Yes and villa are still competing in Europe
Some people on here insist we can't compete for top 4 without 200m on new midfielders yet ignore that villa are right up there with city and arsenal and above Chelsea.
Ruben Amorim | 2025-26
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
- Status
Some people on here insist we can't compete for top 4 without 200m on new midfielders yet ignore that villa are right up there with city and arsenal and above Chelsea.
Amorim would have that team in 15th or worse. He’s poor at improving players.
Are we dominating teams, we did for 2/3 of the bournemouth game but were terrible against Everton and west ham
No the feck he wouldn’t. Villa don’t have a bad team.
There are also plenty that, with every new squad, decide the coach is the issue. Every few seasons, the coach and players basically all change. It’s possible the players, the coach, or both, are a problem.
Personally, I believe the squad is way more significant when it comes to the finished product. Of course, the manager could also be rubbish, but I think the playing squad is the biggest influencer of outcomes, by a long way.
I'm holding him to the same standards as ETH. Failure to qualify top 5 is not good enough. Every manager who's had a full season who didn't qualify for the Champions League was sacked except for ETH and that was of course a bad decision as he was sacked early into the following season.
I'd say yes, but also they are also very lucky to be where they are based on underlying stats. Worse xga than us and far worse xg.
If he takes them down to 4th, 3rd will be progress next season.
Yes. Gripe means complaint.
All those teams have played between 6 and 8 games more than us already. With 9 premier league teams playing in Europe whilst we have a week off this is our best chance for a top 4 finish.
Neither did we last season and yet...
I still disagree, we're almost halfway through the season. But listen, this is clearly a waste of both your time and mine. Agree to disagree.
Ruud left us at 13th I think.
I don't think there's any problems with morale. But once again there's a section of the fanbase who thinks all our failings are down to personnel. And once we spend another £600m Amorim will be hunky dory.
Sometimes, yes. But we often run into problems when we are dominating games. As you've alluded to.
That's invariably always been the case post Fergie. Our cycle has been hire a manager who is not a good fit for the current squad, give said manager way too much power over transfers who then proceeds to spend £400-600m on medicore players, further adding to a mish mash of a squad not built for any one type of football or formation. We then give the manager too much time to fail, inevitably sacking them 6-12 months after we should have.
Then rinse/repeat.
There's a case to be made that Amorim doesn't have the control over transfers that his predecessors had. But other than that we sadly appear to be currently following the same pattern.
It is I'd agree, but not every new manager should need a complete squad rebuild before they can show anything. Our current squad is far from perfect but there is the bare bones of a good side there. The point I was making is there are those who convince themselves the squad/players are responsible for all our failings to make sense of a struggling manager they've decided to back to the hilt. It happened under Moyes, LVG, Jose, Ole, Ralf, Erik and now Ruben.
There are basically a couple of arguments in favour of the manager that are regurgitated every day, and to be fair the same can be said about opposing views. Its getting boring. But especially given the rude nature of the response, I will reply.
The basic question here revolves around what a manager, especially one some claim is or will be a top manager, can be expected to deliver and take responsibility for. On the xG point, our underperformance is long standing. There were lots of articles around September 2024 under ETH how we were the biggest underperformers on xG. It said we were 11th whereas as we 'should have' been fifth. Since then we have added two of the league's most potent attackers. We already had Bruno who the stats show as the most effective AM for creating assists/ chances. I would say with Amad, Bruno, Cunha and Mbeumo we have a front 4 who are in the top 2-3 forward lines in the league. You can then debate formation and whether they are in their best positions, but is anyone denying that is a great line up? Add Sesko in the mix as well. So my point is, we really should be creating chances with that team. I don't want to get in a big xG debate, it gets boring and technical, but I question the obsession of some with it. Palace vs City at the weekend, xG was always well in Palace's favour, even when City were two up their xG was around 0.3. By full time, it was 2.1 vs 1.1 in Palace's favour. What really does that tell us? City won, end of.
