Summer Transfer Window 2022

[TomC]

1 hour ago, thunderball said:

Lastly, I couldn’t care about Carney, he’s talented but it’s 50/50 if he makes the grade, you’d think he should knocking on the door given all the hype, but has had chances (he frankly hasn’t deserved) and he isn’t even close.

50-50 is about right. He's clearly talented for his age, but plenty of talented 18 year olds never make it to the top. Sometimes their talent has peaked early and they don't have any more room to grow when you think they do, sometimes bad attitude gets in the way (whether from the player's own character or from the influence of parents, agents, and others around them), sometimes they suffer an injury early in their career that ruins everything, sometimes they're mentally fragile and something ruins their confidence, sometimes they get money and then lose their motivation about sport, sometimes they develop substance abuse problems.

On the other hand, it may be just a little too early for him, so I'd be careful about saying "he isn't even close." JJ didn't impress me at all in 2020-21 when he was a 19 year old for most of the season, but then look at last year. Chuk could be just a year away from setting the world on fire.

Whether it's coming from him or from his entourage, it has always sounded to me like Chuk thinks that he's destined for the biggest of clubs and like he wanted out of Villa more than a year ago. Maybe the elite is indeed his destiny, but for now, he isn't going to start at someplace like Chelsea when he can't start at Villa. It's more likely that his next club will loan him out to a club no higher up the pecking order than we are. Dortmund is the only destination I've seen mentioned where he might break into the team this year.

The bottom line is that his contract will expire and then he will control his own destiny. Let the chips fall where they may. I'd like to keep him, but I'm not going to lose sleep over him.

 

[Zatman]

9 hours ago, MWARLEY2 said:

Just watched a Kamara compilation. Will have no problem with him. Reminds me in many ways of Roy Keane. Same build , less hatred 

Haaland is terrified of the thought  

[Zatman]

8 hours ago, Xela said:

What is his hit rate like? Did he successfully call the Kamara, Carlos and Augustinsson transfers before anyone else? If he did then fair play. 

He is quite connected at Villa, he was the first one to break the Bailey deal and I think Digne too

[messi11]

Get us a new midfielder NOW

[AVTuco]

9 hours ago, allani said:

He really doesn't and he really won't.  Our current squad is, at best, around 11th or 12th on paper.  The Sly 6, West Ham, Leicester, Wolves and Palace have better / more balanced squads.  Newcastle will continue to recruit.  Expecting SG to get us 7th with the current players is ridiculous.  He won't and then people will call for him to be sacked for "under-achieving" and try and bring in another manager who also won't get a team who are 11 / 12th best into the top 7.  We aren't a million miles away from those teams but I bet most of their fans will be saying that they should be finishing ahead of us.

I love how optimistic people are but sometimes a reality check is required.  If Gerrard gets us in the top half with the current squad he will have done really well.  He has a chance because a lot of the teams I mention above will be taking points off each other and are quite close in overall strength / ability.  We are definitely closer than we were but midfield is still a big concern.  If we don't recruit anyone else and finish 9th - 11th then that is sign of progress and probably moves us one season nearer to some of our youngsters being ready to make their mark.  But I can guarantee that if we are sat in 11th at Christmas - lots of people will be moaning that Gerrard hasn't made the progress that he should have done.  We still have too many players in and around the first team who were bought to keep us in the PL.  Put it this way - how many of our players would start for any of the Sly 6.  Probably none (apart from maybe Emi).  I don't see that West Ham, Leicester or even Wolves would be transformed by signing one or two of our players.  Whereas I think you could make a good case for us signing 2 players from any of those teams and suddenly having a realistic chance of being "best of the rest".

We're not the 7th best team on paper perhaps, I wouldn't know, I'm not good enough an expert on other teams. However, we're within striking distance if things go well. 

If we bring in a new number 8, how much better are we then really? Several positions on the standings? I doubt it. Other things are more important than single players, we have to click from the start.

