Unai Emery

[wittonwarrior]

Surely he’s seen enough of Bailey to know his pluses and minuses. I’ll put my bottom dollar he starts against Everton

[TonyD]

If he starts Bailey again I will start to really worry about him. 

[Clampy]

Playing him at home I dont mind so much.

[PaulWinch again]

I’m also not going to really start to worry about his decision making on the back of a bad game. He has got a back log of excellent decision making at Villa and beyond.

[BC Villain]

Emery is a very good manager. He's lost games before. He'll sort this out, but I think it will take more sorting than we realise. First games of the season are often strange, but we need to beat Everton and get up and running next week.

Yes, a big hole in the centre of defence for a start and there is no easy fix for that one.

This mindset of us not being able to win if we don't have Mings in the backline has blighted us for three years now with nobody seemingly knowing how to sort it.  Now we have no choice

[PeterWithesShin]

Blighted? He's missed about 8 league games in 3 years.

[Risso]

Blighted? He's missed about 8 league games in 3 years.

And mostly when he was out, we’ve had to play the likes of Hause. Our options are much better now.

[OCD]

The flipside of the timing of this is that Pau isn't up to speed yet. No doubting of his quality once he is but the plan was to ease him in gently. Same happened when we signed Moreno. Emery wanted to ease him in but ended up having to replace Digne 9 minutes into the Leeds match.

Now we're going to need him to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

[PeterWithesShin]

Blighted? He's missed about 8 league games in 3 years.

And mostly when he was out, we’ve had to play the likes of Hause. Our options are much better now.

And until Unai turned up it wasn't as though we were winning loads when he was in the team.

[Clark W Griswold]

We tried that later second half, and it was a disaster. Cash is extremely poor playing further forward on the right of midfield.

True but I think the game had gone at that stage and we were generally all over the place. The Tielemans idea would have been one option but we would have lacked a bit of natural width, Cash there would give you that but a lot more solidity than Bailey. Anyway, either of these ideas may or may not have worked but the one thing for certain is that playing a passenger like Bailey in a game like that was a bad idea. We should have been more solid, thinking a draw was fine, if we could nick a win it would be a bonus.
The only use I see for Bailey is playing him at home to some of these sub standard European teams to give others a rest. Which is why I’d cash in and have a punt at someone new.

[Percy McCarthy]

At the VP game we did very well avoiding their press by playing longer to McGinn who held it up for the runners from midfield. We didn’t seem to even try that tactic regularly yesterday. Strange.

Spot on. After fooling Howe last season after his ‘they always play that way’ quote, we played exactly how he expected us to.

[villadelph]

He is going to make all of them sit there and watch that match in slow motion. Over and over and over.

I’m worried, but I trust Unai to do his absolute best to figure it out.

Everton, Burnley, Wolves, West Ham, Luton, Bournemouth - we can get results from this run.

[pauliewalnuts]

I do think the Mings injury had a massive impact on us - not just the obvious, ie not on the pitch any more, but mentally.

[Malandro]

I do think the Mings injury had a massive impact on us - not just the obvious, ie not on the pitch any more, but mentally.

I watched the video of Mings on the floor this morning, it was pretty awful seeing someone in that state - it will have had a huge impact.

[ChicagoLion]

He is going to make all of them sit there and watch that match in slow motion. Over and over and over.

I doubt it.