ThunderPower_14

The guy down holding his head not only took himself out of the game, but he blocked other defenders from getting near Cahill apart from who was out of position anyway. The second goal though comes down to Cahill being absolutely world class with the ball coming into the box in the air, and he always has been. Ultimately, he keeps getting in positions and keeps putting the ball in the back of the net. Sometimes you're lucky, but if you're lucky that often you're doing something right.

Pure fluke at this stage with reds. Obviously Gabby's was outrageous, and the others are what they are. I think yellows are a better indicator of a lack of discipline because of the sample size, and we're about mid range in yellows.

That is an incredibly solid 4 posts.

Obligatory "Why don't we get Tim Cahill on loan for the rest of the season" post It will be a long time before Australia gets another player of Cahill's quality.

Southampton are already on 42 points. In previous seasons 70 points is usually what you need for top 4 so Southampton feasibly need just 9 more wins from their last 16 games so more or less 50% ratio for rest of the season dosen't sound that hard. Mind you it shows a) what a good achivement it was and what a total bottle job it was that in 08/09 we had 52 points around this stage although the premier league was a lot stronger back then as indicated by the teams in the champions league. I was having this conversation with some mates the other day. Randy Lerner really came at the wrong time for us. I mean I know he arguably kept us from getting relegated, but he came and invested heavily at a time when the top 4 was an impenetrable fortress that was only broken when Man City got mega-rich. These days it's arguably easier to finish 4th, despite being much more difficult to win a title. If Randy buys Villa a few years earlier, his relative wealth quite possibly means that he has enough time to break down that Sky 4 glass ceiling before Manchester City come and take a massive financial dump on the entire competition. If Randy buys Villa a few years later (assuming we weren't relegated in the mean time), the period where he is keen to invest coincides with Liverpool falling down the table, Ferguson leaving United etc, and maybe, just maybe, we manage to muscle our way in to 4th one year like As it stands, Randy bought the club, spent some money, was made totally financially irrelevant by Man City, and then decided it wasn't worth continuing to invest because making the Champions League was now all too hard. I don't know why I think so hard about this stuff because it just upsets me, but man Villa fans have been dealt an awful hand over the past decade or so in terms of promise vs success.

I think our current style might actually work better in the Championship where defenders are going to make more mistakes. At least Lambert I guess has shown he knows what it takes to get a side up. Try telling Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday fans that it's sometimes better to just get relegated. We're a big club, but so are Leeds, and I just don't see that we have the right people in place at the moment to get us straight back up.

Barry leaving hurt the most. He left when we were on the cusp of challenging for that top 4 spot, as our captain and best midfielder in his prime, to go to a side that wasn't in the Champions League yet. I feel like Barry leaving was the turning point for our club under Lerner, because we replaced him with Downing who wasn't as good and never really felt like one of us. The fact that we couldn't keep him no doubt assisted Milner and Young in packing their bags over the next couple of seasons as it became obvious that we'd peaked. Milner left because Barry had paved the way IMO. If Barry stayed, who knows where we would have ended up. Would MON have left? Would We have finished higher than 6th the following year? I hate football sometimes.

Grealish has looked lively but let's face it, what has he actually done to help us score when he's been given a chance apart from win the odd free kick? I mean I guess being the only person in our front third who isn't doing their best corpse impression is a bonus, but he's not quite ready yet.

I promised myself that if the initial takeover thread fell off the first page of Villatalk, I wouldn't let myself get excited again until we had something a concrete. Paul Allen is an unrealistic pipe dream.

You liked it when I posted it before In a world where the Rock, Austin and Jericho exist, this promo isn't even on the radar.

FFP is an absolute disgrace.

That isn't Alan Hutton

Wow. Oman aren't much chop but we were absolutely brilliant. The pace and movement in attack was really great to see. We should take a lot of confidence out of that, it's the best we've played in a long time.

tiki taka is fine. We're definitely playing teams who are tiring by the end of games due to having to chase us around all game. We need to add a bit of a tip to the sword though, for 2 reasons: 1. Goals 2. Teams will tire even more knowing that if they relax for even a second, we'll take advantage. At the moment teams are tiring, but they aren't really genuinely worried about their positioning because we struggle to create chances. As Christ_JM says it's all about momentum. It's about getting control of the game and picking the right time to flick the switch and execute a forward thrust. Add a bit of movement and tired defenders who don't quite get over to cover the likes of Grealish or Benteke are hopefully going mean Aston Villa goals.

