TB

12 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I still don't think we have a chance of escaping relegation by playing a possession game.

we need an ugly PULIS approach to survive.

I don't think we have players that'll fit the Pulis mould (ugly or not...)

If (BIG if) Garde can get them playing to their strengths we may have a slim chance.

5 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Sherwood.

Garde has written him off but he's clearly not picking him for a reason at this moment.

OK. You've probably seen more of Kozak than I have, so if you think he's been consistently poor, that's fair enough, and you may be right at that.

But that wasn't really my point. I just wondered why anyone, taking into consideration his multiple and conflicting opinions, bewildering team selections, disastrous in-game tactics and general f**kwittery, would use his stance on any particular player to back up their opinion? 

I deliberately omitted him from my list of managers in my previous post. He deserves praise for keeping us up last season, of course, but as far as I'm concerned, he couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag.

(rant over)

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

Kozak looked poor nearly every time i saw him. He showed early on he wasn't good enough for this level and injury problems won't have helped. There's a reason two managers have now decided that Kozak isn't good enough for one of the worst teams in the league. 

Ayew, after a slow start, has shown qualities and attributes suited to the premier league and he really looks like someone who will get better and better. 

Really? Which two managers might that be, then? I believe that Garde has said after watching him in a U21 game (in which he didn't score) that he didn't think Kozak offered anything more than the other strikers available to him. I don't think that is equivalent to writing Kozak off.

Lambert (you may be effing and blinding to the nth degree about his time here, but I think most will agree he was an actual manager, just not fit for the task at Villa) had Benteke available, so Kozak obviously would be a back-up striker (and then he got injured).

Kevin McDonald? A caretaker manager - ok, he didn't play him, so that's one, I guess.

Uh? No, I don't. I do know who she is, of course. And what's that got to do with the price of cheese?

And the other is obviously the other way around... ok, I get you

Thank you - genuinely laughed out loud at your explanation. But shouldn't the correct phrase be 'the difference between the quality of the two leagues'? Obviously a non-native English speaker here, so I'm happy to be corrected...

1 minute ago, Grasshopper said:

it has one leg both the same

Yes, I know :-) Still don't know the difference between the quality of both leagues, though...

2 hours ago, PaulC said:

With the parachute money we should be able to compete at the top end of the championship. Theres a huge difference between the quality of both leagues. 

Is this question similar to 'What's the difference between an elephant?'

If he has the ability to be in the right place at the right time, and also possesses the ability to convert a decent percentage of the chances (Bent converted about 1 in 6, I think), I honestly couldn't be bothered about his general play. That alone makes him a nuisance, and the other team must keep that in mind.

9 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Spurs are a bigger club than Villa at the moment and so is teams like Palace, Swansea and Stoke who are attracting players we can only dream of. Yes we have a great history but so do Leeds, Wolves and Forest and if we keep talking about history then we are no better than Liverpool

So is the only thing that defines a 'big' club at the moment (and how long is that moment?) what kind of players they can attract? And I really don't get your comment about 'no better that Liverpool' historically. Is Liverpool historically-speaking - a small or medium-sized club, then - in your view? 

10 minutes ago, momo said:

This bigger club discussion is not something I like to discuss. It is a matter of opinion. If you put away those Villa-specs for a minute, you will see that Tottenham as of right now, and the past five years and maybe (but hopefully not) the next five years (especially if Villa get relegated) are a bigger club revenue wise, world wide fan base wise, home support attendance wise, and sporting achievement wise. If you only take into account trophy wise, then yeah, Villa is bigger, but we are really hanging on to trophies won in the 1890's....

Well, you brought the 'bigger' topic up in your post, I didn't. I just responded to your claim. If you don't like to discuss it, then don't. I agree - it's a matter of opinion. As for a Villa fan talking about Villa specs - just wow. I think we'll just leave it there...

10 minutes ago, PaulC said:

Yes we were the equal of them and Man City a few years ago but both are bigger clubs than us now.

