The Philippe Coutinho Thread | Page 33 | Vital Football

The Philippe Coutinho Thread

Stephen Jay Hawkings said:
If he does stay, is there any chance he could take over free-kick duty?

There was a game recently where Dougie was about to take one, and the commentator said "we've seen him bang a few in over the last few years".

I'm pretty sure Doug has never scored a free-kick for Villa. The whole thing is baffling.
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Dougie's free kicks are straight out of the Des Bremner school of shooting. More chance of breaking a window in the north stand boxes than actually scoring.
 
I dunno, playing devils advocate bar a couple of games he's not set the world alight has he?

I admit he's playing with dross though and can't do everything on his own but at the moment it's looking like Erikssen is having a greater impact and he was on the verge of death!
 
Platypus said:
Not really as your post suggests it's a one way sell. He's part of these poor performances - it's not like he's creating chance after chance and it's going begging.
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Yeah. We are going places. We can definitely do without the likes of Countinho who 3 matches ago was being touted as the most talented some had ever seen in a villa shirt. I would suggest that others are the issue at the moment and not him.
 
Melon Donkey said:
Yeah. We are going places. We can definitely do without the likes of Countinho who 3 matches ago was being touted as the most talented some had ever seen in a villa shirt. I would suggest that others are the issue at the moment and not him.
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Don't put words in my mouth please. Of course there are other players who are more of the issue, but Big Phil isn't dragging the whole team up like YKW was at his best. I'd love it if he stayed but I don't think it'll be a defining issue of how we progress.
 
Coutinho has delivered more output in 10/ 11 appearances than Buendia in nearly 30, Buendia cost nearly £40m which is what Coutinho would cost.

I personally think Coutinho would be a great signing in the summer but we have chronic issues through the entire spine of the team and that in addition needs addressing.

We spent £90m+ on three players who have not delivered, I say this as someone who likes Buendia but his output has been very disappointing. It's crucial we 'get it right' this summer.
 
Preparing myself for losing out on him in the summer however I don’t think signing him or not will define the following season. Coutinho is like the finishing touch. He’ll continue to go in and out of effectiveness without a couple of swinging dicks in the team to help him out.
 
CDX_EIRE said:
Preparing myself for losing out on him in the summer however I don’t think signing him or not will define the following season. Coutinho is like the finishing touch. He’ll continue to go in and out of effectiveness without a couple of swinging dicks in the team to help him out.
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I think Buendia would have stepped up if we hadn't got Coutinho...maybe not as well but not that far behind IMO. And there'd be less give it to Phil amongst the team. I'd rather we had a cohesive team rather than to back to the Grealish era.
 
In fairness to Buendia he has created a lot of chances that have been squandered but it is obvious that Coutinho is a class above. Coutinho is, at his best anyway, one of the best attacking midfielders in the world.

Buendia cost us 38m but Coutinho went to Barcelona for 100m more. If Barca weren't in desperate financial trouble then we'd be looking at paying another 20m at least for him on top of the 30 odd million in our buy option.
 
JW1985 said:
In fairness to Buendia he has created a lot of chances that have been squandered but it is obvious that Coutinho is a class above. Coutinho is, at his best anyway, one of the best attacking midfielders in the world.

Buendia cost us 38m but Coutinho went to Barcelona for 100m more. If Barca weren't in desperate financial trouble then we'd be looking at paying another 20m at least for him on top of the 30 odd million in our buy option.
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I think Gerrard must find a way to have both Emi2 and Big Phil in the team. Talk about not "leaving goals on the bench" is wide of the mark when we're leaving a load of chances on the bench instead. Having two underperforming strikers on the pitch isn't the answer and clearly Bailey isn't going to be the answer this season.
 
There needs to either be some serious adaptation on Buendia's behalf or serious innovation on SG's behalf to accommodate him and Coutinho. I don't see that sort of innovation coming from SG so it's increasingly on Buendia.

There's probably a deeper issue here which is something of an abandonment of the recruitment strategy. Players were signed for the manager to work with under Smith. Now it's clear to me that SG has far more say than Smith did. SG fancies his players and wants them in.

For me this makes a lot of last summer a bigger failure. I'm at this point not sure whether Buendia has much of a future. Nearly £40m and cannot get a regular start for us despite having prior experience at this level, it's a fucking disaster.
 
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