oldtype

It is genuinely amazing/insane that he has not had a non-penalty goal involvement in the Premier League since (checks notes) January 2025. You'd think a couple would at least happen by accident.

Our collective heads would have exploded if we sold Gordon to Liverpool that summer, and rightfully so. It’s also hard to predict what Gordon would be like today after two seasons at Liverpool, or what would have happened to Anderson or Minteh if they were struggling to break into our first team here. Players are human beings, they are complex and their development is equal parts skill and happenstance. It just so happens that every possible variable turned out badly for us with these particular transactions, but in the moment the decisions were still very much defensible.

Might as well try him on the left wing ourselves given how little is currently being created from that position.

When you get down to it how badly we’re playing is not particularly complicated. Tonali, Bruno, and Joelinton were being talked about as the best central three in the league as recently as early this season. None of them look particularly good anymore.

I have no idea whose fault it is, but there is a clear throughline of incompetence that runs from: 1. completely fucking up the PSR calculations 2. selling two young players who would walk into our current team at a discount price to avoid a points deduction 3. being unable to sign anyone for three windows 4. handing the manager 200m to spend on panic buys while we had no DoF, probably because we thought he might walk if we went four windows without major signings This entire sequence has probably set us back years.

Maybe his best position is CM but we have a bunch of (theoretically) good players who can play there, and literally nobody else at LB. I could see him moving central eventually if Tonali departs.

Being critical about our league position and the bad form of the team is perfectly normal (I am too). But clearly there’s a large section of the fanbase that is going a great deal further than that. Those are the folks I’m calling out as ridiculous and I stand by it.

If we’re allowed to care about xG now, the xG table makes for some interesting reading.

Villa haven’t won a cup in thirty years. The idea that most of their fans wouldn’t trade their last four seasons for our last four seasons is ridiculous.

“Entitlement” is exactly right. After being run by one of the shittiest owners in the history of pro sports for over a decade and a season where we looked like bang on favorites to go down we’ve finished 4th, 7th, 5th, and won a cup. The idea that we haven’t already overachieved massively and should be expecting regular silverware and European football every year as a minimum baseline for fan satisfaction is completely nuts. Certain segments of the fan base are acting like Man City supporters circa 2010.

Growth is not linear All managers have ups and downs depending on external circumstances and/or dumb luck. The goal is to find someone who you know can produce something truly special when the external factors align. We already know Howe can do that and it’s genuine insanity to conclude that he’s “hit his ceiling” the moment we have a down (half) season. How is this his ceiling when he’s already achieved far better with us multiple times? That kind of impatience and short-termism is exactly how certain clubs with far greater resources than us have ended up perennially struggling with a revolving door of managers over the past few years.

We appear to have two good signings and two bad ones this summer. (Ramsdale is whatever and jury out on Wissa). That is roughly average hit rate and honestly even kind of lucky given that we had no recruitment team. Prior to that, our hit rate was basically 95% since the takeover.

Good thing that’s not his job anymore.

I’m just going to assume we’re finishing 10th this year and stop worrying about league position. Let’s enjoy the CL while we have it, but we’re just not at the stage yet where we can qualify for it and play in it at the same time.

I don’t think any of us were expecting that he would be a downgrade on Willock.

Trophies matter, even the shit ones. Clubs like Villa and Everton, who I would consider our peers, haven’t won one for thirty years despite being much better run than us on average over that time period. There were people (including me) on here during the Ashley era unironically saying that they’d be willing to accept relegation to League 2 the next season if it meant seeing us win a trophy before they die. It’s not the sort of thing where you turn around nine months later and be like “that was nice, but what have you done for me lately.” That frankly smacks of the sort of “spoiled rotten Man City fan” attitude that I desperately wanted us not to fall into when we were taken over.

If he’s going to start, he should probably replace Woltemade in the starting lineup (which would have been the plan prior to his injury anyway)

We’d probably lose Tino or Hall or Tonali or maybe two, or maybe all three. But we’d take that money, reinvest, and keep on ticking. That’s how every team in Europe other than a handful operates.

We live in an era where nobody other than Man City makes the CL every year and where basically everyone in the PL other than maybe 1-2 teams is competing every week. The idea that as a fanbase we’d spend decades salivating over even the slightest possibility of silverware, get to the top of the mountain WAY ahead of schedule, and then immediately turn on the man who made it happen because we don’t get European football this season? Now that is insane.

This is his fourth full season in charge. The seasons we don’t have European football, we finish in the top 5. The seasons where we do have European football, we don’t. (I’m assuming this season we don’t.) I sense a pattern.

I say “first domestic silverware in seventy years” gets you at least one season of “immune from criticism” and I’d rather not have us be the sort of fanbase where it doesn’t.

We gave fucking Alan Pardew more leeway than this after he finished fifth ffs

The new signings have been shit other than Thiaw and Woltemade but the regression from the existing squad is even more of a problem imo. Other than Livramento and Hall everyone looks like a shadow of their former selves. I assume the extra CL games has a lot to do with that.

As far as I can tell, no serious team in Europe is primarily playing 4-4-2 at this point and I assume there’s a reason for that.

True, but to be fair he and his nephew signed the players they signed.