switters

Awful 2nd half, no question. Feel to pieces and got cut open time and time again. I think it shows how brittle our confidence still is: one setback when they equalize and it was like house of cards.

Constantly going long was frustrating - not necessarily always hoofing, but floated passes when we could be keeping it on the ground, we never took control of the ball. Every time we got it, it was back to Southampton within a few passes. Very surprised Lambert stuck with Bent-Benteke when nothing was sticking & we were losing midfield battle (esp after Ireland went off). The end was like a 4-2-4 with KEA and Westwood obliterated as the middle 2 and the 4 up front never keeping the ball. Think any defence would struggle if opposition has that much space in front of them (not really excusing how easily some of the defenders let them through, mind).

Guzan will be breathing huge sigh of relief..ref gives him red there and he might be back on bench for months. Not so good today from him, although only 1st where you could say he could've done much better.

Do think people need to look past names a bit - so many in this thread blithely calling Southampton worst side in the league, when that is something that can't be close to being known after a handful of games. 3 of their 4 losses were Man Utd, Man City & Arsenal so it's hardly a true picture of where they stand compared to the rest of the league. They had a bad loss to Wigan, but otherwise you wouldn't expect any team to be on many points from those fixtures. And they did give both City & Utd big scares. I don't think they're as good as we made them look in 2nd half, but also not as bad a 4 losses in a row suggests..

Dear lord this is a worrying collapse. Defence just crumbled this half.

Really great performance. Comfortably better than anything we managed (that is to say, McLeish mis-managed) last season.

All the new signings looking positive. Biggest change is that there was both work-rate AND lots of efforts on goal. would've been robbery if Swansea had got equaliser, which made the Benteke goal so satisfying.

MOTM - probably Vlaar for an essentially faultless performance, but you could make cases for Lowton (great goal, and so much energy getting up & down the pitch), Guzan (early save was crucial - had we gone 1-0 down after 10 mins it would've been completely different game - we saw that one vs Everton) or Bannan (put in a lot of very good balls - keep doing that and he'll start racking up assists)

Great interplay from our 3 forward players. Very positive to see, and it would've been a lovely goal.

Good awareness from Ireland. Shame about Weimann's shot/cross/whatever that was.

Now great save from Brad

Starting lineup unchanged from Newcastle, if I'm not mistaken. I think it sends right message to both the new players and the likes of Lichaj/Bannan/Weimann to know that if they play well they will keep their place, even if there is new competition for their position..

Hope to see some of the newcomers getting some game time off the bench though..

Homegrown players? Is Stephen Ireland and Charles N'Zogbia have 'Yes' by them. Am I being thick here? Eric Lichaj is American too, right?

You count as homegrown if you played long enough in England before a certain age. Those three all came through English club academies so count.

We don't have too much experience, but in numbers we've got a large squad now. Compare Everton who only named 19 and Chelsea & Liverpool just 20.

Glad we're not in situation like QPR where they can't even fit all their players in. They got Luke Young, Rob Hulse, DJ Campbell & Radek Cerny all in limbo now. Assume they'll loan them to lower league, but they must have crazy wage bill.

It's good that he's still in the squad because he may yet be needed, but it would be great if by the time he's back from injury the Vlaar-Clark combo is looking well enough established that he can't get in the team.

I think we're fortunate Tiote injured. Newcastle don't have the same physical presence in midfield without him.

Team is more understandable with news Delph/Herd injured. Not really a lot of choice in who we play CM without them (only other thing would be Clark as DM, Baker at CB but I think Lambert already said he don't see Clark as midfielder)

Gabby on the bench? Didn't realize he was gonna be back already.

Bold team. We really can't afford to go behind early or I'd fear a thrashing.

The biggest disappointment of the window for me is that Hutton and Warnock are still here

Sounds promising. Hopefully he'll turn out to be a coup.

By the description of style of play, I wonder if he's in as backup/alternative to El Ahmadi. Think we'll generally start with 3 of the 6 centre mids, as follows:

Herd/Delph - primary role: energy/winning the ball back

El Ahmadi/Westwood - keep possession ticking over

Ireland/Bannan - creativity

Delfonso away on loan to Blackpool. Strange one that

Not good enough, only surprise is its not perm

I dont rate him either, what was strange was that he started against Everton. Would that not have made him first choice backup to bent and benteke?

Don't forget we have Gabby coming back, and also signed Bowery, so he might well have been about 5th choice not even on the bench most of the time.

Also it might have been that Lambert just decided to give him a game as an audition as to whether or not to let him go on loan.

not one prem player with genuine experience in the toughest league..i love this club & genuine like lambert but with these signings & other clubs getting quality in the gulf is clear. proud history bright future ..cheers randy.

Didn't Bennett play in the Prem with Middlesbrough?

wiki tells me he made his debut for Boro in the final match of the 2008-09 season. er, which they lost and got relegated in!

