stanthemanisgod

Lets not get into the tippy tappy debate. Tippy tappy with no end product is as ineffective as the hoof ball, if not more so. It's about using possesion to create chances, now I admit I didn't see the game at the weekend but seems like chances were few and far between, but it was the first game of the season against a team who will give few teams the ability to play the ball around. Things wil click but it wil take a bit of time, we played with effectively a brand new back 4, and almost a brand new midfield with the amount of games Delph has had recently. Only Given, N'Zog, Ireland and Bent were regulars last season so I think a little patience is called for before we start judging the playing style.

Question all you want but dont jump to conclusions. Could it be a sign that all is not right? well yes it could. Could the media statements from Feyenoord be heavily biased for whatever reason? Again yes, then again it might be Gospel. Could Vlaar have gotten a bit carried away when in reality he was one of a number of options? Possible, surely? I would argue that the fact that he's clearly available, and club seem more than happy to let him go, yet nobody has 'swooped' in and stolen him away while we 'do nothing' would indicate that we're hardly in the process of pulling off the biggest transfer coup of the summer. It's fine to ask the question, just realise there's always likely to be more than one answer until more FACTS are known.

Exactly! I've always been proud of the fact we dont do our business through the press, although that can mean frustrating silences. But now despite the fact that a fair few people claim not to rate the player, or know much about him, this is clearly evidence that something is wrong witht he club...... it's a joke. For all we know Vlaar could be one of many players who have been to the club for a chat and it's one fo those other players we're gunning for as our first choice. Equally it could be that we need to get some wages off the balance book before Lerner will committ to adding what will be a fairly well paid player on a long contract. But either way there's no point getting upset about, the more realistic of us would expect things to go quiet while the team is on tour.

/\ This What do we actually know.... 1) Vlaar and his representatives visited Villa for a 'chat' 2) He hasn't heard anything from the club and has made a statement to that affect whilst attempting to avoid burning any bridges with the club he currently plays for. Do any of us KNOW he was promised a move or that he'd play a major part in or new look team? Do any of us know if he's even our first choice signing at CB, lot of people still linking us to Ramis? Is this in fact an indication of a buy to sell policy? Has Lambert spent all of his money already? We actually know very little, and apart from a few media interviews which could be argued have been published to present Feyenoord and Vlaar in a certain light we certainly have no evidence of anything regarding the running of the club. Think people just need to chill out and see what happens, Lambert has made a coulpe of decent signings so far and the fact that Vlaar was spotted at the club means he's continuing to look at the right kind of players in my opinion. I'm more than happy to sit back and see what else happens without worrying too much.

Whilst I agree half an eye should be kept on resale value, ultimately you do not buy a player thinking about selling them, ideally they'd all turn into Rio Ferdinand's and stay at the club until their value to the club has passed. You recoup value from performances, league positions, european competitions, gate receipts, sponsorships and TV rights. What is difficult to determine is how much the combined effort of the squad as a whole contributed financially and whether we got close to recovering any of the £45m you have quoted as lost on 'talent' leaving the club for free.

This debate really does go round and round in circles. When you look at the money we spent in comparison to those we were competing with we never got close. The Net figure is very deceptive because we had bugger all to sell. If you look at Spurs over the same period whilst their Net spending was lower than ours they spent almost double gross, just happened they managed to make a lot of money out of the Carrick, Berbatov and Keane sales. During that time Arsenal weren't spending big on transfer fees but were stil paying higher wages (on average) and still had the draw of CL football. We on the other hand had to pick ourselves up from one of our worst PL finishes, being a club that last won something in 96, we were never going to go out and attract the better players from day one unless we had the resources to pull a city and throw £150k a week wages and the dream of something special at players. If he was signing the likes of Harewood and Routlede iin his last season then I'd have been up in arms, but realistically even with money to spend we had a damaged reputation to repair before we could attract a higher calibre of player. The issue of wages wil come up time and time again, again in comparison to the other clubs around us when we were pushing for 4th place and trophies we weren't paying significantly higher than anybody and when you look at the previous sky4 and city we were still well behind. The major issue was wages as a proportion of income, and therein lies the major flaw in the Lerner/MoN model, even in the height of MoN 'glory days' income was not growing at a fast enough rate to support the expenditure. As much as it stings me to say but I honestly believe we've missed that train, if we'd have hung onto Utd's coat tails the season we finished 2nd behind them then we could be an established top 4 club, but now the markets have been tapped, the early days of the CL was the time to gamble and the foreign markets are now saturated with Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool fans. What MoN pehaps could have done, and something Lambert has realised he needs to do is tap into the foreign markets where transfer fees and wage demands are generally (not always) lower. It can be successfull as Newcastle proved last season but it is a higher risk strategy, look at the players like Makoun or even worse examples from our history like Balaban. It is much better imo to add a few foreign players to an established core than it is to rely almost entirely on relatively unproven foreign players hitting the ground running. The final thing I will say is it's easy for us to look back and say we should have signed player A instead of player B, or surely player C was available at price X, but in reality we do not know what enquiries were made, what players were approached and what players turned us down. What we can measure is results, points, goals scored and goals conceeded and league position, and ultimately whether you agree with his method or not MoN delivered a decent return on the money he spent. Finishing in the top 4 woud have been overachieving, I think, and finishing below the Euro spots would have been under achieving.

