Although I have my doubts about Tony Xia tweeting as much as he has been lately, it seems he’s being pretty much true to his word, when he said that there would be players leaving.
Brad Guzan has undergone a medical at Boro and it’s massive odds on that the deal will be done tomorrow.
It’s a shame really, as I mostly quite liked him as a goalie; mainly because of his shot-stopping. His faults were there for all to see, but my thinking was that he’d improve his dominance in the box and more importantly, his distribution.
Sadly he didn’t improve either and ended up seriously lacking.
That said, I won’t forget he was our player of the year a couple of seasons back, an award richly deserved, in my humble opinion.
How times quickly change though and it’s good to see his fat wage off the books.
I think it says quite a lot that he’s seemingly happy to take second place to Victor Valdes and he surely must have known his days were numbered.
No tears overall on my part over this deal.
Then it seems Gana is off too, to Everton.
That’s the way to do a deal.
Get the bid in and just sign the player, job done.
And although it wrankles that we set such a measly release clause, given that we seemingly paid more than the supposed 7.1 mill Euro fee we’ll be getting, I can’t say I’m too sad about this one either. I know the stats were amongst the best to be had last season, but I was never convinced, as I’ve alluded previously.
Hence I’m happy that we’re getting that sort of money, but it still annoys that we probably could have got 10 mill+, with the right release fee.
Who sets a release fee lower than what you paid for the player, these days? Obviously, the Villa do.
Maybe it was just something that his agent specifically wanted, in which case, fair play. Sign him up to our negotiating team, I say.
I’d guess Sinclair will be next.
Which means it looks like we’re going to be stuck with the bad eggs.
To be honest, I’m really not surprised that we can’t shift the troublemakers.
But now, given Xia’s rattle on Twitter, he really needs to deliver something in return, if the Villa fans’ opinion of him isn’t going to go down the pan.
The uneasiness amongst fans about how little the squad/team has changed has been readily witnessed on all the Villa websites and we’re fast running out of time, even if you don’t think players need time to integrate.
We need players in, fast and I’m sorry, but the “massive squad numbers” argument doesn’t cut it for me.
If we go with what we have now, there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance that we’ll get promoted this season.
And even though I know we will still have a few weeks of the transfer window to run once the season is underway, it’ll be too late, as we’ll have lost impetus straight from the off.
I was speaking to a Wednesday fan today and he’s well confident that they’ll beat us, because we don’t have the balls for it, in his opinion.
I suspect he’s right.
Come on Tony, you’re supposed to be a “doer”.
Let’s see some doing.
I have done it again.
Renewed my season ticket on hope and optimism instead of reality.
That was crap.
until the serial losers are out of our club (playing or not) we are going nowhere.
More fool you
Think it’s a case of same old same old.
tactics today were shocking and amateur. playing to your strengths, not to a philosophy you think football should be played. RDM thinks our players are chelsea in disguise, hes mistaken. we have good enough players to get promoted but not playing this style of football.
playing gestede you need to cross decent balls or go long once or twice. hes not the type of player to show the defense a clean pair or heels, or hold the ball up and bring in other players coming onto the play.
sending both full backs way up field is all very well, if you play 2 holding mids that don’t go wandering to far up field themselves. their 2 nd goal they had 3 players on 1 . this happened a few times 2nd half.
RDM really needs to wake up. these tactics will not achieve anything but put us in real bother next season.
rant over p.s STOP fooking about 442 two strikers playing as strikers. two wingers playing as WINGERS and full backs defend first. if one goes the centre mid fills in. stop messing around. good job i never put any money on this lot.
I had that very thought about the players earlier – Gestede is not Drogba
He’s not even Drogbas dad!
RDM is as crap as any of our last few managers. Having said that the team would struggle under pep Guadiola
It was only a friendly, but I feel totally disgusted after that second half performance . Middlesboro where just average, no they where crap. We are a team that’s not ready for the championship that is kicking off next week. God help us.
Same old same old. Went to the game. First visit to VP since the Mcleish season which sucked the life out of me. We were in control first half but lacking in penetration. Second half, as soon as they ran at us we were in trouble. Cissokho isn’t good enough. Grealish was providing cover for him but that’s not his strength. Gestede was a waste of a shirt. Play to his strengths or don’t play him at all.
As others have said, Ayew too deep and ineffective. Boro are nothing special but turned us over too easily.
Not many positives out of this game
Unfortunately agree 100% 😪😪
What do u expect virtually nothing has changed since last season
As expected Di Matteo and his back room staff are having the same impact as previous managers and their staff.
One day they may see what the fans are seeing and put it right. Other than some players having guarantees in their contracts stating they have to be picked in the starting 11 I can not for the life of me understand why Westwood and Bacuna continue to get picked.
Ayew is our best striker, so play him down the middle, take the shackles of him and let him show us how good he really is.
Di Matteo out.
