VillaChris Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 2 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said: I do wonder why this is. I don’t get the we are all behind you feeling at VP. It’s more the ‘here we go again, let’s go and have a pint instead’. Sat 3pm games always feel very flat to me with atmosphere, even half 5 isn't great if you look at Spurs game when we went 1 down very early and half the crowd went after it went 3-0. If we could play every game under lights then we'd probably win 10 games given some of the best atmospheres in last 5 years have been night games e.g. Everton in that first season back, Leicester in league cup SF and I thought the best atmosphere last season was Leicester at home which was a Sunday half 4 game so that was played under lights for the whole game. Different feel to those games and I prefer them to say Arsenal at home on Saturday lunchtime which feels so flat and I think that filters through to the players even if none of them would ever come out in interviews and admit it. Add in VP probably not feeling that intimidating to away teams. Just need to sign better players and then that can nullify things as it's not like Man City ground is some cauldron of hate for away teams but they win 16-17 home games a season like clockwork. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarryOnVilla Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 Top 6 is a real tall ask for Villa. 7th is possible, but lot of competition for that spot top half is realistic. Bottom half would be disappointing. Relegation battle would be shameful Actual relegation would be humiliating Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomaszk Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 2 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said: I just don’t think we’re good enough at present for the top 6. If we bring in another high quality central midfielder, we’ll be a little closer but I think 7th should be the aim next season with a view that anything lower than 10th is a disaster. What do you think? A push for the top 6 would probably require us to go and buy another starting centre half, another central midfielder and a striker. I don’t think we have the means to do it. My feeling is that we’ll bring in another central midfielder and that could well be your lot from a starting XI perspective. Remains to be seen what the team looks like at the start of the season but honestly I think we are good enough. Arsenal were two points off Champions League football last season and their only players who would start for us are Gabriel, Saka and Partey. Take Smith-Rowe/Odegaard over Luiz/McGinn if you want, but I would hope our new midfielder will be better than all of them in that 8 role. If we keep buying 28 year old players, Europe must be the target. It has to be, or what on earth are we doing otherwise. I do hope the rest of our signings are more Kamara than Coutinho personally. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allani Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 2 hours ago, Delphinho123 said: I just don’t think we’re good enough at present for the top 6. If we bring in another high quality central midfielder, we’ll be a little closer but I think 7th should be the aim next season with a view that anything lower than 10th is a disaster. What do you think? A push for the top 6 would probably require us to go and buy another starting centre half, another central midfielder and a striker. I don’t think we have the means to do it. My feeling is that we’ll bring in another central midfielder and that could well be your lot from a starting XI perspective. I agree with the first of these points. Let's face it the Sly 6 have many years head start on us in terms of building a top quality squad. I think another CM and we will give three of the Sly 6 a really good game next season. But we aren't clinical enough in front of goal and that is likely to cost us over a full season. Wolves, West Ham, Leicester and Newcastle (I suspect) will all be relatively strong next season and I think they are the teams we are "battling". I think all five will have some really good spells but will also lose points they shouldn't. All four (like us) have some obvious weaknesses and fixing those will determine how strong a challenge each can mount. So with the current squad I could see us finishing 11th and it being a decent season as I suspect that there will be not very many points between 8th and 11th. If we are in and competing with that group for the whole season with a realistic chance of a top 8 finish with a couple of matches to go - that would be progress. Sign another midfielder and a striker and then things change. However, we would still only a couple of injuries away from a Top 11 team - so there could be reasons why failing to finish top half might not be a disaster. We have to remember that many of the teams above us have had a decade or more to build their current squads and, in most cases considerably more cash too. The fact that we might be able to push them within 4 seasons of being promoted would be an achievement. We need to not get ahead of ourselves. I'm still really in the "if we have more control in matches and our "style of play" is evident more often than not" then that would be a big step forward. