roadoftrinity

Well, I can safely say now that they will be losing a customer this year if it is Hollywood Bob.

Fingers crossed for Bob Bradley.

Martin Jol has not really confirmed that he wants to stay at Ajax. I read somewhere that his press conference post the Fulham rumours was more like a hostage situation than anything else. On a separate issue the signing of players is not a massive concern to me as long as we get the right manager with tactical knowledge AND premier league experience. We do have a good squad and, who knows, maybe the likes of Sidwell & NRC can prove to be valuable assets over the coming months.

What he has said though is that he wont quit, and Ajax have said they wont let anyone buy him out of his contract.

So effectively he wont be leaving.

I can only assume signing Mido is some sort of practical joke to say goodbye to the club!

He did the same to Spurs.

I'm not against Jol - but what has he done to deserve this #1 wanted tag? What's he achieved other than to be sacked in the middle of a game and deal with it with dignity? Weren't Spurs towards the bottom of the league when it happened? What makes him this 'top class' manager?

He is the best of a bad bunch.

To be fair to Jol, his position was made untenable before the start of the season, Spurs had been speaking another manager, Ramos before a ball had been kicked and Spurs had finished 5th the previous season.

Looks like a mistake to be honest. Sort of trying to work out the point of it, realistically the best league position we can hope for is 6th but we aren't bothered about the competition that gets us into.

Yep, I normally site Lower Witton but have just brought 3 tickets in the Lower Holte.

You can both them via the website and are available for anyone to buy.

Was everyone happy with the way we played on saturday?

Do you think we can play as well in our next game?

How about the one after that?

I believe we will continue to play more effective and entertaining football under KM, but until we can actually look back on the evidence of a dozen or more matches we wont be able to make a valid judgement.

As a staunch admirer of the way KM sets his team up and plays, I think we have to give him a chance as caretaker manager to show what he's made of.

It's KM for me as well. There is a shortage of decent candidates out there and there isn't as much money as we have had previously, so give it to him, he knows our youngsters best as well as it would be good to see them utilized more this season.

He was here to win football matches, which he did better than anyone in the coast decade and a half.

Given the level of financial backing he received, that was surely to be expected?

He certainly did not exceed my expectations on the results (or many other) fronts.

Also, did he not have a slightly lower win (or points) ratio than Gregory? Something like that. Sure I read that somewhere (Sky)

That's true, but then lets be fair, when Gergory was in charge the Premier League was no where near as strong.

Excuse me, I'm looking for the thread where we discuss the next manager?

Rikjaard, please. But KM can stay in any capacity he wants, even if Rikjaard has to wait till January.

When the Liverpool job came up, Rikjaard said there was no chance he would break his contract so can't see him doing that for us

I'm at work now, so I don't have access to the link which is on my home pc, but there is a forum where a lot of matches is available for download. I have actually downloaded quite a few Villa matches there, that I have forgot to tape from my PVR TV decoder.

Can you post the link for this site please?

If he becomes manager i wont step foot in villa apark until he has gone,the **** swede is a mercenary.....

Villa through and through.

Apparently Nicky Shorey is off to Albion, so the Albion forums seem to think.

Hopefully that will be someone off the wage bill.

Aston Villa under the new UEFA rules would not be eligible to participate in Europe, is it any wonder why we have a sell to buy policy?

No Phil, it cant be a reason like that, or because of the recession, or due to the fact that we never manage to fill the ground so we can get the revenue in that we need.

It's because Randy doens't trust MON with the money, however he is happy to keep him on as manager in the mean time, surely that is obvious?

I would respectfully suggest that should the owner had lost trust in the manager to the extent that he is not giving him responsibility for identifying new signings then he would have removed the manager by now, or MON would have walked

Apologies, I was taking the pee out of previous posters claiming that the lack of signings was down to Randy losing faith in MON.

Aston Villa under the new UEFA rules would not be eligible to participate in Europe, is it any wonder why we have a sell to buy policy?

No Phil, it cant be a reason like that, or because of the recession, or due to the fact that we never manage to fill the ground so we can get the revenue in that we need.

It's because Randy doens't trust MON with the money, however he is happy to keep him on as manager in the mean time, surely that is obvious?

What do you want us to do? We haven't the money to buy players, nobody has. Redknapp was saying today how nearly all clubs are on a sell to buy

Policy.

Am I the only person who thinks that it would be better for us to just ask for £24m and get it all over and done with? I can't help but feel that Milner won't be anything like the same player we saw last season if he stays.

If there really isn't much money available to MON then surely it would be better for us to get the deal done and move on and bring some more players in who do want to play for us.

We could well have asked for 24 million. As far as we have seen, Man City have only made on bid, which was 20 million. You can be pretty sure if they made another, they would let Sky Sports know about it.

Can't see why MON would back down only 24 hours after saying he won't be going unless we get our price (which is rumoured to be £30m)

Maybe the price was 25 million, which, lets be fair is good value for him.

It's the press that said it was 30 million

The only point which concerns me about all this is the naivity of the club in letting him enter his final 24 months, it kind of puts the player in the driving seat as it did with Barry.

I dont know this for a fact, but im under the impression that Milner is earning less than Heskey, and substancially less than Young. He may be thinking that we're only offering him a contract because City have all of a sudden shown an interest. So we're left in the situation that we were with Barry, whereby we stand to lose a lot of money if we keep him and he doesnt sign a new deal. Had Milner been approached in January with a £70,000 per week 5 year deal I think he probably would have signed it. Thats not to say that he still wouldnt have wanted to go, but it would have put us in a stronger position to negotiate.

That said, £28m is still a tidy piece of business.

It would make bugger all difference if he was into a 5 year deal, look at Fabragas at Arsenal and Ronaldo had 3/4 years on his deal at Man U.

Unfortunately players rule in this day and age, and if they want to leave, it's just a mater of getting as much money for them as you can.

No word on the figure... saying it's the biggest in the clubs history doesn't really say a lot.

I know for a fact that we are getting more money than we did from Accorns.

FX Pro it is then.

link

No fail! Don't fail me. Why isn't Ash in the World Cup squad? Because MON made a right-footer play on the left wing. This is exactly why Capello doesn't like Ash. MON hammers square pegs into round holes. RB/LB situation case in point.

Ashley Young said not long after he joined Villa that his favourite position was left midfield, he was playing left midfield for Watford when he wasn't playing off the striker.

He doesn't like Ash because he hasn't done well when he played for England, no, your right, it's MON's fault. ha ha.

Wolves wouldn't sell Doyle for any less that 12 million, which in my opinion is to much money.

Same way we wouldn't want to sell Milner for less than double what we paid for him.

Barcelona paid £40 million plus Eto for Ibrahimavic so their offer for Fabragas is definitely a piss take. That deal for Ibrahimavic has to be one of the worst of all time

£30million is nearly half what Randy paid for the entire club.

I don't want Milner to go, and will be disappointed if he does. But £30million is a lot of money - and personally I don't think we'll get Champions League with or without Milner - it'd take a brave man to turn down £30m.

Saying that, you'd have to be brave to bid that for a player who isn't an international regular.

Or stupid, and Man City have proved previously that they are stupid.

England winning the World Cup over Villa getting 4th definitely.

Villa winning the league, then I would chose that, but Villa finishing 4th, no chance.