Harry

Bruce managing Newcastle

Good to see that MON’s career as a manager may finally be over. I have never forgiven him for his deliberately disruptive resignation.

Good business IMO

I agree with DS having a look but I doubt he is even squad player in the PL.

I really do wish you would speak your mind in this forum

Never say never, much depends on whether Chelsea want to keep him. I’d have thought £25m would get him.

Great day absolutely rocking still.

Totally agree, no class in the end.

I think his loan was much more to do with the strikers we have - Tammy and Kodjia with Davies as back up. Seems to me that Smith has got a lot out of players who were being vilified on VT - Taylor and Whelan anyone? I agree he is probably a championship player but a good one

Play offs achieved - what a result!

Great result but our wastefulness in front of goal was not good. Having said that we did the job required.

They know who they are

Life is sweet today....another three points off the Blues who yet again show their utter lack of class as a club; their fans and that fan, rubbish blowing all over the pitch, I think I saw one of their stewards being led away by the police, the shameless targeting of Jack by the Blues players....I could go on.....Oh I think I will, Monk seems to think they should have won

As I have said on VT before Villa fans have to have at least one player as our resident pantomime villain to abuse in any given season. At the moment it’s a toss up between Taylor and Hutton as Westwood was a couple of years ago for example. I can’t imagine the abuse they get either at the game or on forums like this help in any way at all. We have seats eight rows from the back of the Holte so in a pretty good position to judge atmosphere which for the most part is poor. It’s good when we are winning but rapidly decends to near silence punctuated by groans every time a pass goes astray or we are not attacking the opposition. Personally I don’t think we get behind the players hardly at all, we are not that mythical ‘twelfth man’. OK you aren’t going to be singing or chanting for the entire game but it awfully quiet at a lot of games.

Great post. Spoiler alert - we are just not that a big a draw for many managers. Just being ‘Aston Villa’ is not enough to attract the sort of names that get bandied around on VT. Rodger? Benitez? Dream on. We are currently a bang average mid table Championship side whose squad needs to be majorly rebuilt on limited funds. Personally I don’t think we can hope for much better than Smith and I do think he needs to be given time as I believe he can rebuild the squad and get us playing the right sort of football. Bruce got 100 games over two years and spent tens of millions to take us nowhere and yet 3-4 months in fans want Smith out to bring in who? Oh yes that dream manager, the best manager we have ever had......until he loses a few games.