yakubu

great read, thanks it's very refreshing to come to villatalk and bask in a little positivity

when mcleish first came i was as dismayed as most people but i was prepared to give him a chance, after all there's not much i could do about it and having not been impressed by houllier and not particularly excited about martinez, mclaren or hughes i scrambed desperately to find some positives to take out of the appointment (other than "he's not houllier" i'm struggling to remember what those positives were) i think there are some mitigating circumstances you could reasonably mention in defense of mcleish, losing some of our better players, the obvious need to clear out some substandard players and lighten the wage bill and the usual quirks of a team that most managers probably encounter when they take over at a club that's under-achieving etc. and i'm trying to be reasonable about it, i always like to see a manager given a bit of time to settle in and a bit of money to mould his own team and i think it's probably fair to say that we've had a fair bit of turmoil at the club since mon cleared off which i expect would be a challenging situation for any new manager to deal with i know a lot of villa fans have been firmly in the "no" camp since he arrived and that's fair enough, i suppose the main thing that kept me "unsure" was a vainly optimistic desire to see him succeed against the odds or at least get us showing some spirit, and i should know better but i still have a thin sliver of belief which says that maybe he can turn it around, perhaps he can clear out some of the rubbish in january and make a couple of canny signings which will steer us clear of relegation and give him something to build on next season however since the spurs game i've been in the "no" camp and i will be staying there until there's a clear improvement in the football we're playing because right now it's a complete shambles. i realise that we have quite a few average journeymen in our squad and the likes of heskey and beye, but i also think that we have enough talent in there to at least make an attempt at winning games of football and i think mcleish has had enough time now to put out a team that looks like they're capable of putting up a fight and he has failed to do so

how about klinsmann with bosnich as goalkeeping coach?

i will sleep a tiny bit easier tonight with this news

i'm a big fan of nrc, liked him while he was at west ham and i was delighted when we signed him christ knows what the deal was with him and mon but i do think nige was harshly treated during the last season or two and that given an extended run in the team playing in front of the back four then some of the nrc haters might soften their stance on him he's certainly not the player he seems to think he is, his passing sometimes frustrates me, i vaguely remember him picking the wrong pass in the final third of the field a number of times. i can see what people are getting at with their criticisms of nige but i think that he has some very positive atributes, he plays with a lot of heart and commitment, breaks up play well and has lots of energy, he must be a nightmare to play against i hope we can find a place for him in our first 11 and that he stays with us

yeah i thought the officials looked almost as dopey as west ham for much of the game the one fella fouled albrighton in the build up to the 3rd goal and should have got his second yellow

could really have picked any of them today but it has to be albrighton who was spectacular both the youngs were very impressive and petrov looked even better with todays formation the future's bright, the future's albrighton!

not the best of games, i think we were a bit lucky that their goal was disallowed but our goal was very nice and our defence was as excellent as it has been for most of this season such a tough one to pick a man of the match. it's between dunne and cuellar for me but i've gone for carlos, he looks better and better all the time

just crawling out of the woodwork to say holy flying shitballs that was incredible gave gabby motm for some excellent play all over the pitch although it's hard to fault anybody's performance woot

the last time you did this i voted in favour of mon staying and i have voted likewise this time however, whereas last time i thought it was a bit of a silly question and i was surprised that some of us weren't backing him, this time i'm not surprised at all and the question seems a little more legitimate i can see why people are unhappy with him, i wouldn't say i'm one hundred percent, over the moon, batshit crazy delighted with him, but i'm willing to give him more time. if this season goes badly (by which i mean something like bottom half of the league and abject failure in the cups) then i think it would be time for new management but if we do okay and there still seems to be some promise with mon then i would hope that he stays. i think he has generally done well thus far and can do better, i hope he gets the chance to do better and obviously i hope he takes that chance

i'd like to think that most of us villa fans realise that those big fat, mouth breathing, toothless retards we laugh at on sky sports news all the time represent only a small minority of toon fans. the few geordies i know are just standard football fans like the rest of us who don't need to be constantly told what a great big massive club they are and i'd hope that you geordie lads on here realise that all the banter over the last week or so is (mostly) just banter :-) i for one have a lot of sympathy for the geordies, i'd be devastated if mike ashley owned our club, i'd be gutted if we had had managers like souness, roeder, kinnear or shearer, i'd be incredibly pissed off if dennis wise had anything to do with villa and i'd be embarrassed over the whole keegan fiasco. looking at the current situation at newcastle i feel a lot better about the situation at villa, we've generally been awful for the past 3 months and it's tough to see the positives in such a gloomy time, but we're not even close to the shit that lot are in. of course i hope we stuff them. we weren't too clever at st james's this season and i'd love us to redress the balance, and i'd love to see shearer fail, and i'd love to see ashley sell up at a huge loss, it might even be good for him to have a bit less money to spend on pies and non-alcoholic beer, and i'd love to see joey barton reduced to fighting people in the championship. i happen to think that a villa victory this sunday is unlikely, but in a match like this with so much at stake anything can happen. if we do win then i'll be sad for the average, decent toon fans who deserve better

i can appreciate the sentiment of this article, you've some good points [particularly relating to the issue of the over-exuberant knuckle heads who tend to show themselves for this tie] and yes, we probably do get over-excited about this fixture. but for me, if this game isn't "the big one" it will do until the real big one comes along. should we, god forbid, screw this one up then that faint glimmer of hope for a uefa cup spot that some of us are still secretly dreaming of will be even fainter secondly, like many of us, i grew up surrounded by blue-noses, i was the only villa fan in my class, about half my brummie mates are blue-noses and even [dare i say it] some of my family have that vile blue and white coarsing through their veins. that makes it a big one in my eyes. and finally, the atmosphere is going to be electric as ever, living in london i don't manage to get up to villa park too often but i was in the holte for cahill's wonder goal and it really is one of my fondest memories from a villa game. i have a ticket for this sunday and to tell the truth i'm struggling to keep my mind off it i mean, i'm a little bit sick of hearing about it, but only because it's proving such a distraction to me

As much as I'd love this rumour to be true, I suspect the dirty nose bastards are winding you up mate.

I could go for that.

If we're gonna get Ashton then I demand we also sign Villa to play alongside him. There's an aesthetic beauty in those 2 names together.