[VillaFaninLondon]

9 hours ago, allani said:

That is still 25% of the first team not being good enough.  But more importantly i am guessing that they are pretty important positions (CB, CM, ST?).  Not sure what you expectations are - but our current squad is probably battling for 10 - 12th.  If we finish below 12th we will have fallen short and that will be on Gerrard and the Board.  Unfortunately lots of other posters seem to think that we should be finishing around 8th and that not finishing top half would be falling short.

Well you seem to think that Palace and Wolves have better squads than we do (a ridiculous statement IMO) but yet they also have weaknesses in key areas - neither have a great striker (in fact, they are both worse than us here), Palace's GK is pretty weak and Johnstone won't do much to rectify that (and they've lost Gallagher), Wolves barely score goals and have a soon to be 36 year old central midfielder starting regularly for them and serious doubts about Neves' future - plus have only signed a CB this summer. How you can honestly say we shouldn't be expecting to finish above those teams is beyond me and I'm half wondering if you are on the windup. 

 

I agree that Leicester and West Ham probably have stronger teams and Newcastle might (depends who else they sign) but Gerrard should be finishing top 10 with this squad absolutely no question. If he finishes 12th we'll have underperformed yet again. 

[jim]

13 hours ago, Tayls said:

I’m saying absolutely nothing about me possibly being right when I called us being done a few weeks back… 

Except we’ve signed a player since then

[Rolta]

18 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Well you seem to think that Palace and Wolves have better squads than we do (a ridiculous statement IMO) but yet they also have weaknesses in key areas - neither have a great striker (in fact, they are both worse than us here), Palace's GK is pretty weak and Johnstone won't do much to rectify that (and they've lost Gallagher), Wolves barely score goals and have a soon to be 36 year old central midfielder starting regularly for them and serious doubts about Neves' future - plus have only signed a CB this summer. 

Doubts over his future makes them worse somehow?

The window isn't done for anyone, so it's a bit difficult to make these calls surely. 

There are a lot of good teams in the Prem. They'll still make purchases/replace players. 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Rolta

[VillaFaninLondon]

2 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Doubts over his future makes them worse somehow?

The window isn't done for anyone, so it's a bit difficult to make these calls surely. 

There are a lot of good teams in the Prem. They'll still make purchases/replace players. 

Take a look at the Wolves forum, most of them are concerned they'll be in a struggle next season as are many neutrals, I think many on here are overrating them. I also think Palace are a bit overrated, they do have some exciting youngsters and an interesting squad, but as much as everyone hyped them last season they still only just finished above us and we were really poor for most of last season. I think they'll end up 12th/13th personally as will Wolves. 

[allani]

38 minutes ago, AVTuco said:

We're not the 7th best team on paper perhaps, I wouldn't know, I'm not good enough an expert on other teams. However, we're within striking distance if things go well. 

If we bring in a new number 8, how much better are we then really? Several positions on the standings? I doubt it. Other things are more important than single players, we have to click from the start.

The key point being "if things go well".  The general assumption seems to be that we should be finishing around the top 8 this season otherwise we will have failed.  My point is that (on paper) 8th would be a significant over-performance.  Of course we could do it but the odds of doing so are not as good as some people seem to be making it out.  If things don't go well (a couple of injuries or a collective loss of form) then we could easily finish where we did this season.  You are right - we are within striking distance.  One more good signing will really help establish the balance that the team / squad has been missing for 3 seasons.  Kamara is a great step in the right direction (hopefully!) but we are putting a hell of a lot of pressure / expectation on a young lad in a new country if we are expecting him to solve all our problems in midfield.  Dougie and McGinn might both be better with Kamara behind them - but I have doubts that a midfield with Luiz and McGinn playing the majority of minutes in the majority of games will be consistent enough to finish in 8th place.  An extra (better) player in that position will suddenly give us real strength in depth to maintain a challenge for longer.

Similarly I hope that our defence will be better with Mings having a more senior partner alongside him (in terms of quality / reading of the game) keeping him on his toes.  But I still worry that when put under pressure we will resort to the "whack the ball down the channel" tactic that has put us under pressure for spells of each of the last 3 seasons.

