Daweii

Who else would you play? Bannan out of position? Gardner out of position? Carruthers is a winger and would do well on the wing. Yes he made of meal of a tackle, but he also did something a Villa player hasn't done in years and tricked his way round Gerrard twice making him look stupid.. The kid has quality. If it doesn't work out bring him off at half-time, but he's worth a try given if Albrighton was fit he'd be starting and most days he's not all that great.

42 I believe.. That was in the O'Leary season in which he got sacked.

Given Lichaj - Collins - Cuellar - Warnock N'Zogbia - Herd - Ireland - Carruthers Weimann - Agbonlahor That's how I'd set it up.. Can't see Weimann or Agbonlahor not scoring with that kind of support. That's if Carruthers, Ireland or N'Zogbia don't score one for themselves.

Carruthers should start today as Albrighton has been ruled out..

Wigna had a full team, Villa went there missing all our key players, arguably our result was better under circiumstances This.. Ask Wigan to go to Liverpool with 8 players injured forcing them to play 5-6 players from the reserves and get a draw. They would get absolutely destroyed and it's testament to the quality of some of our youngsters that we didn't.

Could play Carruthers in Albrighton's position he is a winger after all.

How has Kenny managed that.. He has spent £100 million and arguably he now has a squad worse than the one he inherited. Now that takes some skill.. I think even McLeish is looking down on that with a small grin.

Better choice than Albrighton right now in my opinion.. May as well play someone that may actually terrorise the Stoke defence. We saw what he did to Gerrard yesterday, if he can do that to a player of his calibre he could be like a knife to butter to lesser players.

I dont. Win tomorrow and we are home free. Very much so.. Those below us need 3 wins in their last 6 games to match us on points if we win tomorrow. For a relegation team asking them to win 1 in 6 is challenge enough.

What I'm seeing is positives in some of the players we have, though I can see why there is disenchantment as it's all drowned in a sea of poor tactics..

Yeah not celebrating this.. No point celebrating when we could easily get someone as bad or worse.

We are far too nice.. I can see why we agreed to Bolton with the Muamba situation even though we could have denied their request and easily taken advantage, but with this we should have said no.

3-0 to Villa.. Weimann and Gabby to start upfront with Herd and Ireland in the middle, Bannan on the left and Carruthers on the right.. I think Carruthers would cause a lot of problems.

There are more positives; - Herd showing his quality. - Ireland finally coming good. - Bannan finally showing more of what he can do. - Lichaj playing well. Couple that with some other bonuses that may pay off such as Weimann and Carruthers getting a chance slowly and we have some very good players that McLeish is giving chances to. Yes some of these chances are forced due to injury, but many like Bannan and Herd etc. They are coming good because McLeish has had the faith in them to play them regularly.. If the rest can get that amount of play time we may have a young, but exciting starting 11 next season.

There should be no excuses. These players get paid big money and they owe it to the fans to perform. This half arsed attitude shown by some of the seniors is a big part of our problem. They need to be moved on before we can go forward, i dont care who the manager is they need to go You also have to consider there are a lot of players that would still very much love to play for a team like Aston Villa. Just because McLeish may sign a player typical of him doesn't mean they will be worse. If they arrive and they play with passion and pride especially if they are now playing for a bigger club than they came from, we will be playing better football and winning more games as a result. Player quality to me isn't set in stone just because they are deemed crap at one club does not mean they will be crap at ours, the same is very much true the other way round just because they are good doesn't mean they will be here.. The best we can hope for is whoever we bring in no matter who they are, is that they perform to their best while here. If they give that then they are already better players than 70% of the players we have.

Yes. Yes they would. No, no they wouldn't They most likely would. You rarely see them setting out for draws (read: losses, as that is the outcome of such a mentality). That in itself could have won us a fair few more points than we currently have. For all the good things McLeish does (ie: blood youngsters...that's really all I can think of ), he gets the most fundamental thing wrong which is sending out his team to try to win a game of football and not fear the opposition. Yeah and right now if you set our side up to attack we'd lose every game 4-0.. We don't have the strength at the back, nor the strength in the middle to attack. Teams like Swansea they attack because in the worst case scenario they just go back to the Championship, they have nothing to lose.. Blackpool did the same and for every good win, they got smashed twice as badly. We don't have the quality to attack right now, teams like Swansea don't have the quality either but what they do have is youthful spirit something we lacked until two games ago..

This could all work out great if we managed to scout a replacement like Papiss Cisse.. We need a player like that.

From the Wiki page on him.. So he's a guy that was more than likely on the radar of Manchester United, was on the radar of Arsenal and signed for them and then chose us.. That's a curious decision.

He won't be part of the mass clear out he'll just be a by-product of a "bigger" club jumping for him and McLeish sensing more money to spend biting their hand off. Whether Bent stays or goes.. Heskey, Gabby(possibly), Petrov, Delph, Ireland (possibly), Collins, Dunne, Warnock and Hutton (possibly) will all be going.. If they don't I will be surprised as many are part of the old guard and some are growing tired of our football.. All I know is if Gabby, Bent and Ireland go it will be their decision and not McLeish's as he wants to keep them I imagine.

Not necessarily.. It all depends more on what McLeish does with the rest of the side given we could be looking at a good 7-8 players being replaced.

What I like is he seems the kind of player that will win us so many free kicks and penalties. He's like Oxlade-Chamberlain, one of those players that can just keep going with the ball until he finds a decent pass or gets taken out by a defender..

I'm pretty sure Baker is older than 19! He's 20.. 21 in about 2 weeks.

Now for him to start at Stoke.. He'll terrorise their back four.

Bannan is a great player.. Albrighton I don't think he is. Albrighton should be playing better as he has a lot of competition from players like Carruthers for the position. Maybe that's why Bannan plays better as he realises if he doesn't Gardner will play ahead of him.. Perhaps Albrighton wasn't expecting Carruthers to make the jump, though if that's the case then as well as not being amazing Albrighton is also awfully naive.

Carruthers is better winger than Albrighton so if he gets played on that right wing Albrighton won't play for us again.. Carruthers has a lot more to his game. He's the closest we'll get to an Oxlade-Chamberlain type in our squad.