Damian Vidagany - Director of Football

[Dante Lavelli]

His role is to be a lightening conductor for Unai.

So if Unai blows up he becomes v vocal to accompany and protect him!

Good point.  He often echos Emery’s mood and takes the flack that comes our way.  It’s clever; it gets the message out there, whilst shielding the manager.

[LeonW]

Have a look at the Man City penalty, that might be a clue.

When you look at some of the decisions over the last 4 games I can understand why the club and Emery feel that there is inconsistent treatment. I’m just not sure how effective it is to just post a message like Vidagany has.

I’ve said it for a long time (much as I’m loathe to) but unfortunately, I think it’s the case that get things to change, the manager and the players have to put pressure on the officials publicly, pointing out the inconsistencies. It generates talking points for the media as it’s easy pickings and after awhile, it becomes the case that officials start to worry about negative repercussions from their decisions so it sharpens the mind rather than just ‘oh, it’s Villa,’ as opposed to ‘I don’t want Arteta/Fernandez/Saka calling me out in the media/in front of 50,000 again.’ Some of the players in recent games like Cucuralla, Saka, Fernandez, have literally refereed our games.

Sad but true state of affairs.

[OCD]

The players, and McGinn in particular, seem to be in the ref's ear more recently. Starting to act a bit more like the normal suspects do.

[eamonn]

Isn't it a rule now that only the captains can speak to the ref about controversial decisions ?

[AV82EC]

Isn't it a rule now that only the captains can speak to the ref about controversial decisions ?

Yep. In that Refcam of the Leeds/ManYew game he kept telling players to go away who weren’t the captain.