romavillan

with them off the wage bill and nearly out of contract then it's good business. both troublemakers too. nice work.

MON will get the best out of them as he did here, but probably not for a full season he'll almost have our old back four there now. we know he's a great motivator and he'll get his squad to overacheive, but it'll be interesting to see how he gets on up there with players he signed for us that have ostensibly failed since he left. wages? if all the players he's taken off us are going to play for the same or similar wages as they were on here does that mean the maccams feel they can generate more money than us for wages just based on bigger gates?

couldn't it just simply be that we didn't tie it up in time before going to the us? then got distracted selling warnok and collins? if it's true that they've bothsigned for the maccams then i'd expect vlaar to be signing pretty quickly now...

each? or for the pair? done deals?

both instinct players, given time to think they get it wrong most of the time but if they just have to react then they are/were awesome, i spose it depends on how the coach sets up the team and prepares them for a game. it's a very good comparison, there'll be some that think that both weren't aren't up to it because of howling errors of judgement, and some that think they are/were fantastic because of the instinctual amazing goals. the truth is in the middle somewhere and it takes a smart manager setting up a team to get the best out of them. still, very frustrating to watch when they **** it up when you know what they are capable of.

well played sir

Ron Howard lol. yeah i missed the ron jeremy DVDA happy days special too... in other news, i think we're all underestimating clark and baker. if we get vlaar in then we have CB sorted as far as i'm conerned. we deffo need a left back and we could do with another versatile attacking midfielder, preferably left sided so the zog can play on the right but who can play centrally and on the right. too much to ask? with those additions and the lambert factor + our talented youngsters then we may well get back up challengin for europe without paying players like heskey a kings ransom....

So let me get this straight. You're saying it went to his head? £15-£20m for a player who loses it when people compare him to shearer is a risk he's not proven still in my eyes, failed a big test at liverpool but going there and being part of the season they had isn't exactly all his fault to be fair. i don't htink we'll get him, even if we do and it works out i don't think it necessarily means we're going to be beaming it at his head every 2 mins either. otherwise why buy vlaar and KEA?

um, i know i shouldn't rise to it, but, WTF?!? possession is 9 tenths of the law, if you have the ball they can't score etc. etc.

kjaer isn't exactly well liked at roma by the fans. some go as far as saying he was one of the worst signings ever. not sure how much you can read inot last season for him becuase the last season for roma was a weird one to say the least. enriquez's head exploded trying to handle the players and he left saying he needed a rest i doubt enriquez will go down in history as a great defensive coach, kjaer might benefit from playing in the prem with a good manager. i don't think we shoudl move heaven and earth to get him though. probably better options around at CB.

yeah that's the stuff of dreams, would absolutely love it if lambo could get a spine of a team from our academy players. in the modern game in england we'd be pretty unique. only really bilbao and barca i can think of who've got something similar. who knows, if albrighton can get back to his best form and be consistent, gray gardner might flourish under lambo. baker could come through too (not a brummie but not far away in worcester). there's gabby, last chance for fonz i'd say this year... probably not going to happen, but we're a hell of a lot closer to acheiving it than other clubs! back on track: any news on this transfer? how reliable are the french sources saying we wanted loan to buy and rennes want a straight transfer?

if we get brahimi in, then we'll have a lot of options in the middle of the park. it'll be very interesting to see how we line up. herd was deffo one of the only bright points of last season, i think he looks a player. lambert will rotate the squad so as understudy to el ahmadi he'd get games. if we wanted to play 2 holding players then herd and el ahmadi would be a good pair of ball winners and protect the back 4 well. they both can pass the ball well too.

depends on the formation lambert will play, but i think they coudl make a very good pair. we'd actually be able to win the ball back and then KEEP it for a while. madness. really want to see what sort of formation lambert is thinking about. maybe a 4-1-4-1 would suit us now, KEA behind zog, ireland J2M and holman/alby with bent up top?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg well played!

hard to say, i reckon he's going to have a go at getting rid of a fair few of the bad apples/dead wood/crap. how successfull he is at that and how much he gets in will probably affect how deep lerner goes into his pockets. if lambert has said it's essential that these players go, so they go at a lower price than expected, lerner will need to spend more to acheive the goals that lambert and lerner have discussed. on the other hand, if we get some decent money for outgoing players, then lerner will probably not feel the need to cough up as much. i'd expect to see 4 or 5 go, and get 5 or 6 in, with a net spend of around 20m or so.

what if the choice is between a two yard pass and losing the ball? i don't get your point at all. you need to be more progressive? yeah, when you have a chance to do it absolutely. trying to force the issue so that you lose the ball is just as stupid as passing backwards when you could have put someone through. there is a difference between keeping the ball just for the sake of keeping the ball and being patient and ignoring an attacking opportunity in favour of going backwards! barcelona are the most tippy tappy of any team i think i have ever seen, i don't get where your distinction is between crisp pass and move and tippy tappy. 2 yard passes? short passes? barcelona are full of them for 90 minutes every game. difference between keeping the ball and doing it with purpose? um. for me the difference is between keeping the ball or losing it trying to attack when nothing is on. if you have a midfielder that recycles the ball, keeps it, moves it on to another player. that player is a good player for me. i reckon makoun is that sort of player. one of our big problems is keeping the ball. no brainer.

