Johan Lange - appointed

[FatSam]

Who is 'Big Sam'? I know of a 'Fat Sam'. Are they related?

Well I’m the proprietor of a speak easy, I can’t speak for  the other guy.

[Smithy]

It does seem strange that we've done so little in the weak European market, pretty much all the signngs have been known quantities and the youngsters presumably scouted by the Acadamy team.

Yep. I like the players we’ve bought, but it’s all quite obvious. Buying the player with the best stats from the Championship is what we did 4-5 years ago with Hourihane at the time, and Ings is this year’s Bent, although hopefully better.

I'll hold my hand up and say I'd never even heard of Leon Bailey, not that I really pay attention to German football, but that was a complete surprise to me, and didn't not feel like a normal 'villa' signing.

The same can be said of Sanson, though we've not really seen much of him yet.  Those two definitely appear to have a 'Lange' fingerprints on them.  Whether they'll be proof of how good Lange is, remains to be seen.

Yeah, me too. Don't watch German/French football but genuinely hadn't heard of either until they were linked to us. We shop a bit higher up the food chain than Copenhagen, so it's not surprising that the "surprise" players are ones that people who pay attention to those leagues have heard of.

Also, I'd say we've got a different focus to Copenhagen at all. It sounds like player development will be a big part of our setup, so bringing in players that are in that 16-20 age bracket who we think will improve massively with the right coaching & loan moves makes perfect sense. I'd be surprised if any of the youth team players we've brought in have been specifically targeted by Smith, even if the first team ones might have been more influenced by him.

It's hard to say, of course, because it's all behind the scenes stuff but I think Lange's influence is something we'll see over 5-10 seasons. Think we'll also see more left field signings from abroad when the production line is properly rolling and you're seeing multiple academy players breaking through.

If you look at Chelsea, they spent £97m on Lukaku, which at first glance looks like them throwing money around like it's a billionaire's plaything.  But then you look at Abraham, Tomori and Zouma who were sold for £80m combined, two of whom are youth products, the other signed from France at 19, and you realise this is one of the ways they avoid FFP issues.

Our annual Match-day revenue is about £25-30m a year I think, so you can see how making £20m a year from selling youth products is seen as an important part of our long-term health.  And I don't mean that as in "we're now a business that is designed to sell footballers at a profit", I mean we can only play 14 on any given matchday, and if we have 6 promising youth players come through at once, it would be great to get £20m for the ones we can't fit into our squad, and then only keep the very very best of them.

I love nothing more than seeing homegrown players making it in the first team, but we have about 15 in every age group wanting to do that, that's 15 new players every year getting to an age where they want to play. If we can get one or two of those in and around the first team each year, and sell a couple of the others for a few million, we'll be doing absolutely brilliantly.

[OCD]

If you can get yourself into a position where you're feeding players through to the first team like Mason Mount, Reece James, Trevor Chalobah, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Ethan Ampadu but also selling players like Tammy Abraham, Kurt Zouma, Fikayo Tomori and Tino Livramento for best part of £100m profit you can see what a good youth system can give you over several years.

[Hookeysmith]

I read somewhere today that it was Lange that convinced Smith to not buy a midfielder and instead put his faith in the ability of Sanson so i would assume pretty safe to bet that he was one that was chosen by Lange.

I really hope he comes off

[chrisw1]

If you can get yourself into a position where you're feeding players through to the first team like Mason Mount, Reece James, Trevor Chalobah, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Ethan Ampadu but also selling players like Tammy Abraham, Kurt Zouma, Fikayo Tomori and Tino Livramento for best part of £100m profit you can see what a good youth system can give you over several years.

You can add Lamptey to that list.

[john e]

I read somewhere today that it was Lange that convinced Smith to not buy a midfielder and instead put his faith in the ability of Sanson so i would assume pretty safe to bet that he was one that was chosen by Lange.

