rodigan

for me, the best thing we could see from this villa team is a run of clean sheets. saturday was a great start. if we can start keeping out the goals and cut out the lapses that are letting us down too regularly this season, we will be just fine... with each game, our new players and young players are getting more experienced... coupled with a new look to our attack spearheaded by benteke, with bannan starting to emerge, gabby looking ready to run through brick walls and players like andi weimann and brett holman trying to make the most of any opportunity they are given, i'm liking a lot of what we're starting to see... strong first halves mean we have the ability - clean sheets at the end of the second half will show that we're developing the experience....

the more i think about it, the only way I could see DB9 staying is if PL planned to buy a winger or two in January and then persuaded him that there is future for him at villa with strong distribution coming in from the wings a la young / downing / milner days. with our current team and the way it sets up, I simply don't think that PL would start DB9 if benteke is fit. I fully respect that PL has the right to say that our best starting XI includes benteke as our main striker with two other players playing wide and a midfield four behind him. As such, i can understand that in PL's current thinking, DB9 does not start. Now, the question then is whether Bent is prepared to sit on the bench and wait for his opportunity. If he is, there is no way in a million years, that Bowery should be on the bench ahead of him, even if he has a great attitude, unless PL is trying to prove a point. If he is, i think he's in danger of simply coming across as churlish with bent. he's already done it with warnock and hutton, both of whom represented a far less risky line in the sand to draw - bent will score goals and is proven... if PL is genuinely trying to exile him, he better be pretty sure that he can take the moral high ground ie bent had an attitude that was disruptive to the squad as a whole and was not prepared to put in. Both bent and lambert need to remember that at the end of the day they represent AVFC and they have a duty to rise above their egos for the club - if bent wants to play, and is prepared to wait for his chances, then PL should be man enough to give him the spot on the bench ahead of bowery. to be clear, i have nothing against bowery - i'm sure he's a great young lad with a great attitude, but at this stage, he's no more proven than any of our other academy kids, and noone's suggesting that they deserve a start ahead of benty. if bent doesn't want to come off the bench or PL is not prepared to put him on it when fit ahead of bowery, then one of them has to go, and i'm afraid i can see only one winner in that situation.

not sure that i'd call it a central plank failing... having a squad for pre-season is one thing, i agree, and PL will have learnt a lot about attitude and the like.... however, having your squad playing competitive games together is quite another... it seems to me that we are only now starting to see a consistent first XI appearing and it doesn't have barry bannan as captain... as far as january, i'm not actually making any assumptions about how much will be made available or who PL will try and sign up. What I was saying, and perhaps the length of my post stopped it coming out clearly, is that with the squad he has now, as opposed to the players he had at his disposal when he took over, his approach to transfers is likely to be very different. Over the summer, it was about filling the squad out in terms of numbers the best he could with the budget he had - remember he only had something like 16 - 18 players other than the academy, and in that 18 were hutton, warnock, collins, dunne and delfouneso. Now that he has a full squad, its about improving the quality of the starting XI, on the basis that he now has a squad of 25, all of whom could play on any given day. My understanding may be wrong, but we now have a full squad of 25 players registered - if he adds new players, he will have to drop others out of the squad. this is not an issue he has had to deal with before. On that basis, we shall see how he goes in January, but in my humble opinion, I believe the pieces are now in place to start to genuinely seek to improve the quality of the starting XI, as opposed to building up to a squad of 25. And to be clear, I don't discount the risk that he will not be given money, or that he won't be able to attract the calibre of players that he is seeking. however, based on previous windows, a budget of say gbp20 m is not unreasonable and if that is the case, we now appear to have a scouting network that looks at both premier league talent and overseas. If PL decides that he wants to spend the majority of his budget on improving the first XI, as opposed to developing talent for the future, then I think he would be able to signficantly do so on a buget of that sort of amount, notwithstanding the various 'ifs' in this sentence.

good result.... have seen him play for the socceroos often, and he is certainly a key player for them... if only we can get him confident attacking in the final third for us, he has a key role to play in our team....

good point on newcastle, and one i absolutely agree with. i also suspect that they are about to be raped and pillaged by the big boys and we could see ben arfa, cabaye and perhaps ba and cisse in different colours by the end of January... What Pardew did do however, was make a team outperform their individual abilities, which is what we need some of here...

