VillakevBromsgrove

PL is neither blind nor stupid, he knows the issues with the team more than we do, We have to believe there is a plan and that he will address the issues when it is possible for him to do this, He must know what his finances were for spending when he took the job for all the transfer windows, if he was going to get no money then why would he take the job? He took the job because it is a project that if he gets right will ultimately give him a serious CV. As fans it is hard to take results like yesterday but if long term he can make this club great again then days like yesterday will fall into insignificance. We all have seen the finances and how we were in trouble, i honestly believe we are now turning the corner and things will get better, we do not have many players left on high wages and the ones we have will be gone soon, this must be a sign that when this is done we will then see PL get better players again, the last 3 years have all been about surviving and balancing the books. I think that from this summer it will be about kicking on and challenging, PL is laying the foundations and soon we will see the building, we must keep the faith and believe the future is bright.

As bad as yesterday was I think the writing was on the wall, no one really believed we would win there and to an extent i think the players also thought this and as such did not give their all. The worst thing for us was the win they had against Leeds and the fact they may play us in the final, They had a point to prove and turned it on, to be fair Chelsea in that mood could have done this against 80% of the premier league. I hope though that we can move on and forget this result and get something against spuds or we could go downwards pretty quickly. at least we only have 2 days to hide before the next match. There is a funny side though have you seen the joke going round of Benitez giving PL a box of after eights for Christmas, Good job we have a sense of humour,

12th on 48 points.

Agree with this, as I said the front players are pretty static, Bringing bent in will not help either as he is also static, I just look at the other teams around us and they always seem to have better movement, Even WBA, it is the movement of there players that has made the difference to them as they pull the opposition defences out of position creating space, we just seem tom make it easy for them.

With the run Stoke are on I for one thought we would loose, the fact we didn't and got a point shows improvement, also Stoke never had 1 shot on target the whole game, this shows we are playing pretty defensive minded and may be the reason for our lack of goals, pretty sure the goals will come soon when PL gets the balance right. We have a lot of sideways passing and back passing that goes no where but on the other hand is getting the young players to be comfortable on the ball. I think the problems I have seen more recently is there seems to be little movement ahead of the player with the ball, this can be put right and is probably the next thing PL will look at.

Has anybody actually looked at the league table and the results from the games played, we are only 4 points off 12th place, the league is very compact where a couple of wins can get you a good movement up the league. This yet again is a tight league where there are shock results pretty much every week, even the top teams struggle to put a run together, this year has shown that any team can win against the top teams on a given day with the right circumstances. Yes we are not the best team any one can see this but please tell me why we feel the need to panic, we are in the pack and as such are not certainties to go down as people suggest, We have no right to beat the teams around us as they also need the points and will fight for them hard. The main thing as has been suggested is that we keep accumulating points, this will hopefully breed confidence and then see us start scoring goals. PL is in my opinion getting it right in making us hard to beat and building the side from the back.

No Manager is good in all departments which is why when you hire one you generally hire a management team, Many managers through out time have utilised trainers to improve certain areas of the side, in Chelsea side it was generally thought Ray Wilkins was the reason they did so well which was found to be partially true as they have not really played as well since he left. Maybe PL needs to bring in a better defensive coach.

with our squad rotation and age it should be the magic roundabout.

Agree totally, I think though that as fans we should step back and look at the bigger picture, I expected us to struggle up till Christmas untill we started to click but not to the extent we have done though, I think part of the problem is looking at the teams doing ok and believing we should be better than them, people forget these teams have been together longer and will probably not improve much more than they have, most years after Christmas is when alot of these teams hit the wall and start to plummet, hopefully we will go in the opposite direction.

