Kiwivillan Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 18 minutes ago, Mantis said: We've just been so poor this season. It's all so dreadful. Are you trolling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 1 hour ago, Kiwivillan said: Are you trolling? Blatantly satire in response to a few posters mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mantis Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 1 hour ago, Kiwivillan said: Are you trolling? Yes, I'm taking the piss. I mean if we lose tomorrow I could definitely see us finishing outside the top 5 but the idea that it's hard to see where our next win coming from is ridiculous. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul514 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) Must win tomorrow to kill off Man Utd and secure 5th Edited February 11 by paul514 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 9 hours ago, LondonLax said: It really doesn’t though. Look at Leicester, look at Newcastle. Finishing 4th doesn’t transform your club. If anything it is an extra burden around your neck for the next season. The big 6 are the big 6 not because of the champions league. They have much more spending power because they were the top clubs when the Premier League became a global brand and all the global fans and sponsors went to them. It really does. CL qualification is absolutely vital to us as a club. Far bigger than winning the FAC unfortunately as that's how football is nowadays. We do need to qualify regularly for it to make the huge difference we hope for, but we have to start qualifying at some point or we will NEVER bridge the financial gap to the sky 6. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 11 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said: We won 5-0 a week ago and you can’t see where the next win is coming from? Maybe Luton March 2nd? Maybe yeh. We may even win today, but our performances have been turgid and getting steadily worse for weeks. Right now, I’d back any team (Sheff Utd aside) playing us. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 1 hour ago, GlobalVillan said: It really does. CL qualification is absolutely vital to us as a club. Far bigger than winning the FAC unfortunately as that's how football is nowadays. We do need to qualify regularly for it to make the huge difference we hope for, but we have to start qualifying at some point or we will NEVER bridge the financial gap to the sky 6. Winning a trophy is the whole point of watching professional football. Our fans have put the Champions League up on a pedestal as the holy grail that will transform us to being back up there with the biggest clubs again but I think fans are going to be a bit deflated the season after when we’re still the same club. Look at other leagues for further examples of how Champions League qualification doesn’t make much difference to a mid table side. Teams like Villarreal, Lazio, Sociedad etc have not been transformed into power house teams that can compete with the Barcelona/Madrid/Milan names in a commercial sense. It will be just another false dawn when it finally happens for us but winning a cup will stay with us forever. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) 15 minutes ago, LondonLax said: Winning a trophy is the whole point of watching professional football. Our fans have put the Champions League up on a pedestal as the holy grail that will transform us to being back up there with the biggest clubs again but I think fans are going to be a bit deflated the season after when we’re still the same club. Look at other leagues for further examples of how Champions League qualification doesn’t make much difference to a mid table side. Teams like Villarreal, Lazio, Sociedad etc have not been transformed into power house teams that can compete with the Barcelona/Madrid/Milan names in a commercial sense. It will be just another false dawn when it finally happens for us but winning a cup will stay with us forever. I agree about winning trophies being the point and I have said as much many times on here, but repeated qualification for the CL is infinitely more valuable and the ONLY way to bridge the financial gap long term. (Without being despicable cheats like Man City) It's that simple. Edited February 11 by GlobalVillan 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 1 hour ago, Delphinho123 said: Maybe yeh. We may even win today, but our performances have been turgid and getting steadily worse for weeks. Right now, I’d back any team (Sheff Utd aside) playing us. Literally hours ago you couldn't see where the next win was coming from. Extreme. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 7 minutes ago, GlobalVillan said: I agree about winning trophies being the point and I have said as much many times on here, but repeated qualification for the CL is infinitely more valuable and the ONLY way to bridge the financial gap long term. It's that simple. As Newcastle finding out this season and what Carragher correctly highlighted in his article, repeated qualification for the Champions League is going to be difficult for clubs like us and Newcastle. Listened to a few podcasts and reading online prior to the Chelsea game there were people saying they would rather than win the FA Cup than the Europa Conference. Villa are just not in a position to pick and choose what trophy they can try and win. That argument didn’t last long though. Personally feel we can qualify for the Champions League and win the Europa Conference which would be excellent season. Will feel confident of top 5 if we win today. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Just now, RichW said: As Newcastle finding out this season and what Carragher correctly highlighted in his article, repeated qualification for the Champions League is going to be difficult for clubs like us and Newcastle. Listened to a few podcasts and reading online prior to the Chelsea game there were people saying they would rather than win the FA Cup than the Europa Conference. Villa are just not in a position to pick and choose what trophy they can try and win. That argument didn’t last long though. Personally feel we can qualify for the Champions League and win the Europa Conference which would be excellent season. Will feel confident of top 5 if we win today. Repeated qualification for the CL won't be easy but the alternative isnt to just qualify once either. We will play the extra games whichever European tournament we are in so the extra game argument I hear from some, doesn't stack up. But we need to win today so badly and at worst, just not lose. We need to finish 5th this season and can then see whats what next year. