kidlewis Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 (edited) If we can do slightly better than Newcastle next year we have done well. Going for the title would mean sacrificing a lot in other areas. finish top 8 CL knockout phase (lose to Real Madrid) league cup final (lose to city probably) FA cup quarter+ (United turn up as usual) would love more but we aren’t West Ham and stupid enough to move Unai on if he does something like the above next season. Edited May 19 by kidlewis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indigo Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 This season was such a weird one that it's even more difficult than usual to know what to expect for the next one this early on. You'd imagine the volume of both injuries and goals surely can't be so excessive again next season the way they were across the league this time around. I saw some kind of league table totalling the number of injured players as well as games missed by each of them and Villa were only around 10th, which is mad considering how much we've been impacted by them. Then on top of that you've a record amount of goals in a season league-wide, normally a team that finishes 4th concedes something in the region of 35-45, yet Villa let in 60+ and it doesn't even look that bad compared to the rest of the table. It's a ridiculously competitive league, which is all the more reason not to overlook how massive an achievement finishing 4th was. I think if we're in the mix to finish there again whilst competing in the Champions League next season we'll be doing pretty well, but we'll see what the summer brings! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bose Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 This season showed us that we can compete on two fronts. The next step in the journey is to cement our position as top 4-6 club. Which is huge. We are miles away from challenging for the league with City playing like they are. Look at Arsenal and Liverpool before them, even they are a level above us. The level below will be us, Newcastle, Spurs, possibly Liverpool going through a manager change, Chelsea and likely Man Utd. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlobalVillan Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 Title chase? Come on, this can't be serious. Man City finished 23 points above us this season and it was our best season in years. They will win it again of course, but we can hopefully finish 4th again and close the points gap even just a little bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomC Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 (edited) On 15/05/2024 at 18:44, Pongo Waring said: Here is how I see the race: Man City - Settled and strong. Arsenal - Settled and strong Liverpool - No Klopp, new manager, not stable, unpredictable. Villa - Settled and will get stronger Chelsea - Finished strongly, more settled. Will be our biggest contenders for 4th. Newcastle- They're strong at home, if they keep their best players they will challenge Spurs - Ange interview yesterday was odd, seems unsettled club. Man United- Not worried about them, Bournemouth- Dark Horses Brighton - Not worried about them I agree with all your assessments except... 1. I have a bit more respect for Postecoglu than some around here. Spurs won't be title contenders but will be realistic CL challengers again. 2. Of the mid-table teams, Palace's strong finish makes them more likely than Bournemouth to challenge for Europe. EDIT: That's based on current squads. The transfer market could change things. Edited May 20 by TomC 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomC Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 (edited) On 16/05/2024 at 11:45, Tom13 said: Apologies if this has already been posted somewhere, but, damn impressive for 23/24: On 16/05/2024 at 12:00, briny_ear said: Doesn’t look so impressive though if you do a top 6 mini league or top 10. We did exceptionally well against the top 3 and next season we need to spread that consistency down to teams 5 - 10 briny_ear hit the nail on the head. When you look not only at City's results in the table above, but also the rest of the top 6 (one draw against fifth-placed Spurs, which might have been two had it not been for a glaring Son miss last week, and two draws against sixth-placed Chelsea) and at their performance in Europe (i.e. Real Madrid), they are plenty vulnerable against other top teams. It's their consistency against the bottom that makes the difference...against the bottom 14, the lost only once (Wolves, without Rodri in the side) and drew only once (Palace). That's incredible. Beat the teams you're supposed to beat and good things happen. Edited May 20 by TomC Fixed bad edit 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdulaziz1 Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 22 hours ago, kidlewis said: If we can do slightly better than Newcastle next year we have done well. Going for the title would mean sacrificing a lot in other areas. finish top 8 CL knockout phase (lose to Real Madrid) league cup final (lose to city probably) FA cup quarter+ (United turn up as usual) would love more but we aren’t West Ham and stupid enough to move Unai on if he does something like the above next season. West Ham weren’t stupid by changing Moyes, they were going nowhere with him. He won them trophy, fair enough, but the style of play is already exposed. As a counter attacking team, they have the worst defence if we exclude relegated teams. Same as someone coming to say Southgate is a good manager because he went to two finals which haven’t been done for decades. Judging managers only by them winning cups isn’t right, that’s why I wasn’t impressed when we had Di Matteo for example. He won CL but with a defensive tactics and strong squad. It’s not sustainable. That’s totally different to Unai, who gave us a character. I will give you a small example, during the season I kept watching other games and cheer for our favor (wether wanting Spurs to lose lately or English teams to win in Europe or teams around us at the beginning of the season..etc). I was used to Martinez going out to cover after any offside trap, every time I expected the same but it don’t happen. We have our style of play and building on it. That should expect more players to success than not, before we didn’t have style nor know who’s the player that might help us. Now even supporters can know the needs. