Villa’s Race for Europe 22/23

[Zatman]

50 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

I don't doubt we could win that Conference League but we will need to play more than the kids to do so. It's damaged West Ham this season in the Premier League. 

It would give us a better platform to sign players and also get fringe players games, which would keep them happy. 

West Ham had a similarly long run in Europe last season in the tougher Europa League and did fine hence why they qualified for Conference League

West Ham poor transfers and Moyes not rotating is why they have a poor season not the competition

[villa4europe]

51 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

I don't doubt we could win that Conference League but we will need to play more than the kids to do so. It's damaged West Ham this season in the Premier League. 

It would give us a better platform to sign players and also get fringe players games, which would keep them happy. 

The Thursday and Sunday games drop off stuff is a mentality thing imo and a load of bollocks

Would also argue that West ham had a couple of good years that covered up them not actually being very good and motes isn't a great manager

Would expect Emery to sort that for us

[sne]

Few managers out there who are better than Emery at managing good but not fantastic squads in league and European cup seasons. The work he did with the Sevilla & Villarreal surely proves this.

PL might be a tougher league to do it in but we are in the right hands to manage it.

[Captain_Townsend]

We can handle extra games- we have the master,  Unai Emery. European football is key to taking the next step up and attracting more players and having more games to blood youth/fringe players.

[fightoffyour]

15 hours ago, ender4 said:

Or you could look at the fixtures and see that they have 2 of the easiest games on paper, a mid table team with nothing to play for and a team that might already be relegated by then so also nothing to play for.  They should really be getting 6 points if they have any pretences about being part of the big 6.

If Brentford get at least a point, ideally a win today, they’ll still have the chance to get 7th themselves if they beat Spurs, hence they’ll be motivated to get a result in that game early next Saturday before we even play liverpool.

[JoshVilla]

If we do sneak into the Conference League, it'll be interesting to see how Emery treats it.

I've no doubt that he'll want to win it. The fact that we haven't won a trophy in far too long, coupled with his know-how in European competitions suggests that he'd have his eyes on bringing it home, but I'm sure he wouldn't want to jeopardise what could be a good assault on the top 6 next season.

The good thing is that it's pretty obvious that NSWE are willing to spend some big money this summer, so I think we'll be in a much better position squad-wise (barring a ridiculous injury crisis). Though, I'd imagine that we'd be looking at quality over quantity. That's the difference at this end of the table.

[Kiwivillan]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

West Ham had a similarly long run in Europe last season in the tougher Europa League and did fine hence why they qualified for Conference League

West Ham poor transfers and Moyes not rotating is why they have a poor season not the competition

Thank you for pointing out the obvious that we're not West Ham who are living off many players that were good 3-4 years ago and they haven't upgraded their squad. 

Some posters want to integrate Archer et al into the squad but don't want Conference League if we get it where that would be perfect scenario to recall some of our loans and give them game time.

[tomsky_11]

1 hour ago, WHY said:

58 and 56 points got 6th and 7th last season, typical. 

Since 2001/02 (which I think is the first season in which it would have been possible for 7th place to earn a place in Europe due to league position), the team in 7th has finished on 57 points or fewer 10 out of 21 seasons.

7th place has actually earned a European spot (not including Intertoto) in 11 of those 21 seasons. 6 of those 11 7th place finishes were with 57 points or fewer. The highest points total earned by the side finishing 8th in these 11 seasons is 61 (twice, Everton in 09/10 and Arsenal in 20/21).

Looking at all 21 seasons since 01/02 and the lowest placed team to qualify via the league position (excluding Intertoto) whether that be 5th, 6th or 7th, these teams finished with 57 points or fewer 7 times out of 21.

[allani]

4 minutes ago, JoshVilla said:

If we do sneak into the Conference League, it'll be interesting to see how Emery treats it.

I've no doubt that he'll want to win it. The fact that we haven't won a trophy in far too long, coupled with his know-how in European competitions suggests that he'd have his eyes on bringing it home, but I'm sure he wouldn't want to jeopardise what could be a good assault on the top 6 next season.

The good thing is that it's pretty obvious that NSWE are willing to spend some big money this summer, so I think we'll be in a much better position squad-wise (barring a ridiculous injury crisis). Though, I'd imagine that we'd be looking at quality over quantity. That's the difference at this end of the table.

Agreed but we don't need to sign many people to be in a position where our bench / rotation options become pretty strong.  I mean another CM and an attacking midfielder (of which there have been plenty of links) would likely mean that McGinn, Buendia and JJ would be on the bench - or maybe playing on the Thursday and on the bench on Sunday (or the other way around).  That's still a pretty strong midfield without having to resort to throwing in the kids.  Similarly, at CB we could be rotating Mings, Carlos and Konsa - so they wouldn't all be playing 180 minutes a week and (based on recent form) we'd not be dropping too much quality regardless of who got picked.  There would be a couple of positions that might cause more concern but the core spine of the team would look pretty powerful without too many additions.  It is about the right additions rather than the volume of additions.

[allani]

6 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

Thank you for pointing out the obvious that we're not West Ham who are living off many players that were good 3-4 years ago and they haven't upgraded their squad. 

