penguin

Can't believe they have sacked him, where do they think they should be in league? Mid table team to me and competing in Europe, so strange,

Hold the contract talks! Laudrup sacked!

So fire Lambert to hire a worse manager? Sounds like a good plan.

Bollocks is he

Andreas Cornelius were debated last summer as a possible signing. Instead Cardiff bought him and paid a lot of money. AV bought Helenius and paid a quite small transfer fee. You should be happy with that deal, even though Helenius almost ain't playing.

According to danish media Cornelius one of the coming days, are making a transfer back to

FC Copenhagen. Apparently FC Copenhagen pays about 2,5-3,0 mill. £ which is a transfer record in Scandinavia.

Cardiff on the other hand still looses a lot of money. The paid about 6,5-7,0 £ when they bought a heavily overrated Cornelius.

More because Vinecent Tan is a clueless moron rather than the player not being good enough, which may have been the case but obviously impossible to tell after only 8 appearances.

Yes odd that a team with no recognised striker

 

Wrong, Mirallas is a striker. It's where he played for Olympiacos, and it's where he played for the majority of his career. Was quite a good one at Olympiacos too, with 34 goals in 50 odd games.

 

Just because he's utilised as a winger at Everton doesn't mean he's not a striker.

Wrong. Miralllas is a winger. He was moved up front at Olympiakos after playing majority of his time on the wing for Saint-Etienne and Lille. And who knew a good player would be able to score loads of goals in a shit league. But anyway like I said no recognised striker.

At least no striker recognised by you

I think the Everton game was a very hard one to call for Lambert, on one hand they do have injuries and I personally would have liked a much more positive approach with us attacking and putting pressure on them, then again what fan wouldn't, but then on the other hand this does leave us more vulnerable defensively. Seeing as how good defensively Everton are especially at home, 7 clean sheets in a row earlier in the season, I do understand the caution both in formation and play as them scoring the first goal would have been a disaster.

This said what I think is the most disappointing about the whole thing is that I've always seen Everton, well up until recently, as a very similar side to us and for us to line up that defensively against them seemed an admission that Lambert didn't have the confidence in the team to take them on, almost like a championship team playing a premier league team in the cup and to see Villa line up like that against Everton is depressing.

I know Ill probably get some stick for saying this seeing as he's highly rated here by the looks of it but I really don't think Vlaar is that good. Not saying he's terrible by any means, just not anything special, the fact he is standing out for me is an indicator of how poor our defence is.

You act as if I don't have any qualms with our performance yesterday, read my posts properly, I actually criticise Lambert quite a lot,.

 

If you can't take a reasoned argument seriously, then there's no point persisting. I'm going to watch the Superbowl.

Don't see how disagreeing with your opinion constitutes not taking a an argument seriously but ok. Just took issue with your downplaying of the significance of performances.

Being "obsessed with results", isn't that the whole **** point of football? We lost yesterday, ergo our whole performance wasn't good enough. But I couldn't give two shits if we had 1% possession and 1 shot all game if it meant we win every game 1-0. An extreme example, but at the end of the day if negative tactics get results, performance doesn't matter. It didn't get results yesterday, but it could have if the right changes were made during the match.

What a load of rubbish. We lost so that means our performance wasn't good enough? For sure performance is correlated with the result but one doesn't equal the other. You could have 80% possession, pepper the opponent with shots and they could score from their one lone attempt, the loss wouldn't mean a bad performance it would just mean you didn't have the luck on the day but if you did the same again 9/10 you would win it. Whilst for the other team, 20% possession and one shot, but the win means it was a good performance?

Good performances in the long term will breed good results and bad performances bad results, this is why people are concerned with them. Using your example, say we win the first three games of the season having 1% possession and one shot. Yet we'd got extremely lucky and it all probability if it continues we will start to get spanked, the results don't show this but the performance does.

He is to be addressed as Mr Lambert at all times

Thanks for the explanation.

 

What has disappointmed me in Lambert is that he seems to stick with his favourite players, and doesn't give chances for own youth players...similarly like MON. I can't believe that Carruthers and Grealish would be possibly any worse than "Atomic Strike" Tonev.

I don't understand this at all. If Lambert is sticking with his favourite players then how come Weimann kept on getting game time even when he was in bad form? Delph has been a stalwart in midfield for us whereas El-Ahmadi doesn't appear all the time and Sylla barely features at all. Likewise Helenius has got hardly any game time. As far as I know most of our youth players just aren't ready yet.