Same old crap nothing’s changed. Mistake after mistake after mistake. Team will do well to stay up
Looking back on the game yesterday after having slept on it. I’m struggling to see what has changed from last season. In some ways it could be a good thing we didn’t stuff Middlesbrough cause RDM might of thought what we got player wise was good enough, at least now he might be of the thinking we need a handful more before the kick off next week.
Here’s hoping eh!
Worrying isn’t it Stubbs
What’s more worrying is why the last 4 managers ( Di Matteo, Garde, Black and Sherwood) have all continued to pick certain individuals who continue to offer absolutely nothing to the cause.
Like you said in a previous post it could be a good thing that we got beat the way we did because now Di Matteo may begin to realize we really are not good enough.
This season we should concentrate on staying in the division and trying to build a team to get us back up next season because promotion this season looks a very very long way off.
Come to think of it we’d do bloody well to actually stay in this division!!!
We really are a very very poor team.
Try as I might, I can’t find anything to disagree about in your post. Beginning to underwhelmed by our transfer activity but encouraged if Ayew and Amavi stay.
Never thought we would be promoted this season but would like to see us in touch with play off places.
Need attacking and creative mid, right back and a top quality striker.
having also slept on that nightmare of a performance. its not about the players in my opinion. its about tactics and playing to your strengths. we didn’t do either. what ever most fans think they know, we have enough quality compared to our rivals. except maybe norwich and newcastle.
but if we continue to try playing neat tip tappy football. trying to walk through teams. committing fullbacks forward into wingers leaving us drastically short and vulnerable to every counter attack. we will have no chance to reach our goal and win promotion.
but this isn’t down to signings or lack of them, or quality of our existing players, its down to RDM and tactics. we don’t have the players to play that system.we are not chelsea and never will be with these players.
if you play gestede then you need proper wingers. and you cross the ball, isn’t this simple lmao. we never crossed the ball second half or much in the first. when they did cross the ball it was low and hard, without committing players forward into the box. your left with gestede and he isn’t a striker that moves near post, hes a back post type were he needs a high ball lofty floating ball.
playing grealish and ayew both as free roles deeper than is needed, doesn’t achieve much only pretty patterns. we looked clueless to what was the tactics. if you don’t have a system that suits your players ABILITIES, frankly doesn’t matter how many signings we are too make. we will struggle to stay in this division as most are predicting
peace out
So basically the Manager that won the CL is crap after all! Proves my point that Chelsea team ran itself and the season after when he needed to improve them he was sacked and out of his depth
Remember were not a premiership team anymore (status anyway) we haven’t been a premiership team for years. So the result was it a shock?? Not really. The rebuilding will take a couple of years. Still if we can get rid of a couple and sign a couple before the season starts things may click. I believe we will and have a decent season too. I do trust our backroom staff to be honest I know some of you don’t. why you would be calling for RDM to go I don’t know it’s just daft. We’ve got to be patient end of. If you want instant success go support someone else as it won’t happen to us.
On holiday at minute i cannot stop thinking about it.what a catastrophe. a laughing stock to the game of football.im shocked at the lack of fighting them twats have .
Bill, don’t let it spoil the holiday, relax and retire to the bar!
@Adam
Have to agree. Mid-table finish and signs of progress are where we’re (hopefully) going this season. I don’t think we’ll go straight back up and, in one way, I’m not sure I want us to.
It’s hard to overcome many years of total negativity and I don’t want to see us scraping our way into the Prem in the play offs and coming straight down the season after.
It takes time to build something solid so can we please get behind the team and the manager and give them that time. Being overly negative before the season starts could be counter-productive.
Having said all that I was as disappointed as anyone else about the game.
I think it will be an eye opener for RDM. Every manager that comes in thinks they have to give every player a chance that’s why the same shite always get picked. On paper they probably look our best players! But this new owner coupled with RDM, I think they have the balls to get rid of them, it’s simply trying to find a buyer! I’m sure Xia and RDM will be working extremely hard whilst the window is open to make things happen.
Agree midtable stability is the best we are going to get this season. Team and manager nowhere near good enough.
@Oohah
I think a few pre-season friendlies aren’t anywhere near enough to be able to judge the manager’s performance. I think we need to give him at least half a season before we start demanding his removal.
As for the team I couldn’t disagree with you on that one,
Fair point
See we’re being linked with the Watford goalkeeper again ‘Pantsamillion’ (sic) – why do we need to sign another goalkeeper – is Steer going out on loan AGAIN!
I wouldn’t mind having Boro’s team at the moment. Negredo, Valdes, Downing, Clayton, Friend are better quality players, if we like it or not. They are the Premiership team so we can’t be that dismissive. We’re no longer rolling over the likes of Inter Milan at Villa Park before the season starts. We’re a long way from the team of the early 80s and mid 90s. We quickly need to lose the arrogance we have as fans as we have no devine right to be at the top of the tree and pushing the top teams all the way.
This result may be a blessing in disguise as having a 100% record through pre season may have glossed over aspects that need to be addressed.
Keep the faith, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
UTV!