rodigan

he's currently among the most dangerous players in our starting XI, and i'd say a certainty to start the last two games. as a squad player who reasonably has a strong chance of being in our starting XI, of course, he should be contracted to the club. the fact that he's the guy that PL is bigging up before the games as our creative outlet at the moment, says it all - he's earned his place as a villa player in our current squad. Personally, i think marc has been a breath of fresh air since he forced his way back into the squad - what has particularly impressed me is his ability to make an impact when starting, which is something that he was struggling with.... against southampton, i thought he got better as the game progressed, whereas in former days, he would have faded and been subbed at 60 mins.... coupled with the fact that he desperately wants to stay, this is a no brainer, and not one that i have any worry about happening as soon as the season is done.... well done sharky, and lets get a win against man city tonight...

the problem for me with most of the premier league managers is that they have all been in the job for such a short time it is impossible to get a realistic view of how much they are influencing their teams and how much of the performance is down to them, as opposed to what they inherited. everton is a classic example - martinez is getting all of the plaudits for what everton are doing at the moment, while moyes is a limited manager who plays negative football. who do we credit with everton being where they are today? moyes for developing the players over a number of years that martinez has inherited - baines, osman, rodwell, howard, jagielka, mirallas etc or martinez for getting the most out of them now that they are in their prime? martinez had several years to build a squad at wigan and we all know how that went... southhampton is a similar story - pochettino inherited lallana, shaw, rodriquez, lambert, schneiderlin, clyne, ward-prouse, boruc etc, all of whom have showed fantastic form this season - how will his management skills next season look without a number of those key players? for me, the managers that have outperformed this season in the top tier are rodgers and martinez, who now have progressed beyond bottom half teams and would see no reason to look down the table for a new project... Of the next tier are pocchetino, steve bruce, mark hughes, tony pulis, all of whom I think have done very well, and none of whom I think are what the naysayers to Moyes are looking for. You then have the international coaches, who have come in and had varying degrees of success - Magath, Poyet, Mel, Soljskaer, Meulensteen and the really young former players cum coaches - sherwood, monk, adams.... to succeed in the premier league is very difficult and to transition from other international leagues even harder... not sure where i meant to end up when i started this post, but i guess my point is this - we'd all love to play attractive football, score a shed load of goals and be challenging the best teams in europe. with the squad we have at the moment, and the finances we have available now (or are likely to have available over the summer), the question is simply, what is the best that this team can do, and who is the best guy to do it... if that means a guy who can turn an average team into a solid and good one for a few years, then it is what it is... if that is the realistic aim, then i do believe that moyes has among the best proven credentials out there....

moyes would be excellent for us, in my opinion, notwithstanding the last several months.... he had years of making an everton team of limited budget outperform with consistent top half finishes - he developed talent from no-names into established players at international level, or going to the big clubs... that to me is exactly what we need, and in my opinion, if we thought for a second we could get him at any point in our recent managerial roundabout, the club would have jumped at the opportunity.... having him at villa with a very big point to prove i think would be great for the club. i would be very interested to find out how he rates our squad - are their enough players that he thinks he can turn a consistently bottom half team into a consistently top half team? in my mind, he will be able to choose from a raft of teams outside of the champions league places, and the question to him will be which squad does he think has the most potential for his playing style to convert that team into one challenging for the europa league places. the equation for me is very simple - we need to become a team like that for a number of seasons before we are in a position to consider how we push into the champion's league places.... i'd think moyes has a better chance than the vast majority of those out there. in fact, i can't think of any manager out there who has consistently done it developing a squad on the budget that he had.... as far as young, hungry managers coming up - how many of them have actually made a successful go of it? pocchetino perhaps, but he has been fortunate enough to bring through real talent at very little cost in lallana, lambert, shaw, rodriguez, ward-prowse, schneiderlin etc., all of whom were already in place, i believe, when he got there.... i'd also point out that martinez and rodgers have done well, but have done so with squads they inherited.... how much quality do we really have for our next manager to inherit?

agree on the inability for our bench to turn things around, if needed at the moment... perhaps this is when someone like grealish could be given half an hour - nothing to lose and the freedom to play.... out of interest what has happened to the likes of tonev and helenius? that bench on sunday had no creativity at all, which showed by trying to play marc at the top of a diamond for much of it... he's a winger - play him on the wing...

gabby is one of lets say two players in our squad that other teams fear and have to bear in mind when setting up their defensive strategy against us... while i agree we need to improve our quality throughout the squad, i don't believe that gabby is anywhere near the top of our priority list... out of the squad we have available to us, dead certs to start in my opinion are guzan, vlaar, delph, benteke, gabby and maybe westwood and KEA.... the rest I think are filled in from a pool of competent but similar quality players... i also think that like carragher in his latest years at liverpool, with such high turnover in the squad over the lambert era, you need to have representatives that you feel are villa through and through.... gabby's still a valuable player for villa to me, and i'd have in our starting XI if fit....