The point as said above is what I was trying to get at, the managers you list had a better base to go from and only needed a couple of players, In fairness to PL i dont think any one of us would argue that he inherited a squad with no moral, no confidence, no pattern of play, all the best players sold, and pretty much the youth team filling in for injuries and bans thats not even thinking about the mood of the fans and staff, He needs to replace pretty much most of the squad if the players we all believe will be leaving in the summer when the contracts expire and build from scratch. Obviously he could not do this all in 1 go so I believe we will see more signings in Jan and in the summer, These players no matter how good need time to settle which is why I asked how long we should give him realistically and fairly to turn it around. The reason I am unsure is because the longer we go on near the foot of the table the harder his job will be. I am not unsure about PL but on whether the method used will be accepted by the fans and wonder how long it will be before they start getting on his back, again this will make it harder for his plan to work. On another note we all have a go at at Nzogbia for having no end product as he runs down blind alleys, I remember laughing at a winger we used to have called Tony Daley who had a similar problem where he stopped running to cross the ball when he hit the advertisements at the foot of the holte end, he came good in the end and I have a feeling Nzogbia will too hopefully.

thats a suprise

At the moment I am not 100% sure, The signing of lower league players whilst it looks bad is not really a major risk, in the old days we never had so many foreign players in the league and the Div 1 or premiership was full of British players, was it poor - no we were top of Europe at the time and had to be banned to stop our domination. Now a days where have all the British players gone? they are in the Championship as everybody thinks unless you are foreign then you are no good. Whilst I will agree there are some poor players who will not make it I can not believe that there are those that wont. We have to trust PL to cherry pick the right ones. I applaud this decision although I still like everybody have reservations. Yes there are some good foreign players but there is also some dross. As for having a go at our defense because we have young inexperienced players there, look at other teams and tell me they are better. Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea are all in Europe with the top players yet are there defenses impregnable, recent results show they are not that much better than us. the problem I think is our midfield, This is the area PL and the training staff will be working on, hopefully as we have young players they will learn fast and start improving, whilst we call for older experienced players I wonder if they can adapt to different thinking as well as the kids and if this is the reason PL will not buy them, I do not know the answer to this as I am not at the training ground every day so can only guess. Although the league position is bad and the performances under par I do believe that PL will get it right and we will start climbing the league, PL says to be patient as it is not a quick fix, we owe him the chance to get it right, I do know that swapping managers without giving them time is not the answer as we have found out in the past, yes it does take time to build a good side how long though do we give him, 12 games, 6 months, a season, or two years, Looking back at our history has there ever been a manager who had a limited squad, little money and has come into a team that are so split who instantly turned it round in the first season without spending big? We owe PL a chance to turn it round without the constant criticism, As for DB9 i can not say if PL is right as I do not know the facts behind his decision, I dont think though that it can be a little thing as PL needs to do well and is no fool, we have to believe the action he has taken is justified and support him.

Least they played for 90 mins and never really looked in trouble, could well be a good platform to build off,

I still get annoyed over MON. if you remember we only ever played well for 2 thirds of a season, after February we usually went downhill very quickly, whether it was required to buy in January to bolster the squad or the fact there was no rotation I dont know, we could have easily got to Europe in those 3 years if we played the whole season, this was my real frustration with him

Whilst i think about it i have to say the reason I believe we will improve will be down to the confidence of the players and the manager, to explain this look at the Baggies, they have been getting better every season, they dont buy superstars but make the players they have believe in themselves, with confidence anything is possible, tricks come off, an average player becomes a top player, do you think the baggies have improved their players that much or that they have come together as a unit and have grown in confidence and stature? hell they are in the top 6 and looking good, it was only last year we were pretty equal with them, what they have different is supportive fans and a great management team. we have a great management team but are we that supportive? give it time and we too will get better of this i am sure.

I do not believe the defence are that bad but Naive, this will improve with time and experience, you have to look at the teams we have faced and the players they have been up against, on their day these players will kill most defences, hell if you ask MU they will tell you our defence is not that much worse than theirs (even we ripped them apart), the difference with the top teams is if you score 1 they score 3, against the similar teams our defence has just made the odd mistake, the problem is we dont score enough. this puts added pressure on the defence to keep a clean sheet, it will come right of this i am sure, As for Clark he is similar to another defender we sold now playing for Chelsea, I remember seeing people say Cahill would not make it either, our players need time and encouragement. As for my views on losing the next 4, I dont want to think of that thanks, to be honest i dont think it will happen, I think we will win 1 and draw 1 at the least,

God that brings back childhood memories, I used to love going down with my dad, dancing and singing in the holt, for me removing the seating killed the fun and the atmosphere, although it is nice to come home with the back of ya legs dry and not covered in wee, I remember rivers of it flowing down the holt lol, I remember once seeing one bloke doing it in a fans pocket without him knowing, crazy days. For people thinking going down will help us forget it, if we loose the premiership money then we will be on a downward spiral and may not recover, even though I cherish the old days I would not like to go back to them, Ask Leeds, Forest, Leicester, Blues, It does not always work.

