Houseoftomorrow

So you bring on Heskey....

Bring in a sub!!! K-Mac, pretend like you want to win this one.

Albrighton needs to be on the right, Downing sucks in the middle.

Maybe Houllier will actually make a substitution instead of letting our players slowly give away the game. You have the whole bench, and you don't get points for keeping all of your players on it.

Did we ever have an interest? Considering that their were rumors this morning saying that Bradley resigned to take the Villa job, I consider this good news. I don't know what the news was like in England, but in the U.S. all of the news pointed to him going to Villa.

From Yahoo Sports Yahoo Sports Article

yahoo sports is reporting the Villa have ended their interest in Bob Bradley. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

I'm thinking 2-1 also. Cole (15), Carew (50) Young (75 pk)

Why would he do this? 'Going for the cheap option' wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. In comparison to player fees and wages management hardly compare, yet is the most important area of the team. I have faith the board will make the right decision. It's almost like people think the board is completely skint, in absolute financial meltdown and the end of the world is nigh, it's really not the case. A line was just drawn with O'neill's spending, which simply had to be done considering our losses last year. I think he'll do it because he doesn't exactly make all-star hires for the Browns. He almost always finds some obscure "up and comer" that he doesn't have to pay. He does the same thing with the players. The NFL salary cap last season was around 127 million USD. The Browns spent just under 94 million USD on player salaries, which ranked them 27th out of 32 teams. Cleveland's coach Romeo Crennel made 1.75 million USD, which made him the 5th lowest paid coach. Crennel was fired and Lerner hired a young coach who was making mid-level money in the NFL. I'm guessing that he still is since I can't find the updated salaries. All I'm saying is that as an Aston Villa supporter I would be a little worried. Lerner doesn't historically like to pay a lot of money to coaches or players. I hope that isn't what he's about to do with Villa.

I just have a sneaky suspicion that Lerner is going to go on the cheap for the hire. I'm guessing he'll pick Bradley, which by far is my last pick.

As an American, NO WAY do I think Bradley is a suitable manager for Villa. If you thought that MON stuck to a small rotation of players, just wait and see what Bradley does. His stubbornness cost us the Ghana game, and he's never had any luck with picking 11 during big games. The style of football he plays is horribly unattractive, and I sincerely believe he can't manage a decent attack. It scares me that Americans want this to happen to create some sort of U.S. National Farm system. As if this could possibly be a realistic scenario (I'm sure that this hasn't made it to the boards yet). I've already made a bet with American blogger soccerbyives, saying that if Bradley makes it four years, and gets this squad to 6th I'll give money to a charity of his choice. Not only is that a shot at Bob Bradley, who lost the U.S. too many games, but a compliment to MON, who managed to make his players overachieve every season. Bradley will never get Villa to overachieve, considering that the United States only managed to play above their talent a hand full of times in the last four years (Confeds cup, and maybe 1 or 2 other games). Bob Bradley, no thanks. Give me Jol, Klinnsman, or anyone else. If Bradley wants to go to Europe I'd encourage it. Just stay away from my club, and take another job in Europe that gets you away from my National team. Yeah, I'm a little bitter about Bradley.

Only caught the last 30 minutes of the game, but it looked like we were the better side. Heard the NRC played well. You have to feel like the club has a bright future. The young guns looked good today. Salifou needs to go, he's just eating up money. Let the kid go play elsewhere.

If you haven't noticed, cheating seems to be a theme tonight.

Weimann is always good for a brace.

I think as a fan you want to see a level of effort and attitude during pre-season friendlies. It's safe to say that we haven't seen that (although some players on the pitch now are playing better). I don't expect wins, but I don't expect embarrassment. The statement "it's only pre-season" doesn't hold any weight to me. If you aren't preparing yourself for success in the season in games like this, why even play friendlies? Fitness? Fitness doesn't matter when you are blindly running behind your opponents, watching them score. Ideally the players should be learning to play with each other, and playing better with every game. If they lose, there should be some effort, and they should have the control to keep their spikes down. I'm not going to say the season is lost, because it isn't. But this shouldn't be overlooked, there are a lot of simple breakdowns that shouldn't be happening this late in summer. I think MON can get the players working again, but "fitness" is one of many problems right now.

Game over. Further proof that cheaters always win.

Still think that rebound was offside, still shouldn't have happened though. Unless the subs step up, this group of players hardly look like a threat to score one goal, let alone two.

Wow... offside.

Coentrao is class. Everyone else on Benifica's team disgusts me. I think we need a more physical midfield though. I can't really make out who is in the midfield, but I think Reo and Milner would be good additions for the second half.

Errrr, no. Simple. I don't rate SWP, but even aside from that he's not worth £10m so those two players don't add up to Milner. Just curious, I'd rather have the money for other purchases given that we can't seem to sell anyone at the moment. I personally haven't seen to much of SWP, but I agree that he isn't worth 10m

Heard a couple of rumors about SWP getting offered to Villa again. The story was on goal.com, so its by no means official (I also don't know how to post it). So, the question is. Would you take Ireland and SWP for Milner?

Guzan will do this from time to time. Anyone who watched him in MLS knows that he tends to play a handful of good games, followed by a poor one. By far his worst trait as a goalkeeper is knowing when to challenge the ball. Very good keeper, but he needs to work on his decision making a little.

Completely pedestrian, 1 point at Wolves is not a good result. Maybe it would be different if we had played better, but I didn't see a top 4 team today. Get it going MON!!

Good win, probably should have conceded a goal later in the game, great job by Friedel. Friedel - 9 I do worry about some of his throws though. He seems to get his defense in trouble every now and then Cueller - 6.5 Didn't do horribly, but he's just too slow to play on the outside. Not really sure why he was there in the first place Dunne - 8 Solid in the middle, no complaints Collins - 8 Same as Dunne, he misplaced a number of passes early in the game. Warnock - 7 Nothing spectacular, but did what was needed. Sidwell - A very dull 6 Wasn't impressed with him, really didn't seem to take hold of the game Petrov - 7 Once again, nothing spectacular, but was the only relevant centre mid in the second half, got us the penalty though Milner - 8 Great penalty, made some great runs, especially late in the game Young - 6 or 7 I'm not really sure what to rate him, I thought he was better on the ball today, but he needs to be more of a weapon offensively Gabby - 8 Great strike, especially with the slip. Seemed to disappear and reappear throughout the game, but was definitely the best forward Carew - 6.5 Was good in the air, didn't really do anything in the game Heskey - n/a didn't do anything when he came in the game, but didn't play enough to rate Delph - Hard to say how he did only playing 10 minutes, but seemed to be fairly active

Whoops, my Shorey rating was suppose to be 7.5. I think he did well, but he let more passes through than any other defender.