He's getting suggested here because he offers a bit of creativity in a midfield totally devoid of it. I don't think he's a particularly fantastic player other than his free kicks, but we need an injection of something at the moment.

I think I'd rather have Lambert at this stage in their respective careers. I'm still clinging to the hope that Lambert will turn out to be a brilliant but misunderstood genius and retire from a long and successful career as our manager aged 97. For me this is the most frustrating thing about Lambert. He really doesn't seem that far away from coming good for us but he just hasn't crossed that bridge yet... I really hope he does but it's pretty painful for the time being. A lot of it seems to be rotten luck - sending offs that weren't, multiple horrible injuries to important players, shots that just didn't go in... but he has his weird sides too with subs and sometimes questionable tactics. I guess that could be attributed to the fact that he's a young manager learning his trade and while there's nothing wrong with that, it doesn't help us now. Yep, I tend to agree. I feel like Lambert will be successful as a manger somewhere down the track. We're right in the middle of some teething problems he's having between rising up the divisions with a young and hungry Norwich and him eventually figuring out how to manage effectively in the Premier League. Compounded by the fact that he's on a shoestring budget from an owner who has lost interest. He's obviously trying to change things. We've changed dramatically from the leakiest defense I remember to having a super tight defense but struggling to score. Lambert hasn't quite figured it out just yet. I think he will, but we'll have to endure a little while longer of this garbage. Who knows, if Lerner cared and invested, we might have an attacking player or two who knew how to move and position themselves and could support Benteke and we'd be scoring for fun. When we're relying on two limited academy products, not so much.

It's very frustrating that we haven't really gotten a lot out of our youth system in the past decade or so. I mean who are our better youth system products of the past decade? Cahill? And we got **** all for him. Steven Davis? We got **** all for him as well. Our academy used to be much lauded and we seemingly have talented kids coming through, but we really need the likes of Robinson and Grealish to develop better than say, Delfouneso and Gardner. We really need to start developing more of these players into Premier League regulars, and actually getting a decent return for the ones who do leave.

I like the possession style and I like that we don't concede a lot of goals. It was really tough watching us ship 13 goals in 2 games or whatever it was. However, we need a lot more movement from both our midfield and our strikers. A lot more. Obviously to get a lot more movement and still be able to hold the ball requires a bit more quality than we currently have. Hopefully Gil can run wide and open up the pitch a little bit for us. I think ultimately both Gabby and Weimann need to be replaced if we are to develop this style into a winning style with players who are a bit more intelligent with the way they move, even if they aren't as athletic. We should potentially have a go at Joe Cole in the Weimann role. Possession football is great, but we need to swing the pendulum back a bit and be a bit more willing to lose the ball if it means creating a chance.

Someone being "pissed off" at a black Bond is a really good reason to make the next Idris Elba the next Bond IMO. If we're pandering to racists in this, the year of our lord jesus christ 2015 then it might be time to blow up the entire planet

In the China v Saudi Arabia game, China conceded a penalty and the keeper asked the ballboy behind him which way to dive. He took the ballboy's advice and saved the penalty.

I also think given the current football economic climate they can hardly be classed as high earners anymore anyway if we're being totally serious about being a premier league club long term

In 2012/13, we scored 47 goals with the same attacking players we had at the start of this season. That's more than double what we're on track for this season. You can talk about players all you like, but if it's just the players, how did we manage 47 goals in 2012/13 and 39 goals in 2013/14? These aren't massive totals, but they are totals that would see us with a lot more points this season and probably safe from relegation. These players have the ability to score more goals than they are scoring. They aren't scoring more goals because we've got an ultradefensive, hold the ball at all costs gamebook with a few blank pages in between holding the ball in the midfield and putting it into the back of the net.

It's like someone was playing against us on FIFA on easy mode. We telegraph everything, don't even attempt to penetrate or create.

Second yellow for what? Getting put in a headlock?

I am enjoying Cleverley being booed