rjshare

dont know what the shape is yet but i reckon that they have got it wrong! milner and petrov will be in the middle regardless i would have thought then it has to be either young off carew or young left with downing making three in the middle.

Agree He wont be unhappy, he will give 100% like he always does. I hope so Jez - although his head's been turned I expect him to put the effort in today. Who will take a pen though if needed??? Would we trust Milner to take it?? yes - the guy is about as close as you can get to a perfect pro. he's a yorkshire lad, where spades are spades, you scratch it where it itches and you play to win.

its his first game as manager - i dont think any of his selections will be political - he is just picking what he sees as the best team.

so whats the shape then? young behind carew? downing inside with carew on his own up top? lots of options but looks like one winger too many on paper!!!

cant see deschamps leaving marseille. he is very much at 'his' club, he won the league and league cup last season and is therefore in the champs league this season too. cant see what the villa has to offer to make it a remotely appealing job to be honest.

giving milner stick could seriously backfire. what happens if he doesnt get sold? suddenly he becomes an integral member of the team again and everyone who booed him are going to have to either choke on it and and accept him again or will continue to abuse him and possibly eventually drive out a player who is 1) quality and 2) never asked to leave in the first place.

when you look at his car i'd hate to imagine what kit he'd want us to play in!!!

:| Money is very important but I don't think a man who spent £4 million on renovating an historic ruin will sign a manager just because it brings the club a week of interest in the U.S. I'm not saying Bradley won't be considered, just that it would be for his football credentials (not great in my opinion), and not for the very temporary publicity it would bring in the U.S. i think you are right there - signing landon donovan would be a better bet for that.

No. very no. reminds me of gregory in some ways - at one point in his career he was the future 'it' english manager but made bad career moves and is now just, well - where is gregory anyway?

well at least no-one has mentioned bringing back dol yet

Why would you want Curbishley over Sven? Curbishley has never won anything and his only success was keeping Charlton mid table for the length of time he did, if we're to progress surely we require something with a track record that is a bit better than that. Sven on the other hand has won the double in three different countries. curbs ONLY managed to keep a club with a small revenue stable in the prem by using a mixture of low cost astute signings and home grown talent. i can see why someone might think he would fit our needs.

i can only see us getting someone unspectacular like curbishley - but in some ways it might not be such a bad thing. we have a good side who have gone close to the champs league two seasons on the bounce - and that is under a regime of total tactical inflexibility, minimal rest due to a lack of squad rotation and poor team selection. if the new manager could just put eleven players out in their prefered positions we will probably improve.

Steven Sidwell – 5 – Made no impression other than of a player who has his bagged packs... you'd struggle to play football with your packs bagged too!

Yes crazy for thinking a semi final and a final given our recent record in cups is something good, added to a good points total, league finish and decent challenge for 4th yes i think it can be used to show a good season. Why is it quite ordinary, other good teams lost to lower league opposition, why is it just ordinary to beat lower league opposition when MON does it? Yeah horrible when actual facts get in the way of a good complaint with nothing to back it up eh? it is you who refuse to acknowledge facts. no one is trying to claim that we didnt get to a cup final etc etc - it is you who refuses to acknowledge that whilst it was great to get to wembley in actual fact to get there we got the easiest draw of all time and really struggled to win some games that we should have won easily. the only time we got beaten was when we played teams above us in the league so we got as far as "form" would have suggested we should do.

no - pointing out that when you use it as a benchmark of greatness, it actually boils down to something quite ordinary. no - mon shouldnt do anything at all. it is YOU who should stop using the argument of - "but he got us to a cup final" as a get-out-of-jail-free card for anything that the manager might be doing - in some fans eyes - wrong. no one is complaining about having a good cup run - they are trying to put into perspective what an acheivement it was - or wasnt, depending on your point of view.

thats not complaining, its pointing out a fact. the bit about stupidity says more about you than the person who you were directing it at.

so you are of the opinion that the league is just a run down of balance sheets are you? if team a spends more than team b they will finish above them? thats it, no chance of upsetting the odds a bit? we dont have some wimbledon crazy gang squad - we have a squad of mostly very good players, who on their day are capable of beating anyone - last season proved it. we dont have a manager who is capable of outwitting a visiting 9-1-1 formation as demonstrated by the likes of wolves and stoke etc. those are the games that cost us and unless mon suddenly swallows a tactical encyclopedia in the next fortnight i cants see it changing. i think that the league is getting harder at the top, so there is every chance in my opinion that we will struggle to finish 6th this year - hence my prognostic of decline for the future.

