Summer Transfer Window 2022

[chrisvilla4]

8 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

Its not that we hate it, we are jealous of it and make out we hate it and claim we don't want to be one of those teams. We all know we want AVFC to buy their way to the top 6 and Champions League football and be one of those teams. 

Sorry mate, I was referring to creating fake ITK twitter accounts. 

It's not that deep 

[a m ole]

9 minutes ago, lexicon said:

Are people really suggesting Teemu Pukki as a signing? 

Watkins can’t finish but the guy who Emi Buendia created 17 billion chances for and couldn’t keep Norwich up is going to do better?

[DakotaVilla]

9 hours ago, paul514 said:

Traore is easily good enough for 4th choice both now and for where we want to be finishing.

Ha. Talk about damning the guy with faint praise…..4th choice. 
 

We should be signing elite options that push our existing first teamers to 2nd, 3rd, 4th option or giving our high potential youths that opportunity or buying elite young players and showing that we have that 3rd, 4th spot open for them. 

[Peter Griffin]

1 minute ago, chrisvilla4 said:

Sorry mate, I was referring to creating fake ITK twitter accounts. 

It's not that deep 

HaHaHa, too close to the truth for me to pick it up as a joke 

[Peter Griffin]

11 hours ago, Zatman said:

he played 40 minutes and got an assist and had a hand in winning the Brighton game then not used again

Not saying Anwar is a genius or something but for me its poor management that a guy is performing well and dumped completely

Using the reason El Ghazi should be in the 1st team reckoning as a bat to beat Gerrard with over poor management has to be your best one yet. 

 

[Sam-AVFC]

19 minutes ago, DakotaVilla said:

Ha. Talk about damning the guy with faint praise…..4th choice. 
 

We should be signing elite options that push our existing first teamers to 2nd, 3rd, 4th option or giving our high potential youths that opportunity or buying elite young players and showing that we have that 3rd, 4th spot open for them. 

Is elite the newest football buzzword? Of course we have always tried to sign who we think are the best players available and affordable at the time, including when we signed Traore.

[Zhan_Zhuang]

Gerrard is his own man and wants his own players, football is ruthless and hence there is no room for sentimentality.

Likewise if Barcelona wanted to pay El Ghazi £500,000 per day he'd be off like a shot.

I want what's best for Villa, not what's best for El Ghazi.

Football is a ruthless business and using yesterday's player as rhetoric for beating Gerrard makes no sense.

Now I like El Ghazi and am thankful for his goals, appearances and Play-off goal but we move on....

If we are looking at anyone to create sanctuary for El Ghazi and save him from purgatory then look to Norwich and in particular Dean Smith.

[Vive_La_Villa]

33 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

Using the reason El Ghazi should be in the 1st team reckoning as a bat to beat Gerrard with over poor management has to be your best one yet. 

 

It’s becoming a parody.

[Vive_La_Villa]

2 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Gerrard is his own man and wants his own players, football is ruthless and hence there is no room for sentimentality.

Likewise if Barcelona wanted to pay El Ghazi £500,000 per day he'd be off like a shot.

I want what's best for Villa, not what's best for El Ghazi.

Football is a ruthless business and using yesterday's player as rhetoric for beating Gerrard makes no sense.

Now I like El Ghazi and am thankful for his goals, appearances and Play-off goal but we move on....

If we are looking at anyone to create sanctuary for El Ghazi and save him from purgatory then look to Norwich and in particular Dean Smith.

You can guarantee that if we had a Poch or a Favre or any other manager that the critics wanted so badly and they made the exact same decisions nothing would be mentioned. 

It’s getting really petty.

El Ghazi is not good enough and needs a new club. Same for Traore. For their own careers loans out might be the best thing for both of them.  