right, this is my biggest, number 1, most huge **** problem with the british attitude to football. it has been the problem with our national side forever, the problem with how we coach kids, the main reason we don't encourage or produce technically gifted players too. for **** sake, KEEPING THE BALL IS DOING SOMETHING WITH IT. keeping the ball for it's own sake means YOUR TEAM HAVE THE BALL AND THE OTHER ONE DOESN'T. they cannot score without the football. if he gets a chance and all he does all season **** long is KEEP THE BALL FOR OUR TEAM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PARK. he will be an invaluable asset. don't normally shout with caps lock, but i hate people sputing all this bullshit about "tippy-tappy ineffective football". all the best sides in the history of the game back to puskas' hungary have kept the ball well. once you make sure you can keep it, then you can start thinking about scoring with it. much harder to score without it...

my thoughts exactly. the players are the game, they shoudl get the lions share of the profits from the game. the problem is that the profits are so high at the top they can afford to giev the top players massive amounts of money that a less successfull club just cannot sustain. our problem with wages came when we didn't break in to the top 4 or even supplement our income a bit with runs to the last 8 of the europa league or better in the 3 years we finished 6th. if we'd have managed to do that our world profile would have been higher, so more lucrative sponsorship deals, more gates, better yield from home ads etc. which might have meant a sustained crack at the top 4. none of that happened though and now we have to get wages in line with our revenue. we have a manager now though who knows how to get the most from our assets, so maybe in a couple of years we'll be looking at increased revenue and we can kick on from there. back to my first point, i'd much rather the money went to the players (for all the ills it creates) then we go back to the days when the chairmen and the suits make a killing and after a top flight career a great player has to scratch a living for the rest of his life after creating enormous wealth for someone else.

haha. wiz, why don't you look at somethign like this http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/17259891?featured=1&utm_content=featured_listing? you could get yourself a season ticket, easy to get to all the home games from there...

after he had a taste of being the manager briefly, then working with the first team etc. he's probably looked at his options here after 17 years with PL coming in and thought he can best further his career elsewhere. he did great work here over the years and that should be respected.

i wouldn't put bannan, albrighton, delph or fonz in the shit pile just yet, fonz has definitely got to pull his finger out as there maybe younger and better players coming through this year. i've seen dunne be great and not so great i don't think he is shit though, not what he was a few years ago for sure. but he isn't shit. warnock has played well for us in the past as has collins. they aren't exactly amazing but they aren't shit either. hutton? hmmm. had a great season for spurs when we had walker on loan. not shown anythign like that form for us at all. i expect PL to get the most of our kids to be honest. i would think a man who has taken a league 1 squad, got them promoted twice on the bounce and then been more competitive than us last year will work wonders with our youth products. all of which i woudl think have careers ahead of them as at worst championship level players.

it all depends on how we're going to go about getting improvements and results... if randy backs lambert heavily in the transfer market and we get plenty of quality in and the problem players out of the door. then we should be expecting challengin fo rthe top 6 again next year (given that PL will have created "his" villa pretty quickly in terms of playing staff). what i'd actually like to see is us playing good football with our youngsters on the pitch, finishing mid table pref top half. with PL instilling a good football style and team spirit into a core of players that have claret and bllue blood. then next summer he'd have a very good idea about where we need to strengthen the squad plus more of the big contracts will have finished. what i expect is a bit of a mixture of the two to be honest with a top half finish. that wouldn't be bad either! basically losing the sense of impending doom every time we have a fixture to play is all i ask for

peace and love man. Feel the love, join the love, experience the love! hmmm, at the first hints of optimism i though Richard was sick. then it carried on, optimism, positive posts. contentedness, even happiness at something. after the above post i think it is now clear that Richard has started taking industrial quantities of acid.

To be honest fuse these were my gripes, but as usual we are stuck with it so we will have to back him. I really thought we would have been smart enough to get a manager with some vibe to him who could bring that feel good factor back and have some creativity with transfers. We've gone the safe and boring route as usual, as I suspect this manager will. :? Your both what I hate about some Villa fans, never happy, never satisfied, part of the poisonous band of miserable gits that linger around Villa Park. Instantly on the clubs back. It makes no difference that football people, with knowledge and experience, rate him as one of the best young managers around. No, lets be upset at the fact he doesn't tell jokes at his press conferences, and he's not from Brazil and called Paulinio Lamberto. Everyones has a right to an opinion, but there's a bunch at Villa that just need to do one. Oh, I'm sorry. So because I am not cartwheeling down the road at the appt of Lambert as I wanted us to be more ambitious and progressive and this is different to your opinion, I should do one? Why don't you stop being such a self righteous clearing in the woods and do one yourself? hmmm. "Grant bloody holt" and "We needed revolution, not another bloody dour, miserable, media unfriendly appt." is a bit stronger than not doing cartwheels i'd say. who was going to provide your revolution? why can't lambert be revolutionary? for us winning games would be a pretty revolutionary, and lambert is good at that. could not give a monkeys how he appears on post match interviews. he's young, ambitious, brings with him a wealth of experience at pretty much every level of football right up to being a european cup winner. what's not to like? he's not even been appointed yet and there's already a few on here who don't like him?

why the hoofball talk? lambert can play direct footy like MON, but direct doesn't mean route one. having a target man doesn't mean long ball either. look at how chelsea used drogba for years, or ibra in italy. lambert won the EC as an important member of a technical footballing side, did his coaching badges in germany, you think his only way of playing is to clog it? really? the comment abotu us not having the players to do anythign else is just plain wrong as well. yeah collins isn't a cultured european style technical CB. so the **** what. we have clark and baker. a decent manager with an appreciation of decent football would be able to put a side together with our current squad that would play better football and get a lot better results than the shite we were served up last season. give that same man some backing and who knows lambert wasn't my number one choice, but i'm not picking and lambert is by no means a one dimensional hoof it and hope coach.