simple fact of the matter, in my humble opinion, is we are better with him on the pitch than sylla in the same position.... him coming off on sunday showed me clearly how much we miss him, even if there is very little that he does which is hollywood.... have been critical at certain stages in the past, but think he has been a nailed on starter for me over the last few months, bearing in mind the alternatives we have available to us...

great game on sat, althought this should be exactly what having a squad is all about - rotating players should not weaken the team... i know there aren't many positions that we can say that about, but its certainly better than it has been for the last two seasons... as for who starts against stoke, both players won their last games, so its really a case of whichever PL thinks is best for the job...

21 minutes of waffle, with no solutions... (no disrespect to the interviewer, who i think did a good job) the thing that frustrates me with something like this, is that it just moans that things aren't as good as we would want them to be... the question to us all is, how do we make it better, and who pays for that? if we were to fire PL and bring in someone new, how much money would we need to give them? how many of the 16 new players would they have to get rid of? what constraints would the new manager be under? who is going to pay for the new funds required? how long will that new manager be given before the fans start to bitch and moan about their performance? if we were to sell the club, who is going to buy it? how much would they be required to pay? how much would they be required to commit on top of that? how hands on are they supposed to be with the club? on what matters should they say yes or no to? will the club be run on a break even or loss-making basis in the future? we'd all like to have 20 points more and to be playing attractive and consistent football - so would the other 11 clubs around us.... however, how you get to that point is a bit more difficult.... my view on it is this - PL, under the constraints set by RL, will get us to a club that sustains its position in the premier league while costing us something close to financial break even.... the majority of the players we have on our books, with the exception of the bomb squad, will have a resale value in excess of their purchase price, or in the worst case, no more than say 3m less.... the days of massive losses on individual players is a thing of the past.... expenditure each summer will be about the smae that it has been each year of RL's tenure, unless players are sold to generate funds.... With a squad effectively in place, future acquisitions will be less in number, more in price and with a view to enhancing our starting XI, as well as one or two keepers to fill in at squaad level.... PL will continue to be backed by RL and the Board, having delivered what his mandate was, which was a mid-table financially sustainable premier league team... the players will continue to back PL, as they have been unanimous in doing so far, and as they reach stability, will start to play with confidence, even at home... we will be in the premiership for many years to come, and hopefully a top half team.... we will not mount a serious challenge for the champions league places, or the title.... if this is right, I sincerely hope that RL stays as our owner and PL as our manager on this basis.... I also sincerely hope that bentekkers stays as our talisman for years to come!!!

heaven forbid someone tries to force a star wars pun into proceedings....

lamela playing well for spurs means they won't be looking quite so desperately for a benteke...

briny, fair enough i take that statement back, or at least qualify it.... the point that i was trying to make in perhaps overly simple terms is that randy has put substantial amounts to the club - actually, having read into it, its substantially more than the gbp250m that i mentioned.... secondly, the fact that he has waived substantial amounts (by converting it into equity), most recently almost gbp100m, by converting that money into equity, he no longer has recourse to that money - in that regard, i was trying to make the comparison to it being a donation.... the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner...

the point is, i agree that few are prepared to pay the asking price for ownership of a PL club these days, but also note that randy's asking price is actually a fraction of the investment that a new owner is required to commit to allow a club to stand still, much less go forward.... to put it into context, how much of your total worth would any of you, as dedicated and passionate villa fans be prepared to give to the club.... would you still be prepared to do that if you were ridiculed for doing so, and subject to calls for you to get out of the club? if we look at RL, say he has put in 250m into the club, which i'm guessing is conservatively 25 per cent of his net worth, although in reality may be a much higher percentage... that amount still has villa making an annual loss, has us with the inability to sign players of more than say 8m and is apparently insufficient to keep the club comfortably mid-table. In other words, has this amount, 250m donation, which to all intents and purposes is now a donation to the club, as he recently waived a large chunk of the loan that he had previously loaned the club, been sufficient to keep the fans on his side? when i look at RL and what he has done in his tenure, i feel that while we'd all love to be doing better than we are at the moment, in terms of who our owner is, we could have done much much worse.... we're still wearing claret and blue we're still called aston villa we're still in the premiership we've had substantial amounts of money put into the club regularly when the amount of revenue that we generate has been insufficient to fund player acquisitions etc we have first class facilities we have stuck by a manager after backing him to the tune of 16 new players to allow that manager's strategy time to work - how many of the club's adopting a merry go round strategy are finding that it is working for them? we do not have a friend of the owner's son as director of football we are not in a position where we would immediately go into administration if he stopped giving money to the club we have a pool of players that are now generally increasing in value we had three players in garth crook's team of the week at the weekend despite the glory day's of villa seem a long way in the past and watching us play most weekends is frustrating to say the least, i for one, am cautious in running with the calls for RL out, PL out, for fear that what we would most likely end up with would be substantially worse than what we currently have... also, when i look at the owners of the clubs outside the biggies, man u, chelsea, man city, liverpool, arsenal, spurs, i'm curious as to which owners would people rather have owning villa?

