Summer transfer window 2017/18

Is Bruce really gonna take us into a new season without signing at least ONE attacking player after the team finished with the fourth worst goals tally in the league last season? REALLY?

As for Green, I really think he's just hype right now and is not worth putting all our faith in. look, we need midfielders who can hit 8-12 goals in a season and chip in with at least 7-12 assists. Is Green really gonna do that for us when he doesn't even have a goal or assist to his name yet? Not for me. We need someone much more proven in the attacking third imo.

Welcome to Ahmed and Glenn to Aston Villa.

With Green I think some of the excitement for him is slightly premature, he's a good prospect, but we shouldn't be going into a season relying so much on him for creativity, as he's still got much to prove, but as it stands with the players we've got available for selection I'd be looking to start him.

Wyness in an audio interview with Tom Ross did say we were going to sign a mixture of 'real men' and 'exciting youth', I suppose you could say the first part has come true, so maybe the second will too.

A player called Kunda Jr has been linked the past few days, but there's not much information on him, that I can find other than he's a technical player who can play on the wing or as an attacking midfielder.

A lot can happen in 3 years - good and bad, and this is a 3 year old scouting report, but might give some clue about Kunda - at least, how he was at 21 yrs old anyway.

Gabriel Kunda Jr.: Scout Report



Thursday, 20 February 2014
Introducing


Who is Gabriel Kunda Jr.
The young maestro was born on the 2nd of October 1992, in Lusaka, Zambia. Having started his career in England at Charlton's U'9 academy Kunda moved abroad to where he further developed his young career in the mother land of tiki taka football Spain. However, Kunda has not represented them at any youth level internationally nor has he represented his native country Zambia.

Kunda has many reputable strengths, most notably his dribbling and his passing. There are many technically brilliant players out there, but Kunda sticks out in the way he carries himself on the pitch: Head up, posture like a ballet dancer, flair, impeccable first touch and with some of that 360 degree vision we have come to expect from a young midfielder learning his trade the Spanish way. In terms of pure and natural talent, there are not many better than him within his age group.
His role in the team is as one of the two midfielders ahead of the defensive midfielder. He sometimes plays as the deeper of the two, but is perhaps better suited to the more attacking minded role, and has often demonstrated a willingness to make runs into the penalty area as well as good timing in terms of when to pick his moments to go forward.
Still, his main strengths are his superb ball control, technique and composure. He can bring the ball down in just about any situation, never gets stressed, and usually plays the right pass. Like most Spanish youngsters he has no problem receiving the ball under pressure, as his combination of ability, composure and awareness of his surroundings means he rarely loses the ball. He also has the ability to do the unexpected, which makes him able to destabilise the opposition and instigate attacking moves from seemingly innocuous situations. Kunda has been suited playing the (free role in midfield) which allows him roam and stray passes around the field from left to right with pin point accuracy.
As with many other technical players, his weakness lies in the physical side of the game. He is not particularly big, strong or defensive minded, and although he makes up for it through sheer footballing ability the question mark revolves around how he would cope playing a different type of football, in a different midfield setup. Even though he has decent body strength and good balance, and also has the work ethic ingrained, I doubt we will see clubs deploying a two man midfield playing a more direct style of football being after his signature any time soon. If so, it would probably be in a no.10 role, operating at the apex of the midfield. To be fair though, this has more to do with the type of player he is than it being a weakness.

He sounds like the type of player we could do with, just a queston of whether he can kick start his career. I read an article that suggested that he scored 7 goals in 21 games for Zaragoza, and was wanted by AS Monaco and PSV Eindoven, chose Villareal instead, but for whatever reason hasn't made a single appearence for them.

http://readastonvilla.com/2017/07/18/villa-considering-swoop-zambian-midfielder/

Even if he were to sign we'd probably still need someone a bit more proven to help with a our creative problems, I think we'll probably look to loan a few youngsters from Premier clubs, who though, I've got no idea.

