praisedmambo

Many people on here would be really bad with the parts of quizzes where you have to name people from photos. That is not Mitrovic nor Costa and the other guy is definitely not Jay Rodriguez!  

40 minutes ago, chips'ngravy said:

Just found out he supports Vox (Spanish far right). He can f**k right off as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah **** that. 

Cleverly was a non entity until Sherwood came. To be fair to Sherwood he was good after that. Manager bounce or whatever. 

That's my memory of it anyway. 

15 minutes ago, thunderball said:

A result like yesterday and the poor showings against Southampton and Watford have coloured the view.  The summer business was OK, given the task in hand: reduce the average age, reduce the wages. It was a success. The problem is the shoddy management for many years prior that left us with over the hill players or deadwood not good enough. We needed a lot of new faces. I think on the whole it has been OK if survival was the objective, but the problems have been two fold:

1. Not enough forward cover. Wes was a risk and unproven, and actually never going to score loads but I think they intended to get some one else in and it didn't materialise. The issue is also Kodjia who is on the payroll, but not giving a toss and being a waste of space, he is like another long term injury.

2. Injuries: This is the main thing, Heaton and McGinn are big misses to the senior reliable players and Wes, despite him being marmite, at least tried and was capable. Now we have lost the spine of the team. Add to that Davis and Mings being out for 3 weeks, and Targett being a little bit injury prone, its very bad.

Two months ago we looked like we just needed McGinn to rediscover his form and two extra forwards, our goal difference was OK considering Wes wasn't that prolific, but the injuries to key players is catastrophic.

This is where I'm at.

30 minutes ago, Fairy In Boots said:

Same parallel decent players just poor coaching 

I don't think this is true at all. We had one or two good players, but the team as a whole was awful. Richards/Lescott were both liabilities. Gestede was not a prem striker. I remember Richards being responsible for half our goals conceded by November. I've forced myself to forget everything else.

The point I'm trying to make though is that we had a bad team with one or two good players. That's the first parallel I'd make to this season. This season we had to buy a lot of players though just to have a squad—and even after all that we're still seeing the likes of Elmohamady, Taylor, Hourihane and Lansbury featuring—it was always going to be a big ask. Captain hindsight makes it easy to point fingers at the players we shouldn't have signed, but that's what Captain hindsight does. Losing McGinn hasn't helped at all.

No.

24 minutes ago, KevinRichardsonsMoustache said:

This might be the wrong place for this comment but when did we last have a player from Eastern Europe who was a success for us? 

 

Out of this list, I don’t think we can call any of them massive successes (despite my fondness for the memory of Savo): Kubicki, Milosevic, Curcic, Balaban, Kalinic.

 

I don’t mean this as some sort of national stereotype comment. I have always wondered why these players could never really do it at Villa when their national teams exude the sorts of qualities we’d like at the club.

Then there was Petrov.

It's always exciting  when one of the Twitter posts starts to load up when you refresh on here. The wonder it may contain. 

I wish I had the discipline not keep checking transfer news.

2 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

This is the reality of the situation that I feel more than partly guilty of for giving oxygen for several pages but only because literally dumbfounded. 

Villa interested in unknown 29 yr old striker with recent history of bad injuries and only 5 goals in 3 seasons

Many Villa fans: Boooooo shit signing. We are a joke club with no ambition

Vs 

Villa interested in signing Benteke

Many Villa fans: I would take him back. Would score for us. The fans would get behind him. He just needs to be loved

Absolute sentimental madness 

Some choice quotes from when we signed Mings last Jan:

"I hope that 1m isbollocks personally its a crazy amount for a player who has hardly played for 6 months. I would prefer a loan deal for 18montha for that price"

14 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Bloody hell the romance in football really is dead. 
 

Benteke returning to villa park would be unbelievable. I don’t care if he’s not the same player or past it. He is still getting minutes so must still be able to play at this level.  Can you imagine the atmosphere on his debut?

I'd be pretty excited tbh. Hope and optimism is always there at the start of things in football. It's what keeps us going surely.

I know that doesn't mean it'd work out (at all), but as others have mentioned, he's still getting time with a decent Palace side—at the very least we need someone to hold the ball up well. And just imagine if he found half the goalscoring form he had with us back in the day.

