The Summer 2020 Transfer Rumour Thread | Page 31 | Vital Football

The Summer 2020 Transfer Rumour Thread

ldgavfc said:
think Wesley and Davis will do very well in the championship under Smith
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I can see the flaw in your plan there.

If you're beginning to see sense and brace yourself for life in the Championship, then you might also want to prepare yourself for the likelihood of our owners dispensing with your precious Saint Dean.
 
ldgavfc said:
The realism is that we are relatively small time, back in the championship again next season because our owners put our playing squad in the hands of a Spaniard with no apparent understanding of the standard of player required to play in the EPL.

When you take into account that we are small time and unlikely to attract someone like Abraham or even Mitrovic to this club next season, you look around at options and think, is Davis that bad? Theres been plenty of strikers throughout history who haven't found their goalscoring boots but still provide more than enough to warrant a starting place in a side. Firmino being the most glaring example.
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Nope. The reality is, for a decade or more, we've talked big and acted small. Billionaire owners of no other big club would go for a manager with Walsall and Brentford on his cv and a striker who can't score and was released by Stevenage and went to Biggleswade

Now some of you think he's good enough for us. I despair, I really do.
 
The Fear said:
Nope. The reality is, for a decade or more, we've talked big and acted small. Billionaire owners of no other big club would go for a manager with Walsall and Brentford on his cv and a striker who can't score and was released by Stevenage and went to Biggleswade

Now some of you think he's good enough for us. I despair, I really do.
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Man Utd have a manager with a Cardiff relegation on their CV. Real Madrid won the champions league three times with a manager who had a headbutt on his CV. Chelsea have a manager who has losing to Dean Smith in the play off final last season on his CV.

We are not a "big club" nor have we been talked about as one since about 2010.

Davis is absolutely fine for back up in the championship.
 
What the hell has a headbutt got to do with anything?

To be fair, he was a temporary appointment, with close connections to the club from playing at the very highest level, and did so well he got taken on.

Lampard, a real student of the game, the same, a hero to the fans, much like Brian Little was with us.

Smith is... err... oh yes, he supports us. :wahey:

We go for middle of the road managers, we have for years, Houllier (too ill) aside. And in recent years, we think players released from Stevenage 'will do'.

How small is the thinking with that? He doesn't score, he's a striker.

This has to be a wind up if anyone thinks he's going to be good enough to get the sort of goals we'd need to be promoted.
 
The Fear said:
What the hell has a headbutt got to do with anything?

To be fair, he was a temporary appointment, with close connections to the club from playing at the very highest level, and did so well he got taken on.

Lampard, a real student of the game, the same, a hero to the fans, much like Brian Little was with us.

Smith is... err... oh yes, he supports us. :wahey:

We go for middle of the road managers, we have for years, Houllier (too ill) aside. And in recent years, we think players released from Stevenage 'will do'.

How small is the thinking with that? He doesn't score, he's a striker.

This has to be a wind up if anyone thinks he's going to be good enough to get the sort of goals we'd need to be promoted.
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David O'Leary was a big name at the time. Martin O'Neill was another. The two of them would be the equivalent of hiring Brendan Rodgers or Benitez today.

Smith isnt manager because hes a fan, hes manager because he's built a career from succeeding expectations at every club hes been at, from Walsall to Brentford to Villa.
 
ldgavfc said:
Yeah not much of a goalscorer but he's good at drawing defenders in, got decent vision, physically strong with a good first touch and decent passing statistics, I dont know if he will ever be a consistent goalscorer but he does enough to play as a centre forward in a 4-3-3 with goalscoring wingers, Dean's preferred setup.
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And yet, at Brentford, all I remember from Smith's teams was quick run-in-behind type forwards (Maupay, Hogan etc.). Did he play with a target man? To me, a target man needs to play in a front two or with an advanced number 10, so that someone is close enough to pick up scraps, flick-ons etc.
 
ldgavfc said:
The realism is that we are relatively small time, back in the championship again next season because our owners put our playing squad in the hands of a Spaniard with no apparent understanding of the standard of player required to play in the EPL.

When you take into account that we are small time and unlikely to attract someone like Abraham or even Mitrovic to this club next season, you look around at options and think, is Davis that bad? Theres been plenty of strikers throughout history who haven't found their goalscoring boots but still provide more than enough to warrant a starting place in a side. Firmino being the most glaring example.
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To be fair, Firmino has 56 goals (and 34 assists) in 168 premier league games. His scoring record is not at the level of Salah or Mane, but far better than anyone we've seen at Villa Park in the last 10-12 years....
 
ldgavfc said:
When you take into account that we are small time and unlikely to attract someone like Abraham or even Mitrovic to this club next season
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No we're not. We're a massive club in the Championship.

