PB

At the moment i have to agree but there are contributing factors to that ratio especially in his time with us over the past two seasons.

His main supply Downing and Young were sold. He was then asked to play in a withdrawn role with McLeish. He knew that he was the main vocal point of our attack and that chances would be at a premium so with those limited chances he was under a lot more pressure to score and began to snatch at those chances.

Really? What was Harry Redknapp on about then, three years before he even pulled on a Villa shirt? How about his most famous moment to date, missing *that* chance against Croatia that would have put England into the Euros, or the more recent shocking miss against Switzerland? Are those Lambert's fault as well?

Darren Bent throughout his whole career has been a striker with a patchy record of finishing. A phenomenal predator, with great positional sense, but a real tendency to scuff shots, his ratio of finishing off sitters really is only 1 in 3 or 4 as was said. As has also been said, thats why he's playing for us and not a top side.

You might argue the same is true of benteke, and you might be right at this moment, but Benteke is younger (and so can learn) and does so much more for the team, is so much more of a threat.

*Fastens chinstrap on tin hat and prepares for inevitable*

Right there in the trenches with you

I appreciate that some of these players may not still be here when things have turned around, but they're a start.

If we were relegated he'd have to go I think, all things considered

Are the players really used to playing counter attacking football!? Who? Our own youth players haven't been educated under Sid/Kev Mac that way. Vlar, Holman and KEA have all played in Holland. Ireland is a naturally creative ball player. Benteke is part of a unique generation of talented Belgians. Lowton, Bennett, Westwood come from decent academies and I doubt they've been nurtured playing on the counter.

Who does that leave? Gabby?

I take your point, but we're not quite playing the same way.

We have dropped the outdated system of 4-4-2, big strong man alongside little fast man up front, 2 wingers, 2 holding players stuff. And quite right too, the top teams dont play this way any more. So we are asking our players to make accurate one touch pass and move stuff around the opposition box, and this is a really difficult technical skill. But if we crack it, we'll be able to take on anyone. We wont crack it straight off, it will take some time. We still need to change some players, but we have already really changed too much too fast. If Lambert is guilty of anything, then its this.

As a littel side note, I'm told that Benteke cost us 2 points against West brom, another point at least against Spurs, and another point yesterday. Agreed? A team capable of beating WBA, Spurs away and drawing at Fulham is a really decent team. We are, apparently, Benteke finding his feet away from being a really decent team. Benteke WILL find his feet. A player doing what he does at international level wont struggle for long

If we had a choice of Redknapp or Lambert when the ginger one was sacked who would you have chosen?

I think I must have imagined thousands of Villa fans at Norwich last May making their feelings known on who they wanted as manager? Must be old age creeping up on me

What plan ? There was no plan yesterday. Or was that the plan ?

Sometimes, just sometimes, someone needs to think further than planning for just the next game, or even for just the next season

Dont you think its about time we got out of this silly knee jerk short termism rubbish which has led us to where we are?

Firstly I totally agree with your final sentence but would be interested to know more about why you think "We are trying to play progressive, modern football"

If "progressive" means keeping possession, moving the ball up the pitch and then playing a pass into a danger area that one of the strikers can do something with, the only team that could be defined as progressive yesterday was Fulham. By half time we had 51% possession but only 1 shot on target against Fulham's 5 (iirc). In the 2nd half our "progressive" football amounted to trying to hoof a ball over their back four when our midfield or defenders crossed the half way line.

I don't disagree that "progressive, modern football" is that way forward but we simply do not have players with the necessary skills to play this game in the oppositions half. They will always be perfectly happy to let us knock it around in our half. All that said I don't know what the alternative is.