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 Our target needs to be 7th for me along with a cup run (or two). Top 6 is going to be too much to ask unless we sign 3 more starters which I don’t think we’ll do. It honestly depends how brave (or reckless) the board want to be with money. If we want incremental improvement, we’ll sign another central midfielder and be done. If we want to be bold and ambitious, we’ll splash out on a striker too. If we want to really push, and go all out for it, we’d probably need another centre half. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 Top 6 and 70 points minimum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bannedfromHandV Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 Top 8, need to finish above wolves and West Ham ideally as well as the obvious 6. That would be a big step forward in my view, if we could finish 7th we’d get into Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HalfTimePost Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 (edited) Target has to be 6th and would be an Outstanding result. 7th great. 8th Good 9th Satisfactory (Questions to be asked, dependant on the gap to 7th) 10th Disappointing but I'd be OK with it. 11th or worse Unacceptable (someone loses their job) Edited June 4, 2022 by HalfTimePost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vive_La_Villa Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 28 minutes ago, HalfTimePost said: Target has to be 6th and would be an Outstanding result. 7th great. 8th Good 9th Satisfactory (Questions to be asked, dependant on the gap to 7th) 10th Disappointing but I'd be OK with it. 11th or worse Unacceptable (someone loses their job) Agree unless theirs a good cup run too. 11th and an FA cup final I’d take. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vive_La_Villa Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 1 hour ago, jim said: Top 6 and 70 points minimum. Are you @Zatmanin disguise? 70 points ain’t happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark_1989 Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 Anything less than top 8 is poor. We need to change our mentality and really kick on now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick76 Posted June 5, 2022 Author Share Posted June 5, 2022 16 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said: Agree unless theirs a good cup run too. 11th and an FA cup final I’d take. Unless it was a FA Cup win, then 11th shouldn’t be acceptable. I’m not sure 11th should be good enough anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vive_La_Villa Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 7 minutes ago, nick76 said: Unless it was a FA Cup win, then 11th shouldn’t be acceptable. I’m not sure 11th should be good enough anyway. It shouldn’t but I’d take it. Love Wembley days out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allani Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 4 minutes ago, nick76 said: Unless it was a FA Cup win, then 11th shouldn’t be acceptable. I’m not sure 11th should be good enough anyway. Surely that depends on how we finish 11th? I don't expect there to be many points between 7th and 11th this season. The "obvious" contenders for those positions all have there own strengths and weaknesses and there isn't a massive difference between the sides on paper. So let's say that those 5 clubs are within a few points of each other all season and we go into the last couple of weekends still with a reasonable chance of finishing in a European qualification place then that wouldn't be bad - summing up our entire season as either great or unacceptable based on the last 2 matches of the season seems over the top. Quite easy to see a situation where we have a pretty good season and yet still finish 11th but miss out on 7th by maybe 3 or 4 points. That would be better than finishing 9th or even 10th if the top 8 spend most of the season 8 or 9 points clear of us. Basically in that second scenario we will have finished in a higher league position but have been further away from potentially qualifying for Europe - which seems (to me) like a worse season. I would like us to be in and around the European place battle (by which I mean probably within 1 or 2 match results) for most of the season. I'd be a bit happier if we had a win one, lose one, draw one, win one pattern type of record rather than get 6 good results and then have 4 or 5 bad results - which has been our pattern for probably four or five seasons recently. Becoming less streaky would be a step forward - even if we ended the season on a similar number of points (I expect if we become less streaky then actually we would end up getting more points). A 9th place finish, missing out on Europe by 3 points would be a HUGE step forward and would allow us to demonstrate to our current players and targets next summer that our project is working. Thinking that we should finish 6th or 7th on the back of finishing 17th, 11th and 14th and having been out of the European hunt well before the end of the season remains fanciful. We remain a couple of injuries off being a lower-mid-table team. But at the same time only a couple of signings away from being a team that really could be "best of the rest". