The College Dropout

Once they ask him to go over I don’t really blame him. A full stadium are calling for the penalty. You’ve said no. Now your colleague thinks you’re wrong. Going over is a waste of time. 98% of the time they change their mind.

It went out the window with our legs. Had Wilson, Barnes, Murphy, Tonali etc. came on I would be legit upset by that second half performance. But that was always going to happen with the shift we out in off the ball and Isak leading the line.

Aye. But they were never going to score from open play. Never. We were so bad with the ball. Don’t think we made 5 passes in the last 15 minutes. BUT we were robbed. VAR stole our 3 points.

Nah they can draw. Our H2J is better.

Absolute robbery.

Aye. Gordon loves buying a foul init.

Yeh I was all for him from day one. Like future England international all that jazz. But he’s much better than I expected. The composure. The vision. The defensive tenacity and tackling ability. If this is FM. He’s long passed ‘hot prospect’. He has to be a first team regular.

He’s absolutely him.

Win this and i'm telling you... we win the CL. Let's Go.

Villa are looking like us of last season. With a better squad. And in a weaker competition than the league cup. Villa have to win a trophy or get in the CL. Anything short will feel like a failure for them deep down I'm sure. Like how finishing 5th for us would've been a sly failure at a certain point last season.

Froggy is funny. ETH will continue to fall out with players because he's not a good man-manager and is showing no signs of improvement. Tactically he's up and down. Few Man Utd play to their maximum potential consistently. It's been that way for a decade and it's not going to stop. Amen, God is good.

My hope for Villa is they run deep in the Conference but have tough ties. When they have to play their best team Sunday, Thurs, Sunday, Thurs performances will dip.

IIRC Bruno had the highest Xa in the league but underperformed his actual Xa because team mates. Rashford overperformed his Xg from memory. So the two aren't as connected as Froggy is making out. Rashford was ruthless. The rest of the team was not.

Any team that finishes 4th-5th will have spells like that though.

There’s a lot of talented left footed playmakers/creators in the PL atm. Neto, Olise, Kudus and Palmer spring to mind. I’ll take Mahrez on loan though.

I don’t think he’s an excellent passer but he keeps the ball well.

The conference league doesn't get difficult until the end and Villa have a good squad. I don't expect them to maintain 2.1+ points a game myself. But I expect them to end the season somewhere 1.7-1.9ppg which will put them in the mix. So they've got room to fall back.. a little. We need to improve our ppg to end up in the mix. I love our team and Howe. But there's a lot of things stacked in Villa's favour. Good squad depth, easiest European competition, the main striker is rarely injured, great manager and catching teams (well at least Spurs) at the right time, great start.

Ramsey in for McGinn. Bailey in for Diaby (subbed at HT last night), Watkins is harder to replace but the understudy looks a player. They've got a good squad.

GK is such a hard position to fill in 2023. Sanchez lad is not it.

They have been the 3rd richest club in England for some time tbf

Ok you were shit defensively last season and got away with it loads... and you're doing it again this season.

You got a clean sheet yesterday with an Xgc of over 2. Poor finishing gave you that clean sheet. Defend like that against us - and we should hit you for 3 again.

I do feel like they are in Spurs territory. Spurs were generally good for the first 10 games of the season. 10-20 they started to concede, throw away leads and Conte started acting up. Their form 11 to whenever Conte left wasn't top 4 form. But their first 10 games were title challenge numbers so they were still in the mix. I agree that Man U look worse this season. Last season against weaker teams they looked solid at the back and that was reflected in De Gea winning the golden boot. That's not the case this season. If we don't progress well in the cups. We can win 8 out of 10 league games post-January with a fit squad. So my hope is he stay in touching distance until January. Deep European and Cup runs and I don't think we can keep pace, even with a fully fit squad.

I mean more.. he keeps making poor choices for his career. Moving to PSG was fair but he seems to have not applied himself well there. Had the opportunity to move to West Ham but would rather waste away at PSG. I liked the look of him but he's not being guided well in his career.

Chelsea have such a good academy that they will never be too far away from it IMO. In fact - having to sell players, reduce the wage bill and the higher wages and rely more on academy players will probably help them on the pitch.\ Our biggest challenge is scaling the squad at the right quantity and quality within FFP. And scaling performances across EU competition. In large part, this is what the season will come down too imo.