Straggler

He won't get pushed on it though. This is the sport media not Jeremy Paxman. The sports press is in the main as spineless as our manager. They deserve each other

Sherwood can f right off. He is a cowardly little snake in the grass. What he is doing is worse than anything Delph did. Chucking the players and the club under the bus to save his own worthless skin is bad enough, but the underhand manner in which he is doing it is the true measure of the man. I'd get rid this morning if I could.

I could never actually hope that we lose. I can't imagine actually willing an opposition goal into our net or feeling anything other than joy at a goal for us going in. That said if Sherwood gets binned off after a loss to Chelsea it sure will soften the blow.

You see that's the sort of post that can be easily made when we're losing week after week out but I don't see it, I don't see this rebelling on the pitch although obviously no idea of the mood in the dressing room or training ground during the week. What I have seen in our games this season is a severve lack of quality and belief. Think back to last season and the amount of goals we were scoring, benteke, Wealth and Grealish were involved in the vast majority of them. Now without out those two proven premier league quality players in the final third, Grealish still has his moments but is struggling to influence games with poorer quality final third players and too much expectation placed on a kid who's not played 20 premier league games yet. Not starting Gil dosen't helped either. We also lack that game understanding most sides have...to not see out a 2-0 at Leicester and to lose it is bonkers and you can see it has messed with the players minds as our performances since then have been dire...at least there was a bit of promise in the August games. Ultimedly we're a team that lacks conviction...we can't keep clean sheets and look very dodgy with Lescott in there now and we struggle to score goals when it's 0-0 in games. We lack cohesion in linking up all parts of our team which you see in other sides like Palace and Swansea. That's why we're not winning games, not because the players are going on strike as they don't like Sherwood. I'm not saying that the players have gone on strike. My point was almost the opposite of that. I don't think he has lost them yet I'm just surprised that this is not the case. I do expect the style TS is employing in the media to start grating with them before long, but I think our poor form is down to boring old footballing and managerial reasons (for now).

No way, I deal with that in the classic English fashion. I eat the food, hating every bite, tell the waiter everything is fine, pay leaving the minimum acceptable tip and then spend the whole way home complaining about how awful it was. Sorta like what getting a season ticket feels like.

I said when he joined that he would not make it past Christmas this year. This was because I saw him as a man that was out for himself rather than the team. I figured that he would lose the dressing room in pretty spectacular style at some stage for that reason alone, as he began to chuck others under the bus rather than man up himself. I was however expecting the results to be better than they have been and will be surprised if he gets fired for bad results before the dressing room revolt gets him. I get the feeling that Fox thought Tim was the Brit version of Mourinho with all the arrogance and swagger. Sadly Mourinho gets his players to run through walls for him Tim just gets his to smash their heads against the same walls. I'm still deeply disappointed about this, I badly wanted to be wrong and to have the next bright young manager in the UK blossom with a vibrant new Villa team. With the summer transfers I even thought it may be happening. Sadly it isn't happening and I will be stunned if Tim has it in him to turn this round. It is only a matter of time before the players decide to give up on him as to my mind, if we are worried about what he is saying in public you can be reasonably sure the players will catch up sooner or later. May as well pull the trigger now and move on with as much time as possible to put right what once went wrong.

Got another bug in career mode. Scouted a star, then signed him to the first team. He agreed terms and then the player just vanished. I still have the email of him agreeing, but no sign of the player in the squad. Bugs getting a bit silly now.

I thought it was a really strong speech by Obama. Regarding his request to post the terrorism deaths v gun deaths statistics, the first outlet I have found posting them up is ABC here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/gun-laws-chart-barack-obama/6822342 To sum up US gun deaths this year total 9940 (probably gone up in the time it has taken me to write this post. Between 1970 and 2014 there were a total of 3521 terrorism related deaths. So 44 years of terrorist threat dwarfed by a single year of gun violence in the US. I think he has a point.

Career mode is plagued by a doozy of a bug. I bought a player on deadline day in the first January transfer window. If i put him in the first team and try and start a match the game crashes. I can put him on the bench and bring him on, but I can't start him or caboom. EA are aware and don't give a shit, they advise so far to sell the player. Good work EA.

Ok guys, I have not played PES for years so am looking for a little game control advice. I have never stopped using the PES style button set up with square for shoot etc (PS4), but what subtleies should I be looking out for? I'm thinking about thing like how to jostle for position for headers, how to defend properly, can I call over a second defender like in FIFA? Last time I played PES I was putting an aftertouch on shots to define the curl on the ball is that still a thing?