[HalfTimePost]

Poch etc. would be questioned less because he is proven at a high standard. Gerrard is not and hasn't implemented a style with us in 9 months despite being allowed to bring in some big names. Nobody would've disagreed with his decisions if he was making them after the 5 games run after his appointment where we did so well. He's not, and we're not..so there are questions... That's the game

I don't agree El Ghazi should be around the team - he needs to be sold - I do however think it is possible to get more out of him (and many of our players) than we did for all of last season pre-and-post Gerrard appointment. The man-management appears to be lacking imo, I'm not for a minute suggesting that El Ghazi, Traore etc. Could propel us to the Top 8 - they aren't good enough. But they have proven they can pull a moment of magic out of the bag on occasion and it wouldn't do us any harm to keep them engaged, happy and around the first team on the off chance they're needed if we can't sell them.

Football is ruthless and 18 months without performing well is a death knell for almost anybody. El Ghazi, Wesley, Sanson and Traore either have already or will possibly this season hit that milestone.  A few others will see the expected standard around them rise too and might be in danger next year...

That said, Gerrard will also hit the 18 month milestone and hasn't exactly performed to expectations yet himself 

Edited August 1, 2022 by HalfTimePost

[Zhan_Zhuang]

I'd argue the acquisitions of certain players is indeed trying to implement a style as a possession based team, it just takes time. Villa have been counter-attack minded for so long.

Again, acquisitions in pre-season also are players to help us implement the style of a possession based team and we have seen as much in the majority of the pre-season games.

[nick76]

20 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

I'd argue the acquisitions of certain players is indeed trying to implement a style as a possession based team, it just takes time. Villa have been counter-attack minded for so long.

Again, acquisitions in pre-season also are players to help us implement the style of a possession based team and we have seen as much in the majority of the pre-season games.

Are you saying we are looking/trying to look like a possession based team in preseason?

Edited August 1, 2022 by nick76

[His Name Is Death]

1 hour ago, HKP90 said:

I got that reference!!!!

Ha! I forget that most people on here are probably Millennials like me. Not everyone is pushing on 50 or 60, then?

[abdulaziz1]

The strangest thing about this window it’s probably the least one we spent money at since we were up. Yet the most quality signings somehow.

Edited August 1, 2022 by abdulaziz1

[allani]

10 minutes ago, HalfTimePost said:

Poch etc. would be questioned less because he is proven at a high standard. Gerrard is not and hasn't implemented a style with us in 9 months despite being allowed to bring in some big names. Nobody would've disagreed with his decisions if he was making them after the 5 games run after his appointment where we did so well. He's not, and we're not..so there are questions... That's the game

I don't agree El Ghazi should be around the team - he needs to be sold - I do however think it is possible to get more out of him (and many of our players) than we did for all of last season pre-and-post Gerrard appointment. The man-management appears to be lacking imo, I'm not for a minute suggesting that El Ghazi, Traore etc. Could propel us to the Top 8 - they aren't good enough. But they have proven they can pull a moment of magic out of the bag on occasion and it wouldn't do us any harm to keep them engaged, happy and around the first team on the off chance they're needed if we can't sell them.

Football is ruthless and 18 months without performing well is a death knell for almost anybody. El Ghazi, Wesley, Sanson and Traore either have already or will possibly this season hit that milestone.  A few others will see the expected standard around them rise too and might be in danger next year...

That said, Gerrard will also hit the 18 month milestone and hasn't exactly performed to expectations yet himself 

To be fair Gerrard has had some pretty major gaps to fill in the team / squad.  He's improved our left-back options considerably.  He's signed someone to lead our Back 4.  He's finally started to address the major issue with our midfield.  His arrival certainly seemed to spur on JJ - although Smith also deserves credit for sticking with him.  I still think our midfield is painfully poor at dealing with the opposition pressing them because our midfielders are too similar and fit a style that is good for avoiding relegation but not so much for challenging the top of the league.  And our main striker is very inconsistent in front of goal, has a lack of awareness / positioning that limits his effectiveness and has an awful first touch.  If he hasn't managed to impress on the Board that we are still 1 or 2 players short of a team capable of challenging / meeting our ambitions then he becomes part of the problem.  It is difficult to implement a style when our midfielders consistently give the ball away too deep and our defenders then start lumping the ball further upfield in order to at least relieve some pressure.  I am pretty sure than neither Smith nor Gerrard believe(d) that this is the way we should be playing.

