romavillan

out of the 3 games of death, we have the best odds for this one. if we can perform like we did for the first hour against man u for 90 mins then we can get some points today. they'd be bonus points though, tuesday sees the start of a run we need to be scroing well from...

Lambert's attacking intent is a great thing not exactly wreckless and gung ho i'd say, although maybe after a year of mcleish having more than zero players pushing forward must be a shock. expecting us to lose at qpr is being a little bit negative ay? whilst it's funny to say it, that everyone ends their bad streak against us etc. it's not exactly true, just one of those things that you remember when it happens and forget when it doesn't. as for us only having plan A: wreckless gung ho and plan B: lump it to benteke, i'd say that's not exactly a thorough tactical assessment of PL and the diff shapes and players he's used this season so far. saying we'll only get 2 points from those games is really pessimistic, you might be right and it could happen in which case we'd be in deep shit. we might get 9 though, but it'll probably be more likely somewhere inbetween...

2? really?

must have that in him if he was club captain at crewe so young.

um wtf has wanting mcleish to stay as manager got to do with anything VillaForever1970 said? your constant obsession with lerner is bordering on mental. why not answer what exactly it is that you want RL to do? are you holding out for a rich arab to invest a billion and turn us in to the next man city or something?

lexicon, can you summarise a couple of the other threads too please, i can't be arsed to read all the PL and relegation threads for example

well, pretty educated guesses i'd say he's more or less accurate with the figures and the fact that PL got 8 players isn't debatable. in so doing he covered all positions and got competition for places all across the squad. buying from the uk isn't good value at any time of year but january especially, lets see what henke can come up with, i wouldn't be surprised to see 3 or 4 new faces come in from europe to help us out without breaking the bank. pretty obvious that he's desperate to ship out hutton, i'd guess getting enything for the players with only months left on their contracts is a bonus. looks like zog isn't going to work out here and he has a fair bit of contract to go so shoudl be decent money for him. same goes for bent (even though i'd prefer to see him stay to be honest). if bent and zog do go and it is sell to buy then PL will be able to get 3 or 4 good players from europe with the money from just those 2. i think RL will make funds available and tell PL he can use money from sales to reinvest, so it'll be a bit of a mix i'd think. either way jan will see some new faces and the continuing work on PL's long term project to turn the creaky villa ship around and start getting up the league.

relegation is still a big IF at the moment. 12 games is way to early to panic and it looks like lambert has enough about him to keep us up this year and onwards and upwards next year. defeats against manu u, city and arsenal aren't going to change my mind about that.

hmmm, i think a lot of you will be eating humble pie regarding signings from lower leagues. it's not glamorous but with what you save initially, if only half of them turn out decent then you're up a lot in terms of transfers and wages. then if they are really good you make a killing if a CL club come and get them. anyone remember the lad we got from watford? what was his name? very lightweight, falls over a bit, went to united...

i think we have the players to play 3 at the back, don't know if PL has ever played that way though, it might help us in midfield too and could suit us. on the other hand though it doesn't resolve the fullbacks issue (although i think bennet and stevens will come good tbh). albrighton might work on the right, but you'd probably have to play zog on the left. we could then have KEA, westwood and bannan in the middle and ireland behind benteke/bent/agbonlahor. napoli play it well but with a diff formation up front to that. wouldn't be against trying it... oh and can't either one of mantis/morpheus block the other one?

i said somethign similar in the westwood thread when someone suggested he might be off to united in a few years but it's true for any player i spose. for him to get poached by a champs league club in the premier league he's going to have to play for a coupel of seasons at a very very good level for us first. at which point he'll cost a fortune and will have helped us move on as a club. if he goes at that point we'll make a load of money, which even if only 80% goes back into the squad and we get a couple of younger replacements with the same potential and only 1 works out as good, then we're still moving forward as a club. we have to accept that until we are challenging for the the CL we cannot expect to keep players who want to and more importantly have the talent to play at that level. i mean, you don't see many players refusing moves to the premier league from the championship do you?

Not giving PL time to properly turn this club around could be the worst mistake the club has made since ellis came back in the early 80s. not that long ago we looked good at 2-0 up against united, had the chances to get a point from them even with their jammy goals benteke nearly had us 1 up away from home at city. if we play at the level of the best footy we've played this season so far for 90 mins a game we can beat most teams in this league. PL's only had 12 games so far and took us over in a shit state. He has said it's a long term project, 12 games is very short term.

i think we will get 6-8 points out the next 4 games, which won't have us sitting pretty but we'll be out of the bottom three, i reckon 4 or 5 clubs won't do better than a point a game so things will probabaly look better in a few weeks. PL has said we are down to the bare bones on a coupel of occasions already so i think we can expect new faces in january. on the subject of experience/youth, if they've been pullin gup trees all season long in another league and look amazing i'd take the punt seeing as compared to buying from teh prem in january we can probably get 3 from abroad for the price of 1 in the prem. which has a knock on with teh wages too. keep the faith, we all thought we might get 0 points from a run of united, city and arsenal. we could have beaten united to be fair, at city they had 2 deflected goals and a non-existent penalty in the 5 so we should be due some luck after the united game too. i still think we'll finish around the 50 point mark and be well safe.

away at city was a tough ask, we have another very tough game against arsenal coming up but at least we're at home for that one. then we have a few games where we can pick up some wins.

never gonna happen soooo, what does everyone think our points total will be? i'm going for 52 and mid table safety...

i think the best is yet to come from him, very early days still. he has shown some class though already. happy days!

yeah the mentalist count is massively high, the block feature is awesome though when westwood had that bad 45 mins, a lot of people went massively over the top in saying how shit he was. a few people did point out it was only 45 mins of football! now we go the other way and he'll be off to united if he does go on to play for united he will have given us a least a few years of good service while he got ot that level. shall we just enjoy that bit if he does turn out to be that good?

well, either we keep him for the length of his contract or someone gives us a metric fuckton of money. either way we win. still, bit premature to be talking of his departure so soon, especially seeing as some people think he is crap (not me, i reckon he's great at holding the ball up for instance).

Cahill. that's 100% nailed on top quality player that we have produced. what level is "quality" though? first team premier league i'd say is high quality in terms of even just european football. we regularly have 4 or more academy players in the team. that's an exceptional turnout surely?

still not sure i'm keen on selling bent, even though there would be more funds to strengthen elsewhere. i'd prefer we went out and got a few very promising young wingers instead. it would mean PL could chop and change style more effectively, we'd be able to play the current style and switch if it wasn't working to a game that suits bent better and would allow bent and benteke to play together.

yeah anyone looking for big names is barking up the wrong tree i reckon. hopefully henke will pull some interesting names out of the hat though,

we're 29/2 some places to win! which is just huge. we can get something out of the game but we'll need to play amazingly well and have some luck on our side (unlike the manure game)

hopefully henke will have had time to spy some real young quality outisde the prem that we can get in witout breaking the bank. another 3 or 4 new faces that improve us would be a massive leap forward in terms of squad depth...

does the title change mean that the excellent academy wasn't a myth? superb, coz i always thought we did actually have an excellent academy!

1. yes