roadoftrinity

Its not just the money thats ruining the game, its the fans being brain washed by it.

Completely agree with that part.

That would suit me. A new CEO/board with football knowledge/experience and a manager we could all get behind. I would be happy!

I don't think there is a manager out there that we would all get behind.

The FFP are absolutely a white elephant, they will not solve anything and merely allow the status quo to be maintained and give some owners an easy excuse

If you are rich enough they are avoidable

Unfortunately our owner isn't rich enough though to give a massive sponsership deal like Man City.

Sunderland are concerned by it as well, there owner doesn't seem like he is just looking for an excuse? It probably wont make any difference to the big clubs, but UEFA could quite happily screw over Villa to set an example.

What about his assists?

Surely if he assisted a fair few, he was important?

I'll go with John Terry, a solid defender nothing more.

Got to be John Terry for me as well, and not even a solid defender these days.

I'd have him RB, him or Cuellar.

He's got to stay in the centre for me. It's been a breath of fresh air to see a ball winner in the centre of the park with mobility and discipline.

Capello doesn't seem to think it's to serious. Lets hope so. Kendrick is just stating the obvious as normal, he has been sent home from England so of course he is a doubt for our next game.

"I decided that Agbonlahor will go home," said Capello.

"It is a little thing but out of respect to the club it is no good to put him forward for the next game because he won't be 100 per cent fit.

"I was really happy when I selected him too because at this moment he is in fantastic form."

What I don't understand is considering how much the wage bill has been reduced and how much McLeish tells us it still needs to be reduced how they could ever have really delivered on this?

Either they could afford the extra salary then and something has changed since in either circumstance or finance. Or they couldn't actually have paid those extra wages in which case how genuine were the offers and the talk of trying to keep the players?

We still signed Given and N'Zogbia on big wages. McLeish also said that there is no issue with any of the first team players been on big wages, it's the players that aren't in the first team that are.

Surely wage bill is a problem when we are paying massive money to the likes of Beye, Ireland and Cueller who hardley feature.

VB, the issue with what you ahve said is that this

the recent performances of some of our younger players is exciting for our immediate future.

is actually this

the recent performances of some of our younger players is exciting for future selling potential.

ie we do not have a competitive future in terms of achieving anything on the pitch IMO. Which is sort of a goal of being in the game in the first place, or should be

All depends though Richard, this time, we might get a good team together, that wants to stop around for a few years at least. Also, hopefully the club will learn from past mistakes, and make sure the players are on long term contracts, as soon as a player is down to two years these days they hold the cards.

I understand that some fans are unhappy and frustrated by Villa's somewhat inevitable inability to hold on to our best players and attract a top manager. I also accept the view that Randy has shown inexperience and naivety on a number of occasions during his stewardship of the club.

However, I really believe that Randy is an honorable man trying to do his best for the long term future of the club. Our team is probably about where it should be at the moment in the Premiership, and the recent performances of some of our younger players is exciting for our immediate future.

At a time when whole countries are on the verge of collapsing financially, spending big money to achieve progress to the next level is no longer the option that it was a few seasons back. Sensible house keeping and development of our young players is the correct way to go in my opinion.

I don't expect posters to agree with my opinion, but I'm happy to give my personal view as a satisfied Villa supporter.

Completely agree with this.

Got to start to be given some game time soon really hasn't he? If Bannan isn't going to feature over coming weeks, it could be a great time to put him in with Jenas coming back, Petrov, Jenas with vast experience should allow him to play without any real pressure of having to perform and control. Maybe same with Delph if he were to be given a chance (although extremely disappointed with how he started the season) that extra experience can help though.

Harsh to drop Herd though surely?

Personally, I think we should move back to a 4-4-2. We aren't creating enough chances so lets try something different, get some balls in the box and give Bent and Gabby some more chances.

......................Given......................

Hutton.....Cueller.....Dunne..Warnock

Albrighton...Herd....Petrov....N'Zogbia

................Bent......Gabby...............

If that muppet McLeish had played an ACM - Ireland or Gardner - instead of Heskey we might have had a chance of winning!

I'll quote this one again as you seem confused. 5 minutes to go and 2 - 1 up, that is a chance of winning surely? Why didn't we win from that position? Because of shit defending or because we weren't playing Ireland or Gardner?

I have to say that he did play well today and scored a great goal. If that muppet McLeish had played an ACM - Ireland or Gardner - instead of Heskey we might have had a chance of winning!

Anyone with a clue about football can see that it was poor defending that meant we didn't win that game today. Guess you could call our manager a muppett for the defending or maybe think that you are lashing out as you had to say Petrov had a good game.

Wigan, Blackburn, Swansea, Norwich, Bolton etc. should be survivalists, to use your term, we should be looking at 7th to 10th IMO, playing some entertaining football and developing the strong youth pipeline.

I would completely agree with you on that, it will be a massive disappointment if we don't finish in the top 10 this season, personally, I still think we will but time will tell on that.

Well then why did the Sheikhs go for Man City?

Who knows, when they make a statement on it I will let you know.

I was talking about an actual statement from the Chelsea chairman, about why Abramovich thought it wasn't a good idea to buy Villa but wanted to buy Tottenham.

