romavillan

i'm optimistic

we're showing signs of progress with every game, and i don't think we're anywhere near the level PL can reach with this group. i expect this month to be more of the same, some downs and some surprising ups too in to the bargain. we'll be a couple of places higher than we are now come the end of the month, then bring on the big guns coz we'll shock a couple of them!

looked good today, very good at times.

on the booking though, he won the ball true enough. even as recently as 10-15 years ago that would have been classed as a great tackle. it's not 10 years ago though, it's now, and he caught the player after he'd won the ball with his studs up, if he'd gone in with both feet it was a red, even if he won the ball first. not saying it's right, but that's just how it is.

so glad to see him looking like a player again. the PL effect seems to working well on a lot of our players that people were giving up hope on.

Agbonlahor and Delph both deserve to start the next game

Please Lambert don't bring Bannan back into the side at the expense of Delph and Bent at the expense of Agbonlahor

What do you guys think about Given though deserves to keep his place or Guzan back in?

i think he's made given think hard, train hard and concentrate. the fact we aren't sure who will start is great and a good bit of management by PL. means we'll get a better given or a better guzan. either way, good stuff by the manager.

same goes for gabby, if he starts and doesn't give a performance like tonight he knows he'll be on the bench for a while. i think it'll be bent and gabby if we go 2 up top. how great that we are rotating and keeping players hungry. looks like PL is a very very good manager in terms of competition for places. albrighton coming back will only help too. delph putting a good showing in the midfield helps here too.

all looks good to me. we will be inconsistent whilst we are getting used to what PL wants to do and becuse we have a very very young squad. the future is looking good though. we haven't seen carruthers have a go yet either, or grealish or DJ.

UTV.

Would have been a nice game to watch.

Highlights (poor quality)

cheers for that, followed it on the beeb on a phone in a restaurant up the road from here outside rome and NO-ONE could understand what i was so distraught and then excited about. fiorentina v juve was on int he place...

so chuffed, we need to follow this with a win in the league but this is good. even a man city team with 10 changes in has quality all the way through it. we bossed the possession over 120 mins. something an AM side could only dream of.

UTV.

bookies have us as narrow favourites.

i'd like to think PL has a plan up his sleeve for swansea, we might be more direct than we have been although i'd love us to be making them chase shadows rather than us!

There is a pub called The Albion near my place in East London which is actually a dedicated West Brom pub. Totally random. It's full of Baggies doing their "Baggy Boing Boing" dance when ever West Brom score.

They show all the West Brom games live but also usually a second 3pm match, and seeing as they enjoy watching Villa lose it's often us that they put on

I've watched us there quite a few times, good beer as well.

brings back memories! i remember it having a west ham corner and a gooners corner too. was great atmosphere in there fo rthe 3pms. eveyrone packing their wives off to the market down the road and watching the game. top pub.

dunno if still there or not but the yucatan between dalston and stoke newington used to show all the games and just up from dalston the marquis of lansdown (if still called that) was another turkish/kurdish owned pub that used to show all the footy it could, serie a and spanish too.

http://www.blackpoolfc.co.uk/news/article/delfouneso-striving-for-success-356030.aspx

well if the lads good to his word there and gets his head down and he gets in to the team and scores regularly then he's on the right road for me. i'll deffo wait till next summer before calling for him to get the boot.

he already is a good CB. he has the potential to be a really good footballing CB, capable of getting forward, keeping the ball and scoring.

that ticks a hell of a lot of boxes for me!

Hopefully we dont see him in a Villa shirt again. League 1 class at best, if he works hard which is a big IF. Im sure he can get a job as a taxi driver at Moore's firm.

No. What one would hope is that he spends a year at Blackpool actually applying himself. Fulfilling his potential, then he comes back and does it for Villa.

I would rather he is successful than not.

totally, i'd love him to get 20+ goals this season for them, come back and have a great pre-season for us and then be another local lad in a villa shirt doing the business in the prem. local lads driving taxis are all over the place.

I've read a few match reports today and i have to admit I couldn't help but smile when reading Pardews comments about the work rate and the reports of how hard they worked for each other. It's kind of renewed some of the optimism I felt earlier on in the summer.

My frustrations have calmed a bit since the end of the window and I'm feeling slightly more positive about the approach we've taken.

It is only 1 point so I'm not doing a full on 180 but I can see myself looking forward to games more.

And to be honest, surprisingly I'm actually very excited to see bennett, Westwood and Benteke come into this team.

