Summer Transfers Window 2020

[sparrow1988]

40 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

Knowing about the kits and knowing about signings is different. 
 

the marketing department would be dealing with kit announcements and those kind of leaks are low priority to the club

how ever transfers is dealt with different people are wish not to leak anything to the press or a teenager on twitter

I’m not saying it’s gospel or anything just that he was proved right with kits and there may be something to it. 
 

Although he was tweeting during lockdown about his children not being able to see their grandparents and so on so I doubt he’s a teenager, either that or he’s really playing the long game with the wind up. 

[TRO]

45 minutes ago, Mat Kendrick's Dentist said:

It clearly isn't though, is it? You can throw 10 men behind the ball every game and you'll concede fewer but that doesn't mean you're improving.

We shifted the balance of our team to be much more defensive. As a result we conceded fewer, but couldn't score for toffee. We still averaged 1 point per game (relegation form) even against largely unmotivated teams.

If we sign better defenders, we won't need to drop so deep, and will score more goals. Obviously we need to sign a striker and a winger, but given we had the 2nd worst defence in the league last season, we definitely need some defenders as well

I favour your theory.....I see it the same as you.

[Mat Kendrick's Dentist]

13 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Of course it does. If you concede less then you've improved defensively. 

Pretty much every defensive stat improved after lock down. We conceded less, we allowed less shots etc..  we improved defensively, I'm not sure how anyone can argue we didn't. 

Oh right so, let's get Paul Lambert in, because his Villa teams conceded fewer goals, so we must have been even better defensively. In fact, we conceded fewer goals with each passing campaign under Lambert, so he must be a defensive genius to bring about such mammoth improvements. 

[Dante_Lockhart]

If we're in discussions with Celtic about Edouard I'd get Kristoffer Ajer in on the discussions to. 2 for 1.

[Philosopher]

5 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Of course it does. If you concede less then you've improved defensively. 

Pretty much every defensive stat improved after lock down. We conceded less, we allowed less shots etc..  we improved defensively, I'm not sure how anyone can argue we didn't. 

you miss his point, which is that the defence improved at the expense of the attack.

[mallett]

Well I am bored.

I wonder if it has been long enough that we can once again start listing players we would like Villa to sign during the window - like we were doing much earlier in this thread.

My revised list based on recent rumours for £100m:

Odsonne Edouard £30m - pace, counter attack threat, goals, dead ball threat, striker

Benrahma £25m - LW - Jack may well want Villa to have a viable option for the role so he can move to his favourite position of 8 (and so Southgate doesn't keep comparing him to players like Sancho)

Ethan Ampadu - £17m - DM/RCB - £17m - covers / competes with Konsa and Luiz but also gives us better options for switching to three at the back or joining Luiz as DM and playing 4 2 3 1, also offers option of Konsa moving to RB for some games and him covering RCB. Could also be that he plays the pivot and Luiz moves to other midfield slot.

Marcus Edwards - £13m - RW - pace, tricks, dead ball ability - cheaper option

Rico Henry - £15m - LB - offers pace as opposed to Targett. Targett needs the competition, for me he has come back looking a bit heavy in the preseason training videos.

Out: Jota, Taylor, Lansbury, Kalinic, Engels, AEG etc. - the outs should just about offset the incoming so that net spend is about £100m allowing for some jiggery pokery.

Prefer us to go big for Edouard rather than cheap with Watkins.

AEG has more ability than Trezeguet but Trez worked harder for it and I would want the squad to know that hard work counts for more than talent on its own.

Engels is too slow for the Premier league and seems to have fallen out with Smith. I want the defence to push further up the pitch and I think Engel's lack of pace is an issue for that.

I don't think Rashica wants to come.

[TRO]

9 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Of course it does. If you concede less then you've improved defensively. 

Pretty much every defensive stat improved after lock down. We conceded less, we allowed less shots etc..  we improved defensively, I'm not sure how anyone can argue we didn't. 

