Ponky

Gotta say my heart dropped a little when I saw it was Ridgey who put the ball in. Poor bugger. We are bossing the midfield and they don't seem to have much clue in our half of the pitch. If we keep it nice and tight at the back (you listening Zat?) we will win this, and if Gabby and Carew can settle together a bit more we will win it well. I have an inkling Petrov is close to a goal. Let's have it Stanny-boy!!

Hello General My first time posting on this thread as I am an Aussie Villa fan and, well, haven't really had anything to ask you until now. Have you heard anything about a delegation from the Carlton Australian Rules Football club over the past week or so? I understand the head coach Brett Ratten and a few senior managers were doing a tour of Man U, Villa and AC Milan over the past few weeks to develop ideas for pushing the club forward. I am a very big Carlton fan - see my avatar <<<<------- and would be interested to know if and when they have been, and the sorts of things that they were interested in at BH and VP. Carlton (nicknamed the Blues - but strictly NAVY blue mind) are the most successful club in the Australian Football League having won the title a record 17 times, but in recent years, much like Villa, we have fallen on pretty lean times due to poor performance both on and off the field. In the past 12 months or so, however, one of Australia's richest men (Richard Pratt of Visy Cardboard) has taken over the club with very stunning off field results - again not unlike Villa - and we have recently captured the signature of Chris Judd, the League's best player, to go with a very talented list of hungry young future stars - so hopefully they will be on the way up again on the field too (other Aussie Villa fans on this board probably disagree vehemently!). Anyway, I was just curious to know what they might get up to when/if at Villa, if you'd be at liberty to tell. Oh, and if MON has a chance to meet them he might be interested in a young Irish bloke called Setanta O'hAilpin who was recruited from Cork in the GAA (Gaelic football) who is going to be an absolutely incredible player for Carlton. I understand MON once played Gaelic himself so it might be something he and Brett have in common to chat about. Thanks General - and I just wanted to say you do a brilliant job on these boards. I am a mod on a Carlton board just like this one and to be honest, I doubt very much if any representative of the club would be game enough to set up camp there.

Mark 9: 22-24

Pretty sure that's a re-hash of an old link. Some of those articles on NewsNow still have MON just coming out now to deny the Nakamura link. Personally, I think MON if given the choice will sign young players with plenty of potential to grow into full-on champions - see young, maloney, potentially NRC and DeJong - so it makes perfect sense that he will be having a big old gander at the U21s comp coming up, to make sure he has all his facts straight before making some formal bids. I get the feeling that when it does happen, we will see a pretty big flurry in a short space of time. I just hope it doesn't come at 11.55pm on 31 August!!

Just wondering what people think Stuart Taylor is likely to do this transfer window. If MON brings in Gordon or some other keeper it's pretty clear Taylor drops down to #3 on the list. While its probably good money for sitting around doing bugger all if it was me I would be looking for a move to where I could actually be playing regularly - like the championship or League 1. While he probably once fancied himself as a premiership keeper you'd think he'll realise his time has come & gone & go looking for another club. Also with 2 young keepers going out, you'd think we'd be getting a new young keeper in to replace Olejnik as the next big prospect - what happened to that young Norwegian fellow we trialled in January - is he still in the picture?

Bayern had also "signed" John Carew in January too hadn't they? Turns out they were counting the chickens a little early in the end. If we can land a few big fishies early in the transfer period who knows, maybe some even bigger fishies will start sniffing around...

Bozzie in goals!

Asian Cup this year so it would affect teams with a large contingent of Japanese, Koreans, Aussies, Chinese etc. I think it would be a good opportunity for the likes of Osbourne, Gardner, Stieber, Olejnik et al to stake a place for themselves for the coming season.

I think the David Villa thing is a big case of mistaken identity. Many search engines such as NewsNow come up with stories on D Villa simply due to the nature of their filters, then dolts in the media and blogdom see the references to Villa on the Villa pages and conjure something from nothing. While Randy seems very keen to hand over cheques to Mr O'Neill, I think he would probably baulk at Mr Villa's price tag!

I reckon Bellamy and Carew would get along like a house on fire, comparing ways of belting Riise across the head.

It was on the transfer rumours web site about 2 weeks ago that Adu was on trial with Villa but I heard nothing more of it. However, would it not have been reasonable to expect he'd have played in a couple of reserves games for us in that time - or am I naiive to think this? Not sure how these things work...

And then the press says stuff like Matusiak is a done deal with Villa or Fulham and that's nowhere to be seen.

Dica's got a dicky knee anyway and is out for 5 months.

I don't know much about England's socio-economics but do they have fax machines in Newcastle?? Should MON have some carrier pigeons on hand just in case there's a last minute deal to get done??

Sorry, I don't think we can compete with Newcastle, they'd get all the brave players and we'd be left with the cowards...

BBC rumours site says Diop has turned down a move to Wigan.

Ash "The Flash" Young. I like it!

Yeah but he can't play on both wings at the same time!!! :shock: And why not mister smarty-arse?? For 10 mill he should be able to play both wings, get down for goal line clearances, kick perfect inswinging corners AND run into the box to head them home, and put on a fool-proof academy award performance in the penalty area EVERY GAME!!

I think MON has been saying he can play either wing, centre forward, or behind the forwards. ie his versatility is one of his great values. I assume he'll play at right midfield but if we had another player who could do RM he could do LM easily enough.

Get with program mate. Villa IS the new Big 4 !!!!!

We could hoard all the central defenders just to piss off Mourinho! Hey Jose! We'll send you Ridgewell on loan if you sell us SWP on the cheap!

here's one report re neill And from the Blackburn vitalfootball site:

I'm with you Tricella. Lucas Neill is the captain of my country and he did us proud in the world cup and is a fantastic player. No he's not the best in the world but he is a damn sight better than many of the precious, over-rated prima-donnas most would put in his place. He is tough, uncompromising, skilled....and according to many women I know, "hot" :oops: ...and probably now even more so now he's on 50k a week

The following article has a snippet on Luke Varney from Crewe. It mentions that Villa are interested. here

Yeah but JC walked on water - that's a bit harder to do you'd think....