Panto_Villan

His points are perfectly valid. His job is to help Villa win, not to keep a stuff upper lip while people foul him. I'd prefer we played a slightly cynical game and won rather than losing with great sportsmanship - why be the soft team everyone likes to play against?

You don't agree with people being positive about the manager, Morpheus? That's a shock -I don't think you've ever expressed that sentiment before. Can everyone stop rehashing the same debate about Lambert's first season that we had during the entire season and the entire off-season? It's really tedious now and we know where everyone stands.

I adore Guzan, he's an absolutely brilliant player and I'm so glad we have him. I can literally only remember one howler he has ever made in the time I've been watching him, and it didn't lead to a goal. Thankfully nobody seems to be trying to buy him, because I think we'd REALLY miss him if he went.

I'm excited. Gonna be having a BBQ with an Arsenal-supporting mate who described Benteke as "a Belgian Heskey" when we signed him. I hope he gets a hat-trick. I kinda suspect we're going to get spanked but I don't care. Just keen for the season to start, not been this excited for a new season in years!

I'd rather have Lambert than Bent and as the two do not seem to be a good match, I'm glad this deal has happened.

(I was actually going to say he looks a bit like Idris Elba but I'm not sure if that makes me sound like a racist or not.)

WHY DON'T WE JUST TALK ABOUT DARREN BENT? He's a nice looking chap, isn't he? Looks a bit cheeky.

Except he actually would have played football in that season. I guess we'll get to see if PL actually did make a massive blunder in freezing him out (as some posters claim) at the end of the season.

Initially disappointed to read it was a loan deal. Much less disappointed given they're paying the full wages and £2m for the privilege of borrowing him. Be lovely if he had a great season (not being able to play against us obviously) and we got a good price for him next summer....more than the £4m or so that we were looking at this year. Or is there a buy-out clause in the loan for a certain amount of money? Maybe I'm being overly optimistic but I think Faulkner has done well here.

Goodbye Darren, all the best. I'm sorry it had to end this way but we've met someone new who just makes everything feel real again. It was fun while it lasted though.

I thought it was much better than the original Bioshock because the characters were more interesting - I thought Rapture got a bit tedious after a while too, the most memorable parts being the visual design of the Big Daddies and that level in the theatre with the statues (which I loved). The bad guy(s) in it were so one dimensional that I didn't really feel the reveal was very exciting at all. Also the combat was endless waves of splicers. Infinite, I thought, was excellent aside from a few frustrating fights (the ghost) and some of the use of tears to advance the plots (ah, we can't be bothered to move this heavy stuff...tear!). I thought the visual design was superb and the attention to detail was great, I thought Elizabeth was one of the best companions in gaming as she's invulnerable and doesn't get stuck on scenery, and has much more character than Alyx from HL2. I initially thought the ending was a bit underwhelming when it began, until it got to the very last reveal....which I didn't see coming at all and really liked. The graphics and sound / voice acting were very impressive too. People are right that the Handymen are a poor imitation of the Big Daddies though, and that it does meander a bit in the middle of the game when the Vox do their stuff. I also thought some of the gunplay got a bit repetitive - but overall I thought it was a fantastic game compared to the standard grimdark shooters that usually get served up these days.

I hope he's their Steven Ireland.

If you look at the defender and where he's holding himself, I reckon he broke the collarbone when he landed rather than when he hit Benteke. I did my collarbone doing something similar but it was mostly because I was a moron and fell on the point of my shoulder instead of just doing a sort of high-speed bellyflop that would have looked sillier but probably done me less damage...

"Droll" means whimsically amusing. "Dull" means boring.

I have been flicking through RAWK after a poster above mentioned their overzealous moderation and it's genuinely hilarious how many threads they lock. One quote from a mod is "We never have and never will allow speculation on RAWK", referring to transfer things or even the news coverage of Sterling being put in the cells for a night (which isn't even speculation). WTF do you plan to talk about if speculation's not allowed? Their stated reason for all this is a whole bunch of threads are turned into endless rehashes of "we have shit owners" because of a vocal minority of posters who are always derailing the threads with complaints (sound familiar?) but the result of it is ludicrous. You're not allowed to complain at all. "Persistent negativity" results in a short-term ban, so you're only allowed to post in the love-ins about Stevie G etc. http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?board=2.40 I must admit there's a couple of posters on the site I'd like to stop being so unrelentingly negative all the time, but that's not the answer.

I did not think his strikes were sufficiently atomic.

Quality! Benteke is such a monster. I hope we don't have to play Belgium at the World Cup.

Yeah, but he's upped his game since then. Been working on it in the off-season apparently.

I'd love to see him do that to John Terry.

I think Vlaar and Baker / Okore should be the starting combination. Preferably starting with Baker until he gets a head injury and needs to come off (I give it about 20 minutes), and then we'll see how Okore does. I'm kinda hoping Okore works out to be the long-term partner because much as I like Baker, I don't think he's reliable enough yet. Vlaar also has his moments of madness but I think he's still more reliable than Baker and seems more of a presence in the defence - Baker crunches people too, but I remember seeing Vlaar squaring up to the opposition strikers a few times last season and I liked that. Scores some useful goals too, which isn't anywhere near as important as being able to defend but is handy in a tie break. Did Vlaar give away any penalties last season? I don't remember him doing so.

To be fair, Rodgers can't just come out and say that Liverpool is currently a mediocre club and that Suarez should stay because other clubs wouldn't put up with him treating Evra like a monkey and Ivanovic like a banana.

Even if we had £250m to spend, we wouldn't make Champ League this season. It takes a couple of seasons to pull it all together even if you are flinging money at the problem (unless your club was already challenging for CL the previous season - I guess someone like Spurs could do it). Kiyotake on a free? Don't want. Price = quality. Next please.

Yeah, he can be rash. I'm not sure I agree with the way he treated Bent, for example. I'm kinda hoping that once he's moved on the players he inherited and doesn't want, he'll be a bit more measured (he won't have any excuse not to). I was impressed in particular with the Benteke saga. Obviously that he got him to stay, but also in the way that he didn't deal with it in the way that I feared - refusing to sell and threatening to freeze Benteke out, basically just playing the hard man like Di Canio or the like might do. Rather he seems to have taken a less confrontational approach which means we've been able to brush the entire affair under the carpet, and means that the fans won't be encouraged to get on Benteke's back or make him feel unwelcome.

Hey, chill out. If he turns out to be awful defensively we can always go back to Bennett.

Thanks guys. I think we can discount Mackay because it's not a season in the Premier League if you're in the Championship, leaving Lambert 6th overall after one season. Madness. I really hope he sticks around for at least three seasons, because by then he'll have a squad entirely filled with players he bought or kept rather than players he inherited. There must come a point where your performances are improved by actually having the players you want to play the system you want to play. I also think that the "buy young" idea means he'll be more likely to stay than the average manager. It's not like being a chequebook manager where you can just buy half a new team immediately - the buying young philosophy takes time to bear fruit and hopefully Lambert will want to be around to see the results.