AVFCAM

As a way of finding goals, would anyone be open to approaching Jermaine Defoe? Must be worth at least a handful of goals...

To be honest, I'd even go for Robbie Keane again it's that desperate

Yeah, £2m is a little low but I wouldn't be looking for much more than £3/4m. He's injured quite a bit, he's not been as good as he was in the World Cup for us ever and I might be wrong, but how many of our wins has he actually played in? Conceding isn't our issue at the moment as much as scoring is.

Even if we win it'll be a poor performance, which will paper over the cracks.

9 games in a row without a goal and then 5 games in a row without a goals (might have those numbers wrong) in the same season is in excusable.

My main worry is that the club seem no closer to getting rid of him. I like Tom Fox, but his interview with Tom Ross worried me, as even with his dire run, the club still saw him as the man to take us forward...

I predict a lucky 1-0 win for us, or a desperately poor 0-1 loss, with lots of booing, but no change in management.

People do really need to start showing their displeasure by not attending. I've not been to a game in over a year, it pains me, I love match days, but I will not pay to watch such a poor display when the club seem to think this quality of football is acceptable for 3 seasons.

Hutton MoM, well done lad

Alan Hutton as one of our stand out players and scoring a goal...how times have changed. Well played Alan!

'Look at the Wickes stand, listen to the Wickes stand'

Just doesn't have the same ring to it.

There's no way we could attract a name like Wickes

If you read the article, Moxley actually reveals that 'stands' will have their naming rights sold, he just assumes the Holte will be first due to it's popularity...Tom Fox isn't a total idiot, I don't think it will happen.

It was only Burnley but he looked a class above. I think starting him twice in 3 days was an error though with his age and injuries.

Possibly, but the fans would have slaughtered Lambert if he'd dropped Cole after the Burnley game

Yeah Lambert couldnt win on that one.

Lambert seems to struggle a lot with anything involving winning...

not sure their strikers are any good (surely even we can handle chamakh) , but bolasie worries me with his pace, and jedinak has the ability to dominate our midfield. quite an underrated player, and id take him over any of our midfielders

Chamakh is poor, so watch him bag a hat trick against us.

We don't half love a good belly run at the Villa.

I still think we are ok results wise on the grand scale of things, obviously it's not great but with players coming back in and 13 points on the board average form would see us ok & here's why..

We need 40ish+ points to survive from 38 games.

We would expect to gain most of those points from the lower 9 teams in the Prem a few from the 6th to 9th place clubs and hopefully a few bonus points against the top 6 teams.

As things stand we have a top 6 of

Chelsea,

Man City,

Southampton,

Arsenal,

West Ham &

Man Utd,

we have played all of them except Man Utd and have gained 2 points thus far from those games.

A couple of those teams you would suggest will drop to more mid table by the seasons end namely West Ham & Southampton.. as it happens the two where our 2 points came from! They will likely be replaced by Spurs & Everton as the season progresses.. Again we lost those two games.

We need 27 points more from 26 games effectively but 19 of those games are against teams outside of the likely top 6. So for me we need about 7 wins, 6 draws & 6 losses from those 19 games against the lesser teams meaning any points in the 8 games we have remaining against the top 6 are purely a bonus and relieve pressure on the other 19 fixtures.

Why on Earth we are back to this scenario yet again is of huge concern but hopefully getting our best players back and a bit of strengthening in the Jan window plus likely having to replace Delph and maybe Vlaar will hopefully see us through the season at least. I'm delighted Okore is now ready as that takes a little pressure off the Vlaar situation but losing Delph as looks likely, needs sorting out.

I didn't read all of that, but I got the gist of it, I like your optimism...something you seem to have missed though it that we recently drawn to Burnley and lost to QPR, 2 of this seasons current bottom 3...where do you see this 27 points coming from exactly?!

I'm not defending him, I think he's a lame duck but he has had a ridiculous amount of injuries. It's like musical chairs out there.

Losing your captain, your best striker and your useful impact sub striker in particular is rotten luck.

That's correct and can be used to partly explain the last few months...how about the preceding few years?

I'm finding the idea that people think all is well as 'we will win when we have Benteke back' laughable...yeah, because after 3 seasons it's a good thing that Lambert has built a squad that cannot win without 1 player.

I agree that he can't win with his tactics, people moaned when he went attacking (Bent on) against Southampton and then moaned when he went defensive against Burnley. The players must shoulder a portion of the blame, but bloody hell, what has to happen for him to get the sack?! If we lose the next few and he goes, great, but we've just missed out on 9 (more) points.

I say a win at Palace or even a convincing performance with a (preferably high) score draw or he's out. It won't happen though, we'll sack him on January 31st because we seem to be a backwards club these days.

Lambert out.

