sellbydate

Gabby been watching a lot of Messi videos?

we haven't been in control in every other match though

Now lets not sit back in our own half please.

we've been in control all match, why would that be your first thought?

shame, still, i don't think much should be made from this match about him

haven't seen a replay but surely Defoe as the one in the middle should have been marked by a CB? sounds like he was having to cover for poor marking in the middle. should have closed Dos Santos though.

on the bench

Mellberg starts tonight for Olympiakos against Arsenal

Unlucky to be taken off as I thought we were more comfortable with him helping us keep the ball. Excellent penalty and good free-kick in the first half think he is well on the way to cementing a place in the side for a while yet.

he took a knock unfortunately.

calm down lads

hahaha, if we win this game, it'll be the bigggest robbery since.... everton!

if we continue to boss this second half, we'll deserve it for taking our chances.

keep playing football, get another

much, much better villa. keep it up.

Wow. I tend to be one of the more optimistic supporters, but good grief what an embarrassing first 45. Granted the last 5 minutes showed more promise, but I think there is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

The weird part is, as much as we like to think it's AM's tactics to just hoof the ball upfield from defence, I don't think that's the case. There was this one shot of AM absolutely incensed, yelling at the players to keep the ball on the floor. I think there are 2 problems here. 1 being James Collins. He's not confident enough to play a pass on the floor most of the time, and just ends up clearing the ball rather than chesting it down and keeping it. And 2, we don't have a midfielder who makes himself available to the defenders to pick the ball up from them. Since our defenders can't pick a pass to them, it's imperative that the midfielders make themselves available. This is another reason why I think it was a poor decision to let go of Makoun. He was that link from defence to attack, while also being creative.

I feel bad for Delph because it isn't his game to play the deep lying midfielder who collects from the defence. He's looking quite poor because of it. We are crying out for a Tiote like player, and only then do I think we'll see the best of him.

Sorry for the tl;dr btw.

mostly agree, please post more.

Bannan is a star in the making!

HAHA, Joking right? He does nothing. One freekick on target don't mean he's going to be a star.

ball has been right over his head, none of the players are confident shifting the ball into the middle.

not entirely terrible when we've had the ball in midfield but way, way too far and in-between. shown by that decent bit of play at the end there. get it on the floor lads!

agree that gardner should come on for delph, not been too confident on the ball today.

results and performaces after the Bolton match? see into the future, can you?

the players coming out and saying Bodymoor is a much happier place is an indication that he's having a positive effect on the morale of players

Duverne was part of the France staff that got sacked for failing spectacularly. He was well known for causing trouble. He pissed off the most professional and best left-back in the world in Patrice Evra.

give it a rest.

If all else fails.. bring up "standards" :lol:

or "vision"

Luke Young was one of our better performers last season.

Whether the players were right to complain or not has absolutely nothing to do with it, Houllier was the manager and his number one concern should have been getting the results. He almost got us relegated and that is his fault, he needed to manage the players we had to get the maximum potential from them and he didn't do it.

Failure as a manager of Aston Villa, and would have continued to fail had he been in the job for longer.

and don't for one second pretend that the football was good last season, it was absolute shite, and not 'great to watch' in any way, shape or form.

Yeah, but the problem with Houllier, and you just cant get away from it, he fell out with a significant number of the squad.

Who cares about that, the players that dont play ball would have been replaced..Houllier isnt scared of players, he dosnt live in a world where they are indispensable..If one dont play, their is another that will play..He would have built the squad and club up..There is no room for spoilt little slackers that think Aston Villa is just a push over..He wants professionals that take the role seriously, not guys that want 10 pts a lager on a Sat night and laugh and joke in training.

Thats what last season was all about...Sorting the realists from the slackers..He was building and teaching..Those that didnt want to know,he didnt have time for..Why teach players that dont take role seriously enough, or that think they know best? Houllier HAS coached and had major imput in world class players that are still playing football at the top of todays game. He knew exactly the levels he wanted to achieve in player training..And he knew exactly which players would make the grade and which wouldnt..

He played every single outfield player that was available to him in the 1st team squad last season....Which is manager testing his squad and giving players the opportunity to shine..This included players like Carew, Sidwell, Ireland, Warnock etc..The slate was fair and clean and it was up to the players to impress...

He also very nearly got us relegated because he treated professionals like children.

I'm sick of us making average teams look like **** Barcelona!

according to most reports bolton looked just as shit

actually agree with most of what you're saying for once. there are 5 matches until November that are all winnable except City, 8 points should be the minimum acceptable. That's when i'd start to be worrying. 15 points from 10 games would be good and hopefully we'd have settled by then.

Interesting that possession and 'hoof' was our problem, isn't this the first match we've had a positive possession percentage, and we lost?

disappointing result, not a lot more.

"Got better, all coming from Villa" - SSN.

just to provide a little balance...