Hanshithispantz

Other than the past few days, when? We usually nullify wingers well. I thought Edwards was daft with his gungho approach but they isolated Burn against the fastest player in the league brilliantly.

He's usually solid and offers us a massive presence in the air, important especially for preventing the opposition from lumping forward down the wings on the break? People have been praying for a week like this for ages from him, he's been shite and should have been taken off in the first half.

In fairness other than against Bailey, Burn generally does well against fast players. There's been plenty times people have said things like "Saka will rinse Burn" but it's never happened. Luton are playing with a front 3 and Ogbene as wingback though and he's isolated him 1v1 and absolutely roasted him all game, Howe should have taken him off after 10 minutes.

Aye this is on Howe like Absolute madness not to hook Burn.

He runs into the box and dives, it's a clear foul outside the box like. Burn needs to come off.

If he's injured take the yellow and come off. Some of his passing has been baffling.

Aue he should be on at half time like

Fair play to Luton like but they're playing suicide football. If Barnes is fit enough he needs to come on ASAP.

Why are the playing with 2 wingbacks against us when we don't have a number 9?

That Luton side looks absurdly attack minded like

Are you paranoid or something? I hadn't even seen your post man

Eh? That post is addressing comments on the same page

This kid from Man City is probably a bit different, but the reality for most of these cheap kids we're buying is that they'll be loaned out when ready and sold on for a profit. That won't be Howe's fault for not throwing them on the pitch like Roy of the Rovers.

Most or the 'critical opinions' of Howe are based on nothing though. Like hyper critisism of his tactics and subs when we had 5 fit players. The Miley and Anderson situation completely kills the theory that Howe doesn't give young players a chance. He's also given Hall a chance, he just doesn't trust him yet from what he's seen. The likes of Alex Murphy and Ben Parkinson are being given a first team experience they're probably nowhere near ready for due to injuries, throwing them on the pitch with your fingers crossed they'll morph into elite footballers is fantastical stuff.

Miley was brought into the first team well before his debut because they could see he was a different level, I'm pretty sure the same would happen with any other youngster. He's not going to play National League level talent (which most of the kids on our bench will be at the minute, let's be honest) in place of Premier League footballers.

Aye went on Villa Talk and (although I only checked one page) there was a few posts which could have been ripped from here

9 minutes wtf

Have we had a 2 week rest or something?

Actually looking forward to this one tbh Murphy being back is a massive boost for us hitting teams on the break.

Literally the next post: But aye, there's nothing particularly out of the ordinary about an 18/19 year old defender not immediately getting game time, especially when he's looked shakey defensively when given a chance. Regardless of whether there's any truth behind the guesses, there's "something isn't right here", "the board have massively misjudged this one", "we should have done x instead" at every opportunity. I wouldn't be suprised if some people were lighting candles and wishing in wells for Gordon to be shite.

Richie has hundreds of Premier League games and has worked with Howe for years though. He'll know exactly what's expected of him when he comes on. Gordon, despite the weird abuse, looked pretty great in some cameos last year but Howe wasn't happy with him tactically and physically from what we've been told, so he rarely played.

Miggy Illmiron surely

Probably the vilest combination of words I've ever seen

Just to highlight how bad things have been, this is basically our 2 XIs, with the players in bold having had decent spells out off the top of my head (with many of them coming at the same time). Joelinton Isak Gordon Willock Bruno Tonali Burn Botman Schar Trippier Pope Barnes Wilson Almiron Anderson Longstaff Miley Targett Krafth Lascelles Livramento Dubravka

I mean the FFP constraints are real but it's speculation as to whether we were in a position to spend £30m on an 18 year old for the future. We don't know what the plan is but Howe (or Ashworth) has talked about a clear plan to phase the next line of players in. Signing potentially world class players like Livramento and Hall for £30m isn't a bad idea imo. There seems to be an idea that we're going after players with a scattergun approach and have left glaring holes in the squad but in reality we've just been really unlucky with injuries (and Tonali's ban).