Gramme

Ray Wilkins and Ashley Young at the same club would be a disaster waiting to happen. "Stay on your feet!"

Things can always be worse.

It's late-onset joie de vivre!

I think Gareth Southgate managed something similar at Middlesbrough too! True but he won **** all if you want to be pedantic. Was just pointing out that Houlliers Lyon played attractive football, scoring lots of goals. Queue French league comments zzzzzz I was neither being pedantic nor thinking about criticising the French league - it was just a light-hearted remark. I'm quite in favour of GH's appointment but I wouldn't read too much into a single result. By the way, being pedantic would be to tell you that you meant 'cue' rather than 'queue'... :winkold:

I think Gareth Southgate managed something similar at Middlesbrough too!

That Townsend Twitter is actually quite amusing. Possibly too subtle for some!

I thought Venglos was supposed to be 20 years ahead of his time. He should be the right man for the job right about NOW then, surely? Sign him up!

Clearly it's Blackpool... Ian Holloway's odds poised to plummet. All aboard!

Yes. All the bookies will pull their quotes overnight rather than leave themselves exposed.

It's just the influence of a bit of money; the betting market for the Villa job is very thinly traded - it doesn't take more than a few hundred quid to shift prices. And 50/1 as Moyes was earlier is attractive enough to bring in that sort of money with only the slightest rumour. I've gone in and out today on Moyes and now have a free upside of nearly £700 if - by some miracle - he does get the job. The question now though is... who is tomorrow's hot property?

Absolutely nothing. Randy and Moyes bumped into each other just before kick-off yesterday, shook hands, shared a joke and a laugh. The Sky cameras caught it, and now it's apparently some sort of seismic event. It was the most innocuous, meaningless encounter ever. He might well turn out to be our next manager, but this meet 'n' greet would have happened regardless; they're grown-ups and gentlemen.

I'll set 'em up and you can knock 'em out the park! :winkold:

I would have thought that putting a potential managerial appointment out in full view of TV cameras would be an exceptionally silly thing to do. Villa Park last night is the last place I would have expected to see Hitzfeld (or Bradley or Klinsmann or anyone, for that matter).

So he becomes manager, is in Birmingham but doesn't go to the game? You are having a laugh. Anything Ian Robathan says is pure and utter bollocks. Robathan hasn't actually said anything - he's seemingly as sceptical as anyone; all the Hitzfeld chat on his blog has come from other people.

Yes, you're absolutely correct, but it's still a little bit strange. His price has fallen a long way in a short space of time with no press comment or even rumour that I've seen. He's a pretty leftfield choice for such activity - I don't think he's even been mentioned in this thread in the last fortnight.

See my post on the previous page... it's the Hitzfeld/Lambert Dortmund Old Boys Dream Team! Since I posted he's come in from a top price of 25-1 to 12-1 now, and he's significantly shorter than that with Paddy Power.

My colleague isn't a Villa fan but loves a flutter; he went in earlier today with £100 on Hitzfeld based on rumour and hearsay. He got on at 33-1 through Ladbrokes and by the time he came back to the office (less than 5 minutes later), they'd cut their price to 20-1. It's really a very thinly-traded market. Paul Lambert is also a lot shorter now than he was a couple of days ago. The Borussia Dortmund connection, perhaps? Hitzfeld/Lambert dream team? You heard it here first! :winkold: EDIT: Lambert's just come in to 9/2 with Paddy Power. Still 25-1 with some bookies though.

So just because people dont like O'Neill doesnt automatically mean they have a direct replacement in line. If someone bangs on about a problem for long enough, I don't think it's unreasonable for others to expect some kind of solution to be suggested. Otherwise you're just part of a bigger problem.

The list of candidates offered by the bookies is pretty mediocre but I'm most disappointed by the complete lack of inspiring and interesting suggestions from the longterm anti-O'Neill brigade. C'mon boys - this is your time to shine!

That's a massively subjective view of that squad. I personally disagree with almost all of it. You're (IMO) particularly generous towards Ridgewell, Davis, Berger (by that stage in his career), Baros (ditto), Sorensen (ditto), and Delaney was already crocked as far as I remember. You're arguably quite selective in your choice of replacements too. It's certainly not 'nonsense' at least.

To be fair though, the goalposts have been moved quite significantly in the last year. It may be that our apparent austerity is a reaction to what's happened at Eastlands; why pour more money into a dream that all of a sudden has a significant chance of disappearing off over the horizon? Last season may have been our best chance of CL football for the foreseeable future.

By the end of the Doug days we were most certainly not a consistent top 6 finisher. For the times, Gregory spent a lot of money (often on older players) and emptied Doug's coffers, then O'Leary turned us into relegation candidates. Coming back from that is a massive undertaking which you seem to make light of just because we used to finish at the top end of the table. Looking back at last season's table, Wigan finished 16th - same as we did when O'Leary left. They were 28 points behind us and had a goal difference which was 55 inferior to us. Can you imagine how much expertise and money it'd take to turn that sh*t around? We've come a long way, baby.

Do they even have extras in porn films? I've never noticed!

There are also quite a few people defending O'Neill's prehistoric football, who should also know better. Truth be told, I'm not that bothered about the top 4, I just want to enjoy watching Villa play, and under O'Neill, thanks to his truly horrible style of play, I don't get to do that. In which case your agenda is probably different to most people on this board and it's therefore pretty pointless continuing the discussion. Couldn't you have warned us upfront? :winkold:

no, that would be birmingham - they finished three places below us last season. I said 'limited', not 'delinquent' or 'remedial'... :winkold: