TheSufferingVilla

Very convenient that you managed to ignore the massive profits we made on selling Young, Downing and Milner which put a substantial dent in your argument. To balance things here's my (own massive wall of text) breakdown of MON's transfer activity posted to the MON thread in January: Stiliyan Petrov (Celtic, £6.5m) Excellent Signing worth every penny. Didier Agathe (Celtic, Free) Failure but cost nothing. Chris Sutton (Celtic, Free) Good stop gap signing, unlucky to get a career ending injury whilest at Villa. John Carew (Lyon, Swap) Considering it was a swap deal for that tool Baros, Carew was an excellent signing, excited the fanbase and scored some important goals. Ashley Young (Watford, £9.65m) One of the best signings any Villa manager has made. Shaun Maloney (Celtic, £1.1m) An inexpensive gamble, produced a couple of great performances and some lousy ones before seperation from his mammy syndrome sent him back up North. Moustapha Salifou (FC Wil, Undisc) Bizarre signing but thankfully cost Eck all Zat Knight (Fulham, £3.5m) On paper looked good, English international and a Villa fan to boot for a low fee, believe it or not we made a tidy profit on him and got some decent performances while he was here Harry Forrester (Watford, £250 000) Who? Eric Lichaj (Unattached, Free) Jury is still out. Marlon Harewood (West Ham, £3.5m) Strange signing, you could almost call him the poor mans Heskey. At the time it looked like it could be a shrewd bit of business after all he did bag 14 Premiership goals a season before but he certainly proved to be a flop. Nigel Reo-Coker (West Ham £8.5m) Nobody divides opinion quite like Reo, as club captain he led West Ham through Promotion to the FA Cup final and for all purposes it looked like a soliddeal but Reo and MON were constantly at war with one another. Still he played over a hundred times for Villa so certainly he can't be labelled a flop. Wayne Routledge (Tottenham, £1.5m) Inexpensive flop, who like all former players came back to haunt us with his goal on Monday. FFS. Curtis Davies (WBA, £10m) Expensive flop, in part due to injury, looked good at times, pub player at others and arrived as part of some puzzling loan to buy contract that we were oblidged to execute despite him getting crocked before becomming officially our player. Steve Sidwell (Chelsea £5.5m) Ginger Flop. Went missing on arrival, still has not been found. Brad Friedel (Blackburn, £2.5m) Excellent signing, served us very well Brad Guzan (Chivas US, £1m) Solid number 2, for a reasonable price. Nicky Shorey (Reading, £4m) Garbage Luke Young (Middlesbrough, £5m) Excellent player, produced many fine performances out of position. Carlos Cuellar (Rangers £7.8m) I like and rate Carlos, certainly I think he's had a raw deal at Villa in part due to MON playing him out of position for extended periods but for the price we paid, not a terrible deal. James Milner (Newcastle, £12m) Many people thought 12 million was too much for a then unproven player. In the end we doubled our money lost our best player which in part most likely led to O'Neills departure. Emile Heskey (Wigan £3.5m) Good ****. Stewart Downing (Middlesbrough £10m) 10 million for a crocked player sounded like madness and for the first season it appeared so until he finally found his form. We doubled our money so Downing has to be considered a superb bit of transfer business. Fabian Delph (Leeds United £6m) Jury still out Delph remember suffered a near career ending knee injury. He may still come good but I wouldn't rate this as a poor signing, time will tell. Habib Beye (£2m) Shit signing, shit player the club gave big wages to only for MON to not bother using. Andy Marshall (free agent) Who cares Stephen Warnock (£6m) Good player playing well this season, Houllier didn't like him for whatever childish reason but it's hard to know if MON would have gotten the best out of him had he stayed. the transfer fee includes the England International surcharge James Collins (West Ham United, £5m) I really can't decide if he's worth the money or not. Richard Dunne (Manchester City, £6m) City's captain and 4 time player of the season, personally I think he's one of the best defenders in the league and worth every penny. So from all that I reckon 8 really excellent signings: Petrov, L Young, A Young, Carew(considering the circumstances), Milner, Friedel, Downing, Dunne. 5 Good signings: Knight(Made a profit), Reo-Coker, Guzan, Cuellar, Warnock. 1 Still to be determined signing: Delph. 1 I can't make my mind up about: Collins. 6 Brutal signings: Harewood, Davies, Sidwell, Shorey, Heskey, Beye. The rest were short loans or gambles that cost **** all. Isn't as bad as some people make out is it? Couple it with the deadwood MON had to clear out: Kevin Phillips, Matthieu Berson, Ulises De La Cruz, Peter Whittingham, Eric Djemba Djemba, Milan Baros, Mark Delaney (Sadly retired), Juan Pablo Angel, Liam Ridgewell, Jlloyd Samuel, Lee Hendrie, Steven Davis, Aaron Hughes, Gavin McCann, Gary Cahill (Terrible decision), Luke Moore, Olof Mellberg(Legend), Patrick Berger, Thomas Sorensen, Gareth Barry (word removed), Martin Laursen (retired), Craig Gardner. You can paint his tenure in as many layers of shit as you like but at the end of the day he built a competitive team from a load of rubbish and his biggest purchases all turned a major profit.