It takes time. Patience is needed. Our players havent got it yet. We're asking players used to playing counter attack without the ball for long periods to suddenly start playing with the ball, its a totally different mentality and you're right, we arent there yet, but its still the right thing to do., the right thing to try. I said at the start we'd be bottom three at Christmas but comfortably safe by May, and I'd stand by that. Lambert is a winner, he has only ever been a winner as a player and as a manager, he knows what he wants to do, but it really isnt easy becasue he isnt working with players of the right quality, yet. But the more he works with them, coaches them, teaches them what they should be doing, the better they will get. One day, the penny will drop, and we'll be 100% better as a team, and the foundations will have built for a strong future

We have a whole season, as long as we're relatively strong at home we'll stay up.

We also dont really have quite the right personnel yet, we are short a couple of proper holding midfielders (as well as others, but thats the most glaring miss). I'd imagine he wants to play Benteke up front on his own, but to do that you need a couple of bulldogs in the middle protecting the back four, and we just dont have a player like that of the right kind of quality, so we're playing this sort of hybrid 4-4-2 thing which isnt quite working at the moment.

Give it time, 8 games is nothing, a drop in the ocean, when compared to the scale of the job

Ive said this before, but I'll say it again anyway, because I like the sound of my own typing

What has changed from last season is that we have a manager who has a plan, who knows what he is doing and how he wants to do it. We may not agree with the plan, or think it will work, but what is undeniable is that we have a plan that involves football. This is a major step in the right direction. Yes I'm worried, but Ive been worried for a long time, and have ot say Im less worried with lambert than I was with McLeish. why?

We are trying to play progressive, modern football. Progressive football is hard to get right, especially if your players have been brought up playing a different way. Yeah, it would be easier to go Fat Sam stylee and buy a whole bunch of 'proven' premiership cloggers and spend a year or two humping around in mid table before those guys get old, cant be sold because of their lucrative contracts, and well, you know the rest as well as the fans of West ham and Bolton do. We've been down that route before, and it didnt work, because in order to break the top group you have to play the right way. It will take some time to get right, and its possible it may not work because if it was easy everyone would be doing it, but at least we are trying to break the mould, to get out of the rut.

We have to give him time to get it right. it could take a while

No not to me it doesn't. Just answering your point concerning whether we played hoofball under MON.

Well, I just had this sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you were somehow trying to make the point that we'd be better off playing hoofball, as if that was the way forward instead of all this passing stuff.

In fact, as I'm sure even martin O'Neill will tell you, the very worst thing a footballer can do is give the ball away. Why? Because when you're playing the better teams, you dont get it back for a long time.

Lets take that statement apart. The better teams wont give it back The implication there is that the more you can keep the ball, the better you are, as a rule, as a team. Interesting. Does this mean that in order to build a good team you need to have players that dont give the ball away?

Players like, oh I dont know, karim El Ahmadi?

With Cuellar at FB and Dunne, Collins and Heskey in the team there's a fair chance we did play hoofball, or did we play a passing game with those players?

Does it matter?

You mean with MON when we finished sixth.

Bloody hell, is that boring ONeill debate still going on? I was actually talking about last season, you know something relevant? O'Neill has been gone for 2 years, he isnt coming back. Im sure everyone is bored to death of the same old boring arguments being bandied back and forth. They just dont hold any relevance to the current situation.. Time to move on now I'd have thought

But just for the record, I dont think we used that style of play under ONeill. interesting that you feel we did.

On the fans ingratitude, did anyone force him to buy the club? When you buy a foortball club you ought to realise what you are getting into, what the club is about, what the expectations are and how much it is going to take. Then when you make announcements that we have a proud history bright future and we want to bring back the european glory days you should know that it will take a wedge to do that, and not just a tempoarary wedge. If you do not have the resources to achieve that then do not set the expectations high.

I guess what I am saying is, these were all his decisions so he takes the rough with the smooth on that.

On the class thing, I'm afraid it is a symptom of the modern game. Building success is not the way modern teams go and with that comes fans demands. It is not a class thing but a change in the game. Not saying I agree one way or the other with the changes, but that's the game we are in

I think its about his intentions. he came to the club and pumped in shed loads of his own money to try and improve things. The amount of money he threw in *should* have been enough to make a lasting impact, but because of some errors on his part with regard to personnel and control of the purse strings it didnt pan out that way, and now he appears to want out.

