sharkyvilla

I've been impressed with the whole summer's work. The key will be how Lambert can improve the players who are already at the club which must be his main priority, with his signings adding quality. Hopefully we can get a quality attacking player in before the window and I will be really happy.

Only the fourth Englishman after Matthews, Charlton and Keegan to win the Ballon D'Or too. There is no way he could have played regularly in the Premiership so the Utd move was the best move for him imo. In his first season for them he still scored the winner in the Manchester derby and got a Champions League hattrick. Quality player ruined by injuries, yet still achieved a lot in that time.

I guess it did end up sounding quite harsh didn't it? But the way players can just run around him is a bit embarassing. Richards has to play at right-back though, I haven't seen a lot of that Dawson who is in the squad but he must be a better bet at centre-half than Tomkins.

Without wishing too sound harsh, he'd probably be the least mobile player in the paralympics team. He really is like a statue. Overall the team is starting to gel quite nicely and the substitutions worked really well. I like the look of Sordell, how did he only play 40 odd minutes for Bolton after signing in January?

Good stuff. I suspect that the lack of investment for the last couple of years was more due to wanting to sort the wage issue than Randy not being interested any more. If he has learnt from his mistakes in controlling the wage structure and perhaps has a fair chunk of cash in his pocket then we should all have reason to be optimistic. A new start for the club.

Either way we won't hear or know anything about it through the press, at least not until Carlos Tevez turns up on our doorstep. I'm not expecting earth-shattering investment all of a sudden but it's in his interest to put some money in now we've got rid of a lot of the shite and have a hungry new manager. Starting to get a bit giddy.

The only thing I would say is that whatever centre-halves are at the club, the level of coaching and organisation has to be much better than Houllier and McLeish ever achieved. Under O'Neill basically the same defence was probably the best in both boxes in the league so it has to be down to more than them just turning shit all of a sudden. Good luck to Concrete Ron anyway, he must have possibly the greatest nickname of all time.

It's a really fascinating turn of events. It's weird that if he never really felt much attachment for the Browns other than through his father's legacy that he chose to invest in another sport, one where very few owners make money. Who knows what it means. It could be great news for us but I suspect he just wanted to cash in due to other circumstances.

But we haven't sold anyone, therefore it would appear we are not on a sell to buy policy. Infact, by my reckoning, we have now signed four new players and, as yet, have not sold a single player. I'm not quite sure what you want? Well let's see what happens over the next few days. I'm happy with how the summers going. My worry during all the fuss was that we'd miss out on Vlaar as one possibility was we needed to sell a player before we signed him. If collins does go I think it would be one massive coincidence that we just happen to sign Vlaar around the same time. Again I don't see the problem with a sell-to-buy policy, if indeed there is one (the evidence supports otherwise). I think it will be a bit of a miracle to get rid of any of the defenders this early in the summer anyway because they are shite so I think Collins will be here for a while longer.

True. If Carroll could score 15-20 goals a season for four years then £15m would be relatively cheap. He's young enough and has more ability than is given credit for (I thought he turned the cup final on its head when he came on). It may depend on what his advisors say - if I were them I'd tell him to steer clear of Newcastle so he doesn't go back to his old haunts. Then again we may not even be interested as nobody seems to have any idea who is on Lambert's wishlist.

Nobody can deny it was a low point for the club last season but imo it was largely unavoidable in that we had to clear out the deadwood this summer and McLeish was the only person realistically available to manage us through the season under the circumstances. Tough decision that had to be made by Lerner and I admire his guts, but hopefully we're seeing the greenshoots of recovery. If this deal is still on then everyone's gone about it in a perculiar way. Just glad we've not been drawn into a slanging match.

I think if we signed Defoe we'd get the same instant reaction as we did with Keane where you think 'why the hell didn't we sign him 5 years ago?'. He'd bang them in wherever he went, and is one of those players who seem to get knocked for what they can't do rather than looking at what they can do.

The GB consists of players worth £20m+... if its Liverpool that are buying I watched the game too and it was awful. Pearce really is a terrible manager. He's clearly been/being groomed for the top job which certainly looks well out of his league. The FA should offload him sooner rather than later and look to some other promising young manager who might make the step up in the future. But a promising young manager is likely to have a club job, unless you can convince someone to manage a club and the U21s at the same time. I still think Becks is a good player but really they needed one defender, one midfielder and one striker from the over-age players. In a choice between Giggs who still does it for Utd and Becks who plays in the US, I think Giggs is the better choice.

