JoshVilla

Exactly. I would be willing to bet that if a top 6 club would have signed him, the papers would have been obsessed with that statistic. Oh well, it makes it a lot sweeter if we defy everyone's expectations of us this season and really give them something to write about.

I don't really understand the exclusion of VP. It's not like we're a small-time club with a small stadium, Villa Park is an important stadium with an important history. Come on FIFA ffs

Lower league clubs/anyone outside of the top 6 just aren't fashionable enough for Sky. However, speaking of more media crap, the Daily Mail have added a lovely little tag on the end of the title to their latest Villa article. "Aston Villa sign Lazio Striker Kozak (who failed to score a single goal in Italy last year)" There really is no need.

We have a lot more options now, something we didn't have so much last season, and it's nice to have the chance to rest players if we need to. I assume that Lambo will see how this lot does for a couple of months before making a few more tweaks to it in January. If by then he feels that a midfielder is priority, then I'm sure he'll find one.

According to twitter, West Ham are in for Boudebouz...

Hopefully be a very useful signing. Options, options, options!

Really fancy them to either go down or come very close this season. They don't seem to have any sort of long term plan to improve results season after season. They had Lukaku on loan last time and was really the only reason they enjoyed the reasonable success that they did. But now he's gone, and they're still trying to better the squad with loans, which makes absolutely no sense to me. It's as though they just want to get through the season rather than actually buying players permanently to improve the future of the club in the long term. Must be hard to actually convince players to sign though, they're not the most attractive club in the Prem by a long shot. They must be one of the only teams that can finish 8th and still seem such a boring club.

We really should be beating teams like Newcastle home or away this season. If we've given Arsenal, Chelsea & Liverpool good games which got us a win and 2 very narrow losses, then we should be beating the Newcastles, Fulhams, Stokes etc by more than 1 goal. That said, I'm sure Arsenal fans were 99% (at least) sure that they'd knock a few past us and look what happened. Upsets happen, and we could have a bad game while Newcastle have a good one, and I won't be expecting another season of struggling if we lose this. I reckon we'll win it though, just have to improve on breaking teams down at home, with or without a new signing. 3-1 or 2-0 to Villa.

Palace 3-1 up now. Cue Di Canio collapse

Lately I've been considering watching Villa games on mute. The sheer bias of the commentary is borderlining unbearable. I remember when watching the Chelsea match in particular and every couple of minutes there was some sort of reference to either "Villa's relegation troubles last season" or our "8 nil humiliation at Stamford Bridge last season". Aside from that, it was constant "Villa are really struggling to get forward/defend/get into the game (delete as appropriate)". It's just ridiculous how biased it can be, almost as though they just really don't want to see us do well whilst they all participate in the massive Man U/ Chelsea/ Arsenal etc w*nkfest. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to not have Villa constantly be in the focus of the media, with our players/their missuses plastering the front pages of The Sun, but the negative light that's always shed on us gets right on my tits. Hopefully that's gonna start to change this season.

Ah brilliant, cheers. Gonna have to be Tony Moon then

How much is it in Sports Direct? £44.99

Could be good if we did end up signing him. After watching the Sochaux game the other week, he did look a bit wasted there. He didn't really get given too much to do, but looked to have a good pass on him. A bright spark in what looked quite a dull team.

Does anybody know if you can get shirt printing done even if you haven't bought the shirt in store? I got my shirt from Sports Direct and was wondering whether I can still take it into the Villa store for printing.

How the f*ck did he do that with his face at 1:03?

Good stuff. Even though it wasn't exactly threatening opposition, we played some lovely football tonight. The build up to Delph's goal was stunning. Very encouraging to watch and hopefully we can bring some of this into the Newcastle game once everyone is well rested.

No guarantee of Luna tomorrow according to the OS, so we'll probably see Bennett at LB. Interesting to see how he does if he plays, considering this would be his first proper run out since there's been competition for his place.

I'd still keep a strong defence, just to not risk shipping goals, but we can probably experiment a bit more in the attack. Give Tonev/Helenius a start and keep the usual starters on the bench just in case.

- We did better than most of us expected from possibly the most difficult first 3 games of any team in the Prem. We could have had more if it wasn't for some poor refereeing. This time last year we probably would have just about managed a point. - We're still improving and gelling as a team. It's only the first week of the season so once we're fully settled, we should look more organized and clinical with the ball. - There's a definite improvement defensively. There's still work to be done, but hopefully with more coaching and game time the back 4 will strengthen. Luna is fantastic going forward and has a magnificent work rate, and Okore looks solid and comfortable with a good bit of pace on him. - Individual players are showing definite signs of improvement (i.e, Delph)

We take too long to settle into a game. It seems that every match we play (last season included) involves waiting for at least 10-15 minutes thinking "It's okay, we'll settle down in a minute". Annoying, it's during this period that we'll concede, and then we spend the rest of the game chasing and making silly mistakes due to the heightened sense of urgency. Liverpool managed to nullify our counter attacks, and as brilliant as it is to watch a fast paced counter, we need to be able to create chances of our own without waiting for the opposition to lose possession. Frustrating, as I REALLY **** hate Liverpool.

Surely they have more to worry about than we do. Suarez is out so Coutinho isn't exactly gonna be providing a prolific and clinical striker. They seem to rate Kolo Toure awfully highly, and are convinced he's gonna keep Benteke quiet, but we'll see...

On the BBC predictions, Lawro predicts a Liverpool win on the basis that playing midweek will have tired us. To be honest, I think the way that it panned out will work in our favour. After being robbed of a point (or 3), I think the squad will be up for making up for it by getting a win infront of the home crowd.

It wouldn't be a Chelsea game if we didn't get f*cked over by John Terry at some point. We really deserved something out of that, fantastic display in the second half. We hoped we wouldn't be subjected to an embarrassing defeat and we didn't, bring on Liverpool!

I think this entirely depends on how our back 4 and midfield hold out. We've got enough firepower to do them some damage, and they're definitely gonna be in the mood to do so to make up for what happened last time.

Absolutely hilarious. They just can't stand the thought of us doing well. They hate the fact that, unlike them, we have a manager with a plan and a desire to move the club forward to improve it, not only in the results/squad, but in the general way that it is run financially. While they just crawl their way through every season, showing no improvement and just being happy that they made it through, selling their better players with no adequate replacements in the process, Villa has a genuine plan in place that, while it may take a few more seasons, could over time see us returning to former glories. Meanwhile, SHA will slide further down the ladder like a turd down the side of a toilet bowl.