Pretty fickle of you to be honest, I guess that's the power of a good performance.

now now!

fair enough, i'd have been critical if he'd insisted we were **** and going down and it was randy's fault!

seems reasonable enough to me. newcastle was just the start though. we'll have days where the nice move that finished with ireland blazing over goes in, weimann nets his good chance and bent gets one of his chances in the net too...

that was away from home, and they are just getting to grips with what lambert wants, and we have reinforcements and competition for places now i'm not saying we're going to be in europe next year but we have good reason not to have to be looking over our shoulders this year and try and finish as high as we can to make sure we can kick on next year with an improved bank balance...

And on the 8th day after the crucification the Villa Academmy rose from the death and as one said forgive them Lord "Cowans". They know not what they did.

ahaha. yeah i'm pretty amazed there are critics of an academy that has produced cahill, agbonlahor, albrighton, bannan, weimann, craig gardner, gary gardner, luke moore, ciaran clark, baker, lichaj and herd.

all of whom have contributed to our cause to a greater or lesser extent. all of whom can be classed as good players. who knows, some may become great. certainly cahill could end up being very highly regarded internationally if he plays his cards right.

there's a new crop on the way too that people are excited about. i've said it before in this thread but what does the acedemy have to do to be regarded as a success? let alone being pronounced dead!!!

big john: can you show us on the doll where randy touched you?

Being molested by a billionnaire would have been a massive highlight over the last two years.

ahahahahah. touchè.

still though, if randy/MON hadn't managed to get us 3 consecutive 6th's then the last two years wouldn't have hurt so much right?

randy had a go by splashing the cash, overstretching if we didn't manage CL football, the team that MON built didn't make it. so we were left with a CL wage bill and no CL money. in that situation i think first he turned to houllier to try a different football philosophy more suited to european football. this **** up big time in part due to houllier and in part due to the boozier elements of the squad and mainly due to his health failing.

then with reduced income due to a low finish in the prem he panicked and told mcleish to get rid of all the high earners and keep us in the league. he did, but only just and was horrible football wise. so, no good going forward like that.

which left us back at square one, so what do you do? we already tried just chucking money at it and it didn't work. i think getting PL is hopefully the first step to greater things, getting Henke is a very good sign for future transfer windows. if PL can build a squad that acheives midtable this year (i genuinely think we will be, 8 signings gives us more competition for places and has improved our squad). then next year we can kick on from there helped by the increasing TV money, giving us an advantage over bigger clubs in spain, italy and germany in terms of wages. maybe Henke can use that advantage to help PL do what MON couldn't?

maybe not.

i still don't see how constantly moaning about randy not splashing the cash, or the last two years, is anything more than a waste of time though!

I don't recall it so much in the 80s 90s or 00's

wtf is all i'm going to say to that.

big john: can you show us on the doll where randy touched you?

in other news, the last time we lost 4 on the bounce at the start of the season we qualified for the uefa cup in 7th on 57 points (1997-1998).

not saying we'll get 7th. but i think we'll be more than fine this season, and next season will be better still

The season you are talking about I think we changed the manager, took on Gregory and went on an amazing run?

yeah gregory after christmas sometime, staunton, southgate, yorke, collymore, bosnich, ehiogu, townsend...

big john: can you show us on the doll where randy touched you?

in other news, the last time we lost 4 on the bounce at the start of the season we qualified for the uefa cup in 7th on 57 points (1997-1998).

not saying we'll get 7th. but i think we'll be more than fine this season, and next season will be better still

missed the obvious one in grant holt, oh and going back a long time, how abotu malcolm macdonald?

Well if one game of FIFA is anything to go by

Bennet will be the greatest left back in the prem

Westwood can't shoot for shit

And Benteke makes heskey look graceful.

I was just thinking, can anyone give an example of a player coming from league 1 or 2 into the premiership and being good straight away?

Because we've signed 3.

Now i'm sure i'll be called negative but i'm being realistic, what are the chances of these players having a real impact on THIS season? When someone as highly rated as delph at that level struggles are we not expecting a bit much from these players?

Its alright to say Lambert wanted them, but not everything he touches will turn to gold.

Like i said can anyone throw out any examples?

well from lower leagues in the past, how about david platt, gareth barry, jagielka, ian wright, tim cahill and ashley young.

i'm sure someone who's smoked a lot less weed than me can point out a couple of dozen to you though.

You've kept on going on about sell to buy all summer, you asked for the club to sign players before the likes of Hutton and Warnock were sold, they've done that and now you still moan.

Actually the one thing i've asked for all summer is quality.

I haven't demanded every player to be a big name and i haven't asked for stupid amounts of money to be spent.