Double post sorry

That's probably less than, or at least the same as, we're paying gabby. I'd back Carroll to be as effective (obviously in a different way) as gabby over the course of a season. whether that means gabby would be sold is up in the air imo. Think the talk of needing to balance the books still applies to wages, but hopefull if some of our higher paid defenders are sold and the likes of Lowton used as replacements that should help. Also no disrespect meant but does anybody know where the club stands on Petrov's wages are we still paying him? would the club have some kind of insurance?

I think there's still a degree of book balancing required in terms of wages, so I would imagine if we're prepared to offer Vlaar a decent package it would mean one of our current relatively high earners would need to go, Collins would be the most profitable sale at this point so it makes sense it would be him.

as many of us have been saying surely the ins and outs have more to do with wages then initial fees, I dont think there's ever been any official line stating we dont have money to spend, but there has been plenty stating the need to balance the wage bill. Even in the first season of this 'austerity' we comitted to potentially paying £24m for Bent. I think it's fair to assume that as long as he manages to keep the wages in line he'll be backed, although I would imagine there is has been some kind of benchmark figure discussed. But for me the fact that we're making enquiries would mean that there's still money available, PL doesn't strike me as an all his eggs in one basket kind of manager.

He's not my favourite footballer but I think he would do a job for us. The issue wth us playing Bent up top with say Ireland behind him is we rarely hold the onto the ball longe enough or get to Ireland in the kind of space neccessary in order to drag the defence out of position. As a result Bent has 2 CBs covering him meaning unless the combination of his run and the ball in is spot on he's second favourite. When Carroll is on the pitch at least one CB is constantly concerned about where he is, freeing up time and space for Bent. £15m might be a lot but it would certainly add something to the squad.

As exciting as that looks I cant imagine we'll be seeing a midfield three of Makoun, KEA and Gardner early in the season. Makoun still has some work to do to prove he's up the PL speed, KEA will need to fully settle in and Gardner is quite inexperienced himself, obviously they could all have blinding pre-season campaigns but I'd say that's an unlikely starting line up for West Ham.

Again CI, Who was the manager, what were the tactics, who did he have playing around him, who was playing ahead of him, what was the result, did anybody look good in that game? By your argument you could say the majority of the Dutch squad look poor, or Rooney but I wouldn't be upset to see any of them in a Villa shirt next season.

If you look at the season he played well at City it was when he players like Bellamy, Robinho around him making life easy for him. He had the freedom to pick the ball up carry it a few yards and then pick a pass to one of three intelligent footballers making intelligent runs for him, before he's make a trademark late run into the box to pick up on any cut backs or half clearances. For Villa to get the best out of him we need to employ a similar style, and playing him behind Bent with Charlie on one side and and A.N Other (maybe Hollman) on the other with a decnt CM or 2 in behind him. He was voted POTS last year because he was the only player who looked remotely exciting in a very dour and boring side, give some freedom in a team when the ball is played to feet more times than it's flying over his head and he'll be a good player. Ask him to be part of a 4 man midfield with the ball constantly missing him out and he'll look average, it's as much about PL and his tactics as it is about his work rate and levels of interest. Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what he can in a new look Villa team.

Does it really matter? There should be leaders all over over the pitch. I played to a decent county standard as a youngster and as the gobbier of the 2 full backs it was my job to look along the line and keep the defence organised. The keeper would keep me on my toes and pick up on anything I had missed, and the actaul captain was a CM who kept the midfield ticking. My point being if you need to rely on one player to rally the troops or keep things organised then you're in trouble already. Sometimes the captaincy can be a form of man management, I'm fairly sure AMc gave gabby the arm band to try and spark so performances out of him in the run in to the end of the season, it didn't work but that prob says more about the mood of the whole squad than it does about gabby. As some have said perhaps giving it to Ireland might have a positive impact on his game, because at the professional level you'd expect everyone on the pitch to be vocal when it's needed.