How odd, you appear to be saying that football managers should be judged on the future alone? Can you explain to me how that works? And if we're in decline, you come we keep getting more points season on season with (imo of course) increased competition in our section of the league. If that is indeed decline then I think we should decline some more so where does the continuing arguments about dol fit into that then? why does the fact mon took a team that had finished 6th and then 16th prior to his arrival and got them to finish er... 6th again mean that four years later he is the man to take us higher up the league. i didnt say mon should be judged on the future because that is well - you're just posting for effect really arent you? i said lets agree that he has done up to now a decent job - because he has, but what he achieved in the last four seasons wont give us any more points this coming season. if he doesnt sign a single new player but reduces the squad by a few bodies probably will. i also didnt say we are IN decline - i said in my opinion the answer to the question "what does the future hold?" is decline - not exactly the same is it? i dont believe he has any squad building strategy, i dont believe he has this summers transfer activity under control and therefore i dont think he is in a position to take us any further. your reply wasnt actually a reply to what i wrote... So is it in MON we trust or do not trust? If it is not, then can you change your signature and advise when your mind changed as I don't see many failures in MON when it comes to someone being a custodian of our football club - which is what you are basing your argument on. Tactically, yes I see flaws but not in our future potential. does my signature make any **** difference to the fact that we are a fortnight away from the new season and have a smaller squad than last season? my mind was changed when we threw away the chance of finishing fourth two seasons on the trot purely due to bad management.

How odd, you appear to be saying that football managers should be judged on the future alone? Can you explain to me how that works? And if we're in decline, you come we keep getting more points season on season with (imo of course) increased competition in our section of the league. If that is indeed decline then I think we should decline some more so where does the continuing arguments about dol fit into that then? why does the fact mon took a team that had finished 6th and then 16th prior to his arrival and got them to finish er... 6th again mean that four years later he is the man to take us higher up the league. i didnt say mon should be judged on the future because that is well - you're just posting for effect really arent you? i said lets agree that he has done up to now a decent job - because he has, but what he achieved in the last four seasons wont give us any more points this coming season. if he doesnt sign a single new player but reduces the squad by a few bodies probably will. i also didnt say we are IN decline - i said in my opinion the answer to the question "what does the future hold?" is decline - not exactly the same is it? i dont believe he has any squad building strategy, i dont believe he has this summers transfer activity under control and therefore i dont think he is in a position to take us any further. your reply wasnt actually a reply to what i wrote...

its funny how whenever say, a small heath fan laughs at villa fans and says we all live in the past we all jump over him (metaphorically!) but its 90% of what this post is talking about! mon has done ok - agreed, now lets stop talking about it as it is irrelevant. what does the future hold? can mon take this club further? does he appear to have a strategy of evolving the team in the way say wenger does? is he in control of the destiny of his current squad? for me the answers are decline, no, no and no.

and newcastle and leeds would never have got relegated...

i wish there were more players like yorke. they get to play football for a living and make huge fortunes at the same time, SO SMILE FOR FµCKS SAKE - YOU DONT REALISE HOW GOOD YOU HAVE GOT IT!!! yorke is probably the only professional player who ever looked like he was genuinely enjoying what he did. and: no.

when winston churchill lost the election following the war do you think it was because people thought he had done a bad job??? sometimes it is just time for a change, the outgoing person doesnt have to be put in front of a firing squad - its just time to move on. for me, mon has come in, steadied the ship, done what we needed and can no longer really do any more for us. i have no doubt that if he stayed at the club for another ten years we would finish somewhere between 6th and 8th for every single one of those seasons - but we would have an average crowd of 10k every week.

no, that would be birmingham - they finished three places below us last season.

carew is villa personified. brilliant on his day, woefully hopeless on others. he does enough to keep us interested, raise our hopes, pull of the odd shock and then just when you start to believe, it all goes @rse up and we are left pulling our hair out and thinking how next season will be better!