sharkyvilla

I just can't see why if Lambert only had £8m to spend he blew it so early in the window and almost half of it on a League 1 fullback. All logic points to getting a couple more players in imo

...except for Aston Villa

Considering he had the best batting and bowling averages for England I'm surprised KP didn't get the man of the series award

There was pretty much a concensus where we thought 10th-12th would be a good result for this season and 1-0 away defeats will be part and parcel of that. There's only so much a manager can do instantly with a painfully average squad with still some players who shouldn't really be here that are hard to shift. I really hate the negativity of some fans, I wish they would at least try to forgive and forget what has gone before and try to concentrate on the new start.

And more than likely haemorrhaging money again... Adam is on £65.000 at Liverpool Carrol on £60.000-90.000 and Adam Johnson is on £ 85.000 at City Even if you take the figures with a pinch of salt, how much would those players be willing to decrease their wages for the honour of playing at Aston villa? Surely it's only haemorrhaging money if we pay those kinds of wages and then not play them. That's where our money troubles have stemmed from. Bent on 70K a week is good value, Heskey and co on 50K is where the problem lay. I'm sure if we signed them we would pay the going rate.

15 minutes into the season and he's on a hattrick already. Let the 2012/13 wankfest begin

I quite like the idea. I think we'd need someone like Huddlestone to screen infront of the back 3 so that if Zog gets caught up field, Clark can just move across to left-back and Huddlestone can just slip into the middle as cover. I think it'd be the most likely we'd ever see N'Zogbia being useful in a Villa shirt tbh.

If we could get him in on loan on those wages with a set transfer fee and pay increase if we chose to keep him at the end of the season then I would settle for that. It gives everyone an incentive to make it work.

Heskey's still available isn't he?

I think Ireland's job would be a lot easier if he had the likes of Dyer and Sinclair playing on each wing with pace and lots of movement so he has other creative options rather than just a throughball to Bent that the centrehalves can telegraph before he's even passed it. I can see why people would think he would do better at Swansea than here. Unless we can bring in a couple of those players then I struggle to see how we can get the best out of Ireland as he doesn't naturally score goals himself.

Wether we set up to play possession football with the idea of attacking or set up defensively and play long ball does it ultimately matter if we don't create chances? No doubt Lamberts approach is the right thing but i don't think it's all going to click and these current players are going to turn into a great attacking side. The approach is right, the idea is right but he needs to bring in quality attacking players. True, that's why I'm hoping Lambert has some quality lined up to come in during the next week or two and he's just laying the founations of a passing game to get the best out of whoever he brings in. It could be one signing that makes all the difference and turns us from being toothless to a potent attacking threat, the problem is working out who that player is and how to get them in.

He's not really got an eye for a goal. If you're playing in the final third then you really need to chip in with goals. The problem is that he can't really play in a central midfield pair either, but if he's on 70K a week you have to at least try and use him. Robbie Keane was more use in his loan spell than Ireland has been in his entire Villa career and we could really do with someone like him at the moment.

We played this kind of passing football under Houllier and Bent scored loads. The difference is that we haven't got Young and Downing, Bent will score goals in any team if he gets opportunities, we just need better creators. I agree with you about Warnock.

He is utter barry white. We just aren't the right club for him, if we could somehow shift him out and get Adam Johnson in, even if it's just on loan, I'd be in dreamland

edit: double post

None of the players we have brought in this season were linked anywhere before we got them in, at least not until our fans did their detective work for the press. They have had absolutely no idea about our transfer activity and neither do we, we could be either in for 5 players or none and nobody would have a clue. All I do know is that Lambert would have been nuts to come to our club if he had no money to spend because the squad is a bit shit.

If we don't score more goals than last season then we'll be in for a struggle and the only way of doing that is to bring in quality, no matter how much better the passing game is under Lambert. But I still have hopes that Carroll and maybe Johnson could be on their way and they would make a big difference. I'm not getting carried away with this result because I always felt it was a tougher opener than it looked on paper as promoted teams will have the extra bounce in their step as well as massive crowd backing - we also seemed to be having to pick square pegs in round holes a bit because Lambert hasn't been able to get rid of Hutton and Warnock yet. Have a bit of patience because it will be a slow turnaround for the club.

I'm hoping that Lambert will mould a modern football side that won't include a big target man. Maybe a loan deal just for this season for a bit of experience and variety whilst Lambert slowly changes things but I don't see a long-term benefit of signing him. I'd much, much rather have Defoe as he pretty much guarantees goals.

I would take him because he scores lots of goals

All rumours are wrong, surely we must know by now our transfer dealings are tight as a duck's arse when it comes to leaking. Only by some freak accident did we hear about Solksjaer and Vlaar. I find it quite exciting as we may end up with nobody before the end of the window or half a new team.

Talk about his attitude and laziness but the one thing in his favour for me is the runs I've seen him make in the penalty box that only goalscorers like Bent can instinctively do, and you only see their worth when they have a long run in the team. If we sold him I'm pretty sure another club would turn him into a decent goalscorer, despite the ordinary loan spells he's had.

For the (roughly) £60m we got for Downing, Young and Milner I reckon we must have spent at least £50m on transfer fees alone for Bent, Ireland, Given, N'Zogbia, Makoun and Hutton for combined higher wages than the 3 who left, plus had to pay off 3 managers. Let's face it Randy's line of business is prime for punishment from a recession and he isn't really rich enough to donate £30m net spending every summer like he used to, especially with a divorce on the cards. Anyway this is getting a bit off topic again! I'd quite like Carroll at the club, it would be great to have a marquee signing over the next couple of weeks if Randy's pockets are a bit deeper. Either way I can't see Lambert spending money for the sake of it, he'll bring in who he thinks is right for the team.

I agree, and IMO it would be unacceptable for Lerner not to back lambert properly this summer. That doesn't mean man city style spending or even the level of spending MoN spent on wages and fees but there should be some significant investment in what is a very average squad. No one can say either way what will happen this summer but the delay of the Vlaar deal doesn't fill me wth confidence. Why would it be unacceptable? If the money isn't there then it isn't there. It would only be unacceptable if Lambert signed on the premise that there would be money and Randy lied to him. I'm hoping it's just a case of Lambert wanting to spend his kitty a bit more wisely than previous managers who had felt as they were given a budget they had to spend it all. We just need to be a bit more patient, it seems a lot of clubs are doing their business quite slowly this summer for various reasons.

Houllier let himself and the club down. To be in a relegation fight with only Milner missing from the side that finished top 6 plus over £25m spent in the January window, upsetting almost the entire side and looking completely uninterested, is spectacularly bad. Even Gary McAllister managed to turn the side around in the few weeks he was in charge once Houllier got ill, probably by not treating the players like naughty children. McLeish was a total failure but had a much tougher job to do. O'Leary like O'Neill generally had more success than failure so shouldn't be compared to those two.

What happened at Malaga? I thought they had oil billions behind them?