AXD

With all due respect, the problem is not what we received for the players you mention, the problem is that what we paid for them (with the exception of Petrov), did not reflect their real world value, and you certainly can't count the value of payers out of contract such as Heskey and Cuellar, as they have zero value. Collins value was the £2M we received, not the £5M we paid, but I suspect it was Lambert who ultimately decided to sell.

Some. Of the players were still available, such as Hutton and Warnock, and if PL only decided they were surplus to requirements because Lerner or Faulkner told him so, then I would have to question his suitability for the managers job, a strong manger does not allow the board to pick his team. That said, if PL signed p to this plan of RL/PF then he is responsible for the result.

You keep saying you know for sure that PL didn't want the payers he signed,or wanted Sissoko,well he strikes me as the kind if person who would not accept such constraints, why is he not coo uncaring his better ? Why has he it resigned due to the lack of support from the board ?

PL is as much to lame as anyone or the mess we are in,yes he inherited problems, but he unnecessarily changed too much too soon, and seems totally inept tactically.

Lerner and Faulkner are also to blame, but neither of them is gong anywhere, the quickest fix here s for Lambert to o and someone to or in who can motivate to payers we have.

Sissoko's contract is expiring, so it should be not too difficult to get him. offer Makoun for a trade as he's well valued in France.

What Benteke needs is competition. I'd be tempted to bench him for the West Brom game. Especially as fellow Belgian Lukaku will be playing for the baggies.

He'll be desperate to prove he is better than Lukaku, so bench him, bring him on as sub.

you might have something there. one question though? is Bent fit to play and will Lambert put him on. Gabby-Weimann would be an attack force based on pace and drive rather that strength, so something different than what we've seen so far this season. But they are both used more as wingers by Lambert so we need someone up front and Bowery just won't do

They just signed M'Villa according to Antonetti (their president)

the same M'villa that arsenal couldn't afford over the summer? how much are they spending then?

If that £20m or so he spent in the summer is viewed as an investment, then it looks a good one.

I'd say all the players bought except Bennett, Bowery and El Ahmadi will have seen increases in their value. Only 3 weeks ago I was seeing comparisons with Benteke and Drogba, Lowton has looked decent as has Vlaar and Westwood. If those players were to be sold now Lerner would receive more than the original £20m regardless, so I don't buy the cautious approach to transfer spend - where we've hemorrhaged money in previous years is due to paying over the odds for players we'd never see a decent return on and putting them on high wages. We even recouped all of the original transfer spends on Downing, Young and Milner and then some.

Providing we can get the right player in on decent wages then the initial outlay shouldn't be an issue - after all, the man's just sold something for $1 billion, liquidity is not a problem.

key word in this: decent, they have looked decent. we need players that look good/great. Benteke has had moments, as did westwood. of course it's easier as a striker than as a DM.

Vlaar has also looked decent, and yet everyone is expecting him to be the answer to our defensive problems. He will not be, he will be an improvement over our current players, but that's nothong special.

if we don't get one GOOD CB (scott dann is one I'd like) and an allround midfielder (to take pressure off westwood and give Ireland or Nzogbia some freedom to do what he wants) this transferwindow, I don't think we'll make it.

Because he has to fight his way out of being marked up. Everyone can see we have nothing without Benteke!!

that's because Lambert made us a team with only one strategy: play it up to benteke and hopefully something happens. there is no midfield to take a team apart before setting up our strikers.

easy to defend once you know the strategy

Edit: Actually if Herd is back fit, I'd start him ahead of Delph.

I would like Herd to stay as far away from playing as possible.

As shown yesterday, at least Delph has potential to be good

If (more like when), we go down, I honestly believe we will struggle in The Championship.

We will be the biggest side since Leeds United to drop out the Premiership and just think of how 'up for it' the other teams will be when Villa roll into town. Couple this with the fact most our players are gutless and not good enough and the fact we don't have money to buy a 'new team' or sort this huge mess out and I'd say we are literally ****.

let's not forget, the few good players we do have will be bought by other clubs when we relegate

Go get Scott damn from Blackburn. Has prem experience and was one of the best cb in the league at one point. Won't cost much.