The funny thing is that when I say the team aren't good enough to expect a top half finish - people say, but under Gerrard's reign last season we were 9th.  And yet often the same people then say that Gerrard has performed below expectations and isn't doing well enough.  Obviously both can be true as the gap between 9th and 14th/15th is only a handful of points.  So I guess there is a bit of - is 9th but playing rubbish football / no obvious style better or worse than finishing 12th and playing good football with an obvious style / direction?  Is it our managers / coaches that have inhibited us for the last 3 years or the fact that FFP (and other factors) has meant that we had to buy a lot of players who might be good enough to help us survive (they were .... just) but that probably aren't good enough together to match our longer term expectations or it is just that our expectations have got out of control?

My view is that we have some decent players but those players don't work well alongside each other.  There is space in our team for McGinn or Luiz or Sanson or JJ - but probably not 2 of the 4 for anything other than short periods of time.  Same as Mings and Konsa.  I think Carlos plus any of our other CBs is a big improvement.  But until we get another midfielder who can control the ball, dictate the pace of the game, resist the press and also pressurise the opposition into losing the ball - I think it will be hard to implement any style consistently, regardless of manager or system.  I know not everyone feels that way and that some think that the right system will allow our current players to become top level.  Which is why I guess we've had 800 pages of some people saying that the manager is rubbish / needs to improve / get replaced and others saying that some key players are rubbish / need to improve / get replaced. 

 

[sne]

3 minutes ago, abdulaziz1 said:

The strangest thing about this window it’s probably the least one we spent money at since we were up. Yet the most quality signings somehow.

Salaries is probably up there with the most we've spent thou. But fees are great value so far.

 

[abdulaziz1]

Just now, sne said:

Salaries is probably up there with the most we've spent thou. But fees are great value so far.

 

Should be, but when you added together it can’t go to our first window for example when we spent 130m+.

The biggest issue with salaries are resale value, but we had an issue even selling our lowest salary players.

[allani]

26 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Are you saying we are looking/trying to look like a possession based team in preseason?

I think we are trying but we still have certain players in key positions who don't allow us to do it.  Luiz and McGinn (not alone in this) don't control the ball / possession well enough and lose the ball too deep.  Our defenders then panic and try to get the ball further upfield - to our centre forward who couldn't control a TV remote.  This has become a regular feature of our "style" through most of the last 3 seasons.  I guess what we can see is that we have had spells where we've looked pretty decent (and overall our results have been pretty good) but that (much like most of the last 3 seasons) those moments haven't been long or frequent enough.  However, I can see that the team seem to better understand what they are trying to do - that Kamara dropping back, gives us better protection if / when we lose the ball when our full-backs are upfield.  The execution isn't there yet.  But as I think a lot of us would agree - another Kamara helping us get better control of the midfield should make a big difference.  The only real negative in pre-season for me is that Ollie seems to be really struggling and looks more out of place than he has done for a while.  I was hoping that another CM would really set us up for a good season but Ollie's form (and I don't just mean the fact that he hasn't scored yet - I'm talking about the fact that his all round game seems to have dropped a level) is now a real worry.  I am also disappointed that we haven't tried Couts, Emi2 and Bailey at the same time before the start of the season.  It's a gamble to go the Man City "no striker" way but Bailey has been a real bright spot of pre-season.  And I actually feel quite good that if we play 2 "10s" then at 60 minutes we can look forward to either Couts, Emi2 or Bailey coming on.  That's pretty damn good strength in depth right there.

[allani]

35 minutes ago, His Name Is Death said:

Ha! I forget that most people on here are probably Millennials like me. Not everyone is pushing on 50 or 60, then?

Nothing wrong with pushing 50!!!!!!

[John]

15 hours ago, Zatman said:

Would be a backwards signing

It's one we're not taking in any case. Fake twitter accounts.