conscience and still supports initiatives in Edinburgh, where he played for Hibs, while being an enthusiastic participant in Villa’s community work, and Scotland’s problematic relationship with alcohol troubles him. “Don’t get me wrong, I like a beer from time to time,” he says, “but [at 15] that was a point where it’s easy to get sucked in. Everyone says, ‘Oh, if I hadnae turned to drink...’ It’s so easy in places like Clydebank. And there are a lot worse places in the Glasgow area where it’s even easier to get dragged in.” He hopes Scottish initiatives to tackle the problem work.

St Mirren was a testing but valuable breeding ground. McGinn captained the Under-19s and was charged by fellow players with asking youth head David Longwell to relent. “Everything was old school. We picked litter and cleaned the changing room,” McGinn recalls. “Two or three gym sessions a day. I’d have to ask [Longwell] can the boys go home and he’d say ‘go and do another session’.

“Looking back he was doing it for our benefit, making stuff up to keep us there after 5pm, and keep us out of trouble.” His progress took off when a coach, Tommy Craig, converted him to a midfielder. He helped St Mirren win the League Cup and was player of the year. The next campaign (2014-15) is the one he always reaches back to for perspective.

St Mirren changed managers, overhauled their squad, and he decided against extending his contract. He felt the pressure of being the young talisman, and the team struggled — ultimately going down. His future was uncertain, no top-flight Scottish club willing to pay the £250,000 compensation required.

Then, weeks before becoming a free agent, McGinn suffered serious injury in a training prank — St Mirren captain Steven Thompson speared him with a sharpened pole. It plunged into McGinn’s thigh. “It was a millimetre from the femoral artery. Mentally I struggled. It was a complete accident and there were no hard feelings but the fact I was so close to dying... the surgeon showed me the path of [the pole] and it was 7.7cm deep, somehow avoiding the artery. [Had it not] I’d have bled out in minutes, he said.”

That incident felt “like the icing on the cake. Getting relegated was hard early in my career and I thought the world was against me. Nobody — I mean nobody — would pay the compensation fee for me. And it got to the stage, even St Mirren supporters would agree, I was rubbish.”

He felt even sorrier for himself when red tape thwarted a move to Houston Dynamo in the MLS, then a transfer to Dundee United collapsed — United preferring to sign a Dutch nonentity, Rodney Sneijder, instead. His last option was Hibs, in the Scottish Championship, but moving there proved transformative — and look at him now, Villa’s best player this season, scorer of last year’s Championship Goal of the Season and the “£170m goal” that earned Villa promotion via the playoff final at Wembley.

Dean Smith, Villa’s manager, has unlocked creative and penetrative aspects of his game — moving him upfield to play as an attacking No 8 alongside Jack Grealish. “I feel I offer something different to other players,” he says. “I can hustle and bustle. [In Scotland] what frustrated me, and my dad and grandad, was the impression I was just a rat, a runner. Coming here I’ve proved I can play.”

Villa have big ambitions (“everywhere you look there’s building work”) but know their priority — survival. At games are a regular stream of McGinn guests — his parents, his pals and Mikey, a young leukaemia sufferer he befriended visiting Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital and who FaceTimes him daily.

Grealish is a close buddy. “We’re similar age and like similar things,” McGinn says. He considers Grealish’s pin-up boy status and is modest to the last. “We’re different looks-wise but I suppose we’re probably a 12 out of 20 together…”

[KenjiOgiwara]

Surprised people are disappointed so far. Every single match I've thought he looks like the only midfielder we got who genuinly looks PL quality. 

He has the intensity, fight and directness we lack in pretty much every other player. Hope he plays in a Villa shirt until he is 80 years old. 

[zab6359]

12 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Surprised people are disappointed so far. Every single match I've thought he looks like the only midfielder we got who genuinly looks PL quality. 

He has the intensity, fight and directness we lack in pretty much every other player. Hope he plays in a Villa shirt until he is 80 years old. 

Absolutely agree...............SJM & Mingels are the first names on the team sheet for me right now.

[cheltenham_villa]

Cant understand any thoughts around him not playing. One of our few top class premier league players. Has to play.

[Dr_Pangloss]

1 hour ago, cheltenham_villa said:

Cant understand any thoughts around him not playing. One of our few top class premier league players. Has to play.

Certainly not a 'top class premier league player' but certainly one of our best players.

[rodders0223]

If he cannot get on the ball, and start to string a few passes together then it really doesn't matter about the odd goal or how much he works off it.

He is not contributing and not easing any pressure and allowing us to recover at all. 

He needs to do more on the ball.

[Dr_Pangloss]

Excellent in the first half. But as I've pointed out time and time again this season, he needs to get on the ball more, needs to both demand it more and get into better spaces. His levels also consistently drop after 70 minutes which to me suggests a bit of a conditioning issue - which in fairness is what a lot of our players struggle with indicating deficient S&C coaching.

[Rightdm00]

43 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Excellent in the first half. But as I've pointed out time and time again this season, he needs to get on the ball more, needs to both demand it more and get into better spaces. His levels also consistently drop after 70 minutes which to me suggests a bit of a conditioning issue - which in fairness is what a lot of our players struggle with indicating deficient S&C coaching.

I think it's partially conditioning but honestly his possession retention just stinks at this level.  He is a beautiful sight with the ball charging at the opponents box but he lacks the ability to lose his man if he receives the ball deep. He tried the butt/hip move at least twice in the 2nd half and both times he was easily dispossessed. 

In the future if we are protecting a lead sub in another MF and push him further forward.  When teams start pressing he is way to easy a target to pick on. 

[Villarocker]

He should have been subbed today. Also, despite what people might think, his height is a clear disadvantage in the last third of the games when the physicality of the game kicks in. I love that he wears our shirt but when he's given his all there's no doubt he should be subbed.