indeed, i did say i was guessing, but what i said i was guessing was the amount that PL was given in the summer. I don't think I made any suggestion anywhere as to who PL should buy now or in January. The purpose of my post was simply to set out where we were when he came in, where we are now, and how this may affect his transfer activity going forward. Actually, setting it out was more for me to be able to see how things looked objectively, and having done so, there appears to be something that is defensible as a strategy that has us where we are today, with a view to us being better in the near future. I am concerned that it has been cut too fine, and that there was an overestimation of the quality of the squad that we have today. However, to me it does make sense to me to have a core squad, spend time with them seeing who will make it, and who won't, and then looking to spend larger chunks on marquee players to fill the gaps that can't be filled with the players and the playing style we currently have. When PL was doing his transfer activity at the start of the summer, he had no idea what his first team squad looked like, or where the most pressing weaknesses were. If PL had bought established premier league players (by which I mean the likes of Berbatov, Charlie Adam, Adam Johnson, Junior Hoilett, Steven Fletcher, Diame) in the summer, they would have been substantially more expensive than the players that he bought in terms of transfer fee, wages or both. There was every chance, with no structure in place and no established first team, that, having blown our transfer kitty on two or three players, one or more of those players would have ended up like say Ireland or N'Zogbia when they first joined us - exciting players for their former teams who went on to not become first team regulars for us at the outset. QPR's summer purchases looked exactly like that, and mark my words, their transfer activity this summer will haunt them for years to come, as they will have to work out long term expensive contracts for aging players that aren't regularly starting, and have little resale value. In that regards, Tony Fernandes is very like RL, a wealthy owner, but not wealthy enough to simply give away say GBP200 million. look at the players that they have bought over the last couple of seasons who would now have expensive contracts, and who are not regularly playing for them. By my reckoning, over the last two years, they have bought or loaned Ryan Nelsen, Andy Johnson, Fabio, Park, Junior Hoilett, Jose Bosingwa, Julio Cesar, Rob Green, Granero, Mbia, Diakite, Zamora, Cisse, Onuoha, A Ferdinand, S Wright-Phillips, Bothroyd, K Dyer, DJ Campbell... now that's a nightmare waiting to happen.... Finally, as far as sell to buy, I don't think selling players who are not in consideration for the matchday squad represents a sell-to-buy policy. PL has said he doesn't want to sell Bent, which to me says that if Bent decides he wants to go, then it is something he may consider. Dunne, we don't know about because we haven't seen him fit enough to start in a PL XI.

absolutely agree that we need some wise heads - i think what we are really lacking is the experience to baton down the hatches with 20 minutes to go in order to see the end results out... i know its the wrong sport, but i can't help thinking of the 2003 england rugby team... all old, but they certainly knew how to close things out when they were ahead going into the last quarter... we are competitive in almost all games for at least 60 minutes, so i think the overall quality is there... as we develop our young players, we need to buy in people that can close out those last half hours... and i don't think that has to be premier league experience, necessarily...

who'd have thunk it - stevie ireland, defensive lynchpin....

i think we're desperately missing him at the moment, old or not... there are some games where you just need a wise old head that's gonna be prepared to boot people up in the air.... three kids out of four in the back line is killing us at the moment...