Any Premiership club who has a striker they want to go out and get time would be looking at us, and any young striker looking to go out on loan would be gagging to come to us. There's bound to be another Tammy out there, and we need to make sure we get him rather than relying on a guy Stevenage released 5 years ago because he wasn't good enough.
 
ldgavfc said:
Man Utd have a manager with a Cardiff relegation on their CV. Real Madrid won the champions league three times with a manager who had a headbutt on his CV. Chelsea have a manager who has losing to Dean Smith in the play off final last season on his CV.

We are not a "big club" nor have we been talked about as one since about 2010.

Davis is absolutely fine for back up in the championship.
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As a third-choice back-up in the right system, maybe, but can you honestly say you'd be optimistic if he had to play as our first-choice forward for a run of 10+ games? And do you think he'd be happy, knowing that he was a third-choice?
Disagree, we are a big club. Just because we have under-achieved and had poor decision-makers at the club for ten years, doesn't dilute the fact that we are and have been the most successful club in England's second-city for almost 150 years. Even today, as we sit here in the relegation zone, we sit above all of our West Midlands rivals, except one, who are on a short-term run of unprecedented success, by their own standards.
Just because we beat Lampard, doesn't mean Lampard was/is a bad manager. It was his first full season managing, while it was Dean Smith's seventh. We also had better and more-experienced players at that stage for that particular level.
 
gmvillan said:
I don't think anyone is mocking him for playing non-league, more his scoring record at every level he's played, including for our own U23 team. Vardy was known to be prolific at non-league level and again in the reserves at Leicester, yet we've seen no evidence that Davis has been or will be.... I've felt the same way since the first few times I've seen him play. He looks like he always needs an extra touch to get a shot off and at this level that simply won't happen. Vardy is instinctive, shoots on sight and doesn't need time to think about things....
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Well said. Quite frankly the comparison is ridiculous. It's like comparing Rooney with Danny Cadamateri just coz they both played for Everton Youth team.
 
I've seen it down the years at the Villa. A so-called "one of our own" is given massive benefit of the doubt, no matter how good or bad they are; whereas some "outsider" comes in and gets pelters no matter what they do. Davis for example has a worse scoring record than Wesley (similar age to Davis) and Heskey, yet the latter two are called donkeys, waste of money, you name it. It should be remembered that players do not set the fees, nor do they select themselves, either for the team or transfers. Players like Hendrie, Moore and Agbonlahor, who spent most of their professional careers under-achieving and partying are untouchable by some.... does my head in.....
 
david-avfc said:
Yes although hopefully if we are aiming to come straight back up would he be worth it if he was going to cost say £15m or more? And at the age of 29 or 30?
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I'd take him for £15m, even at that age. His Championship record is outstanding.

Although obviously if he came here, it would fall off a cliff, as per most of our other forward signings in recent years.

For the benefit of @Melon Donkey, it should be said that I detest Gayle almost as much as I detest Jay Rodriguez, but if needs must...
 
ldgavfc said:
Smith isnt manager because hes a fan, hes manager because he's built a career from succeeding expectations at every club hes been at, from Walsall to Brentford to Villa.
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Err, I'll give you the first two.

Meeting let alone exceeding expectations at Villa? Nup. Maybe for you, but not for me, the majority of fans and crucially not for the owners.

He's a Championship manager, whereas Villa need a Premier League Manager
 
gmvillan said:
I don't think anyone is bashing him for his path or the fact that he played for Biggleswade or Stevenage. Just using the facts that he has never, ever been a prolific/consistent goalscorer at any of those levels, and that to expect that from him is ludicrous. If anything, it's more a bashing of our staff for making him the second-choice centre-forward at the start of the season, culminating in him being expected to save us now (and the inexplicable reason why our expensive January signing with a proven goal-scoring history is being left on the bench)
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Said it back in the summer, only buying wesley was a fatal mistake. Gross negligence
 
Our problem hasn't been one player. It's that the squad is too thin. When we played MU at the start of December we were holding our own, 15th with the best GD in the bottom half of the table. Not stellar, but OK.

It fell apart because injuries meant we had to play players who were way short of the experience needed, specially in defence. Konsa and Hause were not the players to take on major roles in the team, no matter what attributes they had. For Liverpool's first goal the ball was passed through Hause's legs; he had time to react, but he didn't. It only takes one defensive mistake and we're another goal down.

Compare that with RB, where Elmo provided experienced backup to Guilbert. Or LB; Taylor had a good game on Sunday, the sort of cover needed for Targett.

Given our lack of experience at CB, I'm surprised we sent Chester out on loan. Chester and Mings would make a stronger pairing than Mings and Hause. Also, Chester can score goals at the other end, which our current CBs don't. In the same vein, I can't for the life of me see why we play Davis instead of Samatta. Bet Samatta can't see why either.
 
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