Get palacios or huddlestone on loan or buy dnt think he be much

And then find a good lb won't be difficult when you consider how shit Stevens and Bennett are

I agree with getting scott dann, fits in our budget but would be a great asset

The problem is we need players who want to come too, who wants to come to a team that's going to be relegated?

players that want to play in the premier league, an advantage we'll lose if we don't act this month

At half-time today, my patience finally ran out. I want Lambert to be sacked. I've been hoping for quite a while that we'll eventually turn a corner, but I've now reached the point that I've given up and have accepted the inevitable fate of relegation. Some of the decisions made this season have been truly baffling:

• Selling 2 experienced CB's in the summer and only signing 1.
  
• Going into the season with 3 fit CB's (2 of them very much untested in the Premier League). It was obvious that Dunne was going to be out for a long time as well.
  
• Wasting £6m on signing 2 fullbacks when neither of them were a priority position (we already had 4).
  
• Completely bombing out both Hutton and Warnock even though we're paying their wages. We definitely could've done with taking some of our younger players out of the firing line and maybe playing one of these. They honestly can't have done any worse.
  
• Not noticing that we needed a ball winning midfielder, and at least 1 winger.
  
• El Ahmadi.
  
• His stubborn persistence playing formations that aren't working (diamond earlier in the season and 3 at the back).
  
• Making Bent captain and then removing it 3 weeks later.
  
• Finding a way to stop Darren Bent scoring goals.
  
• The embarrassing Xmas period.
  

I agree with people complaining about Lerner and the way he has run this football club over the last few years. I still think, however, that Lambert was given enough resources in the summer to keep this team away from relegation (around 11th-15th). It quite clearly isn't working. I honestly don't know why the fans are being so patient with him. I can only assume it's because he followed McLeish.

add to that:

starting with a team that barely escaped relegation last season and replacing most of the experienced players by youngsters. Bent, one of the top scorers in PL history, sometimes wasn't even on the bench when fit, Ireland (our player of the year of last season) seems te be getting blamed for bad midfield performances while bannan keeps his spot. Warnock, Hutton,...

not improving anyone. players don't seem to improve their skills under lambert. he doesn't get them fired up at half-time either, as was shown today. a coach for team battling relegation needs to be capable of getting palyers to take the opposition by the throat when leaving the dressing room, or at least trying to; today they started doing that after they got a chance 15mins into second half and with the supporters roaring them on, not their coach roaring them on.

the one that scares me about the game is that Lambert probably thinks our problems lie in our attack, cause the penalty wasn't a penalty and we couldn't score even when dominating.

I for one did not see a team coming out of the dressing room fired up by their coach ready to give everything. It was after they started to have a few chances round the 60th minute with the crowd behind them that the team

started to dominate; That is how they should always be playing and it's up to the coach to get them there.

So after this game, I'm no longer a believer in lambert. at the start of the season we played well at times and still lost, we don't even have that anymore. also, Lambert is proving to be very stubborn (eg Ireland, Bent struggling to get in the side), which is fine when you're winning more often than not. He's just not doing it for us.

a new coach is needed along with a few experienced defensive players. a CB of 10m is a necessity, no time to go looking for bargains.

some great supporters on this board

A mate of mine who is an Arsenal fan in London and who is sometimes privy to a little Arsenal info told me we were interested in this guy. I posted this in the summer. However, he only knew we were interested because Arsenal themselves were interested too. Not sure why nothing happened though.

He's not good enough for Arsenal just yet. But with 3 years as a starter at ajax under the belt, he'd be an asset for us

Good for us if arsenal are not moving for him, I don't want Arsenal to top our offer like they did with Vermaelen (imagine if he signed for us a few years back)

He's been in the Ajax team for years now and hasn't progressed one bit. He is not strong enough to cope in the Premier League and always looks insecure when Ajax play in Europe or against the top 5 teams in the Eredivisie.

I agree he hasn't been progressing as much, that's why he will not make it to one of the big clubs just yet, but he would do fine for Villa

but if he were as bad as you say, he would have been replaced a long time ago and not be made vice-captain this season.

Alderweireld is also a poor poor defender. He was the biggest talent at Ajax several years ago but Vertonghen has completely outclassed him when they started playing together. Alderweireld is physically not very strong and his position is also questionable at times. He is quite strong on the ball and is therefore regurlarly playing for Belgium at right back.

