heystally!

Sunderland have just lost a lump up front. I don't think Bruce's plan is to replace him with a quick kid who's had little first team experience. Heskey could still well be in his sights.

Also, I would love to see an ITK-off between MM and Gazton.

At least Sven is a bigger name than Bob Bradley or Gareth Southgate. Regardless of what people think of him, with him as manager we would have a bigger pull to get some bigger names.

Exactly. So even more sense.

How many deals do people think will get done tomorrow? Everyone will want their targets in for the first game of the season. Hopefully it'll be an interesting day of activity.

Heskey rumour would make sense, now that they have lost Jones to Stoke. Get a big man in to play alongside Bent/Campbell, Heskey is English so would mould easier. I could see it happening. And wasn't he under Bruce at Blues?

MacDonald odds have been shortened to 15/2 on Skybet. Now third favourite behind Sven (odds on) and Bradley.

The futures bright, the futures german!

Apparently, it's definitely orange !

McLeish?

Interesting that this happened after MON left.

He may well have been negotiating it before he left but if not and he was signed up purely by Faulkner (or some other governing body) it coul suggest that MON didn't rate him enough to offer him a new deal.

Or it could have been that it was being drawn up before hand, and the board accepted it because they had faith in O'Neill and his opinions on the youngsters.

We'll probably never know. But it's good that we're getting more players from the youth team into the senior squad. I do hope they all make the grade.

Who would have offered him this deal?

Bobby is not ready for this league.

He will sign his son and start him every game no matter how shit he is.

Bobby Robson is going to sign Bryan Robson for the Villa?

I would love Klinsmann to become manager. He is the antithesis of MON and I think his footballing philosophy is great. He likes fast flowing counter attacking football but in a more modern flowing and technical sense than MON. He is also the epitome of a modern forward thinking manager that brings a lot of new ideas to the table regarding coaching, training and player development. His philosophy is also to integrate the youth, reserve and senior teams by getting them to all play the same type of football so that the reserves become a natural feeder team for the senior team and will be able to easily fit in because they have been brought up playing the same style of football. I'm sure he would be the perfect manager to bring some of our youth through the ranks.

I think that is the kind of footballing philosophy we need at the club, Villa would begin to develop a certain style of football that we could call our own. I think he is also a manger that would fit well with most of the players we have at the club and be able to utilise them well and develop their tactical and technical sides to improve them and get the best out of them.

He got a lot of stick when he first became Germany's manager, he made some big style changes to the whole set up of the national team, but they eventually paid off and he was pretty much lauded a national hero after the previous world cup for his achievements there.

People mention Bayern as a negative point, but there he was given under a year, which didn't actually do too badly at all, and again he had made massive changes to the whole structure of the clubs footballing set up that had not been fully incorporated and come to fruition when he was sacked.

I think given the time he would get us playing fast paced, intelligent technical football that would be great to watch.

I think he is also the kind of progressive thinker that Randy would like, and would fit in well with the clubs structure. I'm sure he would also have some good scouting networks and be able to bring some very good players to the club.

A couple of good articles on him by the BBC.

Link 1

Link 2

I think he'd be great for us too. Good post.

Sven is a management playboy. He is motionless on the touchline, and his laid back approach would quickly get on everyones wick. Does any of this matter ? - not directly - but it quickly builds as non committment to the cause.

All that said - with 2 days until the big kick we could do a lot worse. He has experience of managing big clubs, and managing in the PL - On paper only JOL comes close - and he will take some shifting.

Personally I'm not too bothered about managers on the touchlines. Yes it was great to see O'Neill kicking every ball and celebrating like a jack-in-the-box, but the important thing is results.

If the players get the message, the team are playing well, and we're making progress, then our manager could be asleep in the dugout for all I care.

He'd give us options - Emile - as lovely a bloke as he is - doesn't!

Emile gives the team great options. He has the orange flavour, mint, and regular.

All the other players say he makes great hot chocolate.

Racist.

As long as we sign a Brazilian player, I don't care what happens next.

Sven likes a Brazilian.

Apparently.

Problem solved. I'm sure he could shave some off the wage budget too.

I got that mate, not sure if anyone else did though!

:wink:

You got a Brazilian? Brave.

As long as we sign a Brazilian player, I don't care what happens next.

Sven likes a Brazilian.

Apparently.

Problem solved. I'm sure he could shave some off the wage budget too.

However, I just can't see where he'd fit if we signed Ireland.

A little thing called rotation, though I grant you it's understandable as a fellow Villa fan, you wouldn't have heard that term recently.

Either way, wouldn't we have Delph available in that kind of area, when he's fit anyway?