From what I can see, Hourihane in 2015-2016 made 25 appearances for Barnsley, scored six goals and created 11 assists. Lansbury scored six goals in 17 appearances and created three assists.

For Villa last season, Hourihane appeared 17 times, scored one goal and created three assists and Lansbury appeared 18 times with no goals or assists. At Barnsley, Hourihane's Whoscored rating was 7.72, at Villa last season, 6.80. At Forest, Lansbury's Whoscored rating was 7.23, while at Villa last season it was 6.80.

Oh and Adomah played 38 matches for us last season, scored three goals and created 10 assists. For Middlesborough he played 42 times in 2015-2016, scoring six and creating five assists. His Whoscored rating was 7.20 at Middlesborough that season, at Villa last season it was 6.84.

I haven't looked at anyone else's stats but what the hell are we doing to these really good players we cherrypick from other teams? Even if we did buy in some new attacking players, what's the point? Something, somewhere, is going wrong once they arrive at Villa. Are they all being played out of position?

I think the problem for our attacking players is Bruce's negative men behind the ball football, none tactics and him putting things like 'passion and grit' before things like passing and movement.

That's the reason why last season apart from Kodjia, it was players like Hutton, Jedinak, Taylor and Chester who were deemed to be our better players, of course those types are going to thrive more, when it's the opposition who have the lion's share of the ball.

And it will be more of the same this coming season, not once during pre-season have I heard Bruce talk about how we need to keep the ball better or become more creative, it's all about being men and grinding out results, and that's the kind of football we'll see whilst he's in charge.

Sorry dead buzzard I must disagree with you, Bruce has definitely said we need to be better on the ball, keep possession better and create and score more goals.
If he can sort it out ??? That's the million dollar question.
Despite all the negativity surrounding our pre-season games I still believe he is getting a team together that will be more balanced and will get us to the play offs at least.

He said it last season after games, but we never improved like he said we needed to.

During pre-season, the perfect time to work on things, as far as I'm aware he hasn't talked about improving the way we play at all; all the talk from him, is about getting stuck in, 'real men' earning the right to play and so on. Even Lansbury was talking about grinding out 1-0 wins yesterday.

His signings are the perfect reflection on how we're going to play, as has been stated last season we had one of the better defenses in the league but we were the fourth worst for scoring, so what does Bruce do? Signs a definsive midfielder, a defender, and right-back when we've got about five of those already. Whilst not bad players, you could argue apart from Johnstone, we didn't really need a single one of them, all this talk of the likes of Terry and Whelan being good for the dressing room, smacks to me of Bruce bringing in people to do what he should be doing, if he doesn't do tactics (by his own admission) and needs to bring in others to be a presence in the dressing room, then what does he do.

Whilst Bruce is in charge for us to have any chance of being serious contenders, we're going to have to keep a lot of clean sheets and we'll need match winners all over the park who can conjur something out of nothing, not just Kodjia, but hopefully the likes of McCormack, Hogan and Grealish can step up too.

Anyway back on topic, someone asked Xia if the 'mystery player' we were after was Sam Gallagher, to which he replied 'that's no', interestling that he didn't deny the idea of a mystery player though.

I think if we can sell a few more, we may well see one or two more arrivals. Cisshoko going to Turkey in the next few days, and Veretout and Elphick, look to be on the way too, which I'm guessing should raise the best part of £10M.

Chris Samba signed on a one year deal

https://www.avfc.co.uk/News/2017/07/20/transfer-news-samba-signs

Delighted for Chris Samba, i have really enjoyed watching him in pre season and he has been the stand out player for me too. Crikey A back 3 of Samba, Terry & Chester? That's some wall to get past

The Utterer wrote:Delighted for Chris Samba, i have really enjoyed watching him in pre season and he has been the stand out player for me too. Crikey A back 3 of Samba, Terry & Chester? That's some wall to get past  

He's also been training with us for about 6 months unpaid. His form in preseason coupled with that means he totally deserved a shot