bigwheels

and there is also ... the general apathy / unhapiness with the club IMO.

But they'll only come back when Ellis goes, not when the Woolwich Globetrotters come in to town.

Anyway, German's are a barrel of laughs. Their clothes. Their funny little 'taches. Their mullets.

FWIW, the statement that 40,000 Villa fans come to see the opposition is wrong, but a 4,000? That might be the number of people (not fans) that come to see the big club.

Where did I say it was the only reason?

Holidays and TV have quite a large effect as well - attendences just into the season while it is still the summer holidays are often lower, while attendences do tend to get larger as the season goes on, if there is something to play for.

But, in general, your big crowds come with derbies and big games.

Why would this be?

But its a big reason, no?

Something that is seen at pretty much every club.

Exeter away following one week 9,000, the following week 41 (although the capacity of the stand was 40 ... )

It was the Spurs game when I felt that Tommy looked impressively solid - that the bread and butter was always going to be snapped up.

I can't believe we're discussing this.

Unless we're meant to spend money on a goalkeeper as well ...

Brighton and Hove albion with Tom Hark, made the top 20.

Yeovil True made 34 with sales from the WHSmiths in Yeovil.

:shock:

Of course, considering there's difficulty getting a protest or march together, getting people to buy a single may prove more difficult again.

If he is on holiday, then he's either utterly clueless or utterly contemptuous.

He should realise that such an act would get the message boards buzzing.

I don't think it matters much either way except that it simply looks very bad. As such, my answer to the question is no.

:shock:

And there's me still recovering from the vitriol I got at the time for suggesting such a situation.

I would warn against using just stats as:

1) It will piss off all the people who dislike Gregory

2) It makes no judgement as to where the team was when the manager took over

Crouch or Cole plus £2.25 million is surely the question?

With that money you could buy a pschologist to get the most out of him. I'm seeing Cole's career - a second loan spell at a club, midtable in the Prem, another failure. Drops down a league and scores for fun. Someone takes the risk and it goes Collymore shaped.

Where's neither?

BFR - Great football in that first year, a team that looked like it could win every match it played. The second season saw Townsend in (good) but Whittingham? And the promising youth players were not pushed on in perhaps the right way. A League Cup win that felt so good - beating Man U and stopping their treble. Third season saw both wingers sold, the promising youth sold or sidelined and money was spent bringing in players that weren't ever going to be good enough - Fashanu anyone?

BL - Looked to have saved us before a run of poor results saw us saved on the last few days of the season. His buys were, initially, solid players - Taylor, Wright, Johnsen and then Draper, Southgate and Milosevic. Great first season - 4th, FA semi final and winning the league cup. Again, spent poor money in the following years and slowly lost his way before a terrible third season - especially with the money spent on Curcic and Collymore.

For that one season, he made us a genuine force - arguably the second best side in the country that year.

JG - Not suiting everyone's tastes, Gregory's time in Villa could be seen as 9 months on, 9 months off, repeat until crowd fall asleep. For all his good work, his spell saw us become 'Just Another premiership Club' - something that ignores the consistent finishes and the spells where we looked unstoppable. Winning the FA Cup would make it easier to argue his position. His alleged poor man-management got the best out of most players - the exceptions, all four of them, have such mitigating factors that you cannot simply blame Gregory and walk on. If he was so bad at motivating, how were we so consistent?

When he left, I genuinely feared for the club - he was onto a winner in 2001-2. Certainly a UEFA Cup spot and possibly a CL place for 2002-3. Seems so odd now, doesn't it? He also did win something, something that is a bit forgotten. OK, its the most minor first team trophy you can get, but it did put a buzz around that last season.

GT - Where will history put this spell? The signs weren't promising - 3 wins from February in a pretty fruitless run in to the end of the season - something JG would have bettered. Money spent on Crouch that looked increasingly like a bad buy. A few key players sidelined with various rumours about why.

In hindsight, its obvious that Taylor started what O'Leary is finishing - but was it necessary? Players like Merson and Stone could have helped us that year while their replacements in Kinsella, Leonhardsen were of a worse standard. Poor tactics, poor performances, poor results. A bitter end to a fruitful spell at the club.

And O'Leary? I think we should wait until he's been here more than 18 months. However, he appears to be taking us back to where we were under Little and Gregory, if not aiming higher. So far his spell has been good, with a few blips.

The fact that Gregory had a bit more to spend and a bigger squad than DOL may mask the true figures I think!

1) If you listen to some, then Gregory's net spend is about the same as O'Leary's.

2) Its the managers job to build up the squad.

Another wonderful conspiracy theory

now there's a conspiracy theory and a half ...

of those: 1,3,7

although there are some who'd like us to think 5 and 6 in extremis

or he failed the medical ... ?

I like it to. Can we have a third option?

Here's a conspiracy theory: Faye was supposedly having a medical with Villa, he's been out for chunks of last season and this with injuries.

What if ... he failed the medical???

Well, we'll wait and see if he uses it in a few weeks time, following on from that last time he did ... you know when ... um ...

"....well we tried to get James Beattie....blah blah blah.......which goes to prove we're trying to invest in the playing staff and improve the squad blah blah blah"

I see this as potentially more damaging to him, surely this wily old fox won't use such a see-through defence?

The right signing for the wrong reasons is still the right signing ...

O'Leary will at least chose the targets, but I can't help but feel we have an audacious bid for Rooney lined up :shock:

Jesus was walking along one day, when He came upon a group of people surrounding a lady of ill repute. It was obvious that the crowd was preparing to stone her, so Jesus made His now-famous statement, "Let the person who has no sin cast the first stone."

The crowd was shamed and one by one began to turn away. All of a sudden, a lovely little woman made her way through the crowd. Finally getting to the front, she tossed a pebble towards the woman.

Jesus looks over and says, "I really hate it when you do that, Mom."

The silence on his part is deafening. He had talks with Lowe last Thursday and nothing public came of them, Lowe's public stance is getting weaker - from 'We will not sell' to 'Well, we won't keep him if he wants to go'

But ... its taking a long time now. A week since the news broke, a week and a half since the first (only?) bid?