Yep. I think if we had Petrov, Ireland, Reo-Coker and Delph as our four central midfielders then we'd have some good options for the season. Probably keep Sidwell til January until Delph is fit again.

Then you could also use Young or Downing (or Ireland too) in the number 10 role if we were going to play five in midfield.

Heskey to Sunderland, £1.5m

This would be the second best news this summer if that happened.

With the best news being that Ireland is on the way here, of course...

As long as we sign a Brazilian player, I don't care what happens next.

He shouldn't cost more than 5m pounds I think. His wages would be much lower than for example Sidwell's.

We know that the wage bill is the main issue of worry so getting Sidwell off it and maybe Heskey and then getting Sigurðsson in could work.

No doubt the wages wouldn't be an issue. I couldn't see Lerner or a new manager paying him more than £10k or £15k per week. And maybe they'd actually play him.

But I think Championship clubs get hit harder when a star leaves compared to Prem clubs. So I think we'd be looking at £7-8m at least. Ashley Young cost us close to £10m when he was the same age. But he looks a decent talent. Maybe not needed should Ireland join though.

I'm not going to claim to be close to this one, but I heard a lovely snippet of a whisper today. Actually, I heard it twice which makes me smile.

Heskey to Sunderland, £1.5m

That would be great. All that would leave would be using the Milner money to bid for Huntelaar.

What have people got against Sven, he has by far a better managerial record than MON had, ditto Jol, Hughes, Klinsmann, Curbishley and the other so called candidates.

With Gothenburg he won the Swedish Cup twice, the league once and the UEFA Cup once.

With Benfica he won the Portuguese league 3 times, the Portuguese Cup once and took them to the final of both the European and UEFA cups.

With Lazio he won the Italian league once, the Italian Cup twice, the UEFA Cup winners Cup and Super Cup once and took them to the final of the UEFA Cup.

With Sampdoria and Roma he won the Italian Cup.

So he's won 15 trophies in his club managerial career (18 if you include the Italian and Portuguese Super Cups), he's taken 3 different teams to 6 European finals winning 3 of them. He's won a treble with Gothenburg, won a domestic double with Benfica a year later (narrowly missing out on a treble) and also won a domestic double with Lazio, he remains the only manager to win doubles in 3 different countries.

It could even be argued his tenure at Citeh wasn't a total disaster, he gave them a double over United and their joint highest points finish in the Premiership, if it hadn't been for that meddling Thai nutter who owned them at the time, I'm sure he'd have done better.

I personally think with all his experience and contacts, he's by far the best candidate to manage our great club.

I think it's just the fact that he kind of looks like a paedophile.

Villa should buy Gylfi Sigurðsson from Reading. He's an attacking midfielder who scores loads of goals.

He had fantastic game this evening when Iceland U21s won Germany 4-1 and scored a brilliant goal straight from a free kick. He wouldn't cost too much and I think he can definitely handle playing in the Premier League.

I think we should snap him up before someone else does.

Why wouldn't he cost too much? He's probably Reading's best player, and they have playoff ambitions this year. And they are hardly in the Portsmouth/Cardiff/Sheffield Wednesday predicament at the moment.

Let's wait and see what happens Saturday. If any of the names being mentioned here are at the game, it might give us a better indication of who we can expect.

Odds are calculated with many factors, the biggest being the calculated return/risk to the bookie...so the more people bet on that winning the lower the odds are made.

When you get news papers reporting someone like Sven who's agent when asked says "he would take the villa job" then this makes the news and people believe that to be the next manager. Based on those quotes only I have been ribbed by untold amounts of poeple that he is giong to be our next manager.

The point I'm making is take odds with a pinch of salt, purely that article that says nothing about Sven being our next manager other than he would take the job if it was offered. An article like this is going to massively change the odds as many people will take a punt on betting hes the next manager, it says nothing about the fact AVFC havnt even hinted on they maybe even considering to offer the job to Sven.

It would be easy to take it with a pinch of salt, if it wasn't for the fact that when I went to work, Sven was 8/1 with Skybet. I've come home and it's now 4/5. And as far as I can see, there's no media story that has come out to justify the increased betting activity.

It's kind of worrying that there seems to be some movement on this amongst the bookies. I'd be quite disappointed in getting Sven, but like anyone else I'd give him a chance. After all, he did bring in some pretty decent players to Man City in his single year there, and took them into Europe.

Skybet have Sven 4/5 odds on favourite.

Skybet

Keep l.young.coker and davies bring in Ireland 4 milner.witsel/boateng 4 sidwell and huntelaar 4 heskey

Those last couple would be straight swaps, yes?