In one way you are right.....in another way MKD is right too.

We didn't necessarily improve individually defensively, we just deployed more to the task and focused more on stopping the opposition....that could have impacted on our offensive capability.

in varying ways, you are both right.

Hence some fans looking at better defenders as well as attackers.

 

[SeanVilla]

24 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I don't understand the argument that our defence is fine. We have an urgent need at CB and a less urgent, but still important, need at LB.

Mings is a good defender, and Konsa a promising prospect, but they would both benefit from being the junior partner in a CB partnership. Mings is probably the better player, but is also capable of ricks and of losing concentration and position. He's a big character, but I also think he's a smart guy, and if given a CB partner he could respect he would learn from them. This is why a Cahill signing would have been perfect. We need to abandon only signing prospects and projects under 25 for this position IMO.

At LB, as everyone has already said, Targett is pretty good especially going forward, but Taylor is a Championship level player who is only any use as a warm body in the defensive line when we are backs to the wall. I doubt we will be able to sell him, but we should be looking for someone else to challenge Targett.

We won't be able to play as defensively as we did post-lockdown for a whole season. Managers soon feel the pressure if fans are watching turgid, defensive football *and* bad results. Meanwhile better defenders would allow our attackers to do more attacking.

Disagree we played Defensively, turgid football after lockdown. Here's our stats against Arsenal and Palace:

 

Combined 20 shots & 12 on target. The system we employed post lockdown made us the 4th best team defensively, in terms of shots faced compared with 19th best before lockdown. Think the system we played is perfect for the team we are and to get results in the Prem. You could even argue, if Walcott hadn't scored the first header of his career and West ham hadn't got that lucky deflection we could of even got 12 points from last 4 games. Hypothetical I know but there was only fine margins between us getting the max amount of points. Think we should, and will, continue to play the way we played before lockdown. We'd be mad not to. Who knows how we'd do with a Striker who can score goals.

Edited August 27, 2020 by SeanVilla

[TRO]

8 minutes ago, Philosopher said:

you miss his point, which is that the defence improved at the expense of the attack.

Concisely put.

[DCJonah]

10 minutes ago, Philosopher said:

you miss his point, which is that the defence improved at the expense of the attack.

Really? Our attack was great before lockdown? 

Do you think our attack suffered because we had samatta and davis playing with little quality out wide, or is it just that we went ultra defensive?

Its a myth that seems to be now accepted. Its rubbish.

[DCJonah]

12 minutes ago, Mat Kendrick's Dentist said:

Oh right so, let's get Paul Lambert in, because his Villa teams conceded fewer goals, so we must have been even better defensively. In fact, we conceded fewer goals with each passing campaign under Lambert, so he must be a defensive genius to bring about such mammoth improvements. 

The argument was we didn't improve defensively. Now you're going crazy. 

 

[MJ_1874]

4 minutes ago, SeanVilla said:

 

Combined 20 shots & 12 on target. The system we employed post lockdown made us the 4th best team defensively, in terms of shots faced compared with 19th best before lockdown. Think the system we played is perfect for the team we are and to get results in the Prem. You could even argue, if Walcott hadn't scored the first header of his career and West ham hadn't got that lucky deflection we could of even got 12 points from last 4 games. Hypothetical I know but there was only fine margins between us getting the max amount of points. Think we should, and will, continue to play the way we played before lockdown. We'd be mad not to. Who knows how we'd do with a Striker who can score goals.

Completely dominated Sheffield United and Newcastle as well.  If we start the season with only one or two new signings it's not the end of the world.  I can easily see 4 or 5 points from those first three games.

[rubberman]

Improving the front three will also improve the defence with the right players.  Firstly through more attacking threat the opposition won't be able to press so high and just as importantly we need attackers that can hold up the ball and also track back to defend from the front when it is turned over.  In an ideal world we'd upgrade defenders, (and maybe we will - who knows), but I think having a defensive unit with a season playing together under their belts is on balance better than trying to build a load of new partnerships in a truncated off-season.  More than 4 new starters at this point is a huge risk for me - I'd be OK only seeing the front 3 and a midfielder added in this window. (Well - anyone would be good at this point).