Scott we should head out on the piss in Villa Park Illinois for the laugh.

I can understand West Ham with the London thing and Elijah Wood as an unconvincing hooligan but what's going on with these other clubs? How do Newcastle have 20 times our support in the USA? Norwich FFS we have an American owner and goalkeeper, until recently. I'm not questioning your stats just trying to find out why this has happened. Newcastle is mixed there's a lot of Geordie ex-pats over here probably cause most people want to get as far away from the Newcastle as they can. The origin of American Newcastle fans is uncertain possibly in part it's down to that silly "Goal" film and possibly cause they were marketed in America at just about the right time. No idea where the Norwich fans have come from, for the most part they are Ex-Pats but there's loads of them across multiple pubs it's almost like some group of pranksters taking the piss. West Ham interestingly enough are almost all Ex-Pats, I think you get the odd kid who see Frodo in the Hooligan film and goes out to be a West Ham fan, after about ten minutes with the real West Ham fans they tend to **** off and support Arsenal or Chelsea instead. In terms of Villa numbers we are 50% ex-pats and the other 50% Americans who sadly for them didn't know any better. It's strange tho, not only do we not have many Brummie Villa ex-pats around, you rarely meet anyone living over here who's from the midlands.

Chicago is a cracking City with loads to do, shops, restaurants, bars, museums. Well worth a visit regardless of the Villa game. Also later in the Summer the lake gets lovely and warm and is great to swim in with lovely beaches north of the city. Philly isn't bad, lots of history, decent nightlife and some good stuff worth seeing like Eastern State penitentiary and the Museum of Art. you could make a decent holiday of it by going to NYC, Atlantic City and Philly over a week or Six Flags if you had kids. DC is also an option. I know little or nothing about Portland.

Not going to win over any US fans by playing over here, regardless of who we play. It just doesn't work that way over here. American fans pick teams for a number of reasons: teams that have American players, teams that play good football, glory hunting, because of whom Bill Simmons tells them to support, randomly purchasing the shirt cause they like the style, liking the team name and finally cause they have some connection to Birmingham. Villa may have picked up a mere handful of fans the last time we were in Toronto and Columbus but you'll find that the fans who go to watch the MLS games are already big fans of the sport and already have a Premiership team that they follow. For the record we have one of the smallest fan bases in the US, we are outnumbered by West Ham and Newcastle by at least 20-1, well outnumbered by Everton, outnumbered by Fulham, Norwich, Leeds, Blackburn, not to mention the usual candidates Arse, Spuds, Man UTD/City, Liverpool, Chelsea. In terms of overseas support we are a small, small club and no number of summer tours to the US is going to change that while we continue to play shit football and sell our best players. Might as well have a warm-up tour in Wales.