The issue seems to be that some supporters want to give the manager all the credit for the xG, despite us having one of the best attacking line ups in the PL. I would argue shuffling that line up could make it more impactful in a different formation. But if its down to the manger that we create chances, then surely its down to the manager when we let goals in? The stats yesterday that had Amorim pretty much equal to Ossie Ardiles for lack of clean sheets is alarming. Some of you may be too young, but Ossie's tenure at Spurs was hilarious. They would score goals but defensively they were all over the place and could not defend, it was comedy at times. And statistically Amorim is pretty much equal for clean sheets. So what is it? The manager gets credit for the bits we like but its not his fault for the bad bits, like not winning matches or not keeping clean sheets?
It all seems to come down to exactly the same argument. Give the manager another window or 2, 3-4 top class players and another £300m, and all be well. We have to break this ludicrous cycle, not least when the money really is running out. I am still surprised at lack of comment on our debt levels on here in the last set of financials. An elite or want to be elite coach can improve what they have and integrate new players. The whole needs to be more than the sum of the parts. Villa a good example, but there are plenty of others
I don't think it's about being defensive, we concede way too many easy goals to qualify as a defensive team.
What people have a problem with is key parts of the build up and attacking threat having to come from defenders due to the system employed.
Dani Alves and Jordi Alba Dorgu and Dalot are not. Instead of requiring a centre back to step into midfield and play progressive balls, we could just sign a midfielder that is actually good at that and play a third man in midfield.
I think that's more the issue, relying on our defenders to do things they don't look to have the ability to do.
Yes, we've scored 8 in the last two games. There's been plenty games this season where we've looked pretty toothless also though.
I wonder how things would’ve been if he took over at the start of this season instead, like he wanted to. Probably worse and without the lowered standards.
Definitely would have been the same, it's not a training issue. You can look at what's happening at Celtic at the moment to see almost a carbon copy of Amorim with us.
It's relying of defensive minded players to provide progressive and attacking impetus with players that are just not equipped to do it, or are comfortable doing it. Go hell for leather in part of a game, usually first half, look decent but not take some chances (as happens in all football matches, some good chances are missed), the team are then gased and can't lift the level significantly resulting in a huge drop off in intensity allowing the other team back into it along with a lack of genuine threat, which is particularly prevalent in the second half of matches.
We might be quite a bit better with wingbacks with good attacking quality and a great engine. They need to be reasonable defensively as well though. It's hard to find players that offer those things on a high enough level to get us to where we want to be, those that can will usually be wanted by other top clubs too.
This is a good point and is one of my main issues. The spare man is typically a CB or a wing back, not a more technical and attacking player be it a midfielder or a forward. So we have matches where Dorgu receives the ball in the attacking third with acres of space but then cannot reliably deliver a decent cross. Or its a CB being asked to push into midfield to mark. Against Everton it was Yoro as the spare midfielder given we were a man up, regularly receiving the ball in inside right position in second half, jogging forward and then passing sideways. Its not his fault, he is the player you want on the ball in that position against 10 men.
Your point that we concede too many goals to be classified as defensive is a great one. But what is the point of 3 CBs if not to get us more solidity. The stat what shows Amorim is one of worst PL managers of all times for lack of clean sheets. So if 3CBs dont give us more clean sheets, then seriously why are we playing that formation?
3 CBs is an inherently more defensive formation in the way that most managers set it up, it works best for teams sitting back and hitting on the break, Palace is a good example. We often get more of the ball as teams actively choose to sit back against us and cede possession, as they know we struggle against a low block, then they look to hit us with long ball breaks. This is shown in stats for this season where we are one of the teams facing most long balls against.
the last game was interesting in many respects. Not least for various periods especially later in second half it was a back four, and in that later period we were playing something close to 424. Not sure where Amorim goes next with AFCON and suspensions.
So you suggesting our squad is a 15th in the league level squad?
100% agree with all this. I certainly dont think the system as we employ it is fit for us.
As you rightly point out, a back 3/5 should be solid, and is traditionally something you would expect to see where a team wanted to shore up after taking a lead, or playing a superior team and would play deep and then hit on the break, very much what Palace are good at now.
We seem to employing a complicated version of it designed to provide overloads, but these overloads more often than not seem to result in the extra man being expected to create something being players that aren't very reliable at using the ball.
We're also conceding near enough every game, and often multiple times so it's neither solid, nor are we scoring enough goals to view it as a calculated risk that it winning us more games than not.