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 13 minutes ago, GlobalVillan said: Repeated qualification for the CL won't be easy but the alternative isnt to just qualify once either. We will play the extra games whichever European tournament we are in so the extra game argument I hear from some, doesn't stack up. But we need to win today so badly and at worst, just not lose. We need to finish 5th this season and can then see whats what next year. Yeah I feel we need Champions League or Europa at minimum, just to be able to even finance keeping our best players and to spend moderately without worrying about FFP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villan95 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 12 hours ago, VillaChris said: Relegation battles are grim when you don't win for months and a rival pulls out a shock result that leaves you deep in the mire and potentially about to cost 100s of millions. Top end of the league we are at least winning plenty of games up to last few weeks. Missing out on CL would be a huge blow, there's no denying but we could still win a trophy and get consolation of europa league. Again many would've settled for that in August although it would be seen as a disappointment given where we've been for most of this season. To be fair us and Tottenham have swapped positions a couple of times. They started really strong then had a blip just as we had a really good spell. I think both teams will be disappointed if they don't get 4th but it will come down to who is more consistent and has the least dips in form. Hopefully 5th becomes a CL place so it becomes irrelevant. Important that we keep a nice buffer to Utd and Newcastle now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villan95 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 16 hours ago, markavfc40 said: What a massive opportunity tomorrow is for us as a win and we can almost cement a top 5 finish (and a good chance of champ league qualification) barring a final 3rd of the season total collapse. Tomorrow we can go 11 points clear of Man Utd, 14 clear of Brighton after their loss today and with West Ham up against Arsenal a very good chance to go 13 clear of them. Huge game tomorrow. Bring it on. Absolutely. Have to see it as an opportunity. Hopefully the players are embracing it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 15 minutes ago, GlobalVillan said: Repeated qualification for the CL won't be easy but the alternative isnt to just qualify once either. We will play the extra games whichever European tournament we are in so the extra game argument I hear from some, doesn't stack up. But we need to win today so badly and at worst, just not lose. We need to finish 5th this season and can then see whats what next year. Oh I agree. I’m glad it looks like we are going to have back-to-back European football instead of having to wait 13 years. If West Ham can have 3 seasons in a row of Europe don’t see why we can’t. If we don’t qualify for the Champions League it won’t be because we had Europe. The trend this seasons seems to be we play better when we had a game mid-week funny enough. The fact we are in this position with Europe would make our achievement more impressive than Newcastles last season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 1 hour ago, DCJonah said: Literally hours ago you couldn't see where the next win was coming from. Extreme. Its boring not extreme at this stage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romavillan Posted February 11 VT Supporter Share Posted February 11 16 hours ago, Tayls said: Based purely on form since the Brentford game, and after a slight revision of my previous prediction, I am going 5 wins, 2 draws, 8 losses. 63 points total. (I said 69 previously). If we can actually turn our form around properly, then I expect us to break the 70 point mark. So after a year of 2ppg we suddenly go down to nearly 1ppg? Don't see it, even at 1.4ppg (form over last 5 that has everyone worried) we'd finish on 67 points. United would have to find the form for 2ppg to overtake us in that case. Anyway, avoid defeat today, or even better win and they'd have to do better than 2ppg. If we're talking about beating spurs to fourth then we need to find our 2ppg form and get 70pts plus which would be an amazing acheivement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Reality is we simply don't have the quality in depth alot of our main competitors have. As others have mentioned, when we are all fully fit we are fine, but the drop offs when we have a few injuries is telling. Assume this will be addressed further in summer. Us flying is dependent on us being as fit as possible for as long as possible. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) 31 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said: Reality is we simply don't have the quality in depth alot of our main competitors have. As others have mentioned, when we are all fully fit we are fine, but the drop offs when we have a few injuries is telling. Assume this will be addressed further in summer. Us flying is dependent on us being as fit as possible for as long as possible. I have said this all season and got called negative for thinking we couldn't compete with the top 3 over the season. I was also told I was negative by saying I think Spurs are stronger across their squad, they will finish above us. Whereas I was just being realistic. Hell, there are still some people calling others negative for not thinking we will win the title never mind finishing 4th. My point is that I agree about the drop off in terms of quality and that's why I think that 5th is our ceiling this season. And that's absolutely fine by me! I just hope we can get it. Then, we can address the gaps in the summer as you say. We have a lot of catching up to do both in terms of squads and financially on those above us, so it will take time. We are ahead of where I thought we would be and that's a good thing. Edited February 11 by GlobalVillan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tayls Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) I do think people need to move on a bit from the thinking that because of how we played in first part of the season, that the current way we are playing is acceptable. If you believe that is fine then we won’t achieve anything ever, it’s a very poor mindset… there is a lot that needs changing with us at the minute, injuries or not. We look like we have completely reverted back to type, which is awful. Edited February 11 by Tayls Typos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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