I don't care that Burnley are on a good run, I don't care that we've got injuries, I don't care that Benteke is out...we have to win this. If we don't, Lambert surely has to get the boot...would you really trust him to turn things around and get something out of our run of important must win games?! If we don't get 9/10 points over the next few games then we really are in serious trouble.

Gabby and Wiemann (especially) need to step up and start being strikers, being the the top scorers in a team that has scored less than 10 goals all season is nothing to be proud of...especially when Wiemann had the chance to win it for us last week and managed to hit row Z.

If we lose, I say we sign Heskey and Carew again. Heskey because he's the answer to every question and Carew because Big John wouldn't stand for this shit!

His total lack of form does coincide with our lack of quality on the flanks..meaning his service is non existent as he isn't strong enough to deal with a long ball game. Again, Lambert seems reluctant to have a plan b.

Why didn't he score goals under Fulham's 456 managers last year then, did they all play the hoof ball?

Why is a lowly Championship club like Brighton only willing to take him on a month's loan?

If he is this goalscorer some people proclaim him to be then why doesn't another PL manager take him?

Palace play with proper out and out wingers, surely they must have wanted this guy?

Hull play with out and out wingers.

Burnley.

Yes, they did play hoof ball...that's why they went down

His total lack of form does coincide with our lack of quality on the flanks..meaning his service is non existent as he isn't strong enough to deal with a long ball game. Again, Lambert seems reluctant to have a plan b.

Hutton had a poor run, or bombed out, went on loan, did ok, came back, stayed bombed out (due to wages)...now he's back and has been one of our stand out performers...

Bent came in, scored 24 (twenty four) goals in a season, went on a poor run, got bombed out (probably due to form and wages), went on loan and didn't pull up any tress, although did score 3 goals (oh how we could do with even 3 goals right now), came back, still bombed out but getting snippets of games now...somehow expected to perform in fits and starts (or non starts if you get me)

Why couldn't Bent become a goal scorer for us again, if you give him the service, DB will score. Lambert's policy of bombing players out completely doesn't work for us in the long run (Bacuna may be out next lost cause).

I say give DB some time against Burnley...actually, we'd need to buy some wingers first...or even manage to create something...

Lambert has set us up in a way that doesn't play to Bent's strengths, if we had a plan b (instead of lumping to Benteke) we may still have a 10-20 goal a season man on our bench.

My prediction is we will be forced to play him, he will score some goals, Benteke will leave, we will want Bent to stay, he will go for nothing.

It's typical Aston Villa, we seem to ruin players!

When people keep saying "but look at who we've played..." Are forgetting the fact that before we played these teams, we only scored 5 and the performances were ok, but not that great overall (defensively we were excellent).

The problem of not scoring enough has been evident since August. It was the same last year AND the year before.

Yes, we've had some tough games, but we were hardly convincing beforehand...which is why so many of us fear for the rest of the season.

If we loose to Southampton and Burnley then the pressure would be on to change the manager.

If I jumped out of an aeroplane at 30,000ft without a parachute, my chances of living to talk about it would be very slim.

I'm not one of those calling for his head, but I'm getting frustrated at how blunt we are. I hope he doesn't really think we were that excellent as he intimated after the game because it's so difficult to watch us give the ball away so cheaply and unnecessarily when we should be taking the game to the opposition and pegging them back. always being on the back foot is beginning to grate.

I'm not sure how you can still not feel the need for his head...we've made no progress in 3 years. We are awful to watch, we can score and we have no midfield and we haven't had a midfield for 3 years...

It's a disgrace that the club have allowed his contract to get to this point. We make cut backs to save money, but then piss money away by letting people get to a point where they can leave for free.

West Ham away next and then Southampton at home. There's another two losses for you right there.

With the way we've played today I wouldn't write them off straight away...but...we'll be without Benteke and we haven't strung 2 decent performances together for a long time.

Ref was right with the red, but Spurs could've had 2 reds so far.

Not the worst performance, in no doubt we'd have won this if Benteke had stayed on. Shame a decent performance has been ruined.

So Adebayor has scored more against us than any other club...how many people is that now who've scored more against us?!

I just wish we weren't such an easy game.

The funniest thing about this thread is that some people actually rate Tim Sherwood, someone who was at a pretty wealthy club, with lots of resources and did ok, but not great...yet...Steve McLaren, who was very decent at Middlesborough, was excellent at FC Twente, ok at Wolfsburg and has done really well at Derby, is seen a bad choice...it's mental.

Moyes would be a good shout and probably Randy's first choice.

McLaren would be a decent option in my opinion, although that doesn't guarantee anything.

Pulis has experience and may steady things, but he's not the type of manager who signs up as a stop gap. If he hadn't fallen out with his chairman he'd have been a Palace for a while.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I was a lot happier under McLeish than I am under Lambert.