Right… *draws a big breath* The way i see it is this. Im guessing that when PL came in he was given a budget - somewhere in the say GBP20 million range. That was a finite amount that he could have spent as he wished. At the same time he inherited a squad that looked something like this: GK: Given, Marshall FB: Hutton, Warnock, Lichaj CB: Dunne, Collins, Clark MF: Ireland, N’Zogbia, Albrighton, Delph, Bannan, Herd STR: Agbonlahor, Bent, Weimann, Delfouneso Plus a bunch of virtually uncapped kids, including Stevens, Baker and others. Within this squad, Given, Hutton, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Ireland, N’Zogbia, Agbonlahor, Bent and maybe Delph were on substantial wages above or near the GBP40k that the club believed was right for their first team players. Dunne was a long term injury, and players such as Hutton, Warnock and Collins only had one year left on their contract. As well as a transfer kitty, PL was under instructions about wages – rumours of a salary cap of GBP40k were mentioned, but let’s presume it was say GBP50k. To put transfer fees and wages into context (and these numbers are pulled from a rapid google search): Charlie Adam – transfer fee: GBP4m, wage: GBP50k Steven Fletcher – transfer fee GBP14m, wage: unknown Matt Jarvis – transfer fee: GBP7.5m (+ GBP2.5m add-ons), wage: GBP unknown Adam Johnson – transfer fee: GBP10m , wage: GBP50k Dimitar Berbatov - transfer fee: GBP5m , wage: GBP110k Junior Hoilett – transfer fee: GBP4m, wage: GBP50k Mohamed Diame – transfer fee: GBP0, wage: GBP50k Regardless of whether these are players that we, as fans would have liked, the simple fact is that if we had bought these players or similar, we would have used up our kitty on 2 or 3 players, and have broken the wage cap on just about all of them. To say that the squad that PL inherited was a barebones squad was in the best case a fair call, with little cover for injuries, much less poor form, in almost every position. In my view, what Paul Lambert did was to build a squad as best he could with the limited budget he had – 8 players for the GBP18 million or so that he net spent, and all of them (i) significantly below the wage cap and (ii) with likely substantial resale value. What we now have is cover in each position: GK: Guzan, Given FB: Lowton, Bennett, Lichaj, Stevens, [Hutton] CB: Vlaar, Clark, Dunne, Baker MF: KEA, Delph, Bannan, Ireland, Westwood, N’Zogbia, Herd, Albrighton, Holman STR: Bent, Benteke, Agbonlahor, Weimann, Bowery From this position, he will be able to use the kitty that he gets in January to upgrade the quality of the squad, as opposed to having to fill holes that were simply empty before. he can bring in players at the top end of each position, and drop off those that are the weakest - the squad that he inherited simply didn't have that luxury. From a wage perspective, he has Given, Hutton, Dunne, Ireland, N’Zogbia, Agbonlahor, and Bent earning more than the GBP40k threshold. Of these, Gabby and Ireland are playing regularly, N’Zogbia is a squad player, Given and Hutton are certainly not first choice, Dunne has yet to play and Bent is currently injured. Certain of these players (Hutton, Dunne, Given) may be up for sale in January. Any strengthening of the squad in January will be done with the benefit of PL having seen for half a season, which of the 25 in the squad are going to make it at this level. So, looking at the situation as a whole, I can see method to this – we now have a squad of at least 25 players that PL is comfortable to call on to play at any time, substantially all of whom have now seen playing time. He has a kitty, and I am sure has identified targets to buy and to get rid of. Introducing quality players into a squad that has spent some time working together has a far higher chance of success and is a luxury that PL didn’t really have at the start of the season. I am certainly not of the opinion that the squad that we have now is good enough, and I think we have some very clear gaps that need desperately to be filled. However, I am of the opinion that say three quality players will make a massive difference in our existing squad. Am I concerned about our position? Absolutely. Has the club, whether its PL or RL or anyone else, cut it too fine? Perhaps, but I sincerely hope not. Was it necessary? Unfortunately yes. Will we be ok? I think so, and if we’re not, I’ll worry about that at the end of the season. In the meantime, I’ll keep positive and hoping that we outperform as a team – there is nothing stopping them from doing that, so that’s what I’m hoping for… UTV

given won't be going anywhere, he is in his late 30s, with three and a half years remaining of a very lucrative contract. like it or not, i can see noone taking on that commitment and therefore i can see nothing that would entice shay into leaving.... i also think that anyone that is in with a shout of playing on a saturday will not be sold unless a very attractive offer comes in - as a result, dunne and zoggy stay. Those nowhere near the squad - hutton, warnock, makoun, fonz will all be allowed to leave if an offer comes in for them, although again, i am not sure that anyone would make an offer for them.... finally bent... I strongly suspect Villa and PL do not want to sell him. However, i also suspect that unless he finds himself back in the starting line up regularly over the next month, he will be doing everything in his power to secure a move away from the villa. he is not the sort of player who has stuck around through hard times at any stage of his career, and i think that his track record will make him an attractive proposition to some. i can also see that proposition being in the 6-8m range....

he doesn't need to be a super sub, and he doesn't necessarily need to fit in with benteke - PL rotates players and systems... Benteke has had a great couple of games, but as a young player, he is going to have stinkers as well... at that points fans are going to calling for his head, and if db9 is gone, we're going to be in a situation where we are stuck without that as a credible alternative... what PL needs to do now, and this is why he's paid the bucks, is manage his players and their expectations. if DB9 says he's not prepared to be part of a squad, then i thnk there is little choice other than to sell him. I am firmly of the view that if bent leaves it will be because he has forced the move... i also, unfortunately think that there is more than a 50% chance that this will be case.

