KennyPowers

The little maestro - The Scottish Xavi - Good old Bazzer

By the way out of curiosity I watched the BBC programme 'Free Speech' the other day. It's a yoof programme dealing with yoof issues and talked a lot about why young people are so apathetic about voting. They repeatedly say politicians don't connect them which is why they don't vote. What they are driving at though is that politicians tend to be too educated and too posh. Which is fine but similar to my point above you are just not going to get many very intelligent people with great people skills who want to be politicians (because there are more lucrative and more fulfilling jobs out there). What they seem to be driving at is they want less educated, less intelligent politicians. This is a perverse outcome, MP's are there to legislate, not purely for representation. Yes we could do with more diversity but what we actually need is politicians who can consistently make good decisions following complex arguments (i.e. intelligence and no I don't necessarily mean people should have fancy degrees, I mean we need people with cold, hard, practical intelligence). Anyway it really depressed me. Balanced intelligent comments largely got ignored whilst there was applause for anyone who went on a rant as long as they had a bit of charisma. The future of politics in this country is bleak. The people ideally suited to lead the country gravitate towards more lucrative and more fulfilling jobs and we are left with politicians who have chosen politics as a career largely out of vanity. I don't know what the answer is.

I'm not going to claim to have lots of experience but I have met a few MP's on several occasions and have met and worked with a few people who have risen to the top of their corporate ladder (at least in the sense they claim whopping great salaries). The idea that these people are deserving of their salaries/status is to me completely wrong. They tend to have some intelligence but I wouldn't describe them as intelligent in the studied/academic sense. What these people tend to have and what you need to have to get to the top is people skills and connections. To be harsh you need to be good at schmoozing people. You need to have some charisma and whilst you don't have to necessarily be likeable you need to have an aura of authority. Anti-intellectualism is pervasive throughout society. People don't tend to like cold hard intelligence and very intelligent people often lack social skills. Intelligence may make you rich but it won't get you to the top of the corporate ladder. Schmoozing people can get you to the top in most industries though. Just another point on this. The higher up the corporate ladder you go the more your days are full of meetings rather than y'know doing actual work. It is mostly just about people skills and appointing people below you who are intelligent and do know what they are doing. Don't believe for a second that the people at the top know what they're doing, don't believe for a second that just because they command a huge salary that they deserve it or that their jobs are even that demanding. Obviously there are a high proportion of people who are very good at their jobs (even if that doesn't justify their whopping salaries) but there are a lot of people who have just blagged their way to the top.

Maybe Lambert should get a serious go over Sturridge. Gerrard on his own in central midfield would be funny though. Given he likes to drop backwards to take the ball off the centre backs (presumably because he doesn't trust them to pass the ball ten yards) we'd be left with no central midfield a lot of the time. It's like a christmas pudding formation with no centre. Let's call it the souffle.

Good question. Every few months I read a story that says X club is in blatant contravention of the rules and is in danger of being banned from European competition but nothing actually seems to happen. Last club I read about was PSG. My impression is FFP all nonsense. Maybe someone who has studied it can explain how they're all getting round it.

To be fair at least Man U and Arsenal can justify their wage bills with the amount of revenue they pull in. Every football fan in the country should be livid with what Chelsea and Man City have done. Pissing away hundreds of millions of pounds away every year. Money that has been generated from the natural resources of foreign countries. Disgraceful really. The only good thing to say is well at least the country is raking in some extra tax revenue. As a football fan though it's a disgrace.

Never mind the World Cup, England should have a try at beating 11 random fellas on Copacabana beach first

That was a pretty awesome game tbf. Probably my favourite game this season.

Not terrible with the obvious exception of Cleverley who just isn't deserving of a start right now. Personally I don't like the two centre-backs as well but I suppose our options are limited. I'd like to see Caulker in the squad and probably in the team for the world cup.

I guess I'll have to stick with the mighty Carson Palmer then

I've generally thought we need to go to Brazil playing 4-3-3 or we would get passed to death by too many teams. After watching last night and the two previous qualifiers when we pretty successfully played 4-4-2 I hope Hodgson gets some balls and just goes for it and plays Sturridge and Rooney upfront as a pair with some wingers. Something like: Hart Johnson, Cahill, Jagielka, Baines Walcott, Gerrard, Carrick, Townsend Rooney, Sturridge I don't think we'd do that well playing this way but at least we'd go down swinging. It would be a lot better to watch than trying to clog up the game with 3 central midfielders.

I don't think he did. Mikel/Luiz/Ramires were there to do the more defensive duties. There seems to be a general belief that as midfielders get older you can drop them deeper and deeper and I suppose you can but there is a difference between playing deep and being a defensive midfielder. I generally think you need one player in the 'destroyer' mould to break up play, make interceptions and then pass the ball simply. That's definitely not Lampard. Lampard can pass the ball well, no doubt but really with a player of his quality they are far more valuable higher up the pitch where they can make key passes. The player to do it for England is obviously Carrick and you're right we missed him. Lampard/Wilshere/Milner really looked soft as shit for a three man midfield.