I personally don't see any great value in it the way we do it, and think we'd be better off with a very different approach.
As you say, it did look like he was changing it a bit in the last game, so we'll see what happens if he sticks with it. I could see it just being down to losing some of our better players during AFCON though, then back to business as usual.
We absolutely did have a bad team last season.
We didnt have one that should've been finishing in the bottom half of the table
Apologies for my comment and tone. I see that I was given a warning, but as a non-native speaker, I think I may have had a different understanding of someone being deliberately obtuse. I understood it as someone pretending to not understand, rather than as an insult. So, apologies again, I did not mean to insult, and I appreciate the effort in your response.
Regarding the xG, that is fair enough; I don't even put that much credit in it myself, as it could just be a result of a big amount of low quality shots, which is also why I included the big chances created statistic. In my opinion, I find it rather tiresome that some are blaming Amorim for everything. There is much talk about progress as in results; but us being far up for missing big chances is a good indicator that we're quite wasteful. It is Amorim's job to make us play attacking football and organise patterns of build-up that end up as chances, which by all accounts, he is doing with these players, a few games excluded. We are creating a bunch of big chances, and I see us miss sitters almost every game. So I'm having a bit of a hard time trying to grasp what some posters expect; Amorim cannot finish or score goals for the players. If they did score those chances, then we would be winning those games, but because of the wastefulness that he can do nothing about, we end up drawing or even losing.
I agree that - defensively - it has been a shambles, but we've been quite unlucky with the defense too. Mazraoui, Maguire, de Ligt out - all whom are our best defenders. The remaining ones now are Yoro and Heaven, who are both inexperienced and are having poor performances, and Shaw, who is primarily a LB and prone to be out of position. It doesn't help that we have Dalot and Dorgu as our left wingbacks who are both prone to mistakes and loss of focus, and Amad on the other side who is targeted for his lack of defensive ability. Not terrible defensively, but it is not something he is great at. Offensively, he is doing very good, in my opinion.
To me, when we are strictly talking about progress, then I would say we are progressing. We addressed the attack, but next we need to focus on the midfield and defense. He inherited a really poor, fragile, mentally weak squad. Sure, he could do better, but so could every manager in PL this season.
I am curious as to where you believe Villa are better talent wise than Utd?
Onana and Kamara walk backwards into our midfield. McGinn might actually do a better job in our double pivot than what we currently have. I’d have Konsa at LCB over Shaw, and both of their left backs would at least present more of a threat than Dorgu and Dalot. Creativity up front is where they’re lacking a bit imo, but overall I think their starting 11 at the very least has a higher floor than ours
I think if Amorin was playing Onana and Kamara in place of Casemiro and Bruno in his usual 3-4-3 Utd would have significant struggles getting up the pitch but would be stronger defensively.
Martinez, Konsa, Maguire, Shaw, Digne, Amad, Onana, Bruno, Cunha, Rogers, Watkins
Would be a my combined XI. 6 Villa, 5 us.
Their keeper, 9 and midfield are better than ours.
Not one player has improved under him. And don't come at me with Amad because his talent was already obvious.
Matt Cash is probably better for the RWB position than our current options
Eh?
If we play Amad at right 10, sure. Cash is known for scoring screamers too.
I would think he'd be playing two matches per week so more scrutiny and worse performances about to be sacked. You're right about the standards for sure.
You think we would have qualified for Europe under the previous manager? We certainly weren’t on course to do so.
The issue is that the squad was quite poor, we had really poor attacking options, Rashford, Garnacho, Rasmus, Zirkzee, Anthony were our attacking options... then the number of injuries in defence, Amad being injured, lack of confidence.
Regardless of who the manager was, we would have struggled badly.
I know alot of fans here would say... injuries happen to everyone but whilst that is true, look at City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs for example... when they have their best 2 CB's playing... they look solid. Whenever any of those teams have to go 3/4 games + without them both, they all struggle.
Arsenal are not the same without Saliba and Gabriel, even though they have very good backups.
I wasn't sure about him when he signed for Villa, but Pau Torres is miles better than those 2.
Pre-Aston Villa Press Conference
New
What's this?
https://ibb.co/prQTDMk1
And how do I make it so you don't have to click the link, the pic is just there?
- Status