PhilGibson

How bad does it have to get on the playing front for Randy to make a change? Championship football being acceptable. Is he really that dis-interested in us that he has stopped watching? He has not been to many games this season, you could say because of personal circumstances. Is McLeish untouchable in his eyes because he is balancing the books? Are the finances that bad that the on the pitch performance does not matter. I believe that Randy has felt really badly burnt by the last two managerial appointments and now he just wants a yes man who is not going to rock the boat (McLeish fits the bill), and does not want to from a financial or a personal viewpoint go through the process of recruiting a manager again in the near future. I think he wants to see the academy graduates be the bedrock of the side (cheaper in wages and transfer fees), he probably feels that the McLeish being the ultimate yes man, will go into the summer asking for as little money as necessary and will continue to drive down wages. The long and short of it, whatever the outcome of this season I just do not see McLeish moving on no matter how much we all protest. The sole custodian as he calls himself, is calling the shots and he is making the decisions from 3000 miles away with a focus on something other than Villa. Ellis would have sacked McLeish by now because he was firstly always looking to protect his own back and second turned up to every game and saw the consequences of a bad manager on the pitch. Randy is an absentee owner and does not now have the appetite for Villa, so we will continue to drift with McLeish until he decides to show more interest or sells up. Very sad state of affairs.

absolutely the same as me had nightmares for a few years after.

Everton are not even playing that well, we are just playing some of the worst football I can remember, its just shocking.

and back to chasing shadows!

Disjointed and chasing shadows, Swansea have played really well and passed it around us with pace and accuracy. We have got to put more structure into our team we are being pulled all over the park which is mostly down to Gabby and Cuellar being very close together and Warnock and N'Zogbia being too far apart. Formation is almost like this.... ------------------GUZAN---------------------------- CUELLAR------COLLINS-DUNNE------WARNOCK GABBY--------CLARK-PETROV----------------- IRELAND----------------------------------------- ----------------BENT----------------N'ZOGBIA-- Clearly being so lop sided has meant we are being constantly exposed against down our left.

Pretty unequivocal Darren Bent has set his sights on becoming a scoring great at Villa and emulating Peter Withe's goal feat from 21 years ago. Bent insists he's "really enjoying" life in claret and blue as he eyes a return to the side against Chelsea. Looking further ahead, Bent is eager to become the first man since Withe in 1980-81 to hit 20 goals in one season. He said: "I'd like to think I can repeat Peter's goal feat from the league championship-winning season. "I've scored 20 a couple of times for my previous clubs so hopefully I can do it here over the next couple of seasons. "I love scoring goals because they win games. That's important to me. But saying that, if someone said to me that Villa could finish seventh and I would score 10 goals, I would take it! "I'd rather that than score 20 and Villa finish 13th or 14th. "I'm really enjoying it here. The lads have been brilliant and the facilities are fantastic. Everything has worked out." Bent also spoke of his pride at finally getting to don the No.9 shirt after a career which had not previously seen him wear the fabled striking top. Throughout his time in football, Villa's record-signing has coveted the No.9 shirt and he now admits it's a special feeling to wear the shirt made famous down the years by Gerry Hitchens, Andy Gray, Peter Withe, Dean Saunders, Dion Dublin and Juan Pablo Angel. He added: "It's the first time in my career I've had this number. At Ipswich I was 18, at Charlton it was 10, with Spurs I was 23 then 10 and at Sunderland it was 11. "Then I was 39 for my first few months with Villa. I've always wanted No.9 but this is the first time I've had the opportunity. "It's an honour and privilege to wear that shirt for such a high-profile club."

Is Delph trying to break some kind of record for giving the ball away!

How can we be so terrible, its just pathetic!

For all of the faults of Houiller he had exactly the right idea of the players who needed shipping out, he wanted to play a more possession focused game. Now the players who deserved to be shipped out last season have won and are managing to pick up huge sums of money to serve up utter tripe. We can blame Lerner for this because he took one approach with Houiller going for a continental approach and then switched back to the Gary Megson routed in British philosophy straight after! It is a sign of someone lacking in football knowledge picking the managers. The sooner McLeish nightmare tenure is over the better! Oh and nearly 3!

I cannot stand watching us at the moment, we are truly terrible!

No excuses. Please sack him, cannot deal with much more of this!

This was my first football game I played on any computer. The graphics and sound track are outstanding!

Besides controlling the financial side of a football club, the biggest decision any owner can make is who to appoint as manager, sadly at the moment his decision to appoint McLeish ahead of all conventional wisdom appears to be his biggest mistake so far. This is I feel why he is getting so much ire now, fans were still on his side during the Houiller reign because he gave him money in January (Bent and Makoun). We pontificated for a long part of the summer over who to bring in as manager and we ended up with Alex McLeish. The fact that he came from Blues is largely irrelavant because what matters is what he does for us, we are currently playing turgid, lifeless football and as McLeish said earlier this week we are in transition, this gives the players and the manager an easy get out of jail card to play whenever the result does not go our way. The problem for me with McLeish is he simply sets his team out to not lose, there does not appear to be any hope this will change. Whilst this all going on and we sold Young and Downing in the summer the owner will face the fans frustrations. I am sure if you asked a fan of Cleveland Browns they would say very much the same as us, Randy does not appoint well when it comes to who he hires.

Except much, much better and far more epic. My Lydia (sob sob ) is gone for good now after a brutal battle with the mages of Morvunskar. Lydia met the same fate for me, all worth it for a nice prize at the end. Sad seeing her dead though poor thing, she served her purpose though.

I have a dog following me about who is exactly the same (barnabas I think). Cannot die and really lays into enemies for me. I can just hang back lob a load of destruction spells from a distance! Kind of cheating but Que sera!

Really enjoying it so far (got it on the PS3), I had my first lock up though.... out in the wilderness after finding another wall with dragon writing, meandering to another site lower down the mountain, find another bandit hideout and then bang my ps3 freezes. Slightly annoying really hope they sort it out with a patch. Oh and because of this you need to save quite often in the wilderness otherwise you get put back to your last auto save.

Why oh why oh why can we never hold on to a lead, we are **** atrocious! I give up!

7 or 8 minutes of hanging on for dear life to follow.

Deserved that goal to be fair, we have been the better side since about the hour mark.

The last 15 mins we have played well.

Stan the man, corker!!!

Incidentally why would you put Barry Horne as a co commentator on an Everton game, given his ties to the club, I am sure he would be better suited to the commentary on the everton official site or local radio.

This is a pile of pish. Back to the humour of the Villatalk honey trap thread!

-----------------------Given------------------------ Young--------Dunne--------Clark-------Warnock -----------Makoun----Petrov---Delph---------------- Ireland-----------------------------------N'Zogbia ------------------------Bent------------------------ This the team I would like to see tried. I know it means Ireland in the wide areas, but reading some of the stuff Man City fans have said about when he played his best football was drifting in from the wide areas. Think we need three in the middle because of the lack of a true defensive midfielder.

Get a solid defensive midfielder in there to replace Petrov and we would not look a bad side. Charlie really does have all the trade marks (bar the diving and petulance) of a certain Mr Ashley Young.