1 minute ago, wilko154 said:

Piatek going to Spurs

 

Oh well. He had a shit celebration. It fits Spurs though.

2 minutes ago, screwdriver said:

with the ammount of poles in birmingham you could easily add 10000 to the gate by signing a polish superstar. If the owners were as rich as they say they'd go all out and get lewandowski in on a six month loan. however he's always been to scared to come to the prem.

we need a non cup tied striker to come in and fire us to wembley.

we actually need four strikers just to give us a fighting chance. If one doesn't hit the ground running one of the others will.

So many words here but none of it seems to add up to reality. Easily get 10,000 Polish people? We need four strikers now just to have a fighting chance? The owners are either rich  enough to persuade lewandowski to come in for a relegation battle on a six month loan or they're lying. 

4 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Smith's half time team talks strikes again.

We should have signed him in the summer. We needed to put a squad together.

Why would he leave Burnley though and why would they sell him? He's only just rejoined his hometown club.

@thabucks by nothing solid do you really mean nothing?

19 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Nah, don't like Piatek's crouching double pistol goal celebration - pass. 

He looks like a dick doing it.

7 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Giroud doesn’t fit what the board/management were trying to aim for or what the fans have been screaming for for the last 6 months.  The management have talked about young, hungry players that have sell on value....so maybe they have slightly altered that given when need more experience on the pitch.  

But the fans have wanted more goals from a striker, reaction time from a striker and maybe more pace....Giroud is none of them.  He’s a great player in his own right but seems opposite of what both the management and fans have been calling for.  This just seems like fans wanting a name player rather than somebody who fits our style or expectation in the way we should play.

 

So you're saying the fans want a striker who scores loads of goals, has amazing reaction time and loads of pace?

Who'd have thought! Should be ten a penny!

Seriously though, if Giroud is still capable of playing at his level then there is no way we should turn our noses up at him. We do need experience and we do need a striker.

18 hours ago, DCJonah said:

I think it's good to have a striker who can be involved in the build up of attacks and keeps the ball well. 

He does this very well though. It's his major strength in my eyes.

He definitely falls over too much, but that's a different issue.

11 hours ago, Spray said:

Not a chance. Nyland is actually a decent keeper, not a patch on Heaton but a very capable back up.

What do you base this second sentence on? 90% of a game against Wolves when we lost 2-1 and he barely made any saves, along with 15 minutes against Burnley where he made a good catch?

Or half a season of the worst goalkeeping performances most of us have ever seen?

I'm not saying it's not true and that behind a decent defence he won't be better, but I really have no idea why people have suddenly become so confident in him.

EDIT: Also the Liverpool cup game. I don't remember how he was in that—some good saves, sure, but it's not really the game to be making opinions on.

7 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Olivier Giroud is two weeks older than Gabby Agbonlahor.

Just saying.

 

Just saying not a lot! Shall we compare his age to all the other older footballers still playing and who didn't throw the best part of their career away?

I just had a look at Mee's challenge on Gomez. It seems identical. In the Gomez challenge the initial tackle is fine, but he twists his whole body unnecessarily in the exact opposite way to what would be natural and this is what traps Gomez's leg. It's brutal. Sergio Ramos-esque almost. What a dick.

5 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

Which is why I said if it's taking time that's fine.

But not fine if no effort is being made.

So...fine if effort is being made? Either way, nobody knows, so why focus on the negative?

5 hours ago, wilko154 said:

Could potentially do a job for us if Wesley is injured, we most likely won't get a striker in for 2-3 weeks yet.

He would certainly fill a gap on Saturday against Fulham. We might as well throw him a chance after all the money we spent on him.

I can't get my head around a post like this. 'Could do a job' — he never did a job for us in a lower league and he constantly looked awful and way out of his depth.

'He would certainly fill a gap' — he literally is a gap. That's the best way of describing him on the pitch.

How does anyone ever consider him an option?

8 minutes ago, hippo said:

Have we got a recall option on Hogan.

**** that.

18 minutes ago, ferguson1 said:

Apologies, misread. 

I think there was a would missing. Still, it's a little insight into how Villalad thinks!