I really hope he comes off

The Athletic

[Smithy]

If you can get yourself into a position where you're feeding players through to the first team like Mason Mount, Reece James, Trevor Chalobah, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Ethan Ampadu but also selling players like Tammy Abraham, Kurt Zouma, Fikayo Tomori and Tino Livramento for best part of £100m profit you can see what a good youth system can give you over several years.

You can add Lamptey to that list.

I think Lamptey is a bit of an anomaly in Chelsea terms, in that he's worth god-knows-what now, probably £30m, but they sold him for just £3m a year ago.  You've got to assume there is a big sell-on clause in there, otherwise he was clearly undervalued by Chelsea.

But even then, selling youth products without any real first-team experience for £3m is a great position to be in.  It's not all that long ago we were letting players like Marc Albrighton leave for nothing and to go on be part of a league-winning side.

[OCD]

If you can get yourself into a position where you're feeding players through to the first team like Mason Mount, Reece James, Trevor Chalobah, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Ethan Ampadu but also selling players like Tammy Abraham, Kurt Zouma, Fikayo Tomori and Tino Livramento for best part of £100m profit you can see what a good youth system can give you over several years.

You can add Lamptey to that list.

I limited it to just this summer.

Right back is an interesting one at Chelsea. They've now developed Reece James, Tariq Lamptey and Tino Livramento. They keep developing these right backs/wing-backs but there's no pathway to the first team other than for James who developed first.

[mrfuse]

I read somewhere today that it was Lange that convinced Smith to not buy a midfielder and instead put his faith in the ability of Sanson so i would assume pretty safe to bet that he was one that was chosen by Lange.

I really hope he comes off

The Athletic

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/09/01/aston-villa-transfer-gossip-lange-sanson-smith-report/

[Scott Nielsen]

So if that is true we don't have a DM due to budget constraints rather than Smith not wanting one.

[Sexual Ealing]

And there I was thinking that Smith was responsible for the signings.

[chrisw1]

So if that is true we don't have a DM due to budget constraints rather than Smith not wanting one.

Whilst it's possible I don't think it realy suggests that.  The Atletic Article it is based on just said the below.  I think Evans' quote about our 'quest for top half' says everything about him as a Villa reporter.

The ongoing debate is that Villa need a player who can break down play like Nakamba and then pass it around like Luiz. Southampton’s James Ward-Prowse could have been that man but Villa found out very early on that securing a deal for him was going to be extremely difficult.

When that move fell through — Villa bid in the region of £25 million for Ward-Prowse but were swiftly knocked back — other options were still considered. However, there were whispers as early as the first week of the month that once Axel Tuanzebe had joined Leon Bailey, Danny Ings, Emiliano Buendia and Ashley Young in joining the club, Villa were done if Ward-Prowse could not be signed.

It’s understood that sporting director Johan Lange was very keen for Sanson, who made his first appearance in 149 days for the under-21s last night, to be given a chance to show what he is made of, too. It was Lange who pushed hard for that particular move, with CEO Christian Purslow agreeing that a £14 million deal last January represented good value for money.

If Villa weren’t so ambitious and aggressive in their pursuit of improving, they could have waited until this summer to sign him. As it happens, when the Frenchman finally gets back out there for the seniors, he will feel like a new arrival, having spent the last three months on the sidelines with a knee injury.

Then there was the debate over whether to block the pathway of a youngster like Ramsey or Chukwuemeka. By not signing another midfielder in this window — and let’s not forget, there are only 17 league games until it reopens in January — both players could flourish with more opportunities.

Whether a perceived fragility comes back to bite Villa in their quest for the top half remains to be seen. Can Luiz pull it all together to become the defensive midfielder Villa are missing? Will Nakamba find some consistency? Or does Sanson fill the gap? The weeks and months ahead should provide some answers.

[ADVILLAFAN]

And there I was thinking that Smith was responsible for the signings.

That's what I heard

[Rudy Can't Fail]

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, we only have one defensive midfielder in the squad, Marvelous Nakamba. Any other option is players out of position.

We go again..

[paul_e]

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, we only have one defensive midfielder in the squad, Marvelous Nakamba. Any other option is players out of position.

We go again..

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.