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdulaziz1 Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 Just now, abdulaziz1 said: West Ham weren’t stupid by changing Moyes, they were going nowhere with him. He won them trophy, fair enough, but the style of play is already exposed. As a counter attacking team, they have the worst defence if we exclude relegated teams. Same as someone coming to say Southgate is a good manager because he went to two finals which haven’t been done for decades. Judging managers only by them winning cups isn’t right, that’s why I wasn’t impressed when we had Di Matteo for example. He won CL but with a defensive tactics and strong squad. It’s not sustainable. That’s totally different to Unai, who gave us a character. I will give you a small example, during the season I kept watching other games and cheer for our favor (wether wanting Spurs to lose lately or English teams to win in Europe or teams around us at the beginning of the season..etc). I was used to Martinez going out to cover after any offside trap, every time I expected the same but it don’t happen. We have our style of play and building on it. That should expect more players to success than not, before we didn’t have style nor know who’s the player that might help us. Now even supporters can know the needs. Saying that, I think Chelsea changing Poch might regress them. I used to say (even during their bad run), they’re a threat. Any team that miss a lot of chances could turn our to be a tough one. Brighton used to miss for few season, but finally they made it to Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted May 21 VT Supporter Share Posted May 21 Got a sneaky feeling City might "win" it next year 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted May 21 Share Posted May 21 Gonna have to improve our form! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turvontour Posted May 21 Share Posted May 21 3 minutes ago, Wainy316 said: Gonna have to improve our form! If we absolutely had to beat Palace I'm sure we could have atleast avoided defeat, and so would be 6th for second half of the season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaVilla Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Townsend Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 Injuries cost us from December onwards. If we'd had some luck, and maybe hadn't the conference league. We would have been closer to the top 2. I mean. If you look at our form November 2022 to December 2023 it speaks for itself. Kamara in particular was a huge blow to us. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pongo Waring Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 1 minute ago, Captain_Townsend said: Injuries cost us from December onwards. If we'd had some luck, and maybe hadn't the conference league. We would have been closer to the top 2. I mean. If you look at our form November 2022 to December 2023 it speaks for itself. Kamara in particular was a huge blow to us. Chelsea had a lot of injuries yet were flying 2nd half of the season Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 26 minutes ago, MaVilla said: Last year's one was satisfying to see our rise up the league, but man does it feel good to see your team between 2nd and 5th virtually all season. Had a chance to go top in December! The title charge is only a couple of years off you'd feel. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viivvaa66 Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 5 hours ago, Pongo Waring said: Chelsea had a lot of injuries yet were flying 2nd half of the season When you have a squad of 30+ players that costed billions to assemble, injuries have less of an impact. What improved Chelsea was that they found a style of play that fitted the players they had in the second half of the season. Most teams have a limited quality in their squad, meaning that performance drop when fatigue/ burnout/ injuries impact key players. Teams that have more quantity of quality in their squad can do more player rotation, providing them with rested players in the second half of the season. This is one of the reasons ManC is performing better in the second half compared to first half. The team they play is weaker second half of the season, while they themself is equally strong in both half’s. Next season we could get a boost in the second half of the season if Kamara comes back fully fit. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinker Posted May 25 VT Supporter Share Posted May 25 (edited) 6 hours ago, Captain_Townsend said: Injuries cost us from December onwards. If we'd had some luck, and maybe hadn't the conference league. We would have been closer to the top 2. I mean. If you look at our form November 2022 to December 2023 it speaks for itself. Kamara in particular was a huge blow to us. That and the fact we never had cover for him as well, small squad , not in numbers but in the ability to compete with our first team players which is what a consistent top 4 team needs. Edited May 25 by tinker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DakotaVilla Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 Champions league qualification and a trophy next year has to be the aim. If we get champions league two years running it would give us an extremely strong base to build a team that could challenge for the next 5 to 10 years under Emery. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colhint Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 (edited) On 19/05/2024 at 23:16, Indigo said: This season was such a weird one that it's even more difficult than usual to know what to expect for the next one this early on. You'd imagine the volume of both injuries and goals surely can't be so excessive again next season the way they were across the league this time around. I saw some kind of league table totalling the number of injured players as well as games missed by each of them and Villa were only around 10th, which is mad considering how much we've been impacted by them. Then on top of that you've a record amount of goals in a season league-wide, normally a team that finishes 4th concedes something in the region of 35-45, yet Villa let in 60+ and it doesn't even look that bad compared to the rest of the table. It's a ridiculously competitive league, which is all the more reason not to overlook how massive an achievement finishing 4th was. I think if we're in the mix to finish there again whilst competing in the Champions League next season we'll be doing pretty well, but we'll see what the summer brings! I was them stats as well. Upon closer look it only counts from the start of the season. Mings injury is in it because it occurred on the first day, however, Buendias injury isn't in the figures because it was in preseason. Doesn't half skew the figures. Edited May 25 by colhint Bleeding predictive text Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vive_La_Villa Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 (edited) 21 minutes ago, DakotaVilla said: Champions league qualification and a trophy next year has to be the aim. If we get champions league two years running it would give us an extremely strong base to build a team that could challenge for the next 5 to 10 years under Emery. Unai is a genius but to maintain a top 4 push and win a trophy i think we would need to spend massive sums and increase the wage bill significantly. Something we just can’t do. If you’ve got any examples of a Club with similar spending and wage bill as us that have achieved top 4 and won a trophy in the same season I’d happily say I’m wrong. Of course it should be the aim but it’s very unlikely to happen. Edited May 25 by Vive_La_Villa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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