People refusing to condemn the club because of a lack of info can not be seen to have an 'everything is great' agenda. People who DO want to condemn the club despite a lack of information, can only be seen to have a negative agenda. Some have made their minds up and some are being more circumspect. I'm sorry if you can't see the distinction between the 2 approaches. How is ignoring any information that paints the club in a negative light not an agenda? Putting forward the idea that we've messed them around or have a sell to buy policy is no different to putting forward any of the ideas that paint Vlaar, his agent and his club in the wrong. Picking up on the sell before we buy policy, I don't really mind if there is, if there is indeed one (there is no evidence at the moment, it has to be said). The inference that Lerner would suddenly change the rules on Lambert and pull the club out of a deal behind his back to me is very unfair as there is no indication that Lerner is anything but honest with his managers. He made it clear to O'Neill that cost cutting had to be done, it was O'Neill who didn't want to do it. He obviously made it clear last season when trying to recruit, which is why we ended up with nobody better than the ginger knob willing to take the job on.

Tomkins was absolutely **** useless wasn't he? Looked like he'd never played a game of football in his life.

I'm not saying he is the world's greatest tactician but getting one of our youth sides to a final is a really good achievement imo. He always seems to be having to work with a hotchpotch of players from different backgrounds because our top 4 clubs don't seem to bring through many quality youngsters, yet still qualify comfortably. Picking Danny Rose really is inexplicable though, despite a half-decent showing in the second half the other day. I'm not sure who else we could expect to be attracted to the England under 21 manager's job, or the GB job for that matter.

He's put out a come and get me plea and it's fallen on deaf ears. Time to move on. I would have thought that any move would be unlikely to happen whilst we were in the US and that would have been made clear. I'm glad the club hasn't been jerked into a slanging match that ends up with us giving away details of the transfer policy that may drive up prices for other targets. Players are always coming over to training facilites and stadiums, my dad's a taxi driver and took Eden Hazard to Arsenal's training ground a couple of seasons ago and nothing happened there. It's just this got out in the public domain in a way that Villa are loathe to do due to circumstance.

Sounds like a good deal if you ask me

I guess this is the problem with Villa doing everything in utter silence, we only get to hear one side of the story as to what's going on and it looks bad. It happened with Solskjaer where the power of the internet brought it into the public domain but that turned out alright in the end. I reckon there must be more going on behind the scenes, or it could just be that Feyenoord and Vlaar want it to happen more than we actually do.

Well I said I liked him and for very similar reasons to you, but I don't see how that makes him free from criticism and not a major part of the hole we've been in. Pretty much all but 3 of the players he's signed have had to be written off, some of whom have picked up huge wages for doing bugger all. Houllier and McLeish were bigger disasters, I agree. Only McLeish was a rank bad appointment, Houllier really let himself and the club down when he was here.

The last tournament he wasn't allowed Carroll or Wilshere who would have made a big difference, but the tournament before that England got to the final before getting outclassed by a German side that has gone on to be one of the best in the world. I think he's done a decent job with the Under 21s. GB were shit but it's a really shit group of players he's got against a Brazil side where basically every player is worth £20m+.

I liked O'Neill a lot and I even liked his brand of football, which whilst it was a bit agricultural sometimes it was done with pace, lots of wingers, great set pieces and loads of enthusiasm. His problem is that he has never built a legacy at any of his clubs and we suffered more than most by his short-termism. That's what stops him being regarded amongst the very best managers imo.

I don't think that many of us have seen a lot of him other than at the Euros, where the Dutch defended really poorly and he didn't shine himself. We'd be foolish to judge him on that though. Collins and/or Dunne need removing and I think this is an excellent deal on paper. Just hope everyone holds their nerve and the deal gets done.

I don't think we could attract any other £20m striker to the club tbh. Maybe a couple of cheaper ones but if Lambert really rates Carroll then Randy has to trust his judgement. It will probably mean that the rest of the Downing payment will effectively be getting paid off in one lump rather than over the next couple of years, giving Lambert a bit more in the transfer kitty this summer, with only what, £5m-£10m actual cash outlay to sign him. I doubt he will take a wage cut but if he is going to be first-team regular and is only early 20s then he'd be worth it as much as Bent is.

I'd like us to have signed Bruma. Bit wasted on another loan to Germany.