Some posters want to integrate Archer et al into the squad but don't want Conference League if we get it where that would be perfect scenario to recall some of our loans and give them game time.

The Conference League plus a couple of good signings will make it much easier to integrate Archer, Aaron, etc into the squad as we'd have more fixtures and actually they won't necessarily be our only "back up" in case of an injury.  For example if we sign another goalscorer then actually I think that makes it easier to keep Archer in the squad.  If Ollie gets injured then we aren't worrying about Archer being our only CF and whether he's ready to lead the line.  He'd be able to start with other good players taking some of the pressure off and letting him find his feet.  Even if Ollie doesn't get injured it makes it easier to give Ollie some rest and Archer some minutes if Ollie isn't 3 times more likely to score than anyone else on the pitch.  And if Archer then hits the ground running - we have the perfect situation of 3 players pushing for 2 positions and giving the manager a couple of headaches!

[ThunderPower_14]

Looks like the conference league is most likely, and I'd hope we have a real go at winning it. It's been way too long between trophies. 

[Kiwivillan]

Listening to Gather round the Lamp podcast recorded before Spurs game and Craig who is great says forget about Spurs game, that's 3pts for us ..  anyway thinking about it we're getting 6th Spurs struggle last 2 and Liverpool is a free hit that we might get surprise result and Brighton will be dead on their feet coming to VP that's rocking

[OutByEaster?]

Here's another plan B in case Brighton beat Arsenal today.

If Brighton were to win three of their games in hand, they could arrive at Villa Park already safely in the Europa league and on the beach - with us just needing to win to knock Spurs down to eighth and progress to the Europa Conference.

It makes me uncomfortable, but hey, it's another scenario where we might succeed - maybe plan C.

[Guest av1]

I just posted in the Liverpool thread that Deano could also do us a favour on Monday. 
 

Anything but a Liverpool win at Leicester ends there chances of the top 4 (albeit not mathematically) That could have a huge bearing on our trip to Anfield. 

[NeilS]

1 hour ago, Captain_Townsend said:

We can handle extra games- we have the master,  Unai Emery. European football is key to taking the next step up and attracting more players and having more games to blood youth/fringe players.

Also to add, Our game is not a blood and thunder, kick and rush style game, but a more considered slow build up play. We should be ok as a result of that style of play in my opinion.

[allani]

7 minutes ago, av1 said:

I just posted in the Liverpool thread that Deano could also do us a favour on Monday. 
 

Anything but a Liverpool win at Leicester ends there chances of the top 4 (albeit not mathematically) That could have a huge bearing on our trip to Anfield. 

I was thinking much the same thing.  If Arsenal and Newcastle both beat Brighton (or Brighton only got 1 point from those matches) and Leicester somehow get a draw then Liverpool's season is to all intents and purposes over.  They'd be pretty much 98% guaranteed 5th place whatever happened.  So hopefully they'd have an off afternoon against us. 

My prediction is that Brighton, Spurs and us turn up on the last day all on 58 points.  But that Leeds are going to beat Spurs 3-1 on the last day (not sure whether that will be enough to keep them up).  Leeds will be 2-0 at half-time, will concede a well dodgy penalty but will score a breakaway goal against the run of play to win.  That would still mean that we would have to avoid losing to Brighton - but hopefully we'll get an early goal and have the "comfort" of knowing that an equaliser would still give us European football.  I would love it if us and Brighton were the two team to get the last two European spots.  I really hate Spurs.

[viivvaa66]

Everybody here seems to think we have no chance against Liverpool next weekend.

However, it seems like people think it is possible that Leicester get a result tomorrow against Liverpool.

Let’s stop and think about that for some seconds. If Liverpool isn’t good enough to beat Leicester, and we are 12 places above Leicester with 27 more points.

I would think it’s much more likely that we get a result against Liverpool than Leicester do.

[nick76]

2 minutes ago, viivvaa66 said:

Everybody here seems to think we have no chance against Liverpool next weekend.

However, it seems like people think it is possible that Leicester get a result tomorrow against Liverpool.

Let’s stop and think about that for some seconds. If Liverpool isn’t good enough to beat Leicester, and we are 12 places above Leicester with 27 more points.

I would think it’s much more likely that we get a result against Liverpool than Leicester do.

I don’t think Leicester will get anything and I’ve put it down as a free hit for us against them.  I’m assuming others are thinking Leicester might get something and why it’s different for us is that Liverpool are playing away against Leicester whereas they are playing us at Anfield where they are rock solid, only losing 1 game whereas away they have lost 8 games.

[abdulaziz1]

I think Brentford winning could be in out favour, would give them momentum and chance to be above Spurs if they win (with a slim chance of Europe. We have 8 important games, hopefully it goes in our favour. 
At this stage, watching rivals games equals watching Villa ones. 
Come on Arsenal, we’ve beaten Spurs home and away, win please today.

[Kingman]

So Brentford are currently 2-0 up with about 10 minutes left and just 4 points behind us and Spurs. 

They now play spurs on Saturday, win that are we lose at Liverpool then only one point between us 3 on the final day, I've not  included Brighton as they still 5 games left so I think 6th is there's to lose.