Difference is, Spurs have a sustainable wage bill due to season ticket revenue been double ours and having a massive amount of extra leverage in sponsership been a London based club. Hence when Abramovich was trying to buy a club, he turned down the option of buying Villa because we were in Birmingham and "the long-term opportunities were limited". However, he wanted to buy Spurs but they never returned his calls, of course the rest is history.

Yes but he knows that in the next 12-24 months more of the big earners will be gone on Bosnans

- Cuellar, Dunne, Collins, Guzan, Heskey, Petrov

We could still have signed Robert Green and Gabriel Obertan if he was really trying to be a cheapskate.

Time will tell but hopefully we will try and push on again when we have our wages in check. All we can hope is the money he has invested in our manager is money well spent.

Randys main fault appears to be not having a plan B

You can't fault him for having a real go in years 1-4, but now it's a vacuum

True, but if he had given up completely as people think, we wouldn't have signed Shay Given and Charles N'Zogbia on wages higher than most of the teams outside the top 6 would pay.

Of course the owner is at fault, so is MON for not getting us to the Champions league when we were in such a great position, so are Man City for moving the goal posts, so are the fans for not turning up, so is the economic climate for effecting sponsership revenue.

We are where we are but it's not one persons fault, just a set of circumstances but we are in a better position than a lot of other clubs.

You can't completely blame Randy for the wage bill, he was gambling on us been able to extend the ground, but unfortunately we just don't have the fan base that go to the games to do that.

Yes you can. Good business men, with a proper board, don't gamble. They make informed decisions and act on them.

Petrov and Heskey on £50k+. Who else would have taken those two of us and matched those wages? He overpaid (wages wise) IMO because he did not know the market and did not get the right advice.

Someone else asked earlier who the best chairman was. Whoever appointed David Dien at Arsenal would be my answer. A good chairman needs to put a good management team in place and use them well, not a bunch of yes men with no knowledge of the business or market it operates in.

But don't you agree that the fan base wasn't there that we thought we had? In our best ever Premier League season in the current format, plus a cup final and semi final, our ground was on average 90% full, around 14th on the list of the Premier League clubs, it was then Randy decided to scale back. So the fans have to share some of the blame.

You can't completely blame Randy for the wage bill, he was gambling on us been able to extend the ground, but unfortunately we just don't have the fan base that go to the games to do that.

We're about 4 points down on where we should have been in my view - 4 3 0 would look a lot more convincing than 2 5 0 and we really should have been able to turn a couple of those draws into wins.

Not great, but hardly a hanging offence, and capable of being rectified as the season goes on.

A sensible summary.

However, in the vast majority of the draws we have been lucky, IMO, to come away with a point. Outplayed certainly by Everton and QPR for the most part and you could possibly say the same of the Wolves and Newcastle home games. Possibly a fair result against Fulham, although they probably shaded the chances. So we could easily have been 2-0-5 and those two were home games to two teams that should be in the bottom 3-5, although Blackburn may do better given their expenditure post the game with us. I am not sure which games you would have picked out as games we should have converted to wins?

Some would argue that the sign of a good team is winning or drawing when you are not playing well. I can accept this is if we were scraping draws at Old Trafford or Eastlands, or even doing it in the odd games against bottom half teams, but being outperformed in 90% of games and holding on in games against potentially lower table sides doesn't bode well for our prospects.

It is not the results that concern me but the performances. But they are not unexpected IMO.

McLeish is a solid defensive coach but, again IMO, doesn't understand how to build a front 6. His character is frankly uninspiring and dour and he shows little passion from what I can see and his teams reflect this. At least Ged had passion, even if it was, in the most part, for his old club Liverpool. :winkold:

I want my manager to inspire me. To be upbeat and have a little bit of something about him. A spark that says we might not be a top 6 club in terms of revenues or spend but you just never know. I just can't see the club developing under McLeish and I can see the fan base continuing to become disenfranchised.

I want a manager that will take a calculated risk and go out and buy a potentially exciting Clyne from Palace for a £2m rather than spending £4-5 million on Hutton who hasn't made it at Spurs or played regularly for the last few years.

I just want some hope.

So many things wrong with that post, for a start, I am pretty sure that you know you are making up the price we paid for Hutton, it was reported to be far less than that by every news outlet, I think the maximum price it was reported to be was £3 million. Also Clyne is injured anyway isn't he?

I don't think you have watched Villa much this season if you think passion is lacking, ability at times yes but not passion. Also, prefering Houlliers passion to McLeish, bizzare to say the least.

That is the problem bringing Clark in for Collins, I don't think Clark is strong enough in the air and it will make us very weak of set pieces. Hopefully Cueller will come in for Collins as soon as he is fit again, however I think that might be wishful thinking.

I will be seriously pissed off if we don't bid £10 million for him. So what if Whelan apparently put the price up, he has said that it's £10 mill now, that is the price. It's not like there are lots of options out there, and considering the season N'Zogbia had last season he is good value.

Spot on- this our benchmark and main competitors now under randy. As long as better then them we should be estatic. Get your season tickets before they sell out everyone.

Yes that's what on about, our maybe I was pointing out that all fans of clubs think there team does shite in the transfer window. Bell end