Whoever is manager, the main issue for me is the lack of investment in attacking players who actually get into the starting 11. Roy has hinted as much during post game interviews.

Looking at the truly attacking players we’ve transferred in since Benteke at the start of the 16/17 season:

Víctor Camarasa... loan farcical
Cenk Tosun... loan injured
Mitchy Batshuayi... loan ok in short time at club
Max Mayer... seldom plays
Jordon Ayew ... has done ok
Alex Sorloth... farcical
Erdal Rakip... loan farcical
Ruben Loftus Cheek ... great loan

In that time we also let Yohan Cabaye go.

So in 4 years only 1 attack minded player has been signed full time that now regularly plays ... Ayew. For me that’s been the primary concern for a long time now, not the manager.

I have no doubt Roy wanted his team to perform as they did in the 2nd half of the Chelsea game. The point is, they didn't take that form into the Villa game despite having two extra days to recover. Furthermore, you haven't addressed the Leicester and Burnley performances. The Villa display was not a one-off, just several rungs down from the other poor displays. If Roy simply sends out the same 11 (minus Benteke of course) against Man U what kind of message is that sending to us fans?

Also what will it say to the rest of the squad? I suggest something like "it doesn't matter how badly my first XI play the rest of you aren't getting a start".

one of the main problems we have is tht of the starting 11, i calculate that 9 (Ward and Ayew excluded) are on £60k or more a week and are all contracted next year.

So how can we massively alter the squad when we have ageing and highly paid players? Who wil take them on?

Of the 4 £100k plus players - Zaha, Tekkers, Sakho and Meyer i would not be overly concerned if all 4 are moved on in the summer. £40m plus for Wilf maybe £5m each for the 2 Liverpool flops and possibly a loan back to Germany for Meyer.
The highest paid players need to be playing each week and be contributing. None of these 4 are. Getting them off our wage bill would allow a few newbies to come in hopefully on more realistic salaries

Exactly.
Like I said what message is Roy sending to the bench sitters?
Also, he's gone back on what he said at the time of the Bournemouth game (yes he gave Mitchell 5 minutes - big deal!).
The least he can do on Thursday is give both Jairo and Max a start; he can rest MacArthur and either Luka or Kouyate for the bulk of the game. He might even be surprised at how things go and keep the two youngsters on for the whole match! At least Jairo can pick a pass and he's quite feisty when it comes to tackling. In fact Roy could do worse than play him at LB and ask PvA to play further forward in support of Wilf.
Anything to freshen up this tired old team.

Edited by doombear (14 Jul 2020 11.37am)

Oh my God! When did this happen?! What were the circumstances? It wasn't on the news or anything.

Is he ok? Seriously injured?

I've repeated this many times. Benteke missed 20 from 23 good chances in Roy's first season including the pathetic penalty debacle against Bournemouth. This after Allardyce sacked him from pens following costly misses against West Ham and Watford in Sam's first game.

Roy has done well to keep us in the position he has with this write off / useless lump and so few alternatives.
Imagine managing a team playing three seasons with a £100k a week centre forward who can't score, run shoot, head the ball in the goal or trap a bag of cement.

I've seen his sending off on Sunday now and the "kick" is fairly typical. He couldn't even put his laces through that.

Edited by Rachid Rachid Rachid (15 Jul 2020 10.15pm)