briny_ear

Terry Venables MkII.

Agreed. We know now he's not a left back, although I applaud the strategy of dropping Warnock. It was good he was able to stay on and do better in his changed position.

Thought he made a great debut yesterday and it showed the wisdom of loaning him to Coventry to get match-ready.

The imaginary Houllier who often occupies these pages would have been great for us. Our team of smartly scouted, previously unknown, young (and cheap) continental stars would have played superb, skilful football and swept us into the top 4 ready for a shy at the CL. Sadly, the actual Houllier that we got introduced chaotic tactics and team selection, demotivated half of the squad and took us to the brink of the relegation zone. Shame, really.

I've been a critic this season but he was good yesterday. Credit where it's due & let's hope he has an extended run of form now. Think it will help if there's a competition between him and Keane for a few weeks.

I'm always happiest when the negative posting on here is of the "we won but we were crap" variety. I can live with that. The reality is that we fought and won a really tough battle and should celebrate that. I've wanted to see Robbie Keane in a Villa shirt for a long time now. It's very nearly too late in his career now but he made a fantastic first impact and was easily MOTM.

This myth keeps cropping up on this site. SHA were relegated because, after their League Cup victory, they went on a disastrous run of W2 D3 L7 - 9 points out of 36 - and converted their mid table position to a relegation slot. A couple more draws out of that lot would have kept them up, so you could easily argue they didn't draw ENOUGH matches. The performance of SHA last season is utterly irrelevent to what Villa do this season. I would rather concentrate on what we need to do to improve, not keep harping on about what our desperate neighbours did or didn't do. My point is we are not really in a comfortable mid table position yet and we need some wins to get there.

Our current league position is a bit deceptive in my view. We are about 6 points adrift of where we should be even to keep pace with last season's moderate showing. If we don't start picking up maximum points against inferior teams like Wolves we are going to drift towards a crisis. So I will be worried about anything less than a win. Time for some of our highly paid stars to step up to the plate.

No, I'm not really chuckling at that tbh. The latter IMO. How many games did he get under Houllier/McAllister, and how many good games did he turn in?

Don't agree at all. It remains to be seen whether this lad will fulfil the potential he once showed. We certainly don't have the scope at present in the Villa side to give him some games to see if he is going to make it or not - we simply don't have enough points to play with. So a loan spell seems the perfect solution to give him some game time and allow him to show what he can do and build up his confidence/match readiness. And if he doesn't develop to Premiership level, there is a good chance Leeds would take him back, I guess. Good management by McLeish I would say.

Quite right, Richard. If you go back to page 1 of this thread - only about 16 months ago - people were generally leaping up and down with excitement at the thought of him coming back from injury. The main dispute was whether he was the natural replacement for Petrov or Milner. So it's lazy thinking now just to add him to a list of "MON failures".

Eh? Most of his passes that night were first time passes. If you have time on the ball you tend to take more touches. Aint rocket science. So stop making shit up. One thing that rarely seems to get mentioned in relation to this Man U match is that we lost 1-3. So, whatever Makoun did or didn't do in the match, it was an utter failure in terms of the objective of winning it.

So would most of our opponents, I imagine!

No, this would happen at virtually every club in Britain. Its called having a scapegoat. BTW where does that expression come from? It's actually the Old Testament - Leviticus Ch 16 v8. This chapter involves doing a number if horrid things to animals to atone for man's sins. The goat gets off quite lightly - just gets sent off to wander in the desert. The ram and the bullock come to more grisly ends.

Hmmm. On page 1 you said Since your hatred for him is, supposedly, purely about football, can you explain exactly how his alleged "big nose" impacts on his ability?

