romavillan

well, rodgers is definitely an interesting manager. no doubt about it. lambert a bit less so for my tastes (i like possession football and good basic technical stuff, have done ever since starting to watch serie a in 1989 ). however, rodgers has just signed a new contract and seems very committed to swansea. lambert i'm not sure about, but one thing is for sure that he is contracted to work at carrow road, not villa park. i'd like a magic wand and turn us into the next barcelona, with a 120,000 seater stadium that's full every week too. fact is we have a manager, who it seems is going to be given the time to build a squad of his own over the summer. he's already signed a winger to that end. further to that it seems that 2 things are certain, he's going to be our manager and a lot of keyboard warriors on VT are going to spout a loud of vicous over the top rubbish in his direction until he either fails and gets the sack or he turns it around.

rodgers has done some great work at swansea, he works at swansea though, not at villa park. if AM doesn't manage to sort it out he'd be a great shout if he'd come. we've yet to see whether AM can sort it out though, so it's a moot point.

this could well be his last chance to fulfill his ambitions, which seeing as he's tasted winning in european competition as a player i reckon are high. he's over 50 and if he doesn't manage to turn things around here he's not going to walk into a job at a bigger club. there's ups and downs in his managerial career so far. he's won stuff, he nearly got scotland into the euro's in 2008 and he got relegated a couple of times! so far this season there's been some horrible moments (spurs the worst for me) and some signs that he's not just about 11 behind the ball, backs to the wall, anti-football (chelsea, qpr and the first half against fulham prob the highlights). i can see where the negative criticisms come from in that he's all about not giving goals away, but we've also played some really nice stuff going forward. it's just not so black and white as he's shite antifootball and that's it. as i've said before, big summer coming up. one in which we will finally get shot of some over paid and underperforming players and AM will get the chance to build a side based on the fruits of what is coming through from the academy. if he doesn't manage to make that work, then he'll have blown his big chance to make it and will be fired and someone else will have a go. either way, constantly hurling abuse at him even when there ARE signs that he can get us playing decent football is a waste of time.

yeah the anti mcleish stuff has been a tad overboard at times. i don't think anyone is saying he's suddenly our holy saviour come down from gingerland on a magic carpet to take us to the champions league trophy... seems anything that isn't a personal insult to him means you are pro AM and are a fool. it's been a shit season by anyone's standards but we sold two very good players in the summer, have players on stupid wages bought for big money that for 2 seasons on the bounce haven't come anywhere close to giving value. on the plus side it looks like we could have produced at least half a dozen first teamers from our own academy and we need to make some big changes in the summer and then see what that brings. if it's more of the same then AM will have been a failure and he will be sacked. if it's pushing for the top 6 again, then i'm all for AM continuing in the job. comign on here to write "ginger clearing in the woods" every second sentence every single day is a waste of time and energy.

Bannan, Albrighton are woefull? when did that happen? Albrighton isn't massively consistent i'll grant you and he overhit crosses in the fulham game nearly every time. doesn't make him woefull. he's been our motm on a coupel of occasions this season. as for Bannan, his quick feet are what set up the shot for Gardner which Weimann scored from. i've seen him come on a few times and try too hard for the hollywood ball. i've also seen him use the ball really really well and look to retain possession and pass and move well. woefull is just so far off the mark from what i've seen. why would you want to criticise them as harshly as this so early in their careers? the other comments about saying you can't say we have a good academy until we are constantly churning out stars is a bit crazy for me. a successful academy is one that turns out players who can have a decent career at a decent level (championship and above) so that it is self sustaining and hopefull makes a profit. the fact that we have Gabby, Albrighton, Bannan, Herd, Clark, Gardner, Weimann, Carruthers, Johnson and the Fonz all in and around the first team is exceptional work from our academy. there's Baker and Lichaj too, Stevens and more where they came from too come on, look at the collective value of that lot! all home grown! how is that not a good thing for the club? anyone branding our youth set up a failure because we don't produce a messi or a wilshere or something every couple of years is badly deluding themselves. no academy does that consistently for years. ajax had their turn, barca have the best now. but neither of them have churned out world class players consistently for 15-20 years at a time...

