TWar

I think players wanting to go to a bigger club is overstated somewhat. Players might want to play in bigger tournaments (going to a UCL/Europa side) or want to avoid dropping down (not joining likely relegation candidates) but between that it's all much of muchness, a mid table side is a mid table side. Beyond that its just about wages. Villa aren't in Europe and they probably won't be any time soon as they have one amazing player, a couple of decent players, and then a squad of mediocre players who would likely have gotten relegated a couple of years back if goal line tech hadn't had a one in 10,000 likelihood glitch. Bookies have us at 9/2 to go down and Villa at 11/2, it's much of muchness on that front as well. To be honest, they aren't a quality side side like Everton or Leicester. They have spent a bit because they still have a very cheap wage bill from the championship, but that also comes with a pretty poor squad. Grealish carries them and is far far too good for them, he goes in the summer and I think their relegation chances go a lot higher than ours regardless of whether they reinvest it.

Not sure about this "Villa have ambitions to challenge europe" thing. Could just be they are spending the Grealish money in advance. He is rumoured to have a £100m relearse clause so maybe they know he is off and want to get some people in before people get wind they are minted. Without Grealish they are worse side than us by a fair margin so I'm not sure they are the panacea they appear to be careerwise.

Yeah it more relates to the thing you were replying to in the post. But yes, lets agree to disagree. I think we will sell Vestegaard and maybe Ings but I very much doubt he goes. His long contract means he's our only "star player" (worth over £20m) we can keep so I doubt we cash in or we might be in a right old mess if the other stars don't renew.

I mean, I could get those stats, but that's fine. He does actually do more progressive passes than Phillips and Rice by a fair margin and all our attacking mids and I could find those stats which is akin to "breaking the lines". He receives the ball a lot too, statistically, which is akin to finding space. His high key passes indicates he plays the ball in good areas. His time to release the ball isn't measured, to my knowledge, but it doesn't seem to be hindering him too much considering how many key passes and chances he racks up. I don't think the England thing is much of a mark against him. Grealish was left out the team for ages despite being clearly way better than some others being called up at the time, Southgate makes some very poor decisions sometimes. Either way, your arguments are all valid ones, and I'm not arguing against you holding them. Calling him a "mincing fairy" who isn't tough enough to be our midfielder is patently ridiculous, as is pointing out he has played in games we lost therefore he must be bad.

It's because calling someone a "fairy" and saying they "mince around" is playground rubbish, and is far closer to a personal attack than a football opinion. Also there could easily be a ducking out the way statistic, it's not that it doesn't exist because it can't it's that it doesn't exist because it doesn't matter. A player not taking a shot to the face is not a valuable way to judge a players quality, that's why no one compiles it.

ESR will be about £60m if he goes imo, just coming through and Arsenal absolutely love him. Villa are massively lowballing Arsenal in the same way they are us.

I think we will struggle regardless as they are four very tough games (and newcastle). Without him though I think Diallo will have very big boots to fill and I rate our chances are pretty substantially lower. Maybe 4 pts expected with him and 1 pt without. Just my opinion though, obviously these things can't be accurately predicted.

Just examples mate, not really that deep. Could have used "If you have an ice lolly on a hot day it will melt" (One does not have to have had an ice lolly melt to say that). Just happened to be the things that came to mind in order to argue a point about the English language. I think you are reading a little too much into things that I ment to make simple arguments about the use of English.

In what way is his interpretation correct, just out of interest? I don't think "We fall apart without JWP" necessarily means I am guaranteeing that has already happened. Either way I don't think it is a particularly interesting conversation anyway to have in depth, just curious. And I don't think Duck argues based off what he sees on the pitch, I think he dislikes Ward-Prowse because he ducked out the way of a shot once and Duckhunter has a strange outdated sense of the "manly footballer" being the best footballer as well as a stubbornness that once he has made his mind up on someone that is that. There are a lot of people on here who don't use stats and use the eye test who I respect very much but Duck is not one of them.

The analogy had nothing to do with football, it was designed to argue the semantic point that "It all falls apart without JWP" means "If JWP wasn't in the team it would all fall apart" and not "It has in the past fallen apart when JWP wasn't present". We moved off football and into Duckhunter trying to claim strange semantic pedantry (incorrectly) because he knows little about football and couldn't argue against the actual points being made. I could have used the analogy "If you jump off the cliff you die" to prove it (in that that phrase is still valid if you have yet to fall off a cliff), but I wanted to use the same phrasing.