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick76 Posted June 5, 2022 Author Share Posted June 5, 2022 1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said: It shouldn’t but I’d take it. Love Wembley days out. I only love it when we win, the games against Arsenal and Chelsea weren’t fun at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DakotaVilla Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs should be streets ahead of anyone else. Arsenal and Man Utd should also improve. We should be aiming to compete with West Ham (hopefully they lose an important player), Leicester and maybe Newcastle depending on what business they do for 7th and hopefully one of the big clubs has a season to forget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OLDVILLAIN Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 Is anyone else worried about the numerous rebuilds etc going on in the league right now? The likes of Newcastle and Chelsea are rebuilding, Man Utd will have a whole different team and the likes of Leicester, Leeds and west ham are looking to bring in some decent players also. I'm not sure if we are going to finish any where near top 6 or 7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick76 Posted June 5, 2022 Author Share Posted June 5, 2022 1 hour ago, allani said: Surely that depends on how we finish 11th? I don't expect there to be many points between 7th and 11th this season. The "obvious" contenders for those positions all have there own strengths and weaknesses and there isn't a massive difference between the sides on paper. So let's say that those 5 clubs are within a few points of each other all season and we go into the last couple of weekends still with a reasonable chance of finishing in a European qualification place then that wouldn't be bad - summing up our entire season as either great or unacceptable based on the last 2 matches of the season seems over the top. Quite easy to see a situation where we have a pretty good season and yet still finish 11th but miss out on 7th by maybe 3 or 4 points. That would be better than finishing 9th or even 10th if the top 8 spend most of the season 8 or 9 points clear of us. Basically in that second scenario we will have finished in a higher league position but have been further away from potentially qualifying for Europe - which seems (to me) like a worse season. You have a point! The only thing I would say is that at what point are we happy being in that crowd rather than progressing and being the best of the crowd. If we got 55 points+ and ended up 11th then I agree with you. As I argued a week or so ago but got dismissed I value point targets just as much league position but I was told by a few that only league position matters. For me we need to be around 60 points next season, if we get that or close I think we’d be very unfortunate to be 11th or below. 55 points in 20/21 season that got 11th was very unusual position for that amount of points which normally gets you about 8th position. 1 hour ago, allani said: I would like us to be in and around the European place battle (by which I mean probably within 1 or 2 match results) for most of the season. I'd be a bit happier if we had a win one, lose one, draw one, win one pattern type of record rather than get 6 good results and then have 4 or 5 bad results - which has been our pattern for probably four or five seasons recently. I’m not sure I’d agree. We need to be around European place battle I agree but I certainly won’t be happy with win one, lose one strategy….I don’t feel that’s better than streaky runs for the same points. Both ways have positives and negatives. I want consistent performances, I’d be happy with that even if it doesn’t produce the right result every time, I don’t want us to lose every time we concede an early goal, I want to see fight. I don’t think win one, lose one strategy is any better than streaky runs though. 1 hour ago, allani said: A 9th place finish, missing out on Europe by 3 points would be a HUGE step forward and would allow us to demonstrate to our current players and targets next summer that our project is working. Thinking that we should finish 6th or 7th on the back of finishing 17th, 11th and 14th and having been out of the European hunt well before the end of the season remains fanciful. We remain a couple of injuries off being a lower-mid-table team. But at the same time only a couple of signings away from being a team that really could be "best of the rest". Bringing in Gerrard as the “upgrade”, our spending, youth, infrastructure and everything else, we need to start seeing it on the pitch and in league positions, it’s the only thing missing. Gerrard was brought in to get Europe, we have to be close this season otherwise it will be seen as failure in the boardroom I’m guessing. Everything is being given on the plate, Gerrard and the team now need to deliver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
messi11 Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 We need to challenge for Europe and the top 8. We might not make it but challenging is good. that would be a good season. Getting in Europe again would be a great one A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david-avfc Posted June 5, 2022 Share Posted June 5, 2022 I think we’ll be aiming for 7th but will probably miss it and finish 8th-10th. We’ve spent money already and hopefully there is more in the tank, but converting a highly inconsistent 14th place side into a solid top 6/7 side is a very difficult challenge, especially as there are a number of similar sides pushing for that same position, which is why I can’t see it happening unless we have a particularly great run of form throughout the season. Another bottom half finish now would be viewed as a failure, unless of course there is some unexpected chain of events which sets us back further (e.g. some injuries etc), as we’ve spent enough money and seem to have the right structures behind the scenes now to help us push on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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