Adam P

Elanga's improvement continues, he will get there. Once you get to a truly elite level there are only a few things that count; confidence, aggression and determination principally. The extent to which confidence kills performance shoud never be underrated. I think he has a bit to go confidence wise but he is showing a much higher level of determination and continues to add a touch of aggression in the tackle. I rated his performance highly last night.

The light show at Parc des Princes before our match was quite impressive. Isnt goal music impossible in the VAR era? Do they play a bit of lift music when the decision is pending?

He's a good player, what i have really liked in the past few weeks is the clear uptick in aggression and competitiveness. One of the Murphys biggest and most glaring weaknesses is how much of a soft lad he is in the tackle and how inaccurate he is under aggressive pressing. Elanga has managed to show strength in the air, in the tackle and being tidy under pressure. All the attributes that Murphy lacks and which make him one dimensional on the pitch for us. He looked good when he came more centrally too, if he can start getting some numbers on the board, then the fee will look way more palatable.

I thought he was excellent last night. One of our best players this year overall. Thiaw, Hall, Bruno, and Gordon are our best peformers over the season given injuries etc. Or should someone go ahead of him in that list of 4? Tonali? Trippier? Dont see it myself, notwithstanding how good those 2 were last night.

Apart from sealing our first cup win with a cross from deep in the final third with his weaker foot that landed pin point on top of our player, he'll never be any good in the final third!

I personally think people who are overly negative about our current performances are people who cant deal maturely with negative emotions. Big teams have bad runs, results can be disappointing, what matters is perspective. Objectively, everyone across the world of football who doesn't have an emotional reaction to our results, would agree that Howe has done an incredible job and that dealing with challenges the club have faced has created some inevitable negative results on the pitch. They would also agree that the likelihood of him performing well in the future is very strong. Objectively the club look to be in transition but doing fine. The negative press comes from reading comments on social media, not organic stories from objective commentators questioning the management of the club. Thomas Frank didnt have this objective case, objectively they looked poor with some mitigation from injuries and a good showing in the CL. Not enough objectively and thats why no one is really shocked. The world would be shocked if Howe was sacked. And in that is everything you need to know about the objective case against Howe. There is none.

He looks to now understand what he is meant to be doing, there was so much hesitation and flat footedness in some performances earlier in the season, he looked low on confidence but also unsure about where he was meant to be positionally. Its one of the reasons i thought he needed time. People say we are hard to play against (less so perhaps recently) not just because of our intensity but because we have evidently quite complex roles for each player that requires them to know the system in and out of possession. Maybe that contributed to Wissa and Woltemade being on the bench last night, as Gordon knows his role and that of those around him. I think Elanga needed more time to get his head around what was expected of him. Once that is embedded, he should start to show some 'numbers'. Looking more and more solid in transition both ways too.

Welcome to the mentality of the East Stand. I just see this sort of take as purely emotional. There is no perspective whatsoever here. The idea that we would sign someone in January is just madness. We spent 125m net in the summer, if Eddie says 'we have to sign a player to come in a do a job immediately' then Wilson's and Hopkinson's eyebrows would be arching to the back of their foreheads. 'Do a job with the ones we got you in the summer' would have been my reply too.

This season we have also adapted our game plans significantly as part of a far more complex season plan, requiring more careful control of energy outputs from the players. We dont play the same way as we used to as often and we play a new way too. Its not gone that well.

Happiness = Current Situation - Expectations. High expectations is why Man city had empty seats. It also explains why some of our fans arent happy. I think the best way to look at it is to realise that the incredible job done by Eddie in getting a trophy and 2 CL qualifications has rightly raised expectations but that the foundations of that success were over performance in terms of our financial muscle.

He will improve, he was out for nearly 4 months. Did look slower on that run against the defender, the one i think everyone noticed.

The Barnes pass was not only full pelt but yeah just slightly under his feet / behind him so he couldnt take it in his stride. Whatever anyway, the first goal was outstanding and was sufficient evidence to demonstrate his ability.

I'm going to relatively judge Elanga and Murphy on the basis of how good Murphy was in February 2018. Fee was 12m ?? Lets call that 30m in today's money. Murphy had to go on loan twice, second time was 2 years after he signed. Managed a decent haul of 9 goals at Sheff wed. He took 5 seasons to score more than 2 goals for us. Elanga is one year older than Murphy when he signed. I am not that convinced of him as player, i wasnt convinced in the slightest by Murpy either (although his performances at Norwich were decent). I am convinced however that he will get a lot better.

Took my German mate to Parc des Princes last week, first time he has watched us live. And i quote 'you are 10m too far back'. He was complaining about how we were using Woltemdade not Tonali but he made the exact same point.

200 minutes less but Woltemade's stats are across the board better, goals, assists, passes, tackles, interceptions. Sesko has more aerial duels. Woltemade has also been contributing and scoring in the Champions League whilst Sesko trained and rested at home. That all said, i think they play different roles and for the role of out and out striker, Sesko has a strong case.

Because we arent trying to re-qualify for the CL. If we were, i am sure we would have invested, or more accurately been in a position to invest if re-qualifying for the CL was considered an appropriate strategy for the season. Untill we have closed the gap financially, perennial qualification is not strategy. Spending now is not that likely to help us win a cup or progress in CL seeting as both are dependent on games in matter of weeks.

Definitely agreed!

Aggregate not individual salaries. You cant derive what Mbuemo is paid because 2 years ago the accounts declared their wage bill was 400m.

Under performing clubs paying above market wages are significanly incentivised to minimise estimates of what they pay. Commercial fact.

There are no good sources as none of them can be verified. Salaries are highly confidential and at the same time PR tools, as seen last summer. Anyone claiming to know details of 7-8 figure salaries is lying on behalf of PR at the club.

Which really just says 'football clubs are hard to run' and means that the judgement that we are not well run ignores the relaive competitive landscape. Its as though running a business based on competitive sporting performance entails all sorts of unmanageable risk!

Clubs with deeper pockets and bigger squads regularly fail to qualify, last year was a bit of an anomaly with 2 extra places.

We are not big enough to qualify for the champions league every season. Villa are not big enough to qualify for the champions league every season. To qualify for the champions league, as a club in our relative position, its not neccessary to qualify for the champions league every season because in doing so, you significantly reduce the chances of qualifying the next season due to; PSR, squad costs, games to be played. This is obvious to all our leadership, publicly you dont say it but its the very clear commercial and operating reality under PSR with an incomes of circa 300-350m competing with 6 clubs with incomes 500m+. We've been a tad unlucky with a couple of injuries, we've not been able to adapt quickly enough across the two three key dimensions; change in attacking focus, embedding new players and coping with lack of training/intense number of games. We've had good game plans but lack the training time to execute consistently across the 90 minutes. My take on commercial strategy would be in terms of priority 1. go as deep as possible in CL to max revenue / exposure 2. try and qualify for Europe by winning a trophy 3. Get top 7/8 in PL and attack the CL again next season. Eddie is on track for those objectives right now, lets see where it pans out.

He'll score more goals in his first season with us than Isak did.

Agree with this, he is trying to be too clever too often, needs to keep it simple, retain possession, find a man and get more in the game. Needs to up his movement too, too static at times means the defenders are tight enough to control him.