No team in the league has started as badly as us, we were absolutely abysmal in both games we've played and out of the players we've signed over the last 2 days i can see 2 that MIGHT make a difference.

I still don't believe there are many clubs who have done worse than us this transfer window.

I believe we've gambled and once again will be worried about relegation this year.

I see already the defence of Lerner has started and all the responsibility put on Lambert.

so i suppose you are some sort of footballing visionary who knows 100% that none of vlaar, KEA, lowton, bennet, westwood and benteke are going to be quality?

care to drop some names as to who this quality was that you wanted and we didn't go out and get? then put some prices to them and then pick out only those combined you could get for £20m for the job lot.

if 50% of PL's signings this summer turn out to be quality, then we've definitely got a better squad than last year. that's what the windows for isn't it?

also, someone mentioned that our big problem in defence is at CB? wtf? our big problem was LB and RB and lambert has gone into the market to add to options on both flanks.

ffs, no-one has seen these lads kick a ball in a claret and blue shirt yet and suddenly we're nailed on for relegation and have had a shit transfer window. we've had 2 bad results, we might be in for another on sunday. doesn't mean we are going down or that PL isn't doing a good job. i'll reserve judgment till 10-15 games into the season...

Rome wasn't built in a day.

True, Rome was built by spending enormous amounts of money.

he might eb on to something there though, maybe we can invade somewhere with some good footballers, have them as slaves and save an absolute packet on the wages!

another thread by OP slating the academy starting to think he was rejected

Of course Villa has one of best academies in country look at amount of players in top 2 divisions that came from Villa just cause people think not good enough for us doesnt mean the academy has failed plus players like Cahill, Davis, Gardner, Whittingham and Ridgewell would probably walk into our team now

came here to say just that. if our academy was anything short of excellent, how do you explain that output? for me it's be a success if we churn out 90% champ level players on which we recoup the investment plus some profit. in that way the academy is another source of revenue for investment in the first team. that means it's a successfull academy. the fact in realty the've produced a string of very, very good players who continue to make a living in the prem and have been sold for a tidy profit means that the academy is more than a basic success.

we shoudl be massively proud of the output of our academy, what do you lot expect? a whole squad of academy players that take us to the title? what is your level of expectation for the academy? have you thought about it's outpuit in relation to others?

get **** real, there's a lot of negative bullshit around as we've been beaten twice on teh bounce and yesterday for the most part wasn't pretty. leave the kids alone though, and the academy staff. they do a great job and i for one hope they continue to do so.

I haven't paid much attention to Villa under Lambert so if the below could be answered that'd be great.

1)Why did we release 2 centre backs and only sign 1?

2)Will Dunne feature when fit or does Lambert not like him?

3)How did he get wind of Hutton and Warnock being shit so quickly? And why haven't they been moved on?

4)Can the above really be as bad as Lowton and Baker?

5)What hapenned to Albrighton?

1) because we have clark and baker

2) PL has said as much very recently, he will feature when fit.

3) maybe he had a chat with them after he'd seen them train? probably had an idea before he even took the job.

4) lowton will be a much better RB for us than hutton. baker will be a great CB for us, he isn't a LB.

5) he's injured.

lots of over reaction in here but i spose i should be used to that by now. chill the fudge out, all of a sudden we have the worst squad in the prem and no hope of anything but relegation?

i think not. i think we'll get 50 points plus even without any new faces. have some faith in PL, he's had 2 months to change from being anti football into a possession side. it's going to take time. everyone jumping up and down, booing, giving it lerner out and the squad is shit etc. isn't helping anyone.

i think we'll end up well clear of the relegation scrap to be honest. PL doesn't have a magic wand and the results will come through hard work in training to get the team playing how he wants them to.

2 or 3 more new faces will really help obviously!

i'm still confident we can have a decent season

loads of positives in there, delph at 90%+ accuracy is amazing at this level. really hope he can keep that up and then he could become key for us.

baker's stats seem to vindicate his inclusion at LB to combat the allardyce style of play too.

once we get some more movement behind bent (zog, ireland, holman), which will come from more understanding and playing together more. we should be fine imho.

great to see us have so much of the ball away from home. hopefully no repeats of the swansea humiliation this year!

is it 3 overage players max liek the olympics?

this is a good change if so, especially for us, it'll mean that rich clubs buying loads of seniors can't even give the one's not in the matchday squad a run out in the reserves. shoudl make us more competitive in the under 21s and should mean that if a player wants to play and is third choice he needs to find a new club...

all conjecture on my part though seeing as i have no idea of what the rules are

anyone care to enlighten me?