Because seven days is never too long.
Jacob Ramsey has signed for Newcastle, victim of Uefa rulings and trigger for a load of enigmatic social media posts from his old colleagues. Good luck to him, no luck whatsoever to his new team.
Leon Bailey’s going to Roma for the season. Good luck to him with no second thoughts.
And he’ll need it, because he’s been injured in his first training session and out for two months.
The Athletic has apparently seen plans for the North Stand, adding 5,000 new seats for a start and sorting more stuff about public transport. It’s not as big as the San Giro, as they’re always saying, but it’s going to be built, as they won’t admit.
We’ve apparently made a bid for Toulouse defender Jaydee Canvot. If it exists it’s been rejected. As, apparently, has our offer for Nico Jackson. And one for Sporting Lisbon winger Geny Catamo. One definite deal is Alex Moreno, moving on a free to Girona.
Al-Ahli have added Amadou Onana to Villa’s list of players on the way out while Ollie Watkins is moving to Arsenal for £80 million. That’s what a couple of newspapers, and the Sun, are saying. In response Damian Vidagany, who’s starting to become the loosest cannon seen at Villa Park since the glory days of General Krulak, has a bit of a rant about unreliable news sources and clickbait.
Lewis Dobbon, who you may remember is on our books, has signed for Preston for the season. That’s a few quid extra saved. It might be going towards Marco Asensio, who’s linked with a return again.
Chelsea are selling Carney Chukwuemeka to Dortmund for a profit, part of which might or might not be coming to us. All this money and we can’t spend it. Unai says as much in his pre-match press conference, as well as a few more things that arouse comment.
Then again, there were a lost more comments post-match, and not just from the boss. Brentford are the sort of opposition where we should be turning up, winning with the minimum of fuss, and going home. We’ve done it for the last couple of seasons and there was no reason, PSR or not, why we couldn’t do it again. We had the players to beat them yet we got what we deserved. Pau Torres was at fault for their goal and with Boubacar Kamara going off injured the team’s collective heads dropped.
Once more, we might as well have ended the match as soon as we went behind because we never looked like scoring. Our new signings finally came on but didn’t make much difference while the old hands were for the biggest part missing. Morgan Rogers has been found out and needs to learn something new and although Ollie Watkins gets a lot of criticism he’s always going to find scoring difficult when he’s got three opponents round him and none of ours anywhere near.
As for Unai, the slow build-up is alright if you can find an opening eventually but at the moment none of our team can. We could do with a bit of width as well. Three players in the next week should do it.
