R.Bear

This has a very Forest away feel to it already.

The lack of urgency in the final 10 minutes was infuriating. We could have sent the kids out in Bosnia had we got a 3rd. Now we have to make sure we get a point.

Olsen was beaten then all ends up by a soft, lofted header from about 10 yards out. He's an accident waiting to happen.

Kamara is having a mare.

Aston Villa: How Emi Martinez became world’s best goalkeeper https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64568155

He literally won the best goalkeeper in the world award a few weeks ago.

What an unbelievable ball in from Doug. Incredible.

You're of your mind if you actually believe that.

Here's some advice. Trying to work out what points a team will get from x games and what they'll need etc never works out. It's a total waste of time, as is this post.

Randomly thought of him today and went to see how he was getting on. 15 games, 0 goals, 0 assists

Ironically you talk about projecting yet you've just projected several things I didnt say on me. I am aware of the commercialisation of modern football thanks. She's a bang average footballer. She's a forward who doesnt score or get assists. She doesnt play for Switzerland and has been dropped by Villa, because she hasn't been playing well. In regards to her teammates, I said very clearly "I wouldn't be surprised if...". Nowhere did I say it was happening. But it has happened at basically every sports team in the world since the dawn of sports. Players who get undue attention for other reasons irritates other players who are performing much better but don't get the attention. Not just sport, every line of work. The bottom line is, there are people in this thread almost celebrating that we have Lehmann for her supposed commercial benefits to our club. If we switch it up and it was one of the men's players who was not performing, warming the bench, releasing calendars in sexy poses, constantly uploading suggestive pictures on their social media and having a paid subscription service of pictures and videos, what do you think the reaction of the fanbase would be? Let's be honest, you know damn well what it would be.

Firstly, it's not 15m people. At least half of those followers will be bots. Secondly, I'm not sure getting exposure to our club through a glorified model is the type of road we should be going down to promote our club. I'd rather it was done, in terms of the women's team, through their success on the pitch. Lehmann didnt even get off the bench yesterday and we gave her a three year contract. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the squad are slightly aggrieved by the overexposure she gets because its never for anything she does on the pitch. It's hardly a great message to send to our young female fans is it? That it doesnt matter if you're a good player or play well for the team, as long as you look nice, you will get all the exposure and promotion.

My only concern right now is that we've only had three clean sheets all season (not including the Hibs tie) and the last of which in the PL was against 10 man Chelsea 2 months ago.

What a beautiful goal.

1. We had our best season league wise under Ron yes but you can't ignore what happened after. The second half of 1993-94 was a disaster. We went from top 3 to relegation form. Form which continued into the next season. We were going to get relegated. The League Cup win a total anomaly. We lost the three games before the final and were being dominated right up until we scored against the run of play. That result and performance was a massive diamond in the rough. I can't give our best PL manager award to a man who was taking an aging, ailing side to Division 1. Little was very good for a time but we peaked early and started to decline slowly. We finished 5th in 1996-97 yes but bombed out of all three cups early. The UEFA Cup exit was an aberration. The next season, we were firmly mid-table with only the European run a bright spot. Under Gregory, we came so close to winning the FA Cup and mounted a serious title challenge. People are correct that it definitely changed after losing that final. It was almost like that was as good as it was going to get and we missed our chance, much like the title challenge the season before. Maybe Little does shade it but I much preferred the Gregory years in terms of enjoyment. As someone said, we were fearless under him for a couple of years. 2. I said from his point of view. He was the most touted striker in the country two years before and linked with the best team. Now he was joining 5th place for a lesser transfer fee with nowhere near as much hype. It was a step down, no two ways about it. He said himself he saw it as one.

In regards to Collymore, from his point of view, joining Villa was a massive step down. Two years prior he one of the top strikers in the country having had a brilliant season with Forest. Fergie tried to sign him but instead went with Andy Cole. He had a good first season with Liverpool but his second he fell off a bit. I remember Liverpool fans used to criticise him for not performing as well away from home. Either way, when we signed him it must have been somewhat demoralising. In the sense that his stock had fallen from being sought after by the best team in the league to joining a good but not title contender Villa. It's kind of like when a young player starts in the Premier League but then drops down to the Championship in their 20s. They kind of know that whilst they're still very good, they're not top division quality. That can hit a player hard if they're not prepared for it. I think that's what happened to Collymore. He knew his best days were probably behind him and that he wasn't going to have a glittering career at a top club when it looked like he was at Forest. He said in his autobiography that when joining Villa he "was going to have to work a lot harder for less goals". Then we started his first season with us with four losses and he wasn't scoring goals. It wasn't helped by Little shoehorning Colly, Yorke and Milosevic into a three pronged attack that failed miserably. If he was going to light it up, he needed to start well and boost his confidence. By the end of season it was an if as opposed to a when he was going to get back to the player he used to be. We would obviously find out it was a never. If a player is even slightly less than 100% mentally there then their form can nosedive. By the next season he was non entity of a striker in the grand scheme of things, yesterday's news. All of this no doubt sent him spiralling into the void of which he wasn't going to recover from. On the pitch at least. Such a shame, I didnt think for one second that Collymore would be a flop for us. It was the first of many, many strikers we've signed in the PL era that were previously goal machines who immediately stopped scoring after we signed them.

Funnily enough, I've been watching a lot of Villa highlights in recent days of Gregory's era. Until Emery, I really believe him to be our best PL manager. I know he didnt win anything but we had some great times and he was always trying to take us to that next level. For the most part, his signings were good and he kept the players happy. Sadly, we kept going on horror runs of results during his management in any given season. They came out of nowhere and lasted a long time. During the 1998-99 season we were absolutely screwed by injuries all through it. Had we had something close to a full lineup for the whole season then who knows what we could have achieved. This isn't pipe dream stuff either, we were top from August until Christmas. I also liked how he came across in interviews, always told it how it was and gave it to refs when they made errors that cost us, which they seemed to do a lot during that era. We played some really nice stuff at times too.

Nothing special but the goal is to win the group and this is a big step towards doing that. But it is concerning that we've played a good 90 minutes once in four group games so far. Of course, on the flipside we've won three of them which is a big positive when not playing well.

Never mind win this game, we need to win the group to skip one of the knockout rounds. There really is no excuse either, this group is trash. We should be romping it.

I'd like to see Duran on at HT.

This has been dreadful so far really.

What are you talking about? He was clearly offside.

It's been like pulling teeth watching this game.

2 wins, 2 losses and a draw. The losses away to Liverpool and Newcastle who currently sit 4th and 6th.

We've had 4 away wins this season already. Including a 5-0 and a 4-1.