Popular Post calcifer Posted January 22 Popular Post Share Posted January 22 12 hours ago, Adam2003 said: All comes down to the second point for me - I think we will finish 5th (comfortably, by a distance from 6th) so time to support all the English teams in Europe this season! Cant do it, would rather stick my nipples to a car battery and rub one off with a cheese grater, then support Liverpool 1 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVTuco Posted January 22 VT Supporter Share Posted January 22 20 hours ago, calcifer said: 2009 says hello wasn't we 7 points clear of Arsenal who were 5th. Finished that season 6th... I'm afraid this will happen again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post HalfTimePost Posted January 22 Popular Post Share Posted January 22 (edited) Ah the race to be able to say "I told you so" or "It was always obvious we wouldn't finish there" has moved to this thread I see. 3 points clear with half a season to go. Dream a bit ffs. If you cant enjoy this season, you may aswell find something else to do as you'll never find happiness in this sport. Even if you've waited what, 30 years for us to get back to the European Cup / Champions League and you're already fighting to say you were here early enough to call us missing out on it... honestly, what's the point? Edited January 22 by HalfTimePost 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJBOB Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 (edited) I think for all of the typical VT bedwetting, we remain in a prime position for 4th or 5th. The underlying stats are morphing with the league table now. That's not to say that clubs, both us and others, will continue to underperform or outperform the underlying statistics. The game is played on the pitch and not on spreadsheets, after all - much to the chagrin of FM players worldwide! But Villa remain not a flash in the pain...while losing ground on the top 3 (Liverpool/City/Arsenal) For me - we are not equal or better than those teams in sustained attacks against low blocks and/or set pieces. We have an excellent counter-attacking team as well as being able to bait teams into pressing us to form a counter-attack with our full squad available (especially Pau). Our defense is about 4th or 5th best in the league based on a variety of metrics. But our results against low blocks and on set pieces have kept us from maintaining a title charge. The good news remains that the teams around us are flawed. Spurs - for their lovely open play - are seemingly allergic to defense and outperform their statistics by a large margin. Chelsea underperform their attacking statistics because they lack any clinical finishers. West Ham - no other explanation needed. United - continue to remain very lucky and have glaring holes all over the squad and set up. And Brighton are about where they're at after selling crucial players and getting the rest of the squad up to speed. 4th is still the most likely scenario for me, both in terms of PPG, schedule, and underlying statistics. But 17 matches is a long way to go... Edited January 22 by DJBOB 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fun Factory Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 1 hour ago, calcifer said: Cant do it, would rather stick my nipples to a car battery and rub one off with a cheese grater Whatever floats your boat is fine by me. Just stick it behind a paywall. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick76 Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 2 minutes ago, HalfTimePost said: Ah the race to be able to say "I told you so" or "It was always obvious we wouldn't finish there" has moved to this thread I see. 3 points clear with half a season to go. Dream a bit ffs. If you cant enjoy this season, you may aswell find something else to do as you'll never find happiness in this sport. Even if you've waited what, 30 years for us to get back to the European Cup / Championed League and you're already fighting to say you were here early enough to call us missing out on it... honestly, what's the point? I agree, if we can’t be optimistic after 80+ points in 2023, even more so that we have averaged 2 ppg since Emery started and we have our main players back from injury and suspension and 12 days break. People say we’ve been in poor form and need to be realistic, but realism has been ~2 ppg under Emery and our poor form coincided with, at various points, key players out like Torres, Tielemans, Kamara, Moreno, JJ so now they are back I’d say it’s more realistic that we continue with ~2 points a game and thus end up with ~77 points which by any metric should get us Top4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calcifer Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 59 minutes ago, AVTuco said: I'm afraid this will happen again. I would be really disappointed if we finished 6th this season now, it would be worse than the collapse in 2009 IMO. But its because of things like that we are always apprehensive! The only happy people would be the Media with their told you so and it would take weeks to clean up the Sky and BBC studios if Spurs Finished 4th and Manure finished 5th. But for that to happen we would need to go on an awful run of losses, something that we dont do that often under the guidance of Unai. We have been playing awful, the Everton game was diabolical. Maybe a cross between tiredness and teams now combatting the high line. Just looking at this, Konsa Watkins SJM and Emi, all ever present. 4 key players in key positions. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/aston-villa/leistungsdaten/verein/405/plus/0?reldata=GB1%262023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveAV1 Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 2 hours ago, calcifer said: Cant do it, would rather stick my nipples to a car battery and rub one off with a cheese grater, then support Liverpool A very valid point. We’ll have to finish 4th just to shut that lot up. I’d love them to finish 5th and just miss out having lot to us! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 8 hours ago, Delphinho123 said: We’re not getting close to Liverpool or Man City - especially with Doku and De Bruyne back now. Arsenal are better than us but look fragile. Spurs are as good as us and have Maddison coming back. If you had a gun to my head, I’d say we’ll finish 5th. I don’t think we’ll make the top 4. Cue the, ‘Oh my god you’re such a bed wetter’ posts. That's a fair post. I do think it's very likely indeed 5th will get CL this season. End of the day we've basically got that in our hands as if we get to the conference final and English team gets to the final of one of the other competitions you'd think that would be enough on its own. Helps there's two places available rather than one so we can be o.k with another country doing well in those competitions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 The key is simply to win the next two games. No excuse whatsoever not to beat Newcastle given their general form in last two months, our very good recent record v them at VP and given all the links their squad will be unsettled and they'll probably have a weak first 11 out. They also play Fulham 24 hours after we play in FA cup. And if we can't beat Sheffield United home or away this season we don't deserve top 4. We do our job and that's 49 points after 23 games. My aim is 70 points and we could then achieve that by winning 7 of our last 15 so wouldn't even need a 50% win ratio to achieve that. Hopefully we do that as wouldn't want to be going into the Man. United game on 3/4 winless run as then things will get nervy given what happened on Boxing day. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdulaziz1 Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 First of all, it’s not been quite good games but, we weren’t really bad at any. At Brentford we had an ok first half, then against Sheffield we weren’t at our best yet it was one of those games. Against Utd we were naive. Then against Burnley we were good but we lacked something going forward (slightly better the previous games). Everton we were fine but we’re not creating much. I think losing Kamara was our main issue (then add Pau to the equation) if we had them we would’ve possibly won all which could have helped our confidence and belief. Anyway, still some important games coming up, teams are more familiar how to play against us. We have to be sure to keep a gap with Man Utd, Newcastle and Chelsea. Also keep in touch with those around us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 Next season if we do get to the Champions League will be more random complaints like "We qualified too soon" or something similar 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nepal_villan Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 If you do the math, it really has to be a monumental collapse for us not to finish in the top 5 spots. Seeing the West Ham and Brighton results this week, does not look like anyone from the pack is going to make a strong 2nd half charge either. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jareth Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 41 minutes ago, nepal_villan said: If you do the maths Sorry, couldn't help myself. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilko154 Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 22 hours ago, Delphinho123 said: I wholeheartedly agree. I’d snap your hands off for 5th right now. My worry is that we haven’t played well for 6 weeks and that this *could* be more our level. If this is the case then I think we’ll limp to 5th place. I really don’t think we’ve been great since the Man City game where we arguably put in one of the best performances I’ve ever seen at Villa park. It’s a big game against Newcastle. We owe them one and they can’t buy a win at the minute. It’s also likely that Trippier will have left or be left out for that game and he is a source of a lot of their goals. We need to maintain that gap over Brighton, West Ham and Chelsea/UTD. I’m afraid I’m looking over my shoulder more at the moment, such has been our results of late. Glass half empty and all that. In fairness though, although we haven't been great since Man City the Arsenal game was won with a tired team. Since then we've had various injuries and suspensions which have killed the momentum. With a small squad injuries and suspensions will always drag down on results; we don't have the luxury of squad depth like City. The break and FA Cup games have given us time to get a tired squad back together for the second half of the season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Steve Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 18 hours ago, HalfTimePost said: Ah the race to be able to say "I told you so" or "It was always obvious we wouldn't finish there" has moved to this thread I see. 3 points clear with half a season to go. Dream a bit ffs. If you cant enjoy this season, you may aswell find something else to do as you'll never find happiness in this sport. Even if you've waited what, 30 years for us to get back to the European Cup / Champions League and you're already fighting to say you were here early enough to call us missing out on it... honestly, what's the point? Don Unai has had us in Champions League form for well over a year. We are the extremely consistent and there’s no reason why we can’t finish at least 4th. Let a man dream. I was born to early to really remember the domestic successes under Little. It’s never felt this possible in many, many years. Let a man dream. We have a truly elite manager. Ambitious and rich owners. A squad full of quality and spirit. We are incredibly good hands. Let a man dream. I won’t stop dreaming of this possibility until it’s mathematically impossible for us to dream of it. So, let a man dream until then. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PieFacE Posted January 23 VT Supporter Share Posted January 23 It would be bloody typical that we finish 5th but no English teams make the finals of European Competition. However, I still think 4th is totally achievable. Spurs will get more injuries with the brand of football they play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwivillan Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 17 minutes ago, PieFacE said: It would be bloody typical that we finish 5th but no English teams make the finals of European Competition. However, I still think 4th is totally achievable. Spurs will get more injuries with the brand of football they play. I want to finish above Arsenal. Think we can. The Palace result means nothing. Palace are relegation candidates 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 37 minutes ago, PieFacE said: It would be bloody typical that we finish 5th but no English teams make the finals of European Competition. However, I still think 4th is totally achievable. Spurs will get more injuries with the brand of football they play. We don't need ANY English teams to reach the final to get the coefficient place. Its so unlikely not to go to England and would require pretty much all of us to get knocked out in the 1st round. Which isn't going to happen. We will qualify in 5th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted January 23 VT Supporter Share Posted January 23 19 hours ago, HalfTimePost said: Ah the race to be able to say "I told you so" or "It was always obvious we wouldn't finish there" has moved to this thread I see. 3 points clear with half a season to go. Dream a bit ffs. If you cant enjoy this season, you may aswell find something else to do as you'll never find happiness in this sport. Even if you've waited what, 30 years for us to get back to the European Cup / Champions League and you're already fighting to say you were here early enough to call us missing out on it... honestly, what's the point? We've had 25 years of being, on the whole, completely shit. And the last time we were almost good, we bottled it with a huge collapse. I don't think you can blame people for being cautious or pessimistic, especially when our current run of form is a bit concerning. Good things don't happen to us. People aren't used to us doing well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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