All of which is a massive improvement on the previous owner.

I think he deserves a bit of gratitude for having a go. He is severely out of pocket on the deal, and I'm sure really pretty hacked off about the whole thing and the people who have let him down.

Giving him that year to settle in might mean with an injury to Bent again, Benteke finding his feet in the Championship?

The alternative was to spend similar sorts of money on a 'proven' player like Kevin Davies, Chamakh or Carlton Cole.

I really can't remember where he has affected one of our games with his overall play. Neither a combative or attacking midfielder who falls into the description of being Mr Joe Average and consequently if he does miss a few of our games then it won't hurt us as we have other midfielders with similar abilities.

He gets the ball, he passes it to someone in the same coloured shirt, over and over and over again. And these arent all simple sideways passes either, some of them are very clever ambitious little reverse passes. Possession. If we have the ball all the time, we cant lose. if only we had more players with the ability to keep the ball. Did you prefer it when our full backs hoofed it 50 yards?

Did he not just receive a very large amount of money for the Cleveland Browns?

Nowhere near as much as he lost a) in the credit crunch and as he spent trying to revive the fortunes of a formerly decent English football club

Having shed all his cash, hundreds of millions of it on their club, these fans are now showing their ingratitude.

I'm sure as fans we used to be all about class. Different era I guess.

i dont recall lineker racing around holding the ball up tackling, or ian rush , infact most of the top goal scorers are allowed to play THEIR game and the attacks are based around those players skills and attributes

I dont think this si true any more. The days when your star player could laze about on the half way line in a deckchair with a cigar are gone,or at least at the top level they are. Its not about running around aimlessly, its about contributing to the team, its about making things happen, its about having the ability to change the game if its going away from you. Darren Bent has none of these abilities, he is the kind of player that is rapidly going out of fashion because he isnt good enough technically.

As for his finishing seriously you guys must be kidding? Yes, all strikers miss big chances from time to time (which is why the criticism of a very young benteke is massively unfair) but the reason bent doesnt play for United or Arsenal or Chelsea and never will is partly because he misses way too many big chances. You know as well as I do, if he was as talented as people make out the big clubs would be banging our door down with as much cash as we could carry off. The big clubs pay top dollar for top goalscorers, why arent they after Bent? They arent after him because at the very top level, in the really big games you only get very few chances, and you need to convert them. They dont trust Bent to deliver.

He is useful to have about mind you. If we could afford to keep him great, but we arent in the kind of position where we can have £10m sat on the bench.

'Obvious talent?' Mmm, still waiting to see that.

He appears to be keeping some really decent players out of one of the strongest national teams in Europe, so someone sees the talent in him that you dont.

He reminds me a bit of Savo when he first came. Scored a few, missed a few. Obvious technical ability, just a bit rough and ready. He's only a kid like Savo was back then. He will be fine, he is a threat. Give him a year to settle in maybe?

If KEA is going to be out for a while i don't think there's any need to hit the panic button. He has been largely ineffective and no better than say Delph who can replace him and pair up with Ireland if now available after the international break.

I dont agree at all, I think he is a very decent player, my favourite of the Lambert signings. He needs to develop a bit of stamina as he tends to fade after 60 minutes, but otherwise no complaints and he will be missed if he is out for a period. .

The one thing I find interesting is that Arry didn't rate him.

Didn't he say something along the lines of his wife was a better finisher ?

yes he did, because Darren Bent is as famous for his misses as he is his goals. A great finisher he is not, but he is great positionally which is why he scores goals. Hes not a top 8 player because I dont think he has ever been a regular starter for a top 8 team. For a guy rapidly approaching 29 thats a pretty mediocre record. he has scored alot of goals for not very good sides, but never, ever been picked up by a decent team, and as has been observed kicked out of Spurs as almost the first thing Harry did. Why? Why do the decent coaches (and I think lambert is just the latest in a long line) not rate him? Benteke misses chances too, but has already shown he has much more to offer in the long term, if fans are patient with him.