A genuine question to all of those who believe RL should go, who do you want to replace him? What do you see that owner doing? How much of a commitment to the Club would you expect him to make? Would that be simply a gift to the club or in the form of a loan? How hands on would you expect him to be? How much wealth do you anticipate that he has? and then, taking all of that into account, why on earth do you think that he would pour that money into a loss making football club that has never generated enough income to compete on equal financial terms with the big clubs? I'm just curious, because for all the faults that RL may have, I see plenty of clubs in a far worse position in terms of owners than us and particularly those that have been bought post-2008, both in England and internationally. RL has regularly put substantial amounts of personal wealth into the club, and i think the recent decision to convert almost GBP100m of that from debt into equity deserves far more credit that he is given... I have been involved in the sale of two premier league clubs, one pre-GFC and one post... its certainly a very different world to the glory days that saw clubs like chelsea and man city acquired by someone looking to make a statement to the tunes of hundreds of millions or more... New UK owner? Asian - chinese? Indonesian? Malaysian? Singaporean? Russian? are there any left that would pour hundreds of millions into Villa? American? South American? Middle Eastern? Am genuinely curious as to where people think that a new owner is going to come from and on what terms he is going to come in....

the simple fact of the matter is that if we had benteke performing like he did in the second half of last season, we'd be a completely different proposition in terms of confidence, results and relative comfort in the league than where we are.... his performances last season not only gave us the goals that we needed to get the points, but it gave the players (particularly those around him) the confidence to think we could go out and score goals... that finishing and confidence in front of goal is what we are missing now... look at the newcastle game, look at the cardiff game after mark came on - we are getting the chances, we just don't look like we're going to score... you wouldn't back any of our front three to score at the moment, despite the opportunities that they are being presented... and thats the difference... on the plus side, our defence with concrete on the pitch is certainly better - until the final five minutes on sunday, our defence did enough for us to have won the game, or at worst, not lost it... delph has also been great this season, so i think that is progress also.... ciaran and nathan have progressed, even if they aren't as good as some would like, and bertrand is fine.... guzan has been a very safe pair of hands again this season....

great game for sharky.... nothing flash about it - wanted the ball and then looked to put it into the box as quickly and often as possible.... when you watch that, it all looks very simple... and loved that beast of a shot as well... keep up the good work!!!

Am I also right in my estimation that Ciaran is actually Villa's second most senior player behind gabby in terms of games played for AVFC? astounding and well done to the lad, if right...

the guy wasn't going to play for the vast majority of this season in the very best of cases... i have no issue with giving his number to someone who was.... remember, it was the media or us who put him in the bomb squad, not PL...

would have thought the issue is not about him being expensive at this stage, but more of a case of being over 21 and therefore taking one of the 25 squad places... with a full squad, for everyone to come in, one has to go out, and i'm guessing GG is the number 25 or thereabouts in our squad in lambert's opinion at the moment... i hope the lad gets another year - he's a good fella and certainly wants to be there... not sure about his ability at this moment, as haven't seen him play for a couple of years...

i like him and think he carries out an important role in our team - think he'll still be a starter after the close of the window, even if we bring in one or two midfielders...

would have to agree that his keeping felt a bit wobbly (by his high standards) to me watching the game, but thank god he's between the sticks for us....

unplayable in open play.... looks hungry and like he's enjoying his football again... scoring goals takes the pressure off him, and i have no doubt the finishing is coming any day now.... all three of our strikers are looking good again - perfect timing, as we need to bank the points now...

great game and brilliant to have him back in the side.... the value of a player is shown by how much of a hole he leaves when he's not in the starting XI and for us, having concrete on the pitch makes all the difference.... appears to be our most important player at the moment on that basis...

does fine in patches and i'll never fault anyone who gets in position to score a goal and then does score it, howsoever it may happen.... am always terrified with him playing at right back though, although that may simply be a result of the one or two shockers he has had in that position, and may be an unfair reflection of his overall performance in that position...

seems to offer us good balls going forward from right back, and is no worse defensively than bacuna.... am actually more comfortable with him in the back four than leo...

great game and we certainly missed his energy and work off the ball when he came off.... in a game like that, he would be one of the last people i'd sub off.... without his constant harrying, we lost the midfield battle in the last 15... lets get gabby back on the pitch quickly, with three of them crating havoc, as we need to keep piling up the points through february, before the monthus horribilis that is march!!!