Nabby

Stevens was on bench at weekend

Vlaar is ok but not match fit last I saw

Gabby and Bent no updates

N'zogbia no updates but annoying how he has injured knee twice in training ..

Dunne recently had Op be lucky to ever see him in the team again

From the Guardian

At what stage does Randy Lerner decide that he has had enough of life as Aston Villa's owner? The American made a rare visit to Villa Park on Saturday and must have departed wishing he had stayed away. Villa are heading for a relegation battle for the third successive season, which must be particularly galling when Lerner looks at a balance sheet that shows he has pumped upwards of £200m into the club since he took over in 2006. The club's net spend over the last five years is just under £70m, which is the fourth highest in the Premier League. Tottenham's net spend over that period is just over £3m. Everton's figures show a profit. Yet while those two clubs are pursuing Champions League qualification, Villa are trying to avoid slipping into the Championship, which means Lerner may have to dip into his pocket once more. There must come a point when he becomes fed up with running up huge losses and seeing little reward on the pitch and decides it is time to sell up and get out.

Noticable that all the papers are mentioning we actually were one of the highest spends net.

10 mil is not enough we need a 10 mil rated MF at the least.

Good article in the Guardian like the comments from Holman too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/30/aston-villa-wigan-athletic-report?CMP=twt_gu

Paul Lambert has changed his tune and so have the Aston Villasupporters. The sight of a struggling Wigan Athletic walking all over Villa on their own turf proved to be the tipping point in a miserable season, as previously loyal fans vented their anger at a performance so inept that it forced Lambert to concede for the first time that his players are in a relegation fight.

The boos that greeted the final whistle were predictable on a day when Villa looked like a club sleepwalking towards the Championship. This was their third successive crushing defeat across the space of seven humiliating days in which 15 goals were conceded. Villa head to Swansea on New Year's Day with the lowest goal tally in the league and the worst defensive record. Every alarm bell should be ringing.

Lambert's regular post-match message that the team will "be fine" is kidding nobody; try telling the supporters who headed for the exits on Saturday with 34 minutes remaining that there is nothing to worry about. The fans have been tremendously supportive of Lambert since he took over from the much-maligned Alex McLeish in the summer but faith is not blind. It is one thing to lose 4-0 at home against a resurgent Tottenham Hotspur, as was the case on Boxing Day, but quite another to be thumped by an out-of-form Wigan.

Randy Lerner, Villa's benevolent owner, was there to see the latest debacle unfold and it must have been a chastening experience for a man who has pumped more than £200m into the club, including a sizeable sum on hiring and firing managers as well as a fortune on transfer fees and wages. Villa were among the highest net spenders again this summer but Lambert's decision to splurge £20m on seven players with 45 minutes of Premier League football between them has backfired.

It felt like a gamble at the time, even though Lambert was adamant the strategy would work. When it was put to him on the day the transfer window closed that there is a theory that if you keep signing players from below the Premier League, the team will end up not being in the Premier League, the Villa manager replied: "I had exactly the same question last year and the Norwich lads surpassed everything." Norwich, however, were riding the crest of a wave after back-to-back promotions. Villa have been operating in a culture of underachievement for two years.

Lambert has pointed out that injuries have not helped Villa's cause but of the half a dozen players that are sidelined only Ron Vlaar and Gabriel Agbonlahor have been regular starters. The simple truth is that something has to change.

Lerner and Lambert met on Friday and were scheduled to hold further talks on Sunday. Transfer strategy in January will have been top of the agenda and the indications are that Lambert is prepared to dispense with his policy of signing younger players and instead focus on Premier League experience. A central defender, a ball-winning midfielder, a striker and possibly a left-back will be targeted, although there is no suggestion Lerner is going to be throwing large sums around during the transfer window.

A beleaguered and inexperienced group of players will be grateful for any help that they can get. "If you look at who was on the bench, there's a few reserve players there," said Brett Holman, who at 28 years and nine months was the oldest of the 14 players Lambert used against Wigan. "If the manager feels the need to bring in some players, that's up to him. My opinion is that if there are one or two additions where you could pull players in who might say: 'Keep the ball, calm down here …' that wouldn't be a bad thing."

Villa's frailties from defence through to attack were brutally exposed by a Wigan side who never looked back from the moment Iván Ramis headed them ahead in the third minute. Although Holman hit the bar for Villa just before the interval, the game was over when Wigan scored twice inside the opening 11 minutes of the second half. Emmerson Boyce swept home the second goal shortly before Arouna Koné, who will be a big loss to Wigan when he heads off for the Africa Cup of Nations, rounded Brad Guzan for the third.

It was the perfect result for Roberto Martínez's side before Manchester United's visit on New Year's Day, when Wigan hope to reprise April's memorable 1-0 victory. "We showed last year that on our day we can beat anyone," said Gary Caldwell, the Wigan captain. "It's always a special game when they come and hopefully we'll get the same result as last season.

