Summer Transfer Window 2022

[CarryOnVilla]

3 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Arsenal - Jesus

City - Haaland

Spurs - Richarlison

Liverpool - Nunez

 

Someone like Jonathan David could easily turn into a 20-goal a season striker with the right fine-tuning. Would certainly have more confidence in him doing it than Ollie or Ings anyhow especially as he's still very young. Only problem is he will cost 40m+ and it looks like we don't want to take the risk. 

We won’t take the risk, because at best he’s no better than ollie or Ings 

[Mazrim]

2 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Arsenal - Jesus

City - Haaland

Spurs - Richarlison

Liverpool - Nunez

 

Someone like Jonathan David could easily turn into a 20-goal a season striker with the right fine-tuning. Would certainly have more confidence in him doing it than Ollie or Ings anyhow especially as he's still very young. Only problem is he will cost 40m+ and it looks like we don't want to take the risk. 

Bailey and Watkins are similar mercurial 'need a bit of fine tuning' players and we already have them.
I think we should go straight for a level above that, and we may well do.

[Delphinho123]

2 hours ago, nick76 said:

I’d be surprised if that’s all we are doing.  

If we are seriously only aiming to just scrape top ten then fine but given the vibes from the club, the ambition seems higher but that requires more than just one more in.

It’s not about quantity it’s about quality now obviously but we do need more quality.

I wholeheartedly agree. 
I can't see us finishing in the top 10 as things stand. Maybe at a push. We're 2/3 players from challenging the top 6. It just depends how ambitious we want to be. No point constantly talking about Europe and not backing it up with the tools to actually get there. 

 

[John]

3 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

Genuinely think we're close to being done. We're probably after a new number 8, but only if we can move Sanson + Luiz on. 
I'm still confident they'll tie Chukwuemeka down. 

 

That would be one way of keeping him here:

[sne]

2 minutes ago, John said:

That would be one way of keeping him here:

Where's Julie B when you need her?

[bobzy]

32 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Arsenal - Jesus

City - Haaland

Spurs - Richarlison

Liverpool - Nunez

 

Someone like Jonathan David could easily turn into a 20-goal a season striker with the right fine-tuning. Would certainly have more confidence in him doing it than Ollie or Ings anyhow especially as he's still very young. Only problem is he will cost 40m+ and it looks like we don't want to take the risk. 

With the probable exception of Haaland, all of those signings are "risks" and all of them are north of £45m.

Jesus is a decent player, but he hasn't outscored Ollie Watkins in the Prem and is basically the same age.  Why should we be spending a very sizeable chunk of money on a player who is not guaranteed to improve us?  There's just no need for that sort of gamble when we already have good strikers.

[VillaFaninLondon]

20 minutes ago, Mazrim said:

Bailey and Watkins are similar mercurial 'need a bit of fine tuning' players and we already have them.
I think we should go straight for a level above that, and we may well do.

Bailey isn't a striker and the last thing I'd describe Watkins as is 'mercurial'. 

 

I'd love to know who the level above striker is that you're talking about because we ain't going to be getting Mbappe or Vlahovic. It will come with an element of risk, as most transfers do these days, but that's where clever scouting and diligent legwork come in. 

[allani]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

not including this summer wolves have spent £30m less than us in the last 5 years, more importantly they spent some of it whilst still in the championship and didn't have to build a team from scratch, they had a head start on us

but I think the main thing you're missing is that money isn't enough, it doesn't guarantee progress up the league and I've not seen 21/22 wages yet but 20/21 we were 12th in the wages league so we weren't top 10 payers - at some point the management has to factor in, especially as we have changed manager

add to that I personally think palace have bought really well for a few years now and they'll be competing with us this year, good young team 

