VillaChris

Accy...........?

lol Kane was on for about 10 minutes and gets interviewed, don't tell me they gave him MOTM?!

Fantastic game that...there have been some crackers this weekend. Would imagine that would be the replay pick ahead of Liverpool and us.

Has to be one of the best in play bets in football....a penalty to occur in the last 10 minutes and be the last goal of the game, usually a 25/1 shot if you bet around the 80th mark. Had it tonight and in the Man. United game last night (not mentioning the hundreds of games when it dosen't occur!)

Could be a BBC policy, London club and they have plenty of Spurs in their presenting ranks, Lineker, Jenas etc. Full credit to Leicester, I know some say it's down to confidence but this is far from their first choice 11 and some of these players like Bellahoune or whatever he's called haven't played much this season at all yet there's little difference to how they play in the league. Plus they're still pushing men forward. If this was us 2-1 up at Spurs we'd be now parked on the 6 yard box.

I would be surprised. If they beat Sunderland on Wednesday they'd go 8 clear of them. They then have a home game v Watford. And in the run in the have Southampton, us and Norwich all in a row as home games. There are worse teams down there for me although surprised they gave Curtis the job until end of the season as we've seen many caretakers do alright and then the results nosedive when they get the job full time which he sort of has.

He supports Bristol City. And has a soft spot for us.

Looking online, it will barely scrape 30k as plenty of seats available in all 4 stands including plenty in the Holte End which has been pretty full for most games this season. Not sure Palace will sell out either, the drop in temperature will put off people this week aswell. I thought that's why it's odd they're planning a protest for Tuesday rather than the Leicester game but then again there was similar attendance for that Bolton game and that was very posinous as was the Sunderland mid week game in Houllier's season.

Double like button should be made for posts like this!

You do wonder what the tipping point is for Garde though....he couldn't survive barely winning a game for the rest of the season surely? No manager survives going 20 odd games without a win unless I've missed something, Remi must be over 10 by now. Only thing you can conclude is the board would lose confidence in his ability to getting the team promotion next year which I've never been convinced about, it's unlikely you walk the championship when you go into it losing week after week after week.....Derby didn't in 2008 for example and atm we're on their level as sad as it is. Better to do the groundwork now as others have stated.

Nothing in Gary Mac's managerial record suggest he would've been a success as manager here. However the club were correct in wanting to emulate Houllier's style and so the approach to Martinez made perfect sense without you rate Martinez as a manager or not. The problem is once Martinez didn't want to know how on earth you go from him to McLeish rather than another continental appointment which we have now. The time to appoint a Remi Garde type was straight after Houllier, not when we're knee deep in relegation trouble.

Gary Neville losing again. Valencia have been pretty poor, Sociedad should've been 1 up long before this.

We went through a few early on didn't we....Richard Fitzgerald and Michael Cunnah are names that spring to mind. Neither lasted long, whether that was because they couldn't work with MON or just weren't good enough ,I don't know. Can't remember who was the CEO between the period of 2008-10 but then Faulkner turned up...

Wouldn't shock me if Swansea went for him given his brother is there and they'll probably sell Gomis in the summer.

I've never thought he's been as bad as made out in previous seasons, he's had good games and spells of good form. However this season he looks every inch the lower league midfielder who can't believe his luck he's a premier league player. The reason? IMO in previous seasons the likes of D*lph and Cleverley being around him have lifted his game. It's the same with Benteke. Good players lift the standards of other players in the team so they look better than they actually are. Suddenly with no Benteke to get on the end of his crosses, Bacuna goes back to being a mediocre player and without D*lph's energy, Westwood goes back to being a bog standard midfielder who can sometimes pass well but does little else. When these players suddenly are asking to do things in games themselves they're just not capable.

Put it this way to stay up now we're going to have to average 7 points per month from now on.....e.g. next 3 league games all in Jan then 4 in Feb, back to 3 in March. That would be 28 points by end of April so would get us to 36 points for the start of the Newcastle game. I imagine that's the target Garde has given the players but it's not going to happen is it as they fell well short of the 8 point target over xmas, the team just isn't good enough.

Well after last summer you have to assume some of the foreign lads may have insisted on some release clauses in their deals in the event of relegation, say 10m with Ayew. You certainly wouldn't rule it out. Ayew didn't have his best game yesterday but he still nearly scored from an excellent run. If more of this team showed his spirit and heart we wouldn't be in the bottom 3 imo.

Yes it did but we did finish 9th the next year so it wasn't like the situation was irretrievable That said I have no idea how we finished 9th that year as we were in a relegation battle for a long period and even on the last day we needed 4 results to go for us just to finish top 10 and they all came up. 13-14th would've been a much more accurate reflection of that season. I'd probably sum up the two appointements as 1. Appointing Houllier when the opportunity was still there to challenge for the top 6 on more reduced and sustainable terms with a forward thinking manager from abroad as teams like Southampton and West Ham have and are doing with people like Pochettino, Koeman and Bilic. 2. McLeish appointment. SIgnalled to me the club had given up on being a competitive top half force and mediocrity and working on a shoestring was the standard fare and that has continued ever since. Those were the two key summers and Lerner messed up both.

Can't blame him, his career is just drifting away here. I assume his contract is up end of the season aswell. I can only conclude Garde has looked at him in training and like Kozak and Gardner concluded they haven't been involved for so long they just wouldn't be up to top level competitive football.

Pulis moved him very quickly to left back and as you know with his teams he parks them on the 18 yard box with a very deep sitting midfield so his pace wasn't likely to get caught out much. Very much different here, playing centrally and in a very high line.

The easy statement is to say McLeish. I wouldn't hugely disagree with that as in June 2011 we'd had a poor season but still finished 9th, we were selling Young to Man. United but still had Downing and Bent at the club and we still went on to spend a decent amount that summer on N'zogbia and Hutton so the funds hadn't been completely withdrawn. Then we appointed McLeish and the 5 year cycle of doom is nearly at an end...at least for the premier league. However I actually go back to when we appointed Houllier as when things started to go wrong. We'd just finished 6th three times in a row. When you think teams like West Ham and Southampton have appointed excellent managers despite not finishing as high (or being recently promoted) I just can't understand why our managerial search was so limited to out of work managers like Houllier and other people like Curbishley. It probably shows you what was to come even then when our managerial search was so unambitious from a position of strength. I guess it didn't help back then that fan expectation was still so high e.g. we should be challenging for 4-6th then which is why when you look back Houllier got so much more fan stick than our next three managers combined. I wasn't a huge fan of him either but if I was to know what was to come next I'd have been far more understanding of what he was trying to do even with us losing more games than usual in that era. I accept the managerial timing of MON f***ing off wasn't an ideal. Again with hindsight but I just wish the club had left MacDonald in charge until a suitable candidate had turned up, he was capable of winning games with that squad so would've kept us ticking over in mid table until a really good candidate became available.

Isn't it heavily rumoured Brenton is going back there end of the season hence why they've given it to Alan Curtis? They won't go down.

I just got it off a Tennis forum I sometimes look at....a challenger player ranked 200 in the world hits a couple of good shots to win a set and he's described in an ironic way at GOATing the last set.

Kos GOATing today for the Sunderland goal @ghaparr (only messing as I do rate him a fair bit).

Leaves us with what 3 CBs and one of those is Clark.