I can not believe the talk about sacking PL. It is pretty obvious to anybody with a football brain that we were in the mire, Having a go at a chairman who has seen his errors and has started to address them does not help anybody, Yes we sold our best players but havent we always done that, the problem is we have not replaced them, look around the league and tell me how many ready replacements there are and you will find there are not that many, Other teams you see as our equals have an advantage where their teams have been together a while and have jelled, We could go the route of buying top players again for big money but as QPR show it isn't always the answer, even MC were average for the first season with their spending, A team takes over a year to start to perform together with friendships, patterns of play and performances, look at the teams who have started to show promise, WBA, Swansea Everton etc, these teams built slowly and are now reaping the rewards, Liverpool spend loads on players and wages but are they setting the world on fire? While we do not want to be relegated and can see the team struggling is it all really doom and gloom? PL said he was here for a long term project, most can see what he is trying to do, most football people said he had a hell of a job to turn it round and if we are honest most of us can see this, buying young lower league players is the strategy we are using and we better get used to it, it can work and I hope and pray it does, I also have been one to panic and moan about our position but on reflection I see it is way too early to pass judgement, I will just support the team as usual and pray PL starts to get the rewards for his efforts, It was obvious that we were not going to get points from MU, MC and even Arsenal and most knew this, why then are we now panicking, lets see where we are at the end of January before shouting to remove the manager, this swapping and changing will only harm us, ask any football person and they will say PL is the right man, maybe we should also show support for him and actually help him and the team instead of putting extra pressure on them.As for Harry Rednap, could he really make us improve instantly which is what we need, i do not think so,

I wonder how true the stories in the paper are about bent and his love life effecting his game and thinking.

Would you come to Villa and play for PL if you were a top player? look at the treatment of Bent, Hutton and Warnock. Whether we think they are poor players or not they are still pro players and deserve better. This may make players think twice before coming here.

If there is one thing that villa is good at it is ending runs or bad records that teams have, at this we excel I can not see us getting any more than 2 points from all these games, will draw against sunderland and also against reading.

Is it Randy Learner though or the advice that he is being given, when you are being guided by money men then this takes priority over the football matters, I have felt for a while that we need someone at the club to act on Randys behalf who understands football and can guide him. I do not believe Randy is bad for the club but i do believe he is genuine when he says he wants success, what he needs though are the tools and advice to achieve this.

I am not trying to be condescending and honestly hope you are right, Trouble is if we buy a midfielder in January of quality then how many other players will go to fund this? Regarding the money, I can see why we were in a mess but we have sold many players on top money and so it is given that we are improving. Do we have to be in the black though before we spend again on quality rather than average players no better than what we have now? Surely the likelyhood of relegation and the loss of money this involves should push for buying better players than we have or is Randy happy to stagnate and try and avoid relegation to keep the finances on an even keel paying back his loans to the club. I honestly thought things would be better than this but we are now one of the premier leagues most hated teams and a laughing stock.

Totally agree with this, I have been going down since the Bruce rioch Andy Lockhead days and can honestly say this is the worst midfield I have seen at the Villa. we have no one to chip in with the odd goal, no one who can hold the ball and lay off a pin point pass, no leader, no organiser, no width, no height, no player who wants to control the game, we are very very average and deserve to be in the position we are in.

We are in the top twenty earners in europe this was stated not long ago, if we are running at a loss then why. i do not understand this. if it is true then how will being relegated, losing the tv money etc help us, surely we should be speculating to accumulate.