MessiWillSignForVilla

From a personal point of view the honour of wearing the shirt, playing in front of 35,000 fans and earning in a week what it would take those fans on the terraces to earn in a year would be all the motivation I would need. But you're a fan, it's not your job. No matter how much you love something, if you have to do that thing every day of your life, at some point you're going to need to be motivated to keep on going, footballers are humans after all. Not to mention the dogs bollocks abuse a lot of them get from some of those aforementioned 35,000 fans. Just because someone earns £500k+ per year doesn't automatically make them happy or even mean that they don't find playing football tedious at times and they never need to be motivated.

I find it hard to believe that you stay away due to one man and say league position doesn't matter. Its easy to say that now but if we were top you'd be there. And if we were top Lerner wouldn't be a shit owner and there would be no reason to boycott the club to get him to leave. But were not top and Lerner has kind of screwed us over these past few years and if we want to ever progress again, we need him to leave, whether Lambert goes with him or not, I dunno. I don't know what to think with Lambert, he's been dire recently, but I do like him, there have been glimpses over the last two years and I think with less restrictions in the transfer market, specifically wage wise, he could do well here, but whether it's deemed too late now or not we'll see in the summer. If Lerner was to stay though, I'd definitely keep Lambert as I don't think we'd get anyone better willing to work under the current conditions.

Because he was sacked a few weeks ago...

C'mon the Ellison link is pure fantasy. Completely ridiculous. People are losing their minds if they think there's a hint of truth to it Jesus, let people have some fun. It's fairly obvious we won't be taken over by one of the 10 richest men in the world, but it's fun to imagine what if. I'll be speculating that it's Larry Ellison until it's announced we've been taken over by whoever it is, but it won't surprise/disappoint me that it isn't Ellison just because I wanted it to be. It's just a bit of fun after the past 3/4 years to imagine what could happen if someone like Ellison did in fact takeover.

The fact that nearly everything that account has claimed has come true, everything that he says is written in a manner which indicates it is a club statement or from club personnel, and the account tweets so rarely that it seems they only tweet with concrete stuff.

Larry Ellison?

Territory will always be more important than possession, whether it's rugby or football.

Bowery won the corner for second goal as well. Were has he been all season? Not been watching the game, I thought all the comments about Bowery were sarcastic due to his OG, has he actually done something good?!

The main reason I'm pissed off about it is it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the day now. We're gonna lose and at least two of Cardiff/Fulham/Sunderland are gonna win now aren't they

Jammy bastards!

I was starting to get worried then, but you can always count on them to **** it up It was a GK **** up to apparently

You beauties Bolton!!!

1-0 Millwall, even less hope for them now

It's almost as if he's giving a press conference because there is a game tomorrow...

Look at the new accounts thread started today on the front page. Only a small rise from £70m to £72m but not really the great cutbacks that have 'hampered' Lambert's progress? They are from 2013 and we have got rid of Dunne, Bent and Ireland since but given raises to Benteke, Weimann, Westwood, Lowton and signed a few others in the summer. I would be surprised if there is much difference in the 2014 accounts with regard to wages. Bit of a myth this reduction in wages me thinks? That's the point though. In Lambert's 2 years in charge, the wage bill has increased by £2m, or £40k p/w. During that time 9 first team players have left and 17 have joined, leaving us with 8 more players (if you include Bertrand and Holt, it's 10 more) in our squad, for only £40k p/w added on to our wage bill. In other words, we've only been able to offer a whopping £5k p/w for any additions to the squad/budget, which doesn't get you much in the Premier League. How many clubs in this league buy 8 players, on top of their current squad, and only have their wage bill increase by £40k p/w? I don't think any do. That's where the budget constraints come from. Plus don't forget we still technically have Bent on our books, as is Given and I wouldn't be surprised if we were still paying Ireland something too until the end of June. In this modern era of football, by having our wages effectively stand still, or at least have such a small increase, the wage bill has been reduced as we can't offer competitive wages to add to our squad.

I think just the opposite to be honest. Giggs is vastly overrated because of the length of his career and his haul of medals. In terms of an actual on the pitch footballer I doubt he was ever one of the tope five players at united at any point in his career. People also over look that he was booed by Man Utd. fans at one stage. Even in recent years he has generally played a handful of games a season and usually only against the lesser sides. In terms of longevity and being a solid pro Giggs is great but he was never a great player IMO. I think this suggests otherwise:

I think it's pretty much this. The 8th episode is called the Mountain and the Viper, so if you've read the books it's pretty obvious what happens in that episode, and since that episode isn't that long after the purple wedding in the book, it indicates they're going to be taking there sweet ass time to build up all the little sub plots so that either they don't catch up with the books too quickly or they just have some solid foundations for when they get to around the Winds of Winter/a Dream of Spring, aka the end.

