So Jhon Duran has got the move he, or more likely his agent, has longed for and signed for Al Nassr in the totally meaningless Saudi Arabian desert league.
There’s only one reason you’d want to go there and we all know what it is. Money. Boatloads of it.
I’ve seen talk of £300k a week as the basic wages. Get your head around that, just as I am as I type it. Let’s say he’s signed a 3 year deal. That would be just shy of £48 million tax free. While it’s easy to say that he’ll be a rich man wherever he goes or even if he stayed at the Villa, consider that he’ll only be 24 or so when that contract is done. Then the money is earned and he gets the choice of doing what he wants.
Seriously, would you turn that down? I’m not sure I could or would have, looking back at that age.
It is an odd one though. The Saudis are throwing money at all sports to try and improve their image, but when it comes to footy, they generally target superstars who are nearing the end of their career. Are they signing Duran because they believe they can keep him for many years or have they simply seen him as the big name throughout Europe over the last six months? If it’s the latter, we should be grateful just for that extra exposure he gave us, I suppose.
Whatever, while I quite liked Duran as a striker and much better finisher than Ollie, I have no qualms about him going.
To my mind he’s a petulant sort who will never be happy with his lot. I’m guessing that he caused Emery a world of grief with his moaning, which is why we’ve let him go. If Unai couldn’t control or mould him, I pity any other manager who has to try. On the other hand, he was seen handing out gifts to the mere low life staff in the tunnel after the Celtic game and that makes him much more my kind of guy.
While I think he’s made a mistake, where he risks his reputation (any decent striker can score lots in Saudi, surely?) I wish him well. Where he goes from here is a good question. I honestly believe that if he applies himself as much as he can, he’ll become another Harlaand and score loads wherever he ends up. But I’m inclined to think he’ll become complacent and just fade away.
The really big question is who are we looking to spend it on? I’m seeing loads of talk about attackers, but I don’t see it. Maybe one striker , but way more important are defensive players. We’re apparently interested in Rashford and I don’t see that either. Good grief, why would we? Yes, on song, he’s a great player. But he seems to have serious issues and I wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. Then again, there’s been a few instances where I’ve thought Unai was wrong, but ultimately he’s doing a stunning job and you can’t argue with where we are.
Which is 8th in the Champion’s league table. I’m still struggling to get my head around that too. For a neutral, we’re brilliant to watch, but for a fan, we’re a nightmare. It’s a roller-coaster and while we play well at times, so we are awful at others, which leads to me being probably overly-critical. It’s just the frustration in not getting what we want and I guess that’s the difference between a fan and a more knowlegable manager who sees the bigger picture better.
And so onto the Dogheads tomorrow.
Again I’m laughing to myself, as it’s another where I don’t have a clue as to how it’s going to go.
Squad news first and Matty Cash will be out for around a month. If that doesn’t lead to us getting a Right Back in, I doubt anything will, I’ve said all along that I see this as by far the most important position that needs shoring up, but it hasn’t happened. I’m not convinced it will in this window either.
Tyronge Mings is apparently close to being available, but this game is too soon, which contradicts a report I saw saying we’ve underplayed his injury. Ross Barkley is still training on his own and is about a week away from rejoining the squad.
As for Wolves, striker Jorgen Strand Larsen is out and Joao Gomes is suspended after a red last weekend. Carlos Forbes is a big doubt and they have another three or four players unavailable.
Despite a good start under the new manager, Wolves have lost their last four games, with a GD of 1 for and 10 against, which would indicate that having a striker injured doesn’t make much difference.
This ought to be easy really, but it’s a game of jeopardy, where we’re a gift to any team on a terrible run.
I’m tempted to think we’ll tear the heads off those dogs and beat them soundly, say 3 or 4-1.
But I think we’ll look really tired again and will do well to get a win at all.
I’m going for a safe draw. 1-1.
And while I don’t think that is enough for a team aiming at CL qualification, I do think it’s about as much as we can expect if I’m trying not to aim too high. Hence I’d take it as better than nothing.
UTV!
We needed players in to cope with the amount of injuries and the fixture congestion. Instead we have more players going out than coming in. Terrible decision making by whoever has allowed this to happen and it’s going to ruin our season.
However, can we get a few quid for Bailey before window shuts? I don’t want to see him wearing a Villa shirt ever again.
Duran would’ve made a difference today. As would Carlos in defence. January window is f***** up and Villa have played it very badly this year.
Those are great points. Yes Carlos would be better at centre half than kamara which would also mean Kamara is back in midfield and this Duran was always a serious goal threat. Yes we have money in the bank and it’s business but the business is football!!! Also FFP rules need some serious looking at because there seems to be a lot of young players being used as pawns to make the books look nice and morally it’s an utter disgrace
Exactly. Not forgetting Buendia. So a solid defender, a creative maestro, and an explosive, instinctive striker all gone. The squad has been systematically weakened. Yet we expect 3 points. Not gonna happen I’m afraid. PSR is making football rather pointless, is it not?