It comes down to individual opinions of what a 'big' club is, I guess. I'd wager that few supporters would have said that Manchester City and Villa were of equal size before they hit the jackpot...

7 hours ago, momo said:

Bigger than Tottenham?

1) The biggest club he'll ever 'manage' in the future, no reference to what he may (or might) have done in the past.

2)  A Villa supporter suggesting that Tottenham is a bigger club than Villa? OK...  obviously more successful and better run nowadays than the current Villa setup, but bigger? Really?

13 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

End of the day we have employed him to win football matches. I agree it's a really poor squad but then 1) imo Bournemouth, Norwich and Sunderland all have poor premier league squads. One of the four will stay up this season, maybe two so a couple of those managers will exceed expectations.

Don't quite understand how people saying 2) Sherwood's a chancer and is useless for losing game after game will seemingly just sit back and say Remi has no chance if we lose game after game. The mitigating circumstance of course is the fixture list is a lot harder atm due to 3) Sherwood messing up the easy start spectacularly so I accept that.

4) I don't accept us getting relegated meekly. If that happens I don't want him managing us in the championship as a fair few foreign managers have struggled in that league recently. 

1) Bournemouth and Norwich managers have had more time working with their squad. As for Sunderland, you may have a point. But at this point in time, Garde has had two games. Too early to call yet.

2) Sherwood kept us up, and does indeed deserve praise for that. But the very same chancer traits that helped him keep us up last season (loud-mouth, braggart, over-the-top-confidence) worked against him this season (and possibly the last games last season including the cup final - losing mentality, not my choices etc). Chancer and long-term out of his depth: IMO yes. If Garde goes on to lose game after game after some time in charge he deserves to be criticised. Chancer? No, I don't believe so. From what I know of Garde, he seems to be the exact opposite of Sherwood as a manager - an anti-Sherwood, you might say. Not a PL-quality manager, or not suited to this squad in the current league position? Possibly. Currently he has lost one single game... Let's see, shall we? 

3) IMO, Sherwood didn't only mess up the 'easy' start (not as 'easy' as you might think with a new squad needing to gel from the word Go and playing a settled team with managers knowing the team's strengths and weaknesses) - he messed up the squad's confidence long-term. Any manager would have their work cut out to restore the team's confidence, not only in their own abilities but also in their team-mates' after that barrage of negative and self-aggrandizing comments he made (not to mention the team selections and borderline kamikaze subs).

4) Yes, agree with you (but not fully, however!) on this. If there are no hints of a new manager beginning to turn it around, instilling some belief and fight into the team this season, someone else should take over next season. But surely the manager's ability is more important than his nationality?

Possibly, depending on who/what is lost...

Oh cod. I knew it... A bleak future looms. Unless a ray of hope appears, I imagine you'll be carping on about this now forever. (or at least until the next punathon comes along....)

Yes, English is my second language.Happy to help!

nah :-) more that I'm not too sure whether my post was considered highbrow or fish pun... (cannot see a sole reason that I should be included on page 62... )

(Uh-oh. What did I just do?)

Not too sure which page number you're on at the moment... 

As both loath/loathe comes from the same Old English root: lath/lað, I do hope that he avoids the German and French words from the same root while at Aston Villa: Leid (German) and laid (French)...

Well, yes, I know that the new manager syndrome sometimes kicks in, and sometimes it just doesn't. Too many variables involved. Even so, you would expect a short period of players putting in an extra shift in order to impress the new manager, so a brief bounce should be expected, even though it might peter out into nothing significant afterwards.

But I was really on about actually having a proper manager, someone aware of the old saying that round pegs should go in round holes, as opposed to someone telling the pegs that he wants them to express themselves and then leaving them to dig their own holes to the best of their individual ability...

And while I'm at it: A possible new manager bounce has been discussed several times, as in: does it actually exist? And if so, for how long - and by how much - may a team profit?

Well, how about a finally having an actual manager bounce? Hopefully for much longer, and to a greater degree?

Totally agree, but I'd like to change just one word in your post...