Might be slightly spoiling the books here, but it's just a fan theory so not a proper, concrete spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway: Don't think it'll be Ice v Fire, but do think Dany's dragons will play a part in stopping the White Walkers, and from every description they have in the book, they are most certainly the baddies, but then again the story is told from Human perspectives...

I think we'll be safe, just. Cardiff - They need 6 points, they won't win 2 games, especially with Chelsea last game, they're down imo, or at least will be below us, they might beat Newcastle, but I can only see them finishing as high as 17th with 33 points. Fulham - Again, they need 6 points, and the pressure is back on them to get points to stay up. When they beat us everyone thought they were down and they played without any expectations. With Stoke and Palace it's possible for them to get 2 wins, but with both of those teams in decent form, and could both possibly finish above Newcastle, I doubt it. Norwich - They need 4 points, and with Chelsea and Arsenal as there last 2 games, they're down, I doubt they'll get another point. Sunderland - They need 4 points, probably only 3 as GD isn't a buffer as with the others, and they team we really need to worry about. They're in good form and have got winnable games in WBA and Swansea, I think they might be the only team we'll need to get points on the board to finish above. So to go down, imo, Cardiff, Norwich and Fulham.

Reading the HBO website, this has now been changed in the synopsis, I assume because they realised they may not have meant to reveal it?

Had a bit of a crazy thought, and will probably just be a bit of wild conspiracy, but I think this is what SAF intended to happen in a way, in terms of Giggs becoming manager. Here's my thinking; Fergie left Utd in a state that he knew wouldn't be able to challenge for the title this season, he must've known the squad simply isn't good enough, I'd bet that's why he retired. A lot of rumours were going about last season that Giggs might step up to fill the void, being such a huge icon at the club and knowing Fergie's Utd inside out. But the fact is, the pressure of following Fergie is huge for any manager, let alone an inexperienced one like Giggs. So I reckon Fergie might've suggested Moyes as he knew there was no way he could achieve anything with the squad Fergie left, as it was simply not good enough. That's not to say Fergie suggested him as he knew he'd fail, but just because all but the very best would've failed as the expectations on that squad were way too high, so he suggested a reasonable successor to take the brunt of this season when he knew Utd wouldn't be anywhere near expectations. Essentially, Moyes was used as a fall guy, the expectations were lowered so miuch that Giggs could come in as an inexperienced manager and not have the pressure of following Fergie but just having to do better than Moyes. Short version: Fergie always intended for Giggs to be his long term successor, but Moyes was hired as a fall guy as the squad Fergie left was nowhere near good enough for Utd's standards so Giggs would've been deemed a failure if he followed Fergie, but will now just need to be better than Moyes. Obviously, this will be all bollocks if Giggs doesn't get the gig permanently

As a book reader, I'm very intrigued as to what people think about this, got to say it was fairly obvious I thought, but that was probably because I knew what to look for. Was it not revealed last episode though?

Doubt it, it's just a press conference with Lambert I think, I don't think he's going to really spill the beans about a takeover or even the Culverhouse/Karsa stuff.

No, it's the few gems he has found when having to build a Premier League squad with such low figure signings, i.e. Westwood £2m, Bacuna £800k, Vlaar £3m, Benteke £7m, Okore (probably) £4m. Also, some fans think that many of his "duds" can still come good, such as Helenius, Lowton and I'd even include Bennett. Also, KEA has really improved this year and is starting to look fairly value for money.

I really don't get all this stuff about Martinez and how he would have been able to do so much better instead of Lambert. One of the main criticisms of Lambert, and the main one imo, is that our defence for two years has been shocking. Despite it improving this season, it still is pretty shoddy. Now, I'd like an example of a good defence that Martinez has built? The defences were always the worst part of his Wigan teams, and the Everton defence? He has Moyes to thank for building such a solid base to build a team upon. Simply put, he's not very good at it. As for signings, his best have been loans that we wouldn't have been able to get, and actual transfers have been pretty poor, other than McCarthy, all his permanent signings never start or even play. Martinez has done a very good job at Everton, nowhere near as Herculean as it's made out to be, after all he's just filled in the gaps of Moyes' squad and encouraged them to attack more, but he's still done a good job. But if he'd come to Villa? He wouldn't have sorted out the defence, he'd probably be signing just as many duds as Lambert is and we'd have been relegated by now, imo. But we'd be playing pretty football, so there's that...