Lorenzo

To be fair to southgate, in his biography he states that the reason he went off to middlesborough was that they were willing to try to make that next level. You can laugh at the fact that they've tried to do it with people like bryan robson at the helm, but you have to say, in comparison to the Villa under Doug Ellis, middlesborough were different class in terms of ambition. No only were they a team with a chairman who was willing to put his hand in his pocket, he was willing to give his managers a really good long stint at building a team, rather than dougs '3 years and old out' policy. They didn't make it to the top, but they did try, something which Doug Ellis's Villa never did, and that was his reason for leaving. Barry's done a similar thing to Southgate in many ways, he's made himself a hero at the Villa, the difference to soutgate is that the Villa are a team on the up, Liverpool are a team in termoil. There's nothing that Liverpool are achaiving that can't be acheived at the Villa given a bit of time. Liverpool are never going to win a title with the current regime in charge and any success they've had in europe has come with a large chunk of good fortune too. He may win things at Liverpool, he may not, but it's not a move for the long term, it's a move for what he can get his mitts on over the next year or two. I'm sure silverware may figure in his equations, but I think he'd be suprised if he didn't get a considerable pay rise that comes along with champions league clubs too.

We do have a fairly promising right winger I beleive, a chap nicknamed 'the togolese zidane' (a curse if ever there was one): Mustapha Salifou. He's been one of our better players in reserve games and has started making the bench recently. As far as i can see, a right back is imperitive. Not only would it provide the sound defensive side that we probably wouldn't get if/when gardener plays there, but it would add attacking balance to the team too, making the right wingers job easier. It's vital we get a decent right back before the end of the week.

I agree, but I'd also like to add something: At the start of novemeber or so we were flying high and yet we'd only really played fairly average football. I'm not saying we were bad, but our league standing was better than the way we were playing. We're now playing, with the last game excepted, a similar standard of football. Results are different obviously, but for the most part the level of football from our boys is the same. The only difference is that some times we've had a bad bit of luck (petrovs disallowed pentalty) and sometimes we've not been able to finish with quite as much success. We're still fairly difficult to score against, we still get a good bit of the ball, and a decent amount of it is meaningful possesion too. The one thing a team is judged upon in the long term is results, we all know that, but in the mean time we still have cause to be optimistic in comparison to previous seasons, irrespective of the manager and owner, because the football's still of a decent standard.

By unmitigated disaster do you mean as in he played less minutes than CC and scored more goals? Is that what you're getting at? Thought so. Financially I think everybody would agree that he was bad value for money, but from a footballing sense we've had many players much much worse. One's at VP from chelsea on loan at the moment in fact.

This might seem a little shallow, but compare the strikers they brought in: GT; Hmm, crouch and allback?! JG; Collymore when he wasn't too upset, and Angel, both class acts but inconsitant BL; Savo and Tommy Johnson. I quite liked TJ, played with his heart on his sleeve. DO'L; None really, does Carlton Cole count? Big ron takes it for me, for one simple reason, Deano and Dalian Atkinson.