The Fun Factory

You do if you have serious ambitions to regularly break into the top 6 party. Playing in Europe and hoping for a decent cup run or two results in about 15-20 more games than our current workload. You can't just rely on one quality striker. I am really pleased that Watkins has settled in and is doing well but you have to beef up the squad if you want to continue to improve. Come the summer if there is any chance to sign Tammy for a reasonable fee of less than 40 mil I would take it in a heartbeat. Would add something different to the team.

People keep saying why do managers keep accepting the Chelsea job? 1- They will get paid millions and work with top quality players 2- They will probably live in a nice part of west London 3-When after 18 months to 2 years they get sacked, they will get a massive playoff and sympathy from the footballing world that they were not given the proper time to rectify a bad run 4- Wait 6 months to a year and then get another massively well paid job. Rinse and repeat. Lampard was out of his depth and was only given the job given his legendary playing career at the club and at the time they were under a transfer ban so they couldn't get a top line manager. He was basically a glorified caretaker for a bit.

I would say Smith is probably our first manager who has actually come in and coached our players to play better in a proper system since Brian Little.

Seriously how does this mean still keep on getting relatively high profile jobs? In over 2 years he has managed to get Ipswich relegated and become a mid table League One club. He has a win percentage of less than 35% when they should be pishing that division given their resources. He also managed their rivals Norwich so he can't have much support with the fanbase. If you take out his time at the Canaries his managerial record is awful, and now the 'brains' of the operation is no longer with in in Culverhouse. And to think at the time in about 2012 some people though he was a better manager than Rodgers. Utterly clueless. Celtic awaits.

Well that isn't actually true he was at Villa for 3 seasons and he signed an additional contract whilst at us. He was fantastic with us but I wouldn't have him back because 1- he wouldn't fit the system, and 2- he isn't as good as he used to be.

By all accounts he wanted to go to Liverpool but Donesk refused him to move. Getting paid million in china isn't probably that bad a lifestyle to compensate.

Apparently Teixeira nearly went to Liverpool a few years back but Shakhtar turned it down and he then went to China. I wouldn't give him more than a 18 month contract though as it looks like a stop gap signing. Is against our current signings in getting young players apart from Reina last January. Might help having Dougie and Wes at Villa as well.

Bramal lane is now a far better ground. They have reinvested in the stadium and Wednesday have not. Leppings Lane should be raised to the crowd with and rebuilt with a prominent memorial next to it. It is so eerie when you go into the lower tier it is basically the same since the disaster apart from it being seats rather than standing.

You do wonder when/if Wednesday will ever be good again. Its over 20 years since they were last top flight. When I was growing up I used to think of them only marginally smaller than Villa. They have done nothing for years and Hillsborough is a crumbling relic of a bygone era.

James Bree, a blast from the past. I think he will have a decent career in the championship.

The warning signs should have gone up when journalists asked prominent Chinese business people about Xia and nobody had heard of him.

I don't see any more 'outs' apart from maybe argeeing to terminate Lansbury contract. We will keep Elmo. Taylor etc til the end of the season and upgrade in the summer.

I think Midlands today said after losing to City we were comfortably mid table, which annoyed more than it should do as with the games in hand we could really be pushing for a top 6 spot. Incredible really. I would have been delighted with a 13th at the start of the season.

Costa er no thanks. He is scoring 1 in 6 at Athletico, is well over 30 (I don't believe his dob for one minute) and would be on massive wages.

Really pleased for him to get his goal.

I see what you did there.

Standard. In fairness going out of the cup might well do us a favour given the amount of games we have left to play in the league.

Bye bye brucie. Is this on MOTD tonight?

That would be mad to do so with more than half of the games left to play. He is a child.

The moment he came on at Rotherham with his cheap suit and giving it the big un to the Holte End, it didn't look right. Really loaded people would not have done that.

Bit of a late reply as this thread goes slowly. I think this image was around the time of the 2018 World Cup bid, so Villa Park could have looked like this had Qatar not bribed, sorry, won, the bid.

So basically the same viewpoint from 4 different owners in the past 20 odd years then. When the new trinity was built the intention was to carry on around the North Stand if the demand was there. It wasn't, and it didn't happen. Lerner said a few things before getting romantically nourished and Dr Tony wanted a 60,000 Villa Park as we would shortly have become one of the worlds top 3 football clubs. Then a pig flew by. Maybe in 10 years time we might have a new North Stand. In the short and medium term definitely not. Covid could well depress crowds for quite a few years and we are not yet 100% reestablished as a premier league team. If people are not aware we do have an application in to Birmingham Council for a additional football academy at the staff car park near Witton Station, so the owners are not exactly twiddling their thumbs.

Didn't Steve Evans manage a game in flip flops and a sombrero?

Are you Sir Douglas Ellis OBE (Bicycle kick inventor)- He was like a son to me- in disguise? No Are you Randy Lerner long lost brother? No Welcome aboard.

This happens every 5-10 years with the big clubs flexing their muscles. The new deal will give them more money and possibly more games to play in. Yawn.