24 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Well you seem to think that Palace and Wolves have better squads than we do (a ridiculous statement IMO) but yet they also have weaknesses in key areas - neither have a great striker (in fact, they are both worse than us here), Palace's GK is pretty weak and Johnstone won't do much to rectify that (and they've lost Gallagher), Wolves barely score goals and have a soon to be 36 year old central midfielder starting regularly for them and serious doubts about Neves' future - plus have only signed a CB this summer. How you can honestly say we shouldn't be expecting to finish above those teams is beyond me and I'm half wondering if you are on the windup. 

 

I agree that Leicester and West Ham probably have stronger teams and Newcastle might (depends who else they sign) but Gerrard should be finishing top 10 with this squad absolutely no question. If he finishes 12th we'll have underperformed yet again. 

Pretty sure I have said better balanced squads.  Of course all the mid-table teams will have weaknesses that other teams will try to exploit.  But our midfield has spluttered for 3 seasons on the trot - brilliant at times, woeful at others.  We've started to address that but I think people are being overly optimistic if they think that we will go from 14th to 8th based on signing one midfield player.  I expect that fans of Leicester, West Ham, Newcastle, Palace and Wolves would expect their teams to finish above Villa.  After all they have done for the last few seasons.  I suspect that most independent outsiders would look at our signings and say we've done OK but I doubt many would put us in the top 8 for next season.  We are definitely closing the gap and so far Gerrard and the Board seem to have been tackling the right problems with their transfer dealings this summer.  So there are plenty of positives.  But unless we can manage to control more games from the centre of the pitch we will probably continue to be incredibly inconsistent.  I am sure that this is what SG is saying to the Board (it is definitely what he is saying in public).  For me we are 1 (ideally 2) players away from being a really good team.  At the moment we are a mid-table team equally as capable of finishing 8th as we are of finishing 14th.  I don't think we will do either of those things (one assumes everything clicks for us, the other implies that lots of things conspire against us).  We could finish top half but to say that we should finish top half without question is (in my opinion) wildly optimistic.

Anyway, it is all (hopefully!) a moot point because I do think that we will be signing another midfielder (and that some kind of agreement will be made with Luiz) and at that stage I will 100% be jumping on the Top 8 bandwagon (well maybe Top 9 just because I have been disappointed for too many seasons to not have doubts that something will go wrong for us at some point! ).

[The_Steve]

50 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

Take a look at the Wolves forum, most of them are concerned they'll be in a struggle next season as are many neutrals, I think many on here are overrating them. I also think Palace are a bit overrated, they do have some exciting youngsters and an interesting squad, but as much as everyone hyped them last season they still only just finished above us and we were really poor for most of last season. I think they'll end up 12th/13th personally as will Wolves. 

We comfortably beat Palace too - and somehow Viera is a managerial genius. They are making good moves transfer wise and playing good football - but replacing an ageing squad doesn’t happen overnight. 
 

The league will be very tight, but given that we had some freak results along with some disappointing, narrow defeats. And if we can avoid that, we are much closer to a top half finish. I think some use both examples to bash Gerrard regardless. As with some who seem more excited by Leeds or Newcastle sign. We’ve done great business so far. 

[Delphinho123]

14 minutes ago, allani said:

The key point being "if things go well".  The general assumption seems to be that we should be finishing around the top 8 this season otherwise we will have failed.  My point is that (on paper) 8th would be a significant over-performance.  Of course we could do it but the odds of doing so are not as good as some people seem to be making it out.  If things don't go well (a couple of injuries or a collective loss of form) then we could easily finish where we did this season.  You are right - we are within striking distance.  One more good signing will really help establish the balance that the team / squad has been missing for 3 seasons.  Kamara is a great step in the right direction (hopefully!) but we are putting a hell of a lot of pressure / expectation on a young lad in a new country if we are expecting him to solve all our problems in midfield.  Dougie and McGinn might both be better with Kamara behind them - but I have doubts that a midfield with Luiz and McGinn playing the majority of minutes in the majority of games will be consistent enough to finish in 8th place.  An extra (better) player in that position will suddenly give us real strength in depth to maintain a challenge for longer.