much needed win, as has been mentioned 3 academy players in the move for the goal was fantastic to watch. lovely footwork from bannan, gardner made room for the shot well and hit it sweetly enough for the keeper to **** it up. then a proper poacher's goal from weimann. lovely jubbly. we should have been 2 up at half time though. the stats say we battered them but the second half was nervy to say the least! ireleand motm for me too if we beat bolton i want to see more of the academy players playing together for 90 minutes till the end of the season. big decisions ahead this summer and some good performances from the kids would be very handy for us to get them right.

someone needs to get it into him that this time either he does it now till the end of the season, or he has to go. might wake him up some. i'd hate for him to go and then start showing good form at another club...

i voted yes on the basis of should he go now, which i think would be suicidal. wolves have just done it and i think they are in more trouble than before because of that. if come the end of the season we've only just survived or gone down. then i reckon he should go. the squad is better than that and he'd have had a pre-season and full season to get the best out of the squad. june is the time to be thinking about this, not now.

effective football under taylor, i was there in the holte watching a lot of it and it wasn't pretty. atkinson had us playing with more style as did little. to the point though, lerner over ellis in terms of investment throughout the club. he's cutting back on wages for the playing staff now to be in line with the fair play rules. the investment in the training facilities and the academy will soon be bearing fruit. i know since MON left we've hit hard times and the whole situation at the moment isn't rosey but still lerner over ellis for me.

He's played for us against Chelsea, Arsenal, and Newcastle so far this season, so it's not as if this was the first time he came up against good midfield players. I urge people to set higher standards and expectations for our younger players - at present they are our main hope and it does them no good to be defended to the hilt when their performances are disappointing. I'm sure everyone knows in their heart of hearts he should have done better against Man C and I expect he feels that the most keenly. Ridiculous. This was what his second game in the starting line up in the league for Villa? The whole team played poorly and you think he should have done better against a midfield of Barry, De Jong and David Silva!? It's hard to have a good game in midfield when you rarely see the ball and when you do there are not many options available. yeah not only the quality he was playing against but just in terms of numbers, gg and stan were outnumbered for 90 mins. gg didn't look out of his depth at all to me.

sorry this was a double post! (connection went). dunno how a solid defense is nothign to build on, we were playing against a team that has scored for fun this season and didn't look like leaking a bucket load like we have done a lot this season.

whilst i'm pissed off we didn't give it a go till too late, we looked pretty solid for a change with the changes he made at the back. if we'd have brought on ireland and zog at 0-0 and gone for it after an hour we might have got something more out of the game. if we'd have been too open right from the start we could have gone down by 5 like newcastle yesterday. we need to build on what was a solid performance for the most part today and find a balance between that and the attacking intent we showed against qpr and newcastle (where in the first half we looked very dangerous) it was good to see gardner get a full game under his belt in what i hope will be the first of many. as has been said here the next 5 games are huge for us and we need to get at least 7 points from them. then we can take stock in the summer and move forward. disappointing we didn't go for it sooner, but getting to half time at 0-0 was a much improved defensive display from us. AM made a mistake in not getting zog and ireland on sooner, but if bent's effort hadn't been miraculously saved by hart we woudl have had a point for our efforts today.

can't beleive i'm agreeing with richard gardner as a box to box midfielder and petrov sitting back to screen the back four would be good. woudl really like to see more of clark as a centre back, he could be our vermaelen. he is comfortable on the ball, good going forward and can score...

whilst i agree that he was looking a bit too often for a killer pass from deep and losing us the ball. he was in no way dreadfull and his linking up with gardner in particular was very good. albrighton isn't dreadfull either. fair do's to AM for being pissed off, ireland's reaction was probably just because he'd run a long way tracking back and did his best. nothing story really. AM is probably looking for those kind of reactions to be honest reather than penalising a player who showed some passion...

This was also said last summer, which was supposed to be key and important for the club. No doubt it will be the same next year as well well, to the extent that the summer and pre-season is fundamental to the next season then it should be said every summer yes, at least until you're defending champions or something this summer in particular though is very important, with the contracts expiring it coudl be seen to be the summer where the MON era finally ends and we can start again. add to that the fact we have a nucleus of very good young talent coming through, the handling of which could well define quite a few years to come for us, and this summer in particular looks to be very key for avfc.

not sure i agree with the idea that we are lacking in belief and fight at the moment!

if we finish 15th or 16th there's a good chance he'll be shown the door. i reckon we'll finsih nearer 10th and he'll stay. summer is very important for us. we won't get relegated though, prob after the city game will be the closest to the bottom we'll be all season. we won'r go down though. saying that might not be such a bad thing, we might get rid of some of the moaners who think we have a divine right to be in the champions league and spend £200m every window! we could play the kids all together in the championship, get promoted with them and then build a team around the kids, rather than trying to squeeze the kids in the first team...