I've ordered this one too. The first time I have ordered a PES since next gen consoles. I used to love this series back in the day and with the news that they are back doing what they do best I can't wait to play it. I've enjoyed FIFA, but it has never held the same affection that I had for the old PES games. Looking forward to being back home.

Lambert didn't recognise though and many managers fail to do in game. Rogers at Liverpool- no plan B, hence he is now walking up the steps before the hanging commences. I think it was MarkAVFC40 that mentioned when Gil came off it should have been for Hutton who should have slotted in at RB with Bacuna in front providing the cover, Veretout on for Grealish or Sinclair and drop to a flat 4-5-1- Or something along those lines. I totally agreed with that as I thought we needed to kill the game with numbers in our half when we went 2-0 up as Leicester were pushing us back. He didn't react to that in the slightest the way he should of which was disappointing imo. Anyway what's done is done but it has put a shit load of pressure on us beating the baggies next sat which I don't think we needed right now. I agree....at 0-2 against a free scoring side......I would have gone 4-5-1 However, hindsight is an exact science......but we need to get behind him now. Hindsight is not at exact science it is an art, which is known as History in academic circles (Hence the Bachelor of Arts for history graduates). There is a famous quote often attributed to Winston Churchill, but did in fact originate with a philosopher George Santayana. "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Now I am not really one for crowd sourcing footballing tactics nor am I one for overestimating the abilities of the average football fan to run a professional football team. However I would be remiss to dismiss the combined experience and intelligence of the fans on here who have been watching and analyzing games some for more than half a century. Posts like the ones above regarding the change in formation match my own feelings. It seems like it matches the feelings of most of the people watching the game. Tim had very different ideas on how to close out the game. The result is proof that the decisions were poor ones, but unfortunately it is impossible to prove that different decisions would have resulted in a different result, so we can argue the toss on that until the cows come home. It may be that Tim is an innovator and that we (and possibly the team) do not yet understand how the changes he made should have closed out the game for us and that given time tactics like that will work and adopted more widely. It is also possible and to my mind the more likely that substitutions like those against Leicester will continue to fail and Tim will learn from his mistakes and adopt the more traditional approach that most of the people on here seemed to favor at the time. It is certainly too early to suggest that he won't learn from his mistakes despite similar capitulations this season. He is palpably a different manager now to the one at Spurs and even compared to the man that turned up at the dog end of last season. He has adopted changes to his style and his tactics, I genuinely hope he can keep going until he finds the winning formula.

So. Is he fit?

aww come on, that is funny. I'll still boo him, but I can't hold a grudge properly whilst I'm laughing.

Jonjo Shelvey and Jamie Vardy will start. Hodgson might want to have a chat with Floyd Mayweather about how to whip up support before an event. Giving me a glimpse into this team selection is more likely to have me not tune in.

I thought he improved in the second half after a pretty ineffective first half. He definitely has Carew disease (he can foul but cannot himself be fouled). I'm not sure why the advantage of being a big lad means that defenders are allowed to negate it by putting him in a headlock every time he gets the ball. That said, I also agree that we need a bit more from the man up top in both movement and quality, I hope Gestede can step up to that.

I don't know what Sherwood was doing playing Bacuna so far forward. He just isn't good enough to play there. We had players on the bench who could and in my view should have started ahead of him (Gil and Cole). I don't mind him at right back, but to be fair Hutton has come right back in and looked like a first choice right back against Sunderland.

Yeah but what does Grealish know? He certainly knows the value of buying in bulk.

Just imagine how much more we will be attacking our corners with all the new players in the team plus Lescott. We will be a proper handful at set pieces

Saw the latest mission impossible movie. Pretty much what you would expect, apart from the motorbike chase which was just breathtakingly good. You get a real sense of speed and the danger of what they are doing for that short few minutes and is worth watching for that bit alone.

I'm quite a seasoned football fan (in my own mind anyway) and pretty well traveled, so it takes a solid good effort to manage to get transferred from Villa to a team I have never even heard of. Tonev has managed this, so for this and this alone I salute him, good effort son, take a bow. Frosinone in sort of related news reminds me of that song "Let it go" that every prepubescent girl has been inflicting on their parents for the last year or so.

If this means rocket polisher, then yes I agree completely.

Glad we have got him, it appears he can use the force which can only be helpful. This is the footballer we have been looking for.

I don't have any faith in Adebyor. I hope this one really is dead and we can move on to a more palatable plan b.