Lichaj at Villa: released and looking for a new club

I'm currently restoring Ajax to UCL prominence. Playing with them gives me the excuse to sell my older players. I win with kids.

 

I only buy players 23 or under on FIFA, I sell all players by 28 yrs old. I like to groom them and sell them for big profit when they're still in their prime but done improving at a strong rate.

 

Leeds AND Forest interested in Lichai - this would have been huge news in 1980.

 

He would definitely have been the youngest player to get a game with either team.

 

And probably the only non UK resident.

I haven't played Fifa in years. I got sucked into this FM shit and have no time for anything beyond eating and sleeping. Thank god I'm self employed, or I'm sure I'd have been canned by now.

 

i just fired up fm 2012 again the other day. ********. that. game. don't play it if you haven't. don't. you'll lose hours/days/years of your life. licaj isn't rated on it, though, and doesn't start in the digital version down the line either. all in all, fm is often a pretty good barometer of who's who and who'll be who. not perfect, but often startlingly prescient.

 

In FM 13 he is rated pretty highly, in fact he scored 4 of the 12 goals in the 2013 GC when I was managing the US. Scored 2 against Mexico in the final, it finished 5-0.

 

Has Lichaj ever been tried out at wing before? He has great speed and attacking instincts.

 

is he? Couldn't bring myself to buy that one. Any USA wonderkids?

 

Diego Fagundez and Benji Joya, some others I don't remember, Zardes and Villarreal are wonder kids also.

 

I've never got why someone hasn't bought Villa or Birmingham City and pumped money into them. I bet if you asked most American soccer fans the three biggest cities in the UK they would guess London, Manchester, Pool.

 

Zardes turns 22 in September. He's a lot older than most people realize.

He's 4 years older than Fagundez, and 2 full years older than both Joya and Villarreal. Just saying, when you're that age, you're no longer a kid.

 

Well, that's FM13 for ya.

 

This isn't meant as a knock on Ferguson, but I think you're under-stating how big Man U was before his arrival. They'd been through a remarkable title drought, but they were still arguably the richest club in English soccer, and neck and neck with Liverpool for the most popular. It was only a matter of time before they rose again.

 

Birmingham is big, but when people talk about Birmingham as the 2nd biggest city in the UK they mean the West Midlands conurbation which takes in 4 clubs that have been in the Premier League: Birmingham City, Aston Villa, Wolves and West Brom plus one smaller league club: Walsall. There's also quite a number of historically big clubs nearby: e.g. Stoke and Coventry.

 

Sure. Totally agree. They're always going to be a huge club. However, the complete and total dominaton they have experienced since the late 80's also coincided with a tremendous explosion in exposure and money worldwide. It was a perfect storm of hitting the manager lottery at the pefect time in soccer history. Manchester was huge before, and was a sleeping giant. Similar to Leeds, but on a bigger scale. Fergie maximized that brand. It will be difficult to continue that domination though.

 

Randy Lerner put a fair bit into Villa at the start of his reign (and made a fair bit back on Downing, Milner, Young, Barry etc) but O'Neill made some absolutely dire signings on big wages, and I think Lerner tried to scale back a bit.

Its amazing to think that Villa were so close to Champions League football just a few years ago, considering the shambles they've been recently

 

In the first half of this season, Villa were a shambles, but in the second half, I don't think that was true any more. Pretty good young team, with potential to get better, just a shame that Lichaj wasn't one of the players who made the grade.

 

Yeah, they had a decent lead on Arsenal for 4th the one season and O'Neill bought Heskey in January while Arsenal bought Arshavin.(back when he was really good) I'm sure you'll remember this, but they were on the verge of going 8 points up on Arsenal, when they were winning 2-0 against Stoke at Villa Park in about the 85th minute and Stoke scored two quick goals to get a draw with Glenn Whelan scoring the equalizer.

Edit: I looked it up, that was actually on March 1st, I thought it was closer to the transfer window. Also the first Stoke goal was in the 87th minute.
http://espnfc.com/en/report/243776/report.html?soccernet=true&cc=null

 

Thanks for bringing up the great memories. I thought without a doubt we had champions league that season. I have some great memories of Villa finishing so close to 4th.

 

Lichaj is likely to sign for Nottingham forest.

 

Forest would be a good move. The Kuwaiti owners seem to have a bit of money, and Davies is likely to have them in and around the play offs next year.

Sam Hutchinson was first choice right back last year, and has since returned to Chelsea, so Lichaj would likely be first choice straight away

 

Hope this is the beginning and not an end. Don't wanna see him stuck in the Championship forever. Would he be first choice RB at the club?