**** GET THE **** IN YOU ****! we can win this

warnock the destroyer! nasty injury it seems this one. again we don't deserve to be behind, we've been the better team and had 3 great chances to be in front...

"Aston Villa forward Gabriel Agbonlahor is again a major fitness doubt with back and hamstring spasms." oddschecker paints a pretty bleak picture for this game! if we play well we can get a good result here though. depends if they come out with confidence or not i spose...

bbc says gabby, albrighton and collins are all out

sunderland spent a lot of money in the summer, a lot of people were tipping bruce to push for a european place after the signings he made. some of which were players touted on here as players we would want. we all know the MON effect, and it's fine till the bubble bursts. he was a great manager for us till he bailed on us and left us in the shit he had made. AM will be given more time, and there are signs of improvement. so all the continuos bitching about AM out and lerner out (WTF) is useless, wasted energy. personally he wouldn't have been my choice, but the football away at chelsea and especially the last game was very good. will you all still be so hostile if we play like that for the next 10 games?

i'm a bit confused by some people's interpretations of AM's role in the qpr game, and the game as a whole. qpr WERE NOT the better side even when they were 2-0 up. we weren't as good as the second half it's true, but they scored one great finish that was extremely lucky to fall so nicely for cisse and then warnock's blinder. not much else. the football we played was what people on here have been crying out for, for ages. in the first half it was more measured in the first 30 mins. but at the end of the half we were playing some really good stuff. AM then must have tore them a new hole as they came out playing some of the best high tempo, intelligent passing football i've seen us play for AGES. we MURDERED them in terms of chances and possession, with style. both the formation and how he got them worked up for the second half was AM's doing. i didn't want him here, but if he can get us playing like that consistently then we will be more than fine going forward. the window is closed so all he can do at the back is trust the kids a bit more to create some competition for places. when keane goes i don't see it as a big mystery as to what will happen, ireland will play there and we'll play a winger on the right. not that big a change. give AM some credit where it is due, that performance was fantastic. yes it only brought home a point. had the ref not been such a clearing in the woods though we'd have won, or if bent hadn't scuffed one, or if warnock had been a little less wild, or if the header went in. the list is long as we had 15 shots on goal from 23 chances. also, those saying it's just "45 minutes against a newly promoted side", what about chelsea away? there's plenty of signs that we can do it with this squad and AM is starting to get it right. if we play to 80% of that level consistently we'll finish this season very well.

ok. we all know this season has been terrible so far apart from a few good wins away from home. however i think we have to realise that this process of getting the wages in check that we all find so painfull from the outside, as was MON **** off, must be 10 times worse if you're on the inside of the club and having 4 diff managers in 2 years. the situation is a lot more complex than AM is a GC and that's it. to say that we were only good for 45 mins last night is wrong. it was at least an hour where we were BATTERING them, not by just pumping it aimlessly into the box either. creating great interchanges between the lines of their midfield and back four to craft good chances. maintaining possession of the ball, off the ball movement was great, players showing good vision and composure. pressing high up the pitch, ireland must have run a **** marathon distance last night (stepehen ireland working his balls off?!?!). now, i'm not saying we've been playing like that for half a season. no, we've come close to that level away at chelsea for a shorter period of time. apart from that away we've shown we can play a decent counter attacking game. last night was something we haven't seen a villa side do for i don't know how long. there were loads of positives. the jury is out on if we can repeat that sort of level of performance. if they players play with that level of intensity and commitment to the claret and blue cause from now till the end of the season with any kind of consistency then we'll be fine this season, and with the youngsters coming through we'll have a good base to build on in the summer.

come on. tonight we were class. 70% of the ball, 15 shots on target and 2 stone cold penalties turned down. if AM can reproduce that form and sort the back 4 out in the summer then that' good enough for me. we played some VERY good football tonight. best off the ball movement, passing and vision i've seen us play with in ages.