I know we all love to give the scousers some stick but surely even the most critical Villa fans can see that Liverpool would be a bigger draw than Villa, especially given our last 2 seasons. Whilst they have definately gone off the boil in the last few seasons, they have won major honours in living history of the current crop of players, they are a global brand, go on holiday to Africa or Asia and you'll see plenty of Liverpool fans. They are able to offer more in wages than us, and whilst they cannot offer European football at the moment you'd have to say they're a damn sight closer to it than we are. If I wasn't a Villa fan and I was offered a similar chance of playing regularly at Villa and Liverpool, I have to say I'd pick Liverpool, and probably earn myself an extra £20k a week in the process.

It's a bit different to barca selling messi to stoke, messi would turn up and say I want £400,000 a week and the chairman's wife and stoke would have to pull the plug. Where as us selling Milner to City who were always going to challenge for top honours and pay on average 2 or 3 times as much as we do, it was hardly going to be a difficult decision to accept.

For me I'm firmly on the fence, he didn't look awesome and he didn't look poor, he did look massively off the pace and it's only game time that's going to fix that. I assume in he's in the group of players that if we got a decent offer for we'd sell and if he stays he'll get the chance to prove his worth. We can sit here and discuss his previous performances but there's only one man he needs to impress if he wants a game and he's going to have to knuckle down and work hard if that's what he wants, same as all of our central midfield players!

Just be interesting to know if the deal he's signing on now is better or worse from a club perspective than the one he was reportedly offered previously. If we've managed to get him back on less money than it would have cost to keep him in the first place then it's a decent bit of business for a decent backup keeper.

Are people making the assumption he'll come in and be a regular starter in the first team? Think they fact we're discussing, allegedly, a loan to buy deal means we want to use the season as a bit of a trial. He's still young and might take a bit longer to adapt to the league. I'd say he'll very much be competition for the likes of Albrighton and will hopefully give us a bit more strength in the squad. Again another exciting but ultimately unproven player, could go either this one I think.

What's your point? Before his injury Davies was was an integral part of what was a perfectly good defence, in fact had it not been for the fact we asked him to play through his injury for so long he may well have come back to us the same player after his lay off. People on these boards seem to have a very short memory, in that they judge a players whole time at the club based on his last season with us. This is now well off topic but there's a reason Cahill felt the need to go else where for first team football and that is because he was being kept out of th team by a central defensive partnership that was working well.

Going back a few posts.... Whilst it undoubtedly exciting and encouraging that we are making this kind of signing it is a little early to be weighing up the benefits of a our new transfer 'policy'. This chap might turn out to be our version of Tiote, equally he might never kick a ball in anger in the first team a la Curcic. We have seen from Makoun that not all foreign players make an instant (positive) impact on the team. Buying British is expensive but for that you mostly get an assurance that they are able to compete physically if not technically with the pace and agrresiveness of the PL. I'm hoping that this signing and any others made after work out for the best but it's far from a nailed on certainty.

I dont think Adkins is an option this summer. He's just secured successive promotions with Southampton I think he'll want a crack at the PL with that club before he thinks about a move on. We either need to target the guys who have had that first season ie Lambert and Rodgers, or look at the likes of Poyet who are still in the Championship if we want a young inexperienced manager. As for Martinez, I'm undecided, might be brilliant might be horrific. Martinez's football with our current squad has disster written all over it, it will be like watching the Houllier season again. He has a pedigree of finding decent, decently priced footballers who are happy to use Wigan as a stepping stone to bigger clubs, and he'll need to repeat that with us. What I'm worried about is the scale of that task and the funds with which he'll have to achieve it.

It's not as simple as that, mostly it depends on the manager or rather the type of manager. Get MoN in here and we'll be midtable easy, the players know his style of football and are comfortable with it, he's a better McLeish. However, get a footballing manager in here and I think we get worse before we get better, a lot of the players at the club simply cant adapt to that type of play, hence the reasons Houllier struggled last season with what is largely considered to be a better squad than we have now. The only thing that may affect that is the summer transfer window, but I really cant see the numbers of players leaving and coming in needed to make a change in style work.

I think if massive backing from the chairman was on the cards we'd have had better managers than McLaren and McLeish lined up. I agree in principle that we need a new approach, but it will take any manager more than a summer to sort this mess out, and I really dont think there's the patience around the club to sit through another rubbish season. On the other hand I wouldn't fancy being the manager stepping in to the job either, for that reason I think we'd struggle to get any of the names being thrown around. I'd imagine the manager's all stick together and like the media most probably consider McLeish to be unfairly treated by the Villa fans, I doubt that would inspire them to fill his shoes. For those reasons more than anything else I think we'll keep McLeish, not because he's doing well but because there's little interest from elsewhere.