Armstrongs stats are better than all our other attacking mids, they also agree that he should be one of our first names on the team sheet, along with JWP.

"It all falls apart without him" is what I wrote, which is, for me, synonymous with "without him it would all fall apart" not "It has fallen apart in the past when he was not present". You could, at best, argue that both interpretations are valid, but there is certainly not a world where you can say yours is and mine isn't. For instance, if I were to say "if you remove the screws from your bed it all falls apart" that doesn't insist that that thing has already happened. This is a boring semantic debate but you seem to be deadset on engaging in a boring semantic debate.

Running at people isn't everything. JWP passes a lot better. But yeah, different views are fine. JWP is a great passer and a pretty average dribbler, it's probably his biggest weakness due to his lack of acceleration. We should set up in a way that allows him to splay passes about and lads like Armstrong to dribble too. They both have their role and both are really important, JWP is moreso imo as the end product he provides is better and he is very good defensively whereas Armstrong is only ok against the ball.

I disagree with this too, for the record. Armstrong is a very capable midtable AM and literally everyone else we have in that role is shite. JWP is better than Armstrong in an attacking sense but Redmond, Tella, Djenepo, Walcott sure as hell aren't.

One can predict an outcome with data and reasoning. It isn't proven, and it wouldn't be from a couple of anecdotal circumstances either, but it is a perfectly valid way to construct a hypothesis. For example, if I told you you would die if you jumped off a cliff and gave you a bunch of reasons the retort "well, have I ever actually died from jumping off a cliff?" would be a very silly one to prove you wouldn't.

Well, for starters offensively he has 15 goal contributions to Armstrong's 9 and has created almost double the chances so he can do quite a lot better than Armstrong in that regard. But the point is, he does both. He is slightly worse than Romeu defensively but has almost three times more goal contributions than him this season than Romeu has in literally his entire southampton career (six seasons). He is valuable because he does everything. He might not be the very best attacking (Ings) or the very best defensively (Romeu) but the fact he is second place at both shows how incredibly valuable he really is.

He leads the team or is near the top in most of our important metrics. He has more attacking threat than every single one of our attacking mids (see key passes and chances created) and he puts in more defensive actions per game than every player except Romeu and Bednarek. He also has more progressive passes per 90 than everyone in our team. I'd like to think if he wasn't there someone else would step up and do all that but it just doesn't seem very likely. He is only topped in goal contributions by our CF and is only topped in defensive actions by one of our CBs and our DM, I don't see how we would do without those attributes.

Oh great, your back to blame every one of our poor performances on the one guy you've decided you don't like. It'd been a while without that stupid point of view so I was worried you might have thought better of it. Glad you popped up to remind everyone. Saying we fall apart without him doesn't mean we will always win with him, use your brain.

15 last season. He's one of our best players, significantly better than Romeu and Armstrong but plays different role to both. He is our pivot, our box to box, it all falls apart without him. We have described him as our most important player and that's bang on the money.

I'll go another fullback. I think we'll get Williams in on loan soon as it makes sense for everyone to have him in for the preseason including United.

That successful dribbles disparity and success % are insane. Looks like a new way to advance from the back so we don't need to always hoof long or go sideways.

Excellent start! Couple more signings like that and we can be very hopeful for next season.

Bertrand was in an awkward position where he wasn't quite good enough to start for us but was too good to sit on our bench. He had the choice between dropping down to a lower club and starting (Watford, Norwich, Bournemouth, Fulham) or stepping up to a higher club and being a squad/cup option (Leicester, Arsenal, Spurs, Everton). He chose the latter and it was a good move all round. There is no contradiction in that he wasn't good enough to start for us but was good enough for Leicesters bench as we should be targeting players as starters who are better than Leicester squad players. I'd be gutted if we our best XI started Morgan, Choudhury, and Amartey too.

It's likely an upgrade on what Bertrand was last season and that's what matters really. Peak Bertrand in 15/16 was arguably the best LB in the league, we probably won't be getting that.