pintpotvilla Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 minute ago, Delphinho123 said: I must be the only one who thinks after spending the money we did, our expectations should be a little more than to just survive. If I owned our club and had watched all of our games this season, id be asking some serious questions of the scouts and the recruitment team. I just don’t buy into the idea of spending all that money to survive by the smallest of margins and then to replace all of the players we spent the money on in the following summer window. I’m not saying we should be challenging for Europe or even challenging for a top 10 spot but looking at our current predicament and the performances of the likes of Wesley, Trezeguet, Luiz, Konsa, Nakamba, Engels over the course of the season, it just isn’t good enough for the investment made. Like I say, maybe I’m the only one and our plan all along was to just assemble a squad of players for this season before binning them off and starting again the following year. £130M for 12 players (ave £10m or so) does not buy you a team capable of a high finish. We had no choice though as we had to replace most of the squad. Higher value/ better players will arrive if we stay up. I don't think the board will have had greater expectations hence why there has been no mentions at all of a change of manager. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 2 minutes ago, pintpotvilla said: £130M for 12 players (ave £10m or so) does not buy you a team capable of a high finish. We had no choice though as we had to replace most of the squad. Higher value/ better players will arrive if we stay up. I don't think the board will have had greater expectations hence why there has been no mentions at all of a change of manager. You know the next response will be "What about Sheffield United or Wolves?" right? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 minute ago, pintpotvilla said: £130M for 12 players (ave £10m or so) does not buy you a team capable of a high finish. We had no choice though as we had to replace most of the squad. Higher value/ better players will arrive if we stay up. I don't think the board will have had greater expectations hence why there has been no mentions at all of a change of manager. It’s a fair point but I actually think some of the players we have bought will struggle in the championship too. Regardless of expectations, I’m really disappointed by our performances this season. Like I say though, maybe I set the bar too high from the start! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 Just now, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said: You know the next response will be "What about Sheffield United or Wolves?" right? People are allowed to be disappointed with the recruitment by comparing it to other teams performance. For every Sheff Utd who spent very little, there is a West Ham who’ve spent a fortune on players. I get that. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that in my opinion, we have bought some very poor players for a lot of money. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 minute ago, Delphinho123 said: People are allowed to be disappointed with the recruitment by comparing it to other teams performance. For every Sheff Utd who spent very little, there is a West Ham who’ve spent a fortune on players. I get that. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that in my opinion, we have bought some very poor players for a lot of money. Wasn't necessarily aimed at you, I've just seen the circular debate many times. They are indeed valid comparisons, but the mitigating factors of each team need to be taken into consideration also. That being said, yes we should be doing better. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pintpotvilla Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 5 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said: You know the next response will be "What about Sheffield United or Wolves?" right? Yes you're right but they both had stable squads Wolves especially 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Rob182 Posted February 25, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted February 25, 2020 2 minutes ago, pintpotvilla said: £130M for 12 players (ave £10m or so) does not buy you a team capable of a high finish. We had no choice though as we had to replace most of the squad. Higher value/ better players will arrive if we stay up. I don't think the board will have had greater expectations hence why there has been no mentions at all of a change of manager. This subject has been done to death on VT. I’m still amazed that people think we should be doing better for the money spent. What you’ve said is bang on. Maybe we could have bought fewer players with a higher average spend (eg: 1 winger instead of Trez & El Ghazi, 1 DM instead of Luiz & Nakamba, 1 CD instead of Konsa and Engels), but then our squad would be paper thin, and just imagine if one of those players turned out to be another £20m+ Wesley type player that didn’t look great, or if one of them got injured. We would have actually done a Fulham! It’s also worth considering Purslow’s comments from last week, around our wage limits being determined by the fact that we’re only a ‘1-year’ Prem team currently, so the likes of Brighton & Bournemouth are capable of offering higher wages due to time in the league. The only obvious established Prem player I can think of that we could have realistically had to improve our fortunes would have been Gary Cahill over Konsa, but, chances are Palace are offering him way more than we could, and, what’s to say that he wouldn’t have been another Lescott/Richards signing, taking a last payday and putting in minimal effort. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) 9 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said: People are allowed to be disappointed with the recruitment by comparing it to other teams performance. For every Sheff Utd who spent very little, there is a West Ham who’ve spent a fortune on players. I get that. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that in my opinion, we have bought some very poor players for a lot of money. tin hat on... I think the club have almost quite sensibly bought some players who can yo-yo should we go down, hause, konsa, el ghazi, trez, probably wes following his injury, nakamba, guilbert will all be there in the championship next season, be good players at that level and then in theory give a 2nd bite of the PL a better go I don't think we'll have the turnover of players and 3 year (failed miserably) rebuild should we go down, we maybe lose mings and McGinn (im not convinced we would lose both), definitely lose grealish, plug their quality loss with some loans, buy a couple of development players, give the likes of barry a chance, come back up, spend £100m on 3/4 positions that's what we should have done the 1st time around but thanks to xia / RDM / bruce we **** it up Edited February 25, 2020 by villa4europe 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouchmefoot Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 Our remaining PL games: PL: Leicester a PL: Chelsea h PL: Newcastle a PL: Wolves h PL: Liverpool a PL: Man Utd h PL: Sheffield Utd h PL: Crystal Palace h PL: Everton a PL: Arsenal h PL: West Ham a From that we probably need 13+ points. It's a big ask considering how bad we were vs Southampton. We will need an upset somewhere vs a 'Big Six' club or two. We will not be favourites to win any of them at the moment! I love the Villa and live in hope of a mini-run that could save our skins but I think the best we can hope for is a winner takes all game game against West Ham on the last day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimzk5 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 11 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said: You know the next response will be "What about Sheffield United" Sheffield United are an exception, we've all seen it before when a promoted team goes way above the expectation Teams that do well after promotion need the core of a settled team, a way of playing and importantly a strong mentality, 3 things we don't have I still think a majority of our summer business was good but why we went into the season with only 3 strikers and nakamba and Luiz in midfield is what is sending us down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laughable Chimp Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) 35 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said: I must be the only one who thinks after spending the money we did, our expectations should be a little more than to just survive. If I owned our club and had watched all of our games this season, id be asking some serious questions of the scouts and the recruitment team. I just don’t buy into the idea of spending all that money to survive by the smallest of margins and then to replace all of the players we spent the money on in the following summer window. I’m not saying we should be challenging for Europe or even challenging for a top 10 spot but looking at our current predicament and the performances of the likes of Wesley, Trezeguet, Luiz, Konsa, Nakamba, Engels over the course of the season, it just isn’t good enough for the investment made. Like I say, maybe I’m the only one and our plan all along was to just assemble a squad of players for this season before binning them off and starting again the following year. Posted this earlier, but ran some numbers based on our transfer expenses and predicted wage bill and we're predicted to finish at 43 points based on it all. Even taking into account the mitigating factors, at our current trajectory we're predicted to finishing at almost 10 points less than that. Quite frankly, its near unacceptable imo and the mitigating circumstances are not enough to excuse it away. Is survival a success knowing our current state? Yes. But I don't buy the idea that the owners were viewing just survival as a success at the start of the season. They were definitely aiming to do more than that Edited February 25, 2020 by Laughable Chimp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob182 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 37 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said: Posted this earlier, but ran some numbers based on our transfer expenses and predicted wage bill and we're predicted to finish at 43 points based on it all. Even taking into account the mitigating factors, at our current trajectory we're predicted to finishing at almost 10 points less than that. Quite frankly, its near unacceptable imo and the mitigating circumstances are not enough to excuse it away. Is survival a success knowing our current state? Yes. But I don't buy the idea that the owners were viewing just survival as a success at the start of the season. They were definitely aiming to do more than that Can you run your numbers on our 2015/16 relegation season? Presumably then we had a much higher wage bill than now, and we also spent an average of £10m per player on some new players (Adama, Ayew, Amazi, Veretout, Gueye & Gestede), so I'd be interested to see what points tally your numbers predicts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tayls Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 We just need to win a damn football match. Quite why we are so incapable is beyond me. We cant even get a draw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turvontour Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 47 minutes ago, Ouchmefoot said: Our remaining PL games: PL: Leicester a PL: Chelsea h PL: Newcastle a PL: Wolves h PL: Liverpool a PL: Man Utd h PL: Sheffield Utd h PL: Crystal Palace h PL: Everton a PL: Arsenal h PL: West Ham a From that we probably need 13+ points. It's a big ask considering how bad we were vs Southampton. We will need an upset somewhere vs a 'Big Six' club or two. We will not be favourites to win any of them at the moment! I love the Villa and live in hope of a mini-run that could save our skins but I think the best we can hope for is a winner takes all game game against West Ham on the last day I personally think we will get a minimum of a point at Anfield. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrimevalVillan Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) 49 minutes ago, Ouchmefoot said: Our remaining PL games: PL: Leicester a PL: Chelsea h PL: Newcastle a PL: Wolves h PL: Liverpool a PL: Man Utd h PL: Sheffield Utd h PL: Crystal Palace h PL: Everton a PL: Arsenal h PL: West Ham a From that we probably need 13+ points. It's a big ask considering how bad we were vs Southampton. We will need an upset somewhere vs a 'Big Six' club or two. We will not be favourites to win any of them at the moment! I love the Villa and live in hope of a mini-run that could save our skins but I think the best we can hope for is a winner takes all game game against West Ham on the last day A lot of opportunity here, we have two games (Leicester and Liverpool away) which are probably write-offs but the rest if we show up we have a solid chance at getting at least a point. Edited February 25, 2020 by PrimevalVillan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fun Factory Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) There is a difference between transfer fees and wage structure. We have purposely gone for younger players who have potential resale value. That is all well and noble but if we get relegated in hindsight it might have been better bringing some more experienced players on shorter contracts and higher wages. FFP might also be a factor which could have hampered us. I still think the majority of the players we brought in the summer were on the radar even had we lost to Derby, and we would have brought in most of them probably costing a lot less in transfer fees. Apart from Mings, he would have stayed at Bournemouth. Edited February 25, 2020 by The Fun Factory 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 hour ago, Delphinho123 said: I must be the only one who thinks after spending the money we did, our expectations should be a little more than to just survive. If I owned our club and had watched all of our games this season, id be asking some serious questions of the scouts and the recruitment team. I just don’t buy into the idea of spending all that money to survive by the smallest of margins and then to replace all of the players we spent the money on in the following summer window. I’m not saying we should be challenging for Europe or even challenging for a top 10 spot but looking at our current predicament and the performances of the likes of Wesley, Trezeguet, Luiz, Konsa, Nakamba, Engels over the course of the season, it just isn’t good enough for the investment made. Like I say, maybe I’m the only one and our plan all along was to just assemble a squad of players for this season before binning them off and starting again the following year. That was clearly the plan. We had 120m to spend. We needed a brand new squad after only having around a dozen first team players left in the summer. We bought 12 players, for an average of about 10m per player. Forget about the raw numbers, would you expect a team full of 10m pound players who are all new to this league to aim for anything other than survival? I don't think we're going to bin all of them off. The hope is that a lot of them will develop into good players worthy of keeping. The likes of Luiz, Nakamba, Wesley and Konsa, Target etc weren't signed to be fodder for this campaign. Yes there are some players like Trezeguet who were likely never going to be of the required caliber but from the intimations of Purslow it seems like the aim was to buy players who appreciate in value. We'll likely be adding quality if we stay up and not ripping up the whole squad again. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laughable Chimp Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) 46 minutes ago, Rob182 said: Can you run your numbers on our 2015/16 relegation season? Presumably then we had a much higher wage bill than now, and we also spent an average of £10m per player on some new players (Adama, Ayew, Amazi, Veretout, Gueye & Gestede), so I'd be interested to see what points tally your numbers predicts. Sure, So after calculating and adjusting for inflation, I've gotten 49 points. Looking at the league table, it shows that that wouuld've been enough to put us in 11th place that season. But we were the 8th highest transfer spenders and the 7th highest wage bill that season so I would've expected us to be somewhere up there as well. Probably made a mistake somewhere then in the inflation calculations most likely but I'm not really sure where. But regardless, you get the picture. We should've been comfortably mid-table with the amount we were spending that season. Not rock bottom. I could input all the finances for all the teams in that 2015-16 season so I don't have to take into account inflation but I'm too lazy to put that amount of work in. Edited February 25, 2020 by Laughable Chimp 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supermon Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, villa4europe said: so this weekend we play in a cup final whilst they protest their home game but they have more optimism and heart than us? https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/west-ham-fans-protest-owners-southampton-a4371116.html Had that been Villa and we took Liverpool all the way to a 3-2 loss at Anfield, would you not take some heart n optimism out of that? On the contrary, where do we take heart from after Southampton? Edited February 25, 2020 by supermon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 31 minutes ago, supermon said: Had that been Villa and we took Liverpool all the way to a 3-2 loss at Anfield, would you not take some heart n optimism out of that? On the contrary, where do we take heart from after Southampton? Right before the Southampton game, we took Spurs all the way to 3-2. Should have really won it. That same week, West Ham put in the most turgid performance of any team this season. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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