[Mat Kendrick's Dentist]

13 minutes ago, SeanVilla said:

The system we employed post lockdown made us the 4th best team defensively, in terms of shots faced compared with 19th best before lockdown. Think the system we played is perfect for the team we are and to get results in the Prem. You could even argue, if Walcott hadn't scored the first header of his career and West ham hadn't got that lucky deflection we could of even got 12 points from last 4 games. Hypothetical I know but there was only fine margins between us getting the max amount of points. Think we should, and will, continue to play the way we played before lockdown. We'd be mad not to.

This proves my point. Our scoring dropped from 1.22 per game to 0.7 per game post lockdown. In other words, we played more defensively, meaning we conceded fewer, but also scored significantly fewer. If we had better defenders we wouldn't need to play as defensively, and we'd score more while conceding fewer. 

Again, we obviously need a good striker/winger, but to push on and keep players like Jack, we also need some better defenders

[TRO]

3 minutes ago, SeanVilla said:

Disagree we played Defensively, turgid football after lockdown. Here's our stats against Arsenal and Palace:

 

Combined 20 shots & 12 on target. The system we employed post lockdown made us the 4th best team defensively, in terms of shots faced compared with 19th best before lockdown. Think the system we played is perfect for the team we are and to get results in the Prem. You could even argue, if Walcott hadn't scored the first header of his career and West ham hadn't got that lucky deflection we could of even got 12 points from last 4 games. Hypothetical I know but there was only fine margins between us getting the max amount of points. Think we should, and will, continue to play the way we played before lockdown. We'd be mad not to. Who knows how we'd do with a Striker who can score goals.

It seems to me at times, some folk just want gungo football and see it as the holy grail and that goals against are a mere irritation.....I think some would have been miffed with the 80/81 side built on work rate as the base.

The ability to stop an opponent gaining an advantage over us ,takes great skill and tactical awareness.....its not turgid football or anything remotely like it.

The game is not one dimensional and we should all appreciate the more mundane aspects of it as essential at times.....post lockdown, went some way to helping us appreciate it.

[Mat Kendrick's Dentist]

15 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

The argument was we didn't improve defensively. Now you're going crazy. 

 

Nah, you're just incapable of grasping a simple point

[Rolta]

Just now, Mat Kendrick's Dentist said:

This proves my point. Our scoring dropped from 1.22 per game to 0.7 per game post lockdown. In other words, we played more defensively, meaning we conceded fewer, but also scored significantly fewer. If we had better defenders we wouldn't need to play as defensively, and we'd score more while conceding fewer. 

Again, we obviously need a good striker/winger, but to push on and keep players like Jack, we also need some better defenders

Any chance we could get that stat divided up a bit more. So Goals for/against up to and including the Burnley game, then the same after the Burnley game to lockdown, then post lockdown.

[Mat Kendrick's Dentist]

16 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Really? Our attack was great before lockdown? 

Do you think our attack suffered because we had samatta and davis playing with little quality out wide, or is it just that we went ultra defensive?

Its a myth that seems to be now accepted. Its rubbish.

1.22 goals scored per game pre-lockdown, 0.7 per game post-lockdown. Almost halved. We had largely the same personnel for both samples. How is that a myth?

[Gillz]

I 100% agree the defence can be improved. In fact, with the exception of Jack and Douglas Luiz - every position can be improved.

It's about prioritisation though. 

 

Post lock-down our defence looked better, but we couldn't buy a goal as hard as we tried. With limited (but not too limited hopefully!) resources, we need to prioritise the worst areas, which for me are Strikers and Wingers. The rest is 'good enough' for another season of consolidation at least. 

[Dave-R]

6 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Now you're going crazy.