I'll go to the Philly and Chicago game only on condition that I can head on on the piss with Barry Bannan in Atlantic City between games. Although I am glad to see Villa coming back over here I really wish it happened before we became the **** laughing stock of the league.

British Sky Broadcasting Group plc

1. Don't stay in Times Square. It's a shithole, full of mid-western chain food joints, obese children, drug addicts and tacky trinket shops. If you are bringing a 14 year old girl, then it's the place to go but for adults pay it a visit and get the **** away from there. Personally I think the best place to stay is the Upper West Side, great bars, shops, restaurants, transit, central park, museums and the real Seinfeld vibe. If you can splash for it The Lucern is quality. There are a few less expensive options up there but I don't know them well enough to recommend. Another option is the hotels around Grand Central and Lexington Ave. Great access to the East Side bars and eateries from there. 2. Brochures for New York usually cover everything and more, I've been shown loads of cool joints that I didn't know about by friends coming into the city with their guidebooks. The main thing is to spend quality time strolling around the neighborhoods. Upper east, Upper West, Lower East, Gramercy, Flatiron, Chinatown, Soho, Tribecca, West Village. See them all and spend quality time in each. 3. The outter boroughs, walking the brooklyn bridge or riding the ferry to Staten Island and back should be your only exposure to the other boroughs. Guide books and hipster friends might try and sell the whole visit Williamsburg/Park Slope/Astoria/Dumbo bollocks but it's a waste of your valuable time. I mean you wouldn't go to London and head to check out the happenings in Croydon would you?

What the **** McLeish and his goons do all day on the training pitch with these players. I'd love to know.

Theron's been fairly open about what her character is all about, you only need to read a little about that character to have a damn good guess at what her arc is going to be in this film. Fassbender will play a very big role. They originally kept very quiet about his character and it's only in the last couple of months they've really started to reveal what he is all about, in fact I think one of the viral vids they've released this week is basically a confirmation of his exact character... traits is the best word I can think of. Plot wise he'll be huge I think, but his screen time is not going to feature a lot of stuff that is going to sell the movie in a trailer (as well as not give the whole plot away...). Cheers for the interesting insight I will now en-devour to avoid all potential spoilers between now and release

I wonder: The two biggest stars in the film Theron and Fassbender feature relatively little in the trailers compared to Logan Green and Rapace. Could there be a lot more that we aren't seeing?

Surprised he's stayed as long as he has, could certainly be a number 1 elsewhere and doesn't strike me as somebody content with being a career long number 2 keeper.

Loads of interest in this one then

Any thoughts? I played the Demo a bit, quite enjoyed it but not too sure how much I'd get out of the full version. Wondering if the Villa are any use in it or if there's really any depth in the game?

10 minutes to score and win. Sporting in a bit of a state now.

That was fantastic

In the pub for the Red Bulls opener yesterday, a lot of talk about Ireland making the move to NY. From what I heard the MLS have reached out to his agent (via the club) and were told that Ireland would entertain the possibility of a move to the US should Villa be willing to sell.

I've got to stop watching quality football games like that one. It just makes the step down to the drudgery of how Villa play all the more **** painful.

Aren't Athletic considered the 3rd biggest club in Spain? Sorta sleeping giants if you will, granted lightly sleeping not fully comatose on life support with all limbs amputated like Villa.

Speaking of Nazi Zombies: Outpost is worth a watch. Over the weekend I gave Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans a go. Very odd but strangely compelling. Nicholas Cage is certainly at his best when given a very big bag of Cocaine and told to be himself for 2 hours.

Randy never had a "five year plan". The plan itself was put in place by the previous Chief Executive who Randy cleared out to be replaced with the experienced football business intellect of Paul Faulkner.

Fonz back from Leicester for what is surely his last chance to prove himself at this level. Here's hoping he can prove the doubters (including me) wrong.

Unless she's a munter. Depends how much you plan on drinking.

Batigol **** legend of a player!