Matt1892

At the beginning of the season I thought he needed to get European football as a minimum to be here next season, but I’m not sure how the decision makers will view it if we finish below Bournemouth or Forest, as we can rightfully blame FFP for not being able to compete with City and Liverpool but they won’t see any excuse to be behind those clubs. Today is only one game but our league performances are patchy at best, throw in the cup final and it feels quite Ten Hag-esque this season.

Rutter had a buy out clause I believe.

Even if we didn’t put any deals forward between that time, surely we put some forward now, knowing the new rules that were introduced will likely be challenged too.

If we can claim damaging amounts of compensation from the league, we could potentially use that to leverage the rules going forward.

When Willock has played on a regular basis he doesn’t look out of place at all, the problem for him and others is that when they are given bit part roles, usually after a period of injury, they look miles off the pace. Hopefully we get European football and that will allow us to rotate and give the squad adequate game time, but as much as Willock looks like he needs games to get up to speed, you have Joelinton who looked like he could do with a rest, playing every week until injury. We need to get the balance right.

What I like is that once we realised he wasn’t the right fit for the club, we moved him on quickly, which will be the best thing for all parties. Good luck to him at Juventus, a great experience for him.

If the flexibility to spend isn’t there then we have to suck it up, it seems like the whole market is stagnant at the moment and will kick in to life in the summer. We are in a decent place squad wise at the moment, we have few injuries and no European football to wear us down, so the expectations for Europe are still there. In fact, there will be people within the club thinking we should qualify for the Champions League in the league gets a fifth spot, what with the capitulation of Man Utd and Spurs this season. No reason why we should be finishing behind Forest, Bournemouth and Villa since they have Champions League. People talk about selling purples and whilst you would want the likes of Barnes, Willock and Joelinton to go first, I’m not against selling one of our top assets knowing the money will be reinvested in to signings another 2 top players. Isak would be the last one I would want to go. Goes without saying.

Poor second half from us, instead of being ruthless we took our foot off the peddle and dropped to their level.

We are letting them build momentum.

We need to be professional here and put this game to bed.

Ratcliffe already calculating how much it would cost to sack him.

I can’t believe how bad they are!😂

We had our fair share of bad luck with injuries last season but now we are getting the rub of the green, we have had Duran lose his head putting Villa down to 10 men in the first half on Boxing Day, and get to face Man Utd and Spurs away when both are in pretty poor form. We have to make these opportunities count to extend the gap between us and them.

How much do we need to raise from player sales to be able to spend £80 million?

If we are still looking for a right sided centre back then we should be looking at Zabarnyi from Bournemouth in January, before one of the top sides go in for him in the summer.

It looked a nailed on red card to me, it wasn’t a stamp but he extended his leg to run his studs up Schars back Morgan Rogers simulation to try and get Joelinton sent off was comical.

Villa have lost their last 4 away games in the league. Disappointing if we don’t pick up 3 points here.

Anderson seems to have excelled by starting on a regular basis at Forest, compared to when he was here training with Bruno and Tonali.

It is a valid point talking about a few years on, as I don’t think selling out will be a problem initially but is something we could see in the future depending on how the team is performing on the pitch. You would presume that if that did happen it would be a slow decline in attendance which will allow the club to manage it accordingly.

Was it Sissoko that we signed on a pre contract as he was in the final 6 months of his contract then signed him permanently on the cheap shortly afterwards? Could try the same with Jonathan David.

I rounded the weekend off with a visit to Old Trafford. I didn’t get to see the famous waterfall, it must be how people feel when they go to Iceland and miss the Northern Lights. On a serious note, I think their 3-4-3 has a lot of potential, it was interesting to see the amount of times they had a man over because of it but suffered from the players not really understanding what is required of them in and out of position. That and Bournemouth work so hard out of possession to close down, a team with less work ethic would have been overran. No new grounds to go to this year.

7th should be the minimum with our squad and no European football. Potentially higher if Man Utd and Spurs stumble.

You said it wasn’t reasonable to expect 7th. If you don’t think it reasonable to expect 7th, or a manager shouldn’t be sacked for not achieving it/european football, what would you say was an unacceptable league place that you would accept?

You said it wasn’t reasonable to expect it.