he'll be fine given time... look at wee barry, ciaran and even chris herdy now that they've had a season of first team experience under their belt... they're no longer look like terrified kids on the pitch and are starting to play with composure and have key roles in the team when playing... that took time, and it'll be the same with bennett... if we consider him as a kid having come out of the academy, rather than out of a lower division, am sure we'd be cutting him some more slack...

like ciaran and think he's an intelligent footballer and a natural leader on the pitch... if he stays at the villa, i think he'll develop into an absolutely key player in time for us... i also think that he will keep dunne out of the team when fit and that this run of games is doing him the world of good...

loving that the bottom teams seem to consistently be drawing with each other, which is keeping them below us... don't think its going to last and i think all of the bottom half teams (ourselves included are capable of going on a winning run of games that will see them push up the table... its going to be tight all the way, but we'll bo ok... UTV

I think he's loving having the pressure taken off him because defences are (quite rightly) focusing on benteke... looks fired up every game now, and i really hope we see england form gabby back on the scene on a regular basis.... exciting times ahead if we do...

not arguing with the quality of the A-league... will hopefully see emily play against the victory in melb next month... was interested to read that del piero is now the best paid athlete in australia among all team ball-sports - amazing stat! as far benteke, think he's great and hoping he'll keep getting better... the big man we've needed since big john carew got bored...

great game - strong form continuing!!! loved him monstering smalling six different ways for the first goal... as an aside, heskey up to 5 from 6 in the A-league... the big fellas are going well!!!

becoming a team that never believes they are beaten, even when 2-0 down takes time and proving themselves right over and over again... the only way to actually create a winning culture, unfortunately, is by winning over a long period of time... for us, its slowly slowly and we'll get there... PL needs to get the players to believe that we are not going to concede goals, and then they need to go out and keep clean sheets... every time they do it, they'll believe it a little bit more... two bits of luck let man u in for the first two goals today, but the simple fact of the matter is that if you give an expert finisher two chances, he will most likely score two goals... concentration needs to remain for the full 90 minutes, and if so, we're going to start winning lots of games... i was very encouraged by satdee, but would love for us to start showing defeinsive consistency, just as we seem to be finding it further up the field...

there was one moment about 10 minutes from the end, where, i think it was valencia went round KEA on the wing, and then simply ran straight past delph and kept running in a straight line up the wing with both of them in tow trying to chase him down... all it needed was the benny hill music... if it wasn't so depressing, it would have been funny...

absolutely... bent is in our squad... if called upon, am sure he'll contribute with goals - always has, for villa and other teams... what we want are strikers that when called upon, are going to score for us... i absolutely think that we should try and keep him.... unfortunately, i also think the issue will not be resolved by what villa wants... i strongly suspect that bent will force a move through in january or at the end of the season... lets hope we can get him fit, and get him contributing to the squad... if DB (and everyone else, for that matter) can be clear that his place in the starting squad is earned, and not simply given, i think thats a good state of affairs in general... seems to be working for the likes of gabby and stevie ireland...

i still think we'll be fine... not sure what it was like in the holte end, but watching on tv in hong kong at 2am with my 11 year old son, it sounded like villa park was absolutely on fire on saturday evening... great to hear... not sure if i read correctly, but i believe we're the youngest team in the premier league at the moment... last three games, for me, have been ace, and we've looked good going forward, which is all i've really wanted for some time... middle of the park has looked much more stable, with bannan and westwood hands down for me winning on KEA and delph... have just rewatched benteke monstering smalling 8 different ways for the opening goal, and seeing andi weimann get in the act twice (and nearly thrice) was fab... stevie ireland looked great on saturday, and i thought that enda stevens generally did bloody well considering how much united flowed their play through valencia... do we have a long way to go, sure.... are we in a position we don't want to be in and are we losing games we shouldn't be, yep.... but am i seeing more positives than i've seen in a while, yep... and do i think we're going to win enough points to stay up this season, yep... UTV

like the lad and think he'll do fine if given time... also liked that he was livid at having to come off in the sunderland game...

still think its a massive benefit to have him in the mix competing for a starting place... even if PL doesn't play him, he'll be pushing ciaran and concrete ron, which can only be a good thing...

and his hair is nowhere near as good as tony daley's...