Rovers13

Obviously Blackburn is my first team, but it's so damn hard to follow the championship from America. Then I have the Union, my hometown team, and Villa. Outside of that not much I can think of. Though I have been consistently checking Villarreals scores this year

Danns managers in those relegation years have been McLeish and Kean. Not sure it's his fault. Anyway, okore seems like a very astute signing, maybe could play some rrb?

May have been asked earlier but is everyone having spurs consitently do well? In my games they DoD at least, till avb left. He's the best manager in my save, the work he's done is unreal.

Ha! Could you imagine the uproar on VT if that had happened in real life? Brilliant. Hahaha that would be fantastic.

Martinez is an interesting case. He's a guy with a very good but not great record who we think of as better than he is because of his confident talking and entertaining style. Whether he's actually good will now be tested more

Are you Andre Villas Boas? Hahaha

To your house? You must be talking about to your house, that is the only logical explanation... What's with all the Dann hate? He was very good for Birmingham, struggled in his first season at rivers, and had a phenomenal year this year albeit in the championship. But every defender struggled under kean, and outside of the year with jean hes been very good.

I just want to defend dann having watched a lot of Villa and Blackburn he could've helped the defense last year

Back at that time we had a fantastic signing system in place and were usually right when it came to transfers so kind of a good omen for Villa.

But he rectified that with Lambert, who's the perfect manager for the club

I think ultimately Lerner's well intentioned as an owner and cares, so if that's true, eventually things will go right. For instance, I think he understood that he doesn't know soccer/football, so he decided he'd give his manager control, a reasonable decision and one that he'd get ripped for not making. It's not his fault that MON was awful in the signing of players. The only thing that really jumps out as bad to me is Mcleish, as I have no clue what he was thinking.

Wow! I think he's going to be a great player but in my opinion your comments are way over the top. He's had a really great first season for us and showed immense potential and scored a bucket load of goals. He isn't too good for us, that's a bizarre statement to make. He owes us another three years on his contract that he signed last year so he does owe us something. We also were the team that took the gamble on him (you may say it wasn't a gamble but nobody else put a real challenge in to buy him over us). I think he's had a really great first season but like many that have come before him at our club and other clubs he needs to continue to do it at this level into the second season and then some big club can buy him. I can name a number of players that I feel were better than him at our club in prior years, different positions and consistent over a number of years so if we did lose him i'm sure over the next couple of years we would get somebody else of quality in the club. I would be interested to know what players were better than him. Were they better than him in as bad as a team that he has been in. Were they as young as him? Were they already making an impression on an international stage. I cant think of any that were making the impression Benteke has made at his age. I dont think its a bizarre statement to make. So are you telling me 15th in the premiership is his level? People just look to his goals. Its far more than that. The quality of his goals for a start. His technique. The way he brings people into play. The kids the real deal. You only have to think of the amount of academy players that we have banged on about on here over the last few years. The vast majority of them turn out to be absolutely useful. If they were going to be any good, theyd be good at a young age. They would make an impact at a young age instead of 'looking lively'. Benteke has done that on a monumental scale and I am still absolutely astounded he did not win the player of the year award and I dont think it did our chances of keeping hold of him much good (not that it would have done much - The lad is off). Thank you. If Benteke scored once every four games I'd still be happy with him as a striker. he does everything else so well it creates opportunities for other and allows you to keep possession. He also wins everything in the air, except maybe against Samba.

Would be a brilliant signing. However, the only thing Villa an offer over others is money and the premier league. He may come for huge wages, the question is would Villa be willing to pay that much. Probably not.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/4487675/Stephen-Ireland-is-loving-life-under-new-boss-Lambert.html Tiny little article, but funny how things quickly change.

Well its not really their game. I used to work in the states and played alot of football when i was there. One thing i noticed was that in general the girls technically were alot better than the boys when we played. That's surprising. Why is that? I think its because the girls all play soccer when they are able to walk and they play all through school. Guys have baseball, basketball and american football to name a few. Soccer is way down the pecking order. American football I can understand but I don't see why girls wouldn't pick baseball and basketball over the other sports. Many do pick basketball and baseball (well, softball, usually) and volleyball.They are comparatively free to choose what they want to play, and many, having played soccer since childhood, and there having been strong role models in the women's game for some time now, stay with the sport. Boys, on the other hand, very rarely get to choose. Their sporting activities are on the whole taken MUCH more seriously by the adults around them, so the instant they show some kind of athletic inclination, they're quite literally dragged out of whatever sport they might be playing and thrown into whichever of the school's programs is the money/prestige-maker, which is essentially never soccer. They will often face pretty significant social repercussions if they do stick with soccer (or other non-mainstream sport), especially if they're seen as talented. Coaching tends to be abysmal-to-non-existent, too. "Hey, the PE Teacher's assistant isn't busy Saturday, get him to handle it." It's pretty stupid. My high school bucks the trend because we sucked so much at all other sports that playing soccer actually was seen as the prestigious thing. But that had more to do with the fact that we literally went years without winning a game in American football.

Thing is in other countries not only is soccer the most exposed sport so everyone wants to play it, it's also more accessible. A lot of the inner city kids in America (which make up a large amount of pro american sports players) don't have fields or anything while their idols are NBA stars who come from similar backgrounds, so they'd never pursue soccer or consider it. Also, and this is going to sounds racist even though it's an observation, in my experience people of African descent tend to be more athletic. They make up a disproportionate amount of say, the NBA or belgian or english national team as compared to the population in the country, and African Americans play soccer at a much lower rate than white Americans in the U.S. which to me can't help the U.S. national team.

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/05/aston_villa_players_high_on_ra.html Interesting little article I guess

What tactics do you use? I always seem to be crap no matter who I manage. I'm sure there's a right way to do things, I'm just not sure what that is. My thoughts exactly

Not sure Atletico have cash to burn. They have huge debts and apparently about half the Falcao fee is going to third party investors.

I'm assuming you're talking about the US. I can't figure why we can produce such great keepers and very determined, aggressive (if typically lacking technical ability and craft) players elsewhere on the pitch, but consistently produce central defenders with the attention span and decision making of a fruit fly. For as long as I can remember, even our very best defenders have always been full of stupid self-inflicted and completely avoidable mistakes. I don't know either. Friedel's the reason I started to root for Blackburn in the first place, so obviously I'm a huge fan of him and his abilities. Howard's been very good, though I think at this point Guzan is even better than him. We've also created some very good midfielders, at least premier league class. (Donovan, dempsey, and holden were/are all good enough to be very effective in the prem) However, even our defenders that have been good enough to play in europe always do the stupid errors you referred to.

The bigger issue for the US is more that many of the players are still based in MLS This is not USA's full team. There are still quite a few starters who did not even make the trip. Yes but look at our team sheet in the game vs Mexico at the Azteca. Zusi, Gonzalez, Besler, Brad Davis, and Eddie Johnson are all MLS based

The bigger issue for the US is more that many of the players are still based in MLS

Wow we suck

Well forgive me - but in a debate about us being easy to play against there is not an awful lot of evidence i can use as oppose to previous games . My opinion regarding this does not reflect my optimism we can improve next year btw. I just don't think many teams looked at us in the fixtures and thought - 'shit'. And I think we have always been like that whilst ive been a fan tbh. Watching season reviews today on sky. Only Villa would be 3 points clear at Xmas and go on to get 12 points from the last 16 games including a 4-1 stuffin at home to Cov. Does it really matter how teams feel about playing against you? I think how well you do matters more than whether Villa Park is a feared venue.

If he turns out to be good he'll be one of the few good transfers Barca has made in that last few years.