Saw on a Twitter from West Ham side of things they are interested in Warnock be good to get him off the books.

For all the talk of Bent how many games has he played in the last year or so , since the injury at Wigan he has hardly played through injury and being dropped so

a)how much of a loss would be be and who would actually pay decent cash for him given his recent injury record?

http://mancity.fr/flash.php?br_id=2341&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Link to Guidetti again basic gist being we are favorites as we will pay whole salary but need to move on Hutton and Warnock

The biggest thing killing us is the early goals going in... Teams know now that if we go one down we are there for the taking & they are going for the jugular early doors & sadly succeeding due to our p***poor defence. Those players will be having nightmares at the moment having conceded 15 in 3 & frankly i cannot see how we recover from this now. I do feel Swansea is a game we could have done ok in but not with confidence & injuries as they are... another 3-0 for me.

Very unsure now about this whole thing & will be amazed if we don't finish bottom this season.

We didn't concede in the first half vs Spurs and still fell apart.The team has no spine , no leadership , no experiance and everyone to a man looks scared of the ball.

Its one extreme to another , not every experianced player is going to be a waste of time like Beye or Heskey FFS.

If he said that then he is bloody stupid.

We would lose to every team in league at mo ..and easily too.Even if cash is avaliable not sure how Lambert will use it.Simply can not add more inexperianced players ti this team.

Still out of the bottom 3.

Yea but Soton have a game in hand.

Winning something seems a million miles away ..scoring a goal and not conceding a cricket score would be a bloody start

Was better as a midfielder.

Even with injuries the squad was weak before the season started.We have gone from the extreme of paying the likes of Beye over 40k a week to trying to get players in on cheap wages.The club is a joke right now no 2 ways about it look at twitter we are trending because everyone is laughing at us !Even bloody Joey Barton is commenting on how bad we are.

Sadly the chances of him selling now are even more remote.

I don't know whats worse Lambert making Mcliesh look less useless or Lerner making Ellis look like a decent owner.

If your MF can't control the game then your strikers won't get ball and this score ..same problem now with him that Bent has had.

Have to say he has lost me now...signs of been there for a while in all honesty.Brought the wrong players given what was at the club.If he wasn't following Mcliesh I think support for him would be far less.Its soley to the fans credit and mentioned on the commentary that they still sang his name at 3-0 down to Wigan fans who have seen 15 goals go in without response in 270 minutes of football.

Forget how many the other teams scored how many could we have scored ...I don't remember a decent chance in the last 3 matches

Quite obviously has no ability in getting a team to defend 15 goals in 3 matches and 3 against Wigan is not good enough.

hopefully Lerner will back this manager

I dunno to be honest now you can't concide 3 goals to **** Wigan at home and 15 in all with no reply in 3 matches

At this point we are only5 points off dead and buried Reading.We are in a massive hole need to get at least a draw.But 6 wins at home in the calender Year FFS

Thing about Bent at this point is for practically the last year he has been injured so at this point I doubt he would be that much of a loss.With him approaching 30 now is the time to sell.

Agree with Richard on players required

The difference between spurs and villa who I have always considered to be similar sized clubs. Is that spurs have managed to keep hold of their best players and add to them. Sadly we've been a selling club. The person I sat next to yesterday said we've still not replaced Barry and miner. Well theyre 2 players that are very difficult to replace. We've lost / sold 5 regular England internationals over the past few seasons. Take that out of any club and not replace them then they'd struggle.

Disagree with that somewhat, what Spurs have done is sell players at the right time for maximum profit and then replace them with equally good players.They also kept their Wage budget under control whilst we were handing out Millions to the likes of Beye and Heskey.

For their own sanity I think it would be better if our players avoided Twitter.

They have mostly,a lot less tweeting from them since Chelsea.

if anything, although not at the moment, and generally speaking, shouldnt it be the other way round?

ie, buying the experienced, top drawer first team players in the summer to strengthen us for the season ahead, and pick up 1 or 2 for the future gems in january, with maybe an emergency buy on top?

Absolutely thats would be the better option but we have so little experience in the team at mo we need to get some in ASAP

The time for players with potential is not now , right now we need experianced players who can slot straight into the team.

For me once we concede we try to get back into the game but our heads go as all the players go rushing in trying to get the ball we lose position and we get picked off.We need players to calm the younger players down in those situations.It wasn't just the last 2 matches either Southampton were made to look like Barcelona in the 2nd half.That said after half a season you would expect the players to be better drilled.

If you look at Rodgers at Liverpool he isnt fairing much better and he spent more and had better players to build on.Is it a case of both clubs needing major work or both manager's suffering second season syndrome or are they just not as good as people thought.

Bent hasn't gotten better not playing but given we have him and 2 other strikers injured I'd say currently we would be better off having him at least on the bench.