Similarly I hope that our defence will be better with Mings having a more senior partner alongside him (in terms of quality / reading of the game) keeping him on his toes.  But I still worry that when put under pressure we will resort to the "whack the ball down the channel" tactic that has put us under pressure for spells of each of the last 3 seasons.

Pretty sure I have said better balanced squads.  Of course all the mid-table teams will have weaknesses that other teams will try to exploit.  But our midfield has spluttered for 3 seasons on the trot - brilliant at times, woeful at others.  We've started to address that but I think people are being overly optimistic if they think that we will go from 14th to 8th based on signing one midfield player.  I expect that fans of Leicester, West Ham, Newcastle, Palace and Wolves would expect their teams to finish above Villa.  After all they have done for the last few seasons.  I suspect that most independent outsiders would look at our signings and say we've done OK but I doubt many would put us in the top 8 for next season.  We are definitely closing the gap and so far Gerrard and the Board seem to have been tackling the right problems with their transfer dealings this summer.  So there are plenty of positives.  But unless we can manage to control more games from the centre of the pitch we will probably continue to be incredibly inconsistent.  I am sure that this is what SG is saying to the Board (it is definitely what he is saying in public).  For me we are 1 (ideally 2) players away from being a really good team.  At the moment we are a mid-table team equally as capable of finishing 8th as we are of finishing 14th.  I don't think we will do either of those things (one assumes everything clicks for us, the other implies that lots of things conspire against us).  We could finish top half but to say that we should finish top half without question is (in my opinion) wildly optimistic.

Anyway, it is all (hopefully!) a moot point because I do think that we will be signing another midfielder (and that some kind of agreement will be made with Luiz) and at that stage I will 100% be jumping on the Top 8 bandwagon (well maybe Top 9 just because I have been disappointed for too many seasons to not have doubts that something will go wrong for us at some point! ).

Great post. 

[VillaFaninLondon]

15 minutes ago, allani said:

The key point being "if things go well".  The general assumption seems to be that we should be finishing around the top 8 this season otherwise we will have failed.  My point is that (on paper) 8th would be a significant over-performance.  Of course we could do it but the odds of doing so are not as good as some people seem to be making it out.  If things don't go well (a couple of injuries or a collective loss of form) then we could easily finish where we did this season.  You are right - we are within striking distance.  One more good signing will really help establish the balance that the team / squad has been missing for 3 seasons.  Kamara is a great step in the right direction (hopefully!) but we are putting a hell of a lot of pressure / expectation on a young lad in a new country if we are expecting him to solve all our problems in midfield.  Dougie and McGinn might both be better with Kamara behind them - but I have doubts that a midfield with Luiz and McGinn playing the majority of minutes in the majority of games will be consistent enough to finish in 8th place.  An extra (better) player in that position will suddenly give us real strength in depth to maintain a challenge for longer.

Similarly I hope that our defence will be better with Mings having a more senior partner alongside him (in terms of quality / reading of the game) keeping him on his toes.  But I still worry that when put under pressure we will resort to the "whack the ball down the channel" tactic that has put us under pressure for spells of each of the last 3 seasons.

Pretty sure I have said better balanced squads.  Of course all the mid-table teams will have weaknesses that other teams will try to exploit.  But our midfield has spluttered for 3 seasons on the trot - brilliant at times, woeful at others.  We've started to address that but I think people are being overly optimistic if they think that we will go from 14th to 8th based on signing one midfield player.  I expect that fans of Leicester, West Ham, Newcastle, Palace and Wolves would expect their teams to finish above Villa.  After all they have done for the last few seasons.  I suspect that most independent outsiders would look at our signings and say we've done OK but I doubt many would put us in the top 8 for next season.  We are definitely closing the gap and so far Gerrard and the Board seem to have been tackling the right problems with their transfer dealings this summer.  So there are plenty of positives.  But unless we can manage to control more games from the centre of the pitch we will probably continue to be incredibly inconsistent.  I am sure that this is what SG is saying to the Board (it is definitely what he is saying in public).  For me we are 1 (ideally 2) players away from being a really good team.  At the moment we are a mid-table team equally as capable of finishing 8th as we are of finishing 14th.  I don't think we will do either of those things (one assumes everything clicks for us, the other implies that lots of things conspire against us).  We could finish top half but to say that we should finish top half without question is (in my opinion) wildly optimistic.