I find it impossible to imagine how anyone could "hate" Marc Albrighton. He strikes me as a very decent, grounded sort of bloke, who loves Villa, works hard to improve his game and wouldn't say a cross word to anyone ever. He still has some flaws to his game but he has shown us enough this season to make it worth sticking with him and supporting him in his own ambition to play regularly for the Villa and improve his game. Hatred is such an ugly emotion. I urge you to desist.

where did i say or imply that at all? im saying that moyes isn't a particularly good manager i dont get this why is he held up in such high regard? everton fans are getting sick of him, they list plenty of major issues with him, which are fairly apparent. for all his alleged talents, he's a point ahead of a villa team that plenty on here reckon are relegation fodder with the worst manager in the league. how does that make moyes a good manager? 5 top 8 finishes in a row without a pot to piss in, also a 4th place finish and champions league qualifaction again wthout a pot to piss in and team that lacks a goalscorer but cant afford to buy one if moyes had been able to spend the amount of money we have spent in the last 10 years I think you would find Everton would be finishing higher than 8th every year I'm not disagreeing that Moyes has done a good job at Everton with the resources available to him (and, if our Board had half a clue about how to attract a decent manager to the club, I would have welcomed him here with open arms). But let's not get too carried away about how little he's had to spend. According to the Transfer League web site, Everton spent £106m between 2003 and 2011, £65m of that since 2007. That's a lot less than was spent at Villa - and a lot less net because they benefited from the sale of Rooney and Lescott - but we shouldn't get too hooked on this image of Moyes managing the club on a shoestring. Most other premier league managers would have killed for that sort of budget. It's not like we've seen him shuffling around singing "Buddy, can you spare a dime?"

If the club took the Liverpool stance their press release might sound a little odd... "Aston Villa Football Club are hugely disappointed with the news that Barry Bannan has received an 18-month driving ban following an incident in which he allegedly crashed into a barrier on the M1 near Watnall, Nottinghamshire on the 23rd of October while under the influence of alcohol. "The club finds it astonishing that the courts have completely dismissed Barry's testimony as fiction while simultaneously accepting as fact the unsupported claims of the barrier in question, especially when one considers the fact that said barrier has proven himself to be an unreliable witness in previous cases of this nature. The notion that Barry has some kind of problem with barriers is ridiculous; he has worked with barrier charities in the past and his own grandfather was a barrier. Incidentally, Barry himself suffered injury at the hands of Mr Barrier but declined to mention it in his hearing - he's cool like that. "Furthermore, the club is dumbfounded that the courts failed to take into account Barry's cultural background when passing judgment on his actions. If this incident occurred in his home country, Barry's behaviour would not be considered offensive or damaging in any way, shape or form. Barry grew up in Scotland where driving under the influence of alcohol is common practice. "We urge all Aston Villa supporters to rally around Barry at this difficult time." *Limited edition 'Give Baz his wheels back' t-shirts will be available in the club shop prior to our next home game. Free bottle of whiskey with each purchase. Brilliant!

You mean people! So Iwas the only person on Villatalk who wished him happy birthday yesterday!

Exactly. I think that was where my comment about scouting came in the first place. People were praising Newcastle's squad and manager and I said "don't forget the scouting!"

Houllier could have signed Cabaye for £4m. The board vetoed it. Even if this is true, it's not really relevant to the point I was making about Newcastle having a better scouting set up than Villa. They have recruited many more good young players as well as Cabaye. They don't rely just on the personal knowledge and contacts of a particular manager. (In any event, if Cabaye had come to Villa there is no guarantee he wouldn't have been as big a flop as Makoun and by now be out on loan somewhere in Southern Europe.)

Community punishment? Can't wait to see 'Awwy in a luminous orange overall sweeping excrement away with a broom....

This made me chuckle Happy Birthday, big man!

Whether life in London seems to be shit or otherwise to Villatalk posters is hardly the point. To a footballer it is going to be pretty much paradise with all the celebrity culture, clubbing, etc., happening all around you. I'm afraid Bham just can't compete (anyway, does Bent actually live in Bham?)

Nonsense. When it comes to football "rumours" The Guardian and Telegraph are usually spot on. They don't print random bollocks with no substance like The Mirror, Daily Star or The Sun. There were some stats on here a while ago comparing how true each paper's rumours were. The broadsheets performed slightly better than the tabloids IIRC but were still wrong most of the time. Can anyone link me to the stats? I think it may have been these