What in the world was the Jay Rodriguez call-up all about? I was bemused when I heard it and he didn't exactly change my mind, Also, Frank Lampard has never had any defensive qualities. Why play him in the position of a defensive midfielder? Baffles me. I'm no Frank Lampard hater but even in his youth, even in his prime, playing him as the deepest midfielder was going to expose him.

To be honest it's disappointing the match reaction thread dies so quickly after a game. It is generally full of pretty fair reflections and comment, maybe that is partly because it's full of people who watched the game. Pretty shortly after a game this thread reverts to a 'battle' between the overly optimistic and overly pessimistic posters and it has all gotten a bit dull and predictable. I think I'll just stick to the match threads from now on.

There really wasn't a lot of booing at all. There was only a few seconds on the half-time whistle. Maybe it had something to do with going 7 and a half hours without scoring. It's pretty rich to see 'internet' fans criticising the fans who actually go to games for venting their frustrations.

Yeah I insisted all the way back that it took a big deflection and look a bit silly now.

Tonev was a weird one to assess today. On one hand, I thought some of his crosses were into good areas and not too close to the keeper. On the other hand he never managed to pick out one of the strikers despite having several crosses from good positions. Tonev looked out of sync with Benteke and Kozak, maybe that will come with time or maybe his decision making just isn't that good.

Good win. There's really not a lot to say. Cardiff were very unadventurous and handled our front 2 fairly well which made for quite a dull game. The one thing that seems obvious at this point is that Bacuna has to play further forward. He put in a beauty of a cross for Kozak and even without the goal I thought he was our best player. Whatever formation we play he should surely be right midfield/right wing/right attack at this point.

There's certainly a balance to be had. Judging by our possession stats and generally the way we set up we're one of the most anti-football teams in the league. If that's what Lambert thinks we need to do to stay up then fair enough. I'll be going to fewer games though and attendances generally are going to fall. Maybe it's asking a lot for Lambert to try and play a bit better football or maybe it's not. I think he needs to figure it out though. Play some genuine wingers and try to keep the ball a bit.

I don't think there's been huge criticism of Lambert, he's certainly done okay, we are no worse off and probably slightly better off than when he took over. The astonishing thing is the chasm that has developed between us and the top 6. We basically have one player who would challenge for a squad position in the top 6 sides. That's quite astonishing given the position we were in three/four years ago. Certainly the management of the club is to blame. We could easily be where Spurs are now with better managerial appointments, possibly better executive appointments but certainly by making better personnel decisions overall over the last few years. It's hard to blame Lerner for not wanting to lose tens of millions of pounds every year though, I doubt I'd want to either even if I was super rich. Short-term we have absolutely no prospect of bridging that gap which is disheartening. Over the longer term we could do with some kind of financial collapse or better restrictions through FFP. It's a ridiculous situation when you think about Chelsea and Man City losing hundreds of millions of pounds every year to be genuine contenders. All I'm going to ask from the manager at the moment is to try and bring some young players through and try and play some good football without getting us relegated. Hopefully, some financial sense will spread across the league soon and we will be in a position to benefit.

Is someone after a job as Villa PR officer? I ask as the amount of 'no one dare question the project that will lead us to inevitable success, anyone who does so is just an impatient, short-sighted, so-and-so' posts is really quite impressive.

I posted something similar a few pages back. I'm not seeing any progression in the style of football especially at home when the opposition concedes territory and time on the ball. I'd much prefer to have a British manager but it looks inevitable that a more continental-minded manager is the way forward.

You should read The Secret Footballer, he covers this topic and the way fans see football. Did anyone ever find out who he was?

Yeah and there seem to be a lot of fans who like to see a player put his head down, dribble either towards goal or down the line and then shoot or cross without ever lifting their head. I guess it looks like they're trying hard and fans appreciate the effort.

I have to admit the biggest thing that annoys me at Villa Park is, say we're in the attacking third and someone tries to thread a difficult pass, it gets intercepted, a sizeable section of the crowd groans. I just think why are you groaning? It's a difficult pass, a low percentage pass, but if it comes off it has a good chance of creating a goalscoring opportunity, if you keep groaning none of the players will want to take responsibility for creating anything. Contrast this with an incident against Spurs. Delph dribbles, just inside in his own half, in a circle around three players and then passes it backwards to the full-back and sizeable sections of the crowd applaud wildly (presumably for retaining possession). Now I don't want to pick on Delph here as the dribbling was kind-of impressive but if you're going to do it then do it in the opponents half when you can cause some damage, he could really have just passed the ball backwards at the start and avoided the dribbling (and the risk of losing the ball) completely. It's just a bit perverse the way the fans react when fairly simple high percentage passes get so much applause at times and attempting anything difficult attracts so many groans. To an extent it happens at most grounds but I think Villa Park is pretty bad for it.