Rovers13

Will the policy of unproven youngsters carry over?

Since reading some tips on here and other places gone six wins out of seven in the prem with VIlla including beating Chelsea and Man U before I lost to stoke and went out of the Euro League vs wolfsburg in the same week. Now I got an FA Cup qf coming up, and if I beat city in that game, I'll play Blackburn in the semis so a great chance at more European football.

Wow thanks this should help. My only decent piece of management was getting 10th with Villa the frost year. Could never really improve and have struggled on other saves

For any Americans Lambert's on Foxsoccer right now. Will be till nine talking about Champions league final

So I figured this is as good a place to ask as any: In short, I'm terrible at this game, I basically give it my best Steve Kean impression. Or maybe by terrible I mean average. My teams always basically finish in the projected position. Which isn't exactly what I want to do, because I read about people bringing teams up through the lower leagues and that's kinda what drew me to the game in the first place. I guess the question is: Any tips on how I can become a little more Lambert and a little less Dean Saunders?

Do strong defensive promoted teams really do better? Reading had the best championship defense and did poorly, while Southampton and Lamberts norwich were both more offensive. Furthermore, blackpool under Holloway were relatively bad defensively and got 39 points

There is no doubt that anyone can appear to be decent while being interviewed but i tend to judge a manager on how the team performs. Based on his performance with our team so far it's ridiculous to even suggest 'he's already one of the best in England.' We have just secured our safety with one game to go ffs. Yes just off his time with Villa, but I'm including Norwich and Colchester. Getting back to back promotions to the prem is fairly rare, and he didn't have a huge budget to work with either. He also smashed norwich with colchester at the beginning of that season. And yes, I agree you can't judge managerial ability off of an interview, but you can somewhat judge character. What managers in englandwould you prefer to lambert?

If Lambert stays, I wouldn't be stunned to see a top four finish in the league, without having to rely on the Europa League. Not likely, but with him, anything's possible.

Listening to the podcast, Lambert just seems like an awesome guy. He's very humble, honest, seems kinda quiet, and comes across as a guy who got where he did by always working hard. He also has unwavering faith in his beliefs and is very committed. He's gonna have a fantastic career as a manager, whether with Villa or another club. To me he's already one of the best in England, but he'll definitely become even better. Pure class

Belgian Guy said that was a misquote, he said it was a dream to play for a club like Arsenal, not Arsenal specifically AFAIK. I`m sure BG can confirm Oh ok thanks for the clarification. I'll trust without the confirmation

Before he came to Villa he did say Arsenal was his dream club

Madrid is a possibility but Dortmund cannot afford his wages. Seriously, they lose players because of this. I see no evidence it is about to change. Madrid is in huge debt and despite UCL, they aren't getting a lot of the Falcao money and so won't have that much to spend.

I could definitely see seven or eight. I think it'd be tough for you to break the big six (feel like Liverpool will finally have a decent year and it will be six in champions league contention), but with a great manager and some more brilliant signings, Villa can definitely be the team that replaces Everton in pushing the top six.

WBA just had their best year in prem history. And a couple more wins for the Villans would've been top half this year.

Also, I think the Premier League should improve in Europe now that the top clubs will all have managers to boot. Mancini was pretty terrible at City, and Chelsea getting Mourinho will be a big step up. Even Sir Alex hasn't been great in CL in his career

It probably isn't quite as good, but it's catching up even if it hasn't caught up and the chance to play for the potential champions league winners would be tempting I'm sure

So the background about me is that I've been following Blackburn Rovers for quite a few years, and I still follow them as by far my favorite club. As far as I'm concerned the Venky's are the worst people on earth, excepting Steve Kean and Jerome Anderson. However, the trouble is I live in America. When Rovers were in the prem, I was able to catch the majority of the matches online as the games were televised. With them going down, that was only an option like five or six times this year. So while I still follow all their news, read the articles, etcetera, I wanted a prem team to follow so I could actually watch games of a team I was rooting for. I ended up with Villa because I'm basically a Lambert fanboy. I think he's a genius and is one of the best managers in the country, and I love his style. If any of you have heard of moneyball, to me what he's done is moneyball in soccer. Because of the lack of advanced stats, he had to go to other areas to identify market inefficiences, and exploits the inefficiencies by signing lower league players and foreigners, as opposed to expensive current prem players. His teams are also very entertaining. So, I've been following and watching many Villa games this year, and decided to join this forum to discuss Villa occasionally. There's my background.