ponsaelius

I think this is underrating Solanke a fair bit, tbh. He's genuinely looked really good this season in terms of all-round game and is on track for a 20 goal league campaign. His current career arc in terms of age and performance going from Champ to PL is extremely similar to Ivan Toney. Both appear to be late bloomers - only that because Solanke was in and around PL clubs from a very young age and had that rough first season at Bournemouth replacing Wilson he probably gets more unfairly disparaged.

I've said it before but one of Eddie's biggest strengths is that he's a Plan A coach. Set style of play, impose it on the opposition, stick to it and try to win on your terms. He has his system and 90% of the time he sticks to it. I like that and think it's generally the sign of a good manager with conviction in his training ground coaching and ability to motivate players. However - this season we could have done with being slightly more flexible. Both in terms of system and in terms of approach game to game. We clearly have not been able to go hell for leather every games, and sometimes moving away from 4-3-3 might have been preferable given the personnel to grind out results. Similarly some of the in-game management has ranged from naive to completely ineffective. There's a lot for him to work on, but unless we have a complete meltdown second half of the season he needs to be given the chance to see it through this season and next. It does feel like he's had some absolutely rotten luck to compound some of the decision making and mistakes.

The new format was just a sop to the sewpa league. If they're abandoning it they know it's dead in the water.

This might be the stupidest thing ever posted on here, fair play if trolling.

Dummett has been OK the two games he's played, and we got clean sheets against Man U and Man City. I don't have an issue with him as 25th squad member this season and you can get away with him filling in last resort defensively - particularly if he's got a decent rest of the back four around him. You can't get away with carrying players in forward areas of the pitch though. It's just so brutal especially considering our usually high intensity style of play. Ritchie has looked like a competition winner when he's got on. From what I've seen of him this year I don't think he's even Championship level anymore. He's utterly finished physically.

The thing is this isn't the first time in his career he's had a spell like this. The last 6-12 months at Spurs was the same - constant mistake after mistake. It was why Spurs sold him to Atletico.

Cameron Archer - £20 million Aaron Ramsey - £14 million Chukwuemeka - £15 million Jaden Philogene - £5 million Along with Grealish that is £150 million of pure profit for FFP. We need to get to the point where our academy is churning out regular lower PL/Championship players like this.

It's not just the blue chip players like Grealish and J. Ramsey - they accumulated decent sales from the likes of Archer, A. Ramsey, Chukwuemeka, Philogene over last couple of years. It's why developing the likes of Elliot Anderson in and around our squad is so worthwhile, even if ultimately they end up moving on.

In the age of FFP Villa will continue to be right up there. Their infrastructure and academy will allow them to keep spending at a high level. They were a few years ahead of us prior to the takeover - they just made a horrendous appointment in Gerrard.

Crocked until March, so he'd fit in well.

Looking at that Arsenal team and it's basically their first choice XI. What I'd give to be able to have us have even close to that luxury.

He's matured a lot as a player last 2 years. Wouldn't be a top drawer signing but would be a good option if we needed another CB option. Out of contract again in the summer.

Thought looking at the stats that our XG was disproportionately high as I don't think we made huge amount of chances despite dominating the game against 10 men. Noticed that we got 0.54 for Burn's saved header then another 0.62 for his follow up finish on the line. It seems weird to me to accumulate this when it's effectively a single chance.

I'm not really a fan of music in stadiums most of the time but the fans had been singing it for about 10 minutes before FT

Was so noticeable straight away those zipped balls through to the midfield. Ups the whole team's tempo.

It's ridiculous IMO. If they're going to enforce injury time like this then they probably need to reduce the game to 40 minute halves. Players are playing way more in-play minutes than ever before.

It's probably not been stated enough how much this will have contributed to our injury problems this season. Every match is 20 minutes longer than it used to be. High intensity styles of play suffer more.

That was absolutely bizarre. One of the weirdest challenges I've ever seen.

Well agree with that. I expect they thought he'd contribute more than he has done.

It can clearly be somewhere in-between the two though. They don't think he's ready to play every week yet, but still see the potential. Therefore angling towards avoiding the obligation and getting a reduced fee would make sense considering the current fixed fee is pretty high. Especially since Chelsea will be banking on getting some kind of fee for him in their accounts and probably don't want him coming back next summer.

Again you've got to look at the Hall deal as a bonus. We only signed him because we could do it as a loan deal. He doesn't count towards the PL squad because of his age and he's versatile. I think if Hall doesn't come in we just sign 3 players this summer.

Btw it could just be a game to bargain the fee down if the obligation isn't going to be met.

Don't think there'd be much point in sending him back, as he doesn't count towards the squad at all now we're out of Europe. Might as well keep him about and see how it goes if we've paid a loan fee for the season.

It's a lot of money on the lad. You can see why they might be having second thoughts considering where else we need to invest.