Perfect experience. 1 PL match, 1 relegation

We've signed a very young and very unproven lad with no record of being a future star.

You mean we've signed a player who can't travel in time

In the spirit of all things of a bullsh*tty nature...

One of my bin-dipping colleagues has just skyped me to say "Betting suspended on Adam to Villa".

Make of that what you will.

Just posted on another thread, I think he fits a certain system. At Blackpool he had license to ping balls out to wingers all match long. And he's pretty good at them.

But he's the opposite thing to a possession player, which is what Lambert seems to be trying to instil at Villa (and this is also likely the reason Rodgers doesn't want him in his new possession-based Liverpool team). So I would be surprised if we were in for him.

...................Given..................

............Vlaar......Dunne..........

Lowton.........KEA.........Bennett

........Ireland.......Adam(4m).....

.................Zarate(loan)...........

.......Benteke(6m).....Bent.........

Subs - Guzan, Lichaj, Clark, Delph, Holman Nzogbia, Gabby

That midfield would get trounced...

swap Ireland with Herd and put him in KEAs position and we would be a bit tougher...

although i dont like Adam i could see he how he could come in handy

As far as I can remember, Charlie Adam's two main skills at Blackpool, when he was good, were taking corners and pinging balls out for wingers to run onto. Can't see him being the kind of player who'd suit what we have in the team. Besides which we have Bannan who does similar already.

Makes sense for Stoke, who have Etherington/Kightly/Pennant for him to ping to, and Crouch/Walters/Huth/etc to aim at from corners.

Premier League experience is not the main key factor in success. Saturday line ups total Premier League appearences. Newcastle - 651, Aston Villa - 1052

We should talk about high level experience rather than PL experience specifically.

Anyway, pretty sure Shay Given alone accounts for getting on 50% of our tally!..

For the striker role I'm not sure we need to be so fussed about experience. We clearly need more experience in the team, but its more in defence and midfield we're lacking that.

Up front we actually have Bent & Gabby who are two extremely experienced PL strikers, 500 PL games between them. I think Benteke would be here as another option who offers a different kind of threat to what we have, not someone who's likely to start every game.

A article from a Belgian website that Genk were currently considering our second bid. This Benetke info was obviously leaked by us given the amount of select reporters that got hold of the story i.e. Kendrick. We dont leak unless we know its close to being done or it is done.

Why would we leak it at all?

To keep reporters on side. If they have nothing to report, they are more likely to fill the space with something negative.

Don't take anything an agent says for truth. He'll be doing his best to manipulate the deal in whatever way works best for him, to make sure he gets his 10%. If he's going public it's to put some pressure on Genk or to try and bump up the fee so he gets a bigger cut.

Can't help but think most of this simply comes down to the fact we've been mostly losing for the past 2 years. It might be an indirect effect - supporters are more likely to act like tools when the club is losing and you're more likely to notice the bad elements off the pitch when there's nothing good on the pitch - but it's the losing which is the heart of it. Most football supporters are junkies. We need a sufficient fix of wins (or at least goals) to keep our enthusiasm.

We haven't won two games in a row since May 2011 and even they were bittersweet 'cause they were way too late in a miserable season to mean anything. It's been an utterly depressing time to support Villa, but we will win again...sometime...hopefully!

Surely we have more important positions to sort out than CB?

With Clark being in "indifferent" form and dunne being injured, you can see that given cannot handle too much pressured I think we need two players for defence, centre and left back. Get him signed

Agreed. Having seen first two matches, I think a CB is actually quite high priority - Dunne won't be back for at least a month and I'd expect it'll be another month after that before he's up to speed (in relative terms!) as he's been injured for most of 2012. I don't really want to be relying on him staying fit.

Dawson sounds like he could be expensive for his age, Spurs are good at milking every penny out of people, but our defence is desperately inexperienced. with the current status of Hutton/Warnock/Dunne, Vlaar is our only available defender over 23 and he's got to adjust to this league.

QPR, Stoke & Sunderland all linked to Dawson too, so who knows if there's any substance..

But if we dont sign anyone, surely that brings up the question of why would Lambert join us if he wasn't going to be backed. A question you have posed to others when they have been flapping. Perhaps the answer is that he still will be but things havent worked out this window.

Quite simply he thought he could get more out Nzog, Ireland, Clark etc. His faith in those 3 - has spectacularly back fired - Ireland didn't even get a kick yesterday, Clark was dire and got a red - and Nzog was totally anonymous.

That doesn't make a lick of sense. How can Lambert's faith in Ireland 'spectacularly backfire' if he didn't even play him yesterday?! And it's way too soon to say how much faith Lambert has in likes of N'Zogbia and Clark. He has only managed 2 matches. We know next-to-nothing about Lambert's thoughts on the team. The only real shows of faith are in the people he has signed.