Get to ****...obviously you have bleached Ndombelly outta your memory... I'll also give you Rohan Rickets...and he was a free transfer...Fraiser Campbell, Gilberto, Rasiak, Zamora, Andy Gray...gonna stop ... depressing memory overload
Just got nothing going forwards other than kudus at the minute. Need Solanke back asap as it just bounces back with Tel or Richarlison. Not sure what Simons has against having a shot either!
On a serious note we need to be realistic. This team lost 22 league games last season. We only won 11 and drew the remaining 5. We only beat the 3 teams below us in 3 games out of 6. we failed to get a point against ... Chelsea, Arsenal, Forest, Brighton, Liverpool, Newcastle and Palace. We got just 1 point from Fulham, Leicester, Wolves and Bournemouth. Frank has got players bought by Conte and Ange and has only had one transfer window and has long term injuries to our 2 most creative midfielders and first choice striker. we are not getting top 4 or 5... that is simply too big a leap. I think only Leicester have done that in the Premier League era. if we get top 8 , out of the CL group stage and have a decent cup run I think Frank will have done well.
I agree with this. There are definite signs of improvement. We are far harder to play against and I've generally been impressed with us defensively compared to the circus we had to watch every week last season. Frank wasn't given a transfer window to make top 5 a realistic expectation whatsoever. As you mentioned, he inherited a load of bang average players and we then seemingly added a few more to that in the summer. For me, top half and decent cup runs represents good progress and enough to build on.
This is my view too. To go from 17th to 5th isn’t happening in one season. A top half finish this season and then hopefully some further good signings in summer of 2026 to take the squad further
Worth getting soaking wet for that. Yes a quality 2nd goal but for me Vic has to do much better on the first... I agree with whoever said Maddison is a big miss though, and the strike force way too lightweight. Also what is with the throw ins? Short or long they were bloody awful. Oh well picked up a bargain ploughman's sandwich at Kings X so just get me home...
Maddison is a rare talent and without his guile we need a bulldozer like Solanki and ATM we have neither.
The main issue is it still feels like it's our CBses's job to bridge between defence and attack - and when Romero is out, the lack of his through balls from deep make it all the more clear we had 4-5 years worth of managers who constructed midfields to serve as a screen for the defence, a platform to get the ball out wide, or to have some willing runners above all else Case in point, a Palhinha/Bentancur pivot would have been Conte's dream as that would be winning and recycling the ball to the WBs all day long, but for a match like today we really should have considered either Bergvall to exploit the space that was opening up in the first half or Sarr in the expectation we needed somebody to ride through Cash and McGinn being their usual ****ish selves
. It was good to see that we tried significantly more variety in our build up than the 'Kick it to Kudus' tactic we've seen in quite a few games this season. Tel, Odobert and Simons all had lots of the ball in the final third, but didn't do anything with it. This at least kept Villa stretched across the pitch and imo is what restricted them to two shots on goal and a few scraps that Vicario dealt with comfortably. There wasn't a single area of the pitch Villa were in control of because of the variety in our play. It was telling that Kudus started seeing a lot more of the ball after Richarlison came on, partly because Odobert was tiring but also because the sad reality is the Brazilian doesn't show for or hold up possession nearly as much as Tel does, which is a damning reflection on just how poor his overall game is. I think we could have benefitted from Spence trying to overlap or even underlap a bit more, he seemed quite conservative in his play. And the other conundrum remains Rodrigo Bentancur: at times popping up in the 10 and at others doing an impression of Dier/Wanyama in 15/16 by dropping level with the CBs. I'm not sure if that's tactical but it sure as hell isn't helping us to control the game when one of our CMs spends the whole game running around like a headless chicken.
The main issue with Bentancur dropping so deep is it feels like he's trying to copy what Bissouma did early in Ange's run, but misses the point that Bissouma could dance through a press with the ball - something Bentancur is reluctant to do because his ankle injuries prey on his mind, in much the same way the ankle injuries turned Harry Winks from an Iniesta-like deep playmaker to a Nabil Bentaleb-like ball retainer
We go now to @Dier Hard for his reaction to someone comparing Harry Winks to Andres Iniesta... please log in to view this image
If you watch Winks pre-injuries he really was pinging the ball around from deep like Iniesta used to do It's only after his ankles got reduced to Weetabix that his pass maps became a fat squiggle at the bottom of the middle third
