CBGB

Nothing would surprise me with this game (except for Hull tonking us).

This. He's one of those players who does his job without getting noticed. When he doesn't do his job though, he's quickly jumped on. Some of his crossing lately has been fantastic. People forget he's on an unfamiliar right side for most of the game and will take a while to fully settle after his injury. The new Gareth Barry, then?

Good away performance, I thought it merited a goal or two more TBH. Milner... as everyone's said.. was the difference. And once I got a reliable stream, it was a fun game to watch. I'm pretty sure MON brought on Sidwell AND Heskey just to wind up sections of the internet.

Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lilith

We were under the cosh most of the game but the defence held firm and got us a point we wouldn't have in previous seasons. That's pretty much it.

Spurs will win 2-1. I'm shit at predictions usually though.

Not super confident about this. They are more rested and us losing Ashley Young is a real blow. Can see Liverpool actually playing well and winning, then the press bigging up them once again. Hope we play NRC and get stuck into them, so fingers crossed as it's a big test if we have any genuine ability to bounce back.

A genuinely hard-working, historic win yesterday. And the thing is, we can play better than that **** fantastic!

Thank you Agents Cahill and Knight

...and Priest are from Birmingham too.

I know, I can barely remember last Monday either. :winkold:

Russell Morris - The Real Thing (Parts One and Two)

Wow! Just watched the game again and that was a throwback to the way we were playing last December - soaking up pressure, defending well, great at set pieces and always a threat on the break. The 4-5-1 is made for playing away from home, and I have to say the midfield three of Petrov, NRC and Sidwell played really well today - swapping roles constantly to tackle, harry, defend and break forward. Big credit to the defence and goalkeeper obviously, + to the forwards as well. And apparently Emil Heskey has a role after all, as our new left back! Overall a great team performance and a great managing by MON. A couple of questions, though. Which is the real Villa - today or Wigan? And where is Carew?

We have to go 4-5-1, we need Carew or Gabby to replace Heskey, and a couple of defensive midfielders to shield the back four. If we play really well, we might only lose 2-0 :winkold:

MON is doing OK. It's amazing how knee-jerk and impatient this site has become recently. I think some people are suffering from raised expectations, Premiership fans' disease. That said, he's brought alot of criticism on himself. The last-minute signings thing is really old at this point. It is pretty obvious the squad is worse at the moment than it was at the end of last season. It is pretty obvious that Heskey is not the world's greatest striker the way MON deploys him. It's obvious to me at least that 4-5-1 is the best system with our current group of players. But armchair manager is an easy job. And the season rarely ends the way it looks in August...

Somewhere between the middle two options. At the moment, I'm really excited for tomorrow; hopefully Delph and Albrighton playing; Gabby, Ashley and Milner running defences ragged; Carew dominating... Over the season, I have my doubts we can last the stretch - but some good additions could still change that.

With the current squad, we will slip back a bit - let's say 8th. 1) The major worry for me is that the squad is still small and not especially deep. We have quite a lot of (talented but) inexperienced youth. Without further quality additions, the same thing that happened last season is likely to happen again: burnout in the final stretch. 2) Without Laursen our defence is weaker, full stop: if Distin/Dunne/Warnock came in, it would be stronger than today but still not as good as it was. 3) It's almost a perennial thing for Villa, we need a player who can open up defences (think Merson, Carbone) - so we often struggle to open up teams. And we don't have strikers that score an enormous amount of goals to bail us out. IMO we need to sign someone like Tuncsay or better, and a good striker to replace Marlon too. 4) It's become fashionable on VT to say Barry wasn't that good or important for us after all, now that he's gone. Personally I think there's a reason he's picked for England and feel he's a big loss. Whether a restructured midfield will fare better without him... I hope so and, well, over the season we'll see.

So say our whole first team is injured and this lot is going to play all our matches from next Saturday til May 2010? I would say the second 11 would be lucky to avoid relegation. Why? 1) The team will be comfortably outplayed by the better teams - the top 4, Everton, Man City and Tottenham, maybe a couple of others too. 2) They would be outmuscled by Stoke, Sunderland and others. 3) Inexperience - we saw this season what happens when a young team gets burned out. It's a team that might win a few matches here and there, good enough to play in the lower reaches of the cups. But it's really just very raw talent and over the length of the full season, they would be found out. Summer friendlies are not the same as the Premiership! Don't get me wrong, I'm excited by the emergence of some of the youngsters, but I think you're way overrating them & underrating the level of competition...

The Association - Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies.

I don't think "complacency" is the right word. For the players in the last five minutes on Saturday, maybe.

They have a very good new manager. Their players who will be keen to impress their him. We may have a slight weakness at home. We played midweek, they didnt. We have slipped in the last couple of games, and seem to need a lot of chances to score. We don't have much of a bench if things need changing. I think a win is a long shot, but who knows?

Top song... (crap YouTube video, though)

Great song, but I love Prodigal Son the best by them

The Kinks - King Kong Great song, I'd never heard it before.