He is played right back for Belgium because he very good defensively and there is noone better. if they want someone strong on the ball who can make a run, they play Gillet.

Strange to hear you say Alderweireld is a poor defender. he may not be of the same class vertonghen and vermaelen were, but he's still a solid player

We could do with a Spanish and Belgian scout to go with the German.

make that one for holland and belgium combined. Belgium has sold most of it's talent in the last few years, holland is more expensive, but also has a better league and players

Then again, I don't think Warnock's a bad player, I just don't think he wanted to play for us last season and it showed in his performances. In terms of ability (without considering his clear attitude deficiencies), he remains a decent lower-mid table Prem player in my opinion.

then he should be more than good enough to play for us. he's back from loan anyway, I say lambert should give him a chance

For those unable to view the ITV highlights:

http://www.wawsport....h.71Z7Q3SY.dpbs

thank you

Bent's goal, he makes it look so easy. no extra touch, straight into the corner. He can start more often as far as I'm concerned.

Good pass from N'Zogbia as well.

let these guys play a bit more often, with Zog and Gabby or midfield looks a lot better already imo

We do have two extra games in the next three weeks though in the form of LC Semi Finals

true, so it's good that they get one too

theirs isn't as motivational as our two: playing for a final at wembley or playing because you couldn't beat a lower league team before (WIgan and Sunderland), I think there's a huge difference for a player here

a few of our relegation rivals have replays, so that's good

Wigan away

Sunderland home

QPR away

not bad for us to have them play more games

French radio station RMC reporting were interested in Moussa Sissoko

As if.

interested? yes

can we get him? no

edit: his contract is running out by the end of the season though, and he has indicated he wants to play in the PL. If he pulls a Benteke-move, he might force his club to sell to us.

Bollocks - If Newcastle have such great players why are they only two points above us plus Pardew has had a season more than Lambert.

because football is not exact science, plus they've had quite a few injuries as well. Also, I never said anything about 'great players', I reacted to Pardew claiming he has not enough experience players in his team, while they have quite a few more then we do. I think many of the players I mentioned wouldn't have a problem claiming a starting position in our squad.

Coloccini for example is not the greatest talent ever, but I'd take him over our defenders, even Vlaar (who is a good player, but not the world class defender some make him out to be)

I can't see us challenging for mid table places yet either

I heard Pardew saying in a press conference that he will be looking to add experienced players to his squad as they have a lot of youngsters

Its almost the opposite of Lambert's transfer strategy and considering they are a point above us in the table it will be interesting to see which works out better

if he feels that way with the likes of Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Tioté, Gutierrez, Coloccini,... in his squad, Lambert should rethink his strategy

Oh I agree. I think we definitely need a couple of players such as Scott Parker. But i'd rather our general policy to be about building for the future rather than constantly buying players to do a job "now". There needs to be a balance of both IMO. We desperately need balance.

it should be our general policy indeed, but you need to start with experience. Something PL didn't do at all, he pretty much blocked out every player who has played more than 100 games in the PL

for example. if a seasoned team like Stoke would put Lowton in their defence, he would be allowed to play a crappy game once in a while because you would have Huth or Shawcross who know how to handle that. If lowton plays a crappy game for us, Baker and Clark would panic, run out of position to easily,...

MON went too much with experience, PL too much with kids. But in the end MON did a lot better, I don't see us challenging for european positions just yet.

Like MON? Cos that's pretty much what he did and it only gets you so far. I think if a manager can successfully build a squad for the long term it will be far more beneficial for AVFC. Problem is, it's much harder to do.

I could live with a bit more 'here and now'-MON transfer policy at the moment. Buying for the future is all nice and well if you have an established team. We need results NOW not when the likes of Lowton, Westwood and other Bennetts have reached their full potential.

So if Stephens is all we're going for, we'll need a shitload of luck to survive, as again he's for the future

QPR beating Chelsea - 10 mins left

thanks again chelsea.

QPR has been improving the last few weeks. next game against southampton is a must win for us. the loss against wigan will cost us dearly if we don't start to pick up points soon

Good news is that newcastle is performing awfully and are about to lose their topscorer. Hopefully we can get ahead of them.

Reading, Wigan, Southampton, Newcastle are the teams I'd say will be battling relegation with us. QPR is a question mark