Following on from this comment I do feel that sometimes the spend over a certain period is an unfair metric.  In the last 5 years (partly due to circumstance and partly down to the ridiculous FFP rules which are so heavily stacked in favour of the Sly 6) we have pretty much had to buy 2 entire squads.  1 squad to try and survive in the PL, another to then push us towards mid-table and eventually a third squad to hopefully allow us to push the Sly 6.  Meanwhile most of the teams who are either in the top 10 or should be (and I include Everton as an example of a team who should) have been building / reinforcing an already strong squad.  A net spend of £80 million when you are looking at two or three top quality players / prospects to fit into a strong squad is very different to a net spend of £100 million when you are trying to replace 6 or 7 players at a time.  To suggest that the second of those teams is underachieving if they finish below the first because they have spent more money is very misleading.  Teams like Palace, West Ham, Everton, Leicester, Southampton, etc were simply miles ahead of us 5 seasons ago in terms of the quality of their playing squad.  We basically then either needed to get really lucky (buying players for peanuts who became internationals) or we needed to spend more than other teams in order to try and catch them up.  We paid a huge price for the failures of 4, 5, 6 seasons ago when our recruitment approach left us with a team that won promotion and yet was at least 15 players short of a team capable of staying up.  The new board could have accepted that and planned on a Norwich style approach of bouncing between the divisions a couple of times in the hope that by the second or third promotion we had a group of younger players who'd developed well enough to stay up and kick on.  However, a lot of teams that do manage to stay up the first year then really struggle in the second and third years as their better players move on and they can't bring in the same level of replacement.  Poor management of our previous owners has basically meant that we've needed to buy at least 20 "starting players" in 3 season so it is no surprise that we have spent more.  But we can't then say that as we are the 5th, 6th highest spenders that we should be aiming to finish 5th or 6th.  That just doesn't take into consideration how **** we were 3 or 4 seasons ago.  Like you say other clubs have spent less but have been able to target their recruitment better and also have some time to bed new players into an established squad.  I genuinely think that we can only realistically compare our spending patterns with those of other mid-table teams from last season / possibly even this summer as we were so far behind. 

[SirSteveUK]

1 hour ago, jacketspuds said:

neither Ings or Bailey were able to delivery what we hoped they would.

Ings - 7 goals / 6 asists in 22 starts ?  *shrugs*

[VillaFaninLondon]

57 minutes ago, bobzy said:

With the probable exception of Haaland, all of those signings are "risks" and all of them are north of £45m.

Jesus is a decent player, but he hasn't outscored Ollie Watkins in the Prem and is basically the same age.  Why should we be spending a very sizeable chunk of money on a player who is not guaranteed to improve us?  There's just no need for that sort of gamble when we already have good strikers.

So you genuinely think Jesus would not be an improvement on Watkins? I'll let you into a little secret, he would be by far. That's why Arsenal went for him rather than Watkins because he's a better player.

Scoring stats between Jesus and Watkins are irrelevant because Jesus has played out wide quite a lot for City and has also had far fewer minutes than Ollie has had for us. 

Let's compare apples with apples, over the last 2 seasons these are their stats:

• Watkins: 6278 minutes, 25 goals, 7 assists: a goal or assist every 196 minutes
• Jesus: 3927 minutes, 17 goals, 12 assists: a goal or assist every 135 minutes

That's ignoring the general abilities of both players - Jesus is much better technically than Ollie and links up much better with his team mates. The only thing Ollie has over him is his pressing but I wouldn't say there's much in that either. I actually think if Arsenal play Jesus as an out and out striker he will score 15-20 goals a season without fail. 

Nunez after Haaland was probably the most clinical striker in Europe last season. It's a very low risk Liverpool are taking and I'm pretty sure he'll do very well. 

Richarlison maybe so and Spurs have probably overspent a bit there, but playing in a better side he should do well and he'll be an amazing player to bring off the bench or for rotation. 

[RichiBoi11]

9 minutes ago, allani said:

Following on from this comment I do feel that sometimes the spend over a certain period is an unfair metric.  In the last 5 years (partly due to circumstance and partly down to the ridiculous FFP rules which are so heavily stacked in favour of the Sly 6) we have pretty much had to buy 2 entire squads.  1 squad to try and survive in the PL, another to then push us towards mid-table and eventually a third squad to hopefully allow us to push the Sly 6.  Meanwhile most of the teams who are either in the top 10 or should be (and I include Everton as an example of a team who should) have been building / reinforcing an already strong squad.  A net spend of £80 million when you are looking at two or three top quality players / prospects to fit into a strong squad is very different to a net spend of £100 million when you are trying to replace 6 or 7 players at a time.  To suggest that the second of those teams is underachieving if they finish below the first because they have spent more money is very misleading.  Teams like Palace, West Ham, Everton, Leicester, Southampton, etc were simply miles ahead of us 5 seasons ago in terms of the quality of their playing squad.  We basically then either needed to get really lucky (buying players for peanuts who became internationals) or we needed to spend more than other teams in order to try and catch them up.  We paid a huge price for the failures of 4, 5, 6 seasons ago when our recruitment approach left us with a team that won promotion and yet was at least 15 players short of a team capable of staying up.  The new board could have accepted that and planned on a Norwich style approach of bouncing between the divisions a couple of times in the hope that by the second or third promotion we had a group of younger players who'd developed well enough to stay up and kick on.  However, a lot of teams that do manage to stay up the first year then really struggle in the second and third years as their better players move on and they can't bring in the same level of replacement.  Poor management of our previous owners has basically meant that we've needed to buy at least 20 "starting players" in 3 season so it is no surprise that we have spent more.  But we can't then say that as we are the 5th, 6th highest spenders that we should be aiming to finish 5th or 6th.  That just doesn't take into consideration how **** we were 3 or 4 seasons ago.  Like you say other clubs have spent less but have been able to target their recruitment better and also have some time to bed new players into an established squad.  I genuinely think that we can only realistically compare our spending patterns with those of other mid-table teams from last season / possibly even this summer as we were so far behind. 

Can you stop speaking sense and being reasonable please? There's no place for that on this forum.

[nick76]

45 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

I wholeheartedly agree. 
I can't see us finishing in the top 10 as things stand. Maybe at a push. We're 2/3 players from challenging the top 6. It just depends how ambitious we want to be. No point constantly talking about Europe and not backing it up with the tools to actually get there. 

 

Yep, just hope we still have some difference makers coming in before the window shuts.

[Mazrim]

18 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Bailey isn't a striker and the last thing I'd describe Watkins as is 'mercurial'. 

 

I'd love to know who the level above striker is that you're talking about because we ain't going to be getting Mbappe or Vlahovic. It will come with an element of risk, as most transfers do these days, but that's where clever scouting and diligent legwork come in. 

Bailey has played as a striker and could conceivably perform that role for us as we typically play one striker who needs to be able to pull wide. Please assume I know all about our own players.

And Mercurial as in changeable in form and mood (more so Bailey), but fine. Lets say inconsistent then.

 

Do you honestly think there's no level between Jonathan David and Mbappe?

[bobzy]

6 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

So you genuinely think Jesus would not be an improvement on Watkins? I'll let you into a little secret, he would be by far. That's why Arsenal went for him rather than Watkins because he's a better player.

Scoring stats between Jesus and Watkins are irrelevant because Jesus has played out wide quite a lot for City and has also had far fewer minutes than Ollie has had for us. 

Let's compare apples with apples, over the last 2 seasons these are their stats:

• Watkins: 6278 minutes, 25 goals, 7 assists: a goal or assist every 196 minutes
• Jesus: 3927 minutes, 17 goals, 12 assists: a goal or assist every 135 minutes

That's ignoring the general abilities of both players - Jesus is much better technically than Ollie and links up much better with his team mates. The only thing Ollie has over him is his pressing but I wouldn't say there's much in that either. I actually think if Arsenal play Jesus as an out and out striker he will score 15-20 goals a season without fail. 

I'm not really disputing that Jesus is a worse/better player than Watkins - just that spending £45m on Jesus does not mean we have a drastically better striker.  I think you're completely wrong in your "little secret, he would be by far" bit - and there's nothing that demonstrates that Jesus would outscore Watkins in a season; partly because he never has.

Obviously no-one knows whether Arsenal were or were not interested in Watkins but part of the reason they have gone for Jesus is because he was available.  Man City have signed Haaland - they don't need Jesus and are happy to recoup £45m for him.