Shite simply shite top 7 no chance
We can’t compete against physical teams. Newcastle are the same with the likes of Joelinton. I never felt we would score in the last 15 minutes when Wolves sat deep. The officiating was awful again and VAR cost us a goal and allowed their second goal despite a foul on Rogers. That aside, we didn’t deserve anything.
I’ll say it again has emery reached his ceiling?
He failed at arsenal and now he seems to be failing at villa.
He works better with an underdog team,villa up challenging now and teams have sussed us out we’re no longer a surprise outfit
I’m really pissed off now.
And what the hell is the transfer team doing I can’t understand getting rid of players without replacing any madness absolutely madness
Ok guys, Emery has just guided Villa into the knockout stages of the Champions League. Yet it seems to have gone almost unnoticed by us ever demanding fans. What happened last Wednesday night is a huge deal for Villa. And it’s down to one man. Despite his squad being significantly weakened in TWO consecutive transfer windows. The question is not has Unai Emery reached his ceiling, but have Aston Villa reached theirs?
For the record, Rashford could well be a Cascarino/Asprillia style signing. Disastrous and destabilising half way into a season.
We are starting to sound like Stoke fans ” Get Pulis out! We want pretty football”.
Well that ended well didn’t it?
As BFR points out, we’ve just qualified for the last 16 of the CL and incidentally made around £75m on route.
Yea today was utter dog shite but
After all tomorrow is another day. 😁
UTV!
It looks like everyone has it in for villa,psr forcing sale of best players,var costing us points in nearly every match with decisions going against us.
And what’s happened with the world no1 keeper he’s been bad recently.
And did everyone see emery have a go at mcphee,he was apoplectic I thought he’d have a stroke or something.
Was it because there was no need for Rogers to run across and try to impede the defender.
I wonder if mcphee is next out the door,I remember in an interview emery said he enjoyed working on free kicks himself before coming to villa.
The biggest problem is no defenders and players not getting into the opposition players faces they seem to stand off instead of engaging with the opposition.
Whatever it is something has gone wrong with the recruitment side of things.
And what happened with the loan the club took out late last year it’s definitely not gone towards new signings
And again why has emery made odd changes during the match.
The defence isn’t settled as it is and then he changes at half time and then again during the 2nd half with ned coming on,what’s going on????
For what it is worth I think we have too many players without a weight of shot – and we have just sold one that did hit the ball well. Against the low block you get a chance to shoot from about 20 yards: we had loads in the 2nd half but our players are afraid to have a pop. That I guess is because they know they cannot hit the ball both hard and accurately. Any team needs a minimum of 2 players who have that skill.
Farcical VAR decision – both Malen and Rogers were behind the ball when it was centred.
Luke Roper sums it up well
Sorry to show my ignorance Little 8 but…
Who the f*”k is he?
And secondly, and probably more importantly, what did he say?
I’m the lucky one – missed most of the second half being treated to an excellent dinner.
We’re going through exactly the same as Newcastle last season. Because of PSR we’re unable to invest in a squad deep enough to cope with CL football and the EPL
What we all know as fans is that the wealth of the clubs owners is immaterial. Newcastle are backed by (limitless) sovereign wealth and we are backed by two billionaires. It matters little with restrictive and unrealistic financial rules that protect the historic elite – ultimately it will destroy football which will morph into an American style franchise.
For the above reasons I’m not going to criticise our performance tonight – even though it’s massively disappointing. I will, however, question the decision to let Carlos go without having a replacement ‘in the bag’.
I will, however, criticise both the referee and VAR. Disallowing our goal was a complete and utter joke and may well have influenced the games outcome.
As football fans why do we have to put with – week after week – substandard refereeing and, even worse, a VAR system that is not just not fit for purpose but borderline biased.
Rant over.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in general, the level of refereeing is far higher in a lot of other countries. Look at the ref on Wednesday, Turpin (Clement not Dick). He let the game flow so you hardly knew he was there but got all the major decisions right. I think that PGMOL refs have an unwarranted degree of arrogance partly fueled by the fact that there is no transparency and no comeback when they get things wrong.
PGMOL needs to be abolished and a better model, including free movement of refs across Europe, put in place. Our lot are clearly not up to scratch.
Thinking about this Rashford deal, now he’s on around 300k per week.
Now for simplicity say we are paying 50% of that?
Now that equates to 600k per month.
We are in February now, the season ends May.
So that equals £1.8m for that period.
Bargain if you ask me.