Anyway, it is all (hopefully!) a moot point because I do think that we will be signing another midfielder (and that some kind of agreement will be made with Luiz) and at that stage I will 100% be jumping on the Top 8 bandwagon (well maybe Top 9 just because I have been disappointed for too many seasons to not have doubts that something will go wrong for us at some point! ).

I agree a lot with what you are saying, signing a new starting CM would make me much more confident of a higher finish and Luiz signing a new deal would also add to the optimism. Another CB and ST would be a bonus but I actually think waiting another season to fix those two positions would be fine despite my reservations over Mings and Watkins/Ings.

 

The bit I have underlined is somewhat inaccurate though - we finished above all three of Wolves, Palace and Newcastle the season before last and the season before that we were newly promoted. West Ham also only finished above us in our first season back (by one place) then jumped to 6th the following season. I do genuinely feel we underperformed quite significantly last season much like West Ham did in 19/20. It is possible to jump many places in one season and there is evidence of that from other teams too (Brighton last season for example going from 16th to 9th).

 

I also think it is slightly inaccurate to say we can't hope/expect to go from 14th to 8th "based on signing one midfield player" because the midfield player we signed is an absolutely exceptional talent. We have also upgraded at CB quite significantly if Carlos is as good as he was in Spain, I think he made La Liga team of the year last season and was picked over his team mate Kounde who is supposed to be one of the best young CBs in Europe. La Liga also has a lot of other brilliant CBs.

 

We finished 14tth last season but I don't think that reflected the squad's ability, we really shouldn't have been below the likes of Newcastle, Brentford and Palace last season but most of our players performed below what they are capable of, the only players who could really come out of last season with any credit were Cash and Ramsey, everyone else was below par. It's all ifs, buts and maybes but should the new signings bed in quickly (signing them early should help), and we see much better from the likes of Bailey, Buendia, Ings, Coutinho for a full season, Martinez back to his form of 20/21, then top 10 should be the minimum expectation and maybe even an outside bet of challenging for a European place. I think the only caveat to that is Gerrard as manager, can he make the step up to being a potentially top manager, the second half of last season was a real disappointment and he has a lot to prove, he talks a good game but has a lot to prove tactically to get the best out of a talented squad.

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

Never saw the game, but good to see that a chunk of players have been written off already, in the comments.

I'm guessing we now need about 9 signings?

[Feidhlim]

9 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Never saw the game, but good to see that a chunk of players have been written off already, in the comments.

I'm guessing we now need about 9 signings?

14, easily

[allani]

14 minutes ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

I agree a lot with what you are saying, signing a new starting CM would make me much more confident of a higher finish and Luiz signing a new deal would also add to the optimism. Another CB and ST would be a bonus but I actually think waiting another season to fix those two positions would be fine despite my reservations over Mings and Watkins/Ings.

 

The bit I have underlined is somewhat inaccurate though - we finished above all three of Wolves, Palace and Newcastle the season before last and the season before that we were newly promoted. West Ham also only finished above us in our first season back (by one place) then jumped to 6th the following season. I do genuinely feel we underperformed quite significantly last season much like West Ham did in 19/20. It is possible to jump many places in one season and there is evidence of that from other teams too (Brighton last season for example going from 16th to 9th).

 

I also think it is slightly inaccurate to say we can't hope/expect to go from 14th to 8th "based on signing one midfield player" because the midfield player we signed is an absolutely exceptional talent. We have also upgraded at CB quite significantly if Carlos is as good as he was in Spain, I think he made La Liga team of the year last season and was picked over his team mate Kounde who is supposed to be one of the best young CBs in Europe. La Liga also has a lot of other brilliant CBs.