 

Also, you're not comparing apples with apples there.  To do so would be to look at their tallies whilst playing in that central striker role.  Jesus scored 1 in 8 there last season, Watkins scored 10 in 31 - and Watkins plays in a much inferior team which creates nowhere near the same number of chances.  1 in 8 a clear improvement over 1 in 3 "by far"?  I'll take your word for it.

Edited July 4, 2022 by bobzy

[allani]

3 hours ago, nick76 said:

I’d be surprised if that’s all we are doing.  

If we are seriously only aiming to just scrape top ten then fine but given the vibes from the club, the ambition seems higher but that requires more than just one more in.

It’s not about quantity it’s about quality now obviously but we do need more quality.

51 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

I wholeheartedly agree. 
I can't see us finishing in the top 10 as things stand. Maybe at a push. We're 2/3 players from challenging the top 6. It just depends how ambitious we want to be. No point constantly talking about Europe and not backing it up with the tools to actually get there. 

 

Another 100% agreement from me.  I think with a fair wind in the right direction we might finish 8th or 9th with our current squad.  But we might also finish 10th or 11th or 12th or 13th or 14th if we get a couple of injuries at the wrong time.  Two more quality signings and I genuinely think we could have a good shot at challenging for 7th or 8th and would be much more likely to finish in the top half even if we did have a couple of injury challenges.  We'd still be able to give some of the younger players a chance but would have the luxury of bringing them into matches to gain experience without necessarily having to rely on them to change a game around.  Two good signings actually make it easier for us to develop some of these youngsters and bring them on than staying where we are and then needing Tim to come in and cover for Kamara for 6 weeks because he is out injured.  And no if we want to finish in the top half, Nakamba cannot do that role.  Chambers possibly but again probably not for 6 weeks. 

[thabucks]

Can any Italian football fans fill me in and describe Bologna’s Mattias Svanberg Swedish 6 or 8 … Names cropped up but don’t know too much about him other than he is quite highly rated and think has a year left on his contract 

[VillaFaninLondon]

34 minutes ago, Mazrim said:

Bailey has played as a striker and could conceivably perform that role for us as we typically play one striker who needs to be able to pull wide. Please assume I know all about our own players.

And Mercurial as in changeable in form and mood (more so Bailey), but fine. Lets say inconsistent then.

Do you honestly think there's no level between Jonathan David and Mbappe?

I'm not sure he has played up front much but to be fair I'm not against the idea. I still want Bailey to come good and given Gerrard won't play with any recognised wingers that might be the only chance Bailey has of playing every week. 

Mercurial in my mind suggests a gifted footballer with all the skill in the world but who only turns up when he wants and doesn't put the effort in, someone like Taarabt or more recently Pogba even. Don't think Ollie fits that description, in fact the opposite, I think he always puts the effort in but he's just not that good.

I'd just like to know who these strikers you mention are who are a level above. David is widely considered one of the best young strikers in Europe yet is widely scoffed at on this forum, I don't really know why.

[PaulMcGrath_5]

12 minutes ago, thabucks said:

Can any Italian football fans fill me in and describe Bologna’s Mattias Svanberg Swedish 6 or 8 … Names cropped up but don’t know too much about him other than he is quite highly rated and think has a year left on his contract 

High energy, quite frantic at times. Likes to play long balls forward very quickly. 

Pretty poor pass completion stats. He is decent enough! Not better than what we have now, imo. 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by PaulMcGrath_5

[Zatman]

10 minutes ago, thabucks said:

Can any Italian football fans fill me in and describe Bologna’s Mattias Svanberg Swedish 6 or 8 … Names cropped up but don’t know too much about him other than he is quite highly rated and think has a year left on his contract 

He is decent but I think he can do a lot more and doesnt really impact games as much, he is still young but probably too inconsistent for what we want going forward but yes he is mainly an 8

Linked a bit with Southampton

[sne]

According to Transfermarkt Bailey has 6 games as striker and 2 as second striker in his career. Also has 4 as ACM.

The other 230 or so he's played on the flank. Guy is a wide player. When fit he's rapid, certain he was hampered by that injury last season.

We don't seem to be playing with wide players thou.