It seems we are paying 70% with an option to buy at around £40m
Using your example RSS that still ‘only’ equates to around £2.6m and if we have negotiated no (or only a small loan fee) it does appear to be a reasonable expenditure rather than paying inflated transfer prices for buying players in January.
Also being reported that the loan (without buy option) has been agreed with PSG for Asensio. He will only have a year left on his contract in the summer so Villa would be in a strong position if they wanted to keep him.
Still waiting on a CB though!
The other tricky question is who do Villa add to their CL squad – only three allowed?
I’m assuming Rashford and Asensio will only have agreed to come on that basis so will Malen or the new (currently invisible) be added? Emery might gamble on getting Torres back and keeping Mings fit so including Malen as his third pick.
Only if he makes a difference. A positive difference.
Having calmed down a bit, I notice that we’re still just 4 points away from fifth so losing against Wolves wasn’t exactly a disaster but disappointing nevertheless.
With Ollie getting an injury, I’m warming to the news that Rashford might be on his way.
Still scouring the rumour mill though for news of a defender or two but nothing seems to be happening. Getting quite nervous about that. We desperately need cover at CB and, while Kamara gave it his best shot, it’s obviously not a position he’s comfortable in.
There is a rumour appearing on internet that Manure are interested in Leon Bailey. I’d accept any half decent offer. He’s had one good year in 4!
I would agree with you but you know all to well that his first year at United will be like last year for us and it will infuriate! Non the less, he just can’t seem to get that form back, he had a terrible first year, he looks to have lost a bit of pace recently, he regularly looses possession and leaves cash running back towards his own goal. I don’t think he quite has that quick level of passing out that Emery is looking for and as for an outlet, that seems to have had its day.
Please let it be true. I’ll book him an Uber 😏
Never mind Uber, I’ll drive him to Manchester myself and buy him a coffee at the services.
Letting Bailey go would be madness.
We can only register three new players in the CL squad after the transfer window and we still have to comply with all the other rules. We have already lost Carlos, Duran, Buendia and Philogene from List A which means our squad will reduce from 25 to 24.
If Bailey leaves our squad will reduce further to 23.
Whatever one’s views are on his performances to date, Bailey has to stay.
Just to make up the numbers, Hitch? He’s offered next to nothing all season. If they can get him out, they must – there might not be any takers come the summer.
RSS, Luke Roper is the bloke who was behind the Luke 1977 kit.
Not a clue what he has said though and it’s probably on one of the social media sites, which I don’t do.
Cheers Badger, I remember George Roper, any relative?
(Showing my age there 😁)
🙂
Saw some of the comments in response to what I wrote yesterday, some before the game, and some as a reactionary response to the game.
I said the ground is “in” a doghole not it “is” a doghole. Please scroll up if you misread as I believe VP is the best stadium in the Premier League, but what surrounds it is utterly vile, if I am honest.
And our transfer window attacking wise has been good but what has been the problem this season? Hitch I get what you mean about positivity but we’ve leaked goals almost every game this season, we really shouldn’t be playing Wolves and Celtic and concede 4 goals, especially when one is at home.
I’ve never been much of a positive fan and this is the most away games in a season I’ve went for a while now so I suppose having spent more money on the club than usual, especially since I’ve bought more tickets because more CL games and spent money on CL and away programmes etc, I’ve come to be more negative than usual.
Martinez – 3
Garcia – 6.5
Bogarde – 6.5
Konsa – 4
Kamara – 3
Digne – 4.5
Tielemans – 3
McGinn – 5
Rogers – 4
Ramsey – 4
Watkins – 3
Subs:
Bailey – 3
Malen – 6.5
Maatsen – 5.5
Onana – 4
Nedeljkovic – 3 (not much to go by, though)
3s?
I think there will be a few who disagree with some of those numbers.
We were far from good but I’d say only Bailey was that bad.
All about opinions though, I guess.
Any team that makes Wolves look like a top 8 side deserves average ratings of 3 in my opinion.
For those who doubt the post CL slump the mighty Real Madrid lost to relegation threatened Espanyol yesterday, a team they would normally demolish. Even with their extensive squad they still couldn’t manage a win.
We’re finding out just how hard the grind of the CL is and so finishing in eighth is an even greater achievement as it gives us a window to just concentrate on the Prem.
Sorry Ron luke roper on the utv podcast on you tube check him out
Sorry again it’s luke Robinson Sorry I even brought it up now
No problem L8 I’ll give it whirl 😁
Watching the Villa ladies and they are far better organized that the men, on channel 2 BBC.
Romano says Asensio is having a medical today, with us paying all his wages until the end of the season. No buy option.
And we’re pushing hard for Disasi;
https://www.footballfancast.com/aston-villa-now-insisting-on-the-signing-of-axel-disasi-chelsea/