 

We finished 14tth last season but I don't think that reflected the squad's ability, we really shouldn't have been below the likes of Newcastle, Brentford and Palace last season but most of our players performed below what they are capable of, the only players who could really come out of last season with any credit were Cash and Ramsey, everyone else was below par. It's all ifs, buts and maybes but should the new signings bed in quickly (signing them early should help), and we see much better from the likes of Bailey, Buendia, Ings, Coutinho for a full season, Martinez back to his form of 20/21, then top 10 should be the minimum expectation and maybe even an outside bet of challenging for a European place. I think the only caveat to that is Gerrard as manager, can he make the step up to being a potentially top manager, the second half of last season was a real disappointment and he has a lot to prove, he talks a good game but has a lot to prove tactically to get the best out of a talented squad.

Again I agree with a lot of what you are saying.  One more starting midfielder would make a huge difference to the balance of our squad.  I am probably more confident about our defence than you are - in that I am expecting / hoping Mings will be much improved with someone next to him telling him where to go.  Mings is a good defender but I don't think he reads the game very well and gets caught out of position too often.  I do think Carlos will transform him and as a result we will concede fewer silly goals.

On the counter argument - all five teams finished above us in two of the last three seasons.  I think their fans would point to that as a reason why they would expect to finish ahead of us again this season.  Three of the teams have finished top half in two or more of the last three seasons - we've had spells where we have had top half form and spells where we have had relegation form and more of the latter than the former.  In some ways the fact that mid-table is quite tight means that you can gain places between seasons, in other ways it means that there probably won't be much splitting the teams from 7th - 14th and so one or two poor results could have a big difference in the final league standing.

On the ability of the squad I kind of agree and disagree.  We have some talented players that we probably haven't seen the best of yet.  But I think that the balance of the squad is off.  Kamara has started to address that.  But to really push the top 8 or 9, I still think we need a better balance in midfield.  Luiz and McGinn are both good players but I can't see how suddenly they are both going to transform this season just because we have Kamara behind them.  I would expect them to improve but am still worried that they have haven't been good enough as 66% of the midfield for the last 3 seasons and so it is a big ask for them suddenly to click and not get dominated when other teams apply a hard press.  I also have doubts about how Ollie will fit in with Emi2 and Couts - I don't think he will make as many chances as he should (by not making the runs that those two are looking for and not having the skill / vision to play neat 1-2s with them to create chances for others) and he won't score as many of the chances that are created as he should.  So those two issues that I think are holding us back from a serious Top 8 challenge.

Could we finish top half?  Yes absolutely we could.  Could we finish top 8?  Yes, if things go our way.  But also that applies to maybe 5 or 6 other teams.  I don't think we have any reason to assume at the moment that we should expect either of the above any more than any of the other 5.  We are VERY close and it has been a long time since I have thought we are only 1 or 2 players short of being a really good team.  But I don't think we yet have the balance in our squad to say that anything worse than 10th is the manager's fault.  If we sign the extra midfielder that SG wants then I would agree that the Board will have given him everything that he has said he wants (other than maybe a new striker) and then I would 100% agree with your point that if he wants to be considered a good manager than top half would become a minimum target.  But at the moment we still have 1 too many square pegs that we are trying to fit in a round hole.

[messi11]

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Never saw the game, but good to see that a chunk of players have been written off already, in the comments.

I'm guessing we now need about 9 signings?

Sanson and Nakamba failed to impress for me

[Xela]

2 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Never saw the game, but good to see that a chunk of players have been written off already, in the comments.

I'm guessing we now need about 9 signings?

Sell everyone, buy a new squad

Repeat every summer, because we don't want fans getting 'bored' with no transfers. 

[MWARLEY2]

2 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Never saw the game, but good to see that a chunk of players have been written off already, in the comments.

I'm guessing we now need about 9 signings?

9 book signings for our League winners this coming season.

[sne]

4 minutes ago, Xela said:

Sell everyone, buy a new squad

Repeat every summer, because we don't want fans getting 'bored' with no transfers. 

And the manager needs 25 new players before he can play his football and be properly judged.