This has to be the biggest myth surrounding Bent. He is not a fantastic finisher. He's a predatory striker who is good at getting on the end of things. He's a fox in the box type of striker. But he's definitely not a fantastic finisher. If he was a fantastic finisher he wouldn't have struggled so much over the last 18 months as he's have scored long range curlers, bicycle shots, elegant chips and so on that real top class finishers have that make them dangerous in all situations. Bent is fairly pointless unless he has good service, for the very reason that his finishing is nothing special at all. He's a composed finisher and has the right instincts to get into good positions, but technically he's not a good finisher. He just doesn't have the technical ability to score the goals the likes of RVP and Aguero can. He doesn't even score with the variety of the likes of Ba, Cisse and Defoe. In my opinion he really is nothing more than a penalty box predator and his success there is more to do with instinct than technical finishing ability.

This is exactly spot on.

I cant recall bent ever taking a player on, beating his man and smashing it in the top corner. He doesnt make his own chances in the way decent strikers do, he needs to be fed. Villa is about his level, he will never play top level football, and never has done for exactly this reason.- the top clubs need strikers who can create. bent cant. if Villa arent playing well he is useless, he isnt a game changing player .

This strikes me as being all a bit pointless. Lerner owns the club, he doesnt have pots of money any more, Should he sell? Sure, but who to? There are so many sharks out there, weird little tin pot club owners who may have more cash than Lerner but cant necessarily be trusted to run the club any better

I think wishing for a new owner in the current climate is a risky thing, as you may get what you wish for

The point about the length of the season is this. If this was the "worst last 7 games to a season, ever", no=one would really care, they would focus on where we finished. If it was the "worst 7 games around Christmas ever", then again, no-one would give a monkeys, except perhaps expressing some concern over our form. The worst start ever thing only attracts column inches because people have nothing else to measure it against. So its not even objective, its just a meaningless stat. it would be more meaningful to say "Im concerned about our form". If you said that, you'd find most people in agreement.

So is 7. I'm constantly seeing this "worst start to a Premier League season" stat bandied around and then people coming to the conclusion that this will be our worst Premier League seaosn overall. What people forget is that the league is played over 38 games not 7.

Exactly,its not the first 7 games that count, its the first 38

P26 W3 D11 L12 Pts 20

This is Aston Villa's record in this calendar year since the 3-1 win at Chelsea on New Years Eve. This isnt down to Lambert (who has only managed 7 of these), but is clearly relegation form. If that was a league season you;d be saying we'd need 20 points from the next 12 and realistically well, you know, good bye Premier League.

I know thats a theoretical situation, but I post it merely to highlight the scale of the problem that Lambert inherited. Yes, I accept that he has as yet failed to improve results, but he needs to be given time. We need him to succeed, if he doesnt, we are gone,

I think the first thing to say is that he took over a side who really, truly should have been relegated last season. I still cant quite figure out how we stayed up. So lets not underestimate the size of the task. We arent very good. He has made the bold decision to go with young players who he feels have the hunger and desire to learn and will be the backbone of the team for years to come. The other (maybe safer in the short term) option would have been to bring in a few old stagers. Results might have been better in the short term, but wages higher, and frankly no long term vision to that. Thats a sticking plaster solution. Lambert has gone straight for bypass surgery, recognizing how ill the patient is

So its brave, and its risky, and it might go horribly wrong. I dont think it will though. I have no doubt that this season we will finish closer to the bottom three than the top six, but Im sure we will survive, and we will then have a young hungry team with a bit of experience and a bit more cleverness. Just now its all a bit raw and naive. They will learn, and when they do, they have a chance of being a proper team

Going to be a long hard season mind you, might as well prepare yourself for that