 

Tonev doesn't appear much for us anyway.

Surely Weimann's continued run in the team whilst in poor form would be evidence of lambert sticking to his favourites is it not?

The whole strategy just stunk of a lack of confidence, both in the squad and himself. Everton were completely injury plagued and there for the taking, yet we lined up like we were playing barcalona.

Obviously lambert didn't have the tactical nouse/self-belief to go at the everton team, tbh would have rather seen us lose going at it rather than trying to burgle a result as is becoming way to common.

The good performances have been way too few and far between (results don't necessarily reflect a performance).

Best way I can put it, how I feel we play, is that lambert sets us out to steal a result rather than earn it. If that makes sense.

Is the commentary really as bad a stones wankathon as it sounds?

Think the boring approach is the way to go in this game tbh, they are so good defensively at home. Didn't they go 6/7 games earlier in the season in a row without conceding at home?

Conceding would be disastrous and hopefully when a chance falls our way wel take it.

Thought most grounds did that kind of accounement, I've heard it multiple times.

Think it's time to set up the reclining chairs, the ball isn't gonna be spending much time on the floor.

Realistically think it'll be 0-0 or 0-1 to us, which I'd take everyday of the week because of the form their in.

Any business would set a yearly budget, the January window should be simply for mopping up a loan signing or spending left over money from the summer.

 

In most cases bad planning leads to January purchases it is quite rare a club buys a player they have been tracking for ages and the chance comes to sign them.

 

Feel free to disagree

Don't disagree, the thing that's disappointed me was the fact all the talk about the AM from lambert about how he had so many targets and how he thinks they are so important, it really seemed like a foregone conclusion, at least at the start, that one would be incoming.

Why do people think Holt will be signed permanently? Is it purely because Holt played under Lambert under Norwich?

This is one of the big reasons ,yes. And it's also the only reason he's with us now.

That probably is a factor but let's not forget that the biggest reason why he's here is because Kozak's injured. Kozak isn't going to be injured forever.

No but Benteke is not going to be here forever either. I think Holt will be Kozaks backup next season

This would be an absolute disaster, if we sold Benteke and didn't use the money, and to pry him away it would have to be a substantial amount, to buy a replacement surely there would be uproar.

I hope he does well, always seemed highly rated. Be interesting to see how he does in a side which is very free scoring rather than the borefest that was Blackpool.

Its hard not to look at the transfer window as anything other than a disappointment. No permanent signings, two players on loan but only one of those improves our first 11.

I'd like to think we have enough to stay up. Certainly our recent performances against Arsenal, Liverpool and West Brom would suggest we have. However it is only 4 weeks ago we were on a very poor run both results and performance wise. Therefore if we can maintain recent form we'll be fine and if not and we revert back to how we were playing beforehand then we could get sucked back in.

Really though we shouldn't just be looking at all this and be saying we have enough to stay up. There comes a point when that isn't enough. I'd have liked us to have brought in one or two permanent signings this window that could have put down a marker that we are now really looking to kick on and want to be looking upwards and not behind us. We have failed in that for me.

Loans can become permanent. We all knew REALLY how this was gunna play out.

I very much think Holt will be signed on a permanent if Lambert is still here come the summer

I really hope not, the guy will be 33 and would hope we have our expectations set much higher.

2003 called, it wants it's GIF back.

1960 called, it wants its joke back

Weird how 14 things fell through

I know, feels almost insulting feeding us such bullshit, would rather hear the truth than be given false hope. I guess there is the tiny possibility each one fell through, although common sense would dictate otherwise.

Anyone ITK?

I've heard there will be no signings until summer

What a boring window... Fulham did some good business though.

Villa Fans1. Should always be signing exciting players, whether they are needed. Doesn’t matter how much they cost, just sign someone.2. Any players not signed, or players don’t want to sign... Its always Villa and the owners fault, ALWAYS. Nobody else is involved in the deals, so its Villa **** it up on their own.3. Not signing players means there is no money and nothing to do with not the right players available.

Everything I've seen you post today appears to be deliberately inflammatory and belittling to any with an opinion different to your own.

Who's said we need to sign players for the sake of it when they aren't needed?

That certainly isn't the general consensus I've sensed from the majority, we obviously have areas of the squad which can and need to be strengthened this hardly seems to be too much to ask. And as lambert has mentioned numerous times how much he wants an AM and how he had numerous targets the fact we haven't got one does seem to suggest a lack of financial support especially coupled with a lack of any permanent signings at all.