Foxy1

His best game in a Villa shirt by some distance. The sending off was silly but he showed passion and disappointment with an unjust scoreline that we were all feeling at the time.

Better performance but from forced changes in my opinion, Clarke, Bannon and Allbrighton were great though they need a good run in the team. My worry is that as soon as the players are ready he will revert back to old team.

Hutton was rubbish yet again and him getting sent off was a relief as he will get dropped now, Warnock was not good either with some stupid passes and shit crosses.

Still got to change the manager

Have to disagree I thought Hutton was excellent last night.

Despite the result some pride was restored with that performance, if we can play like tgat every week we wilk finish top half no question.

So did we overestimate the current crop of young players or are they just being mismanaged? Do we just need more experience and quality around them?

I'm starting to really wonder about them - Albrighton and Bannan are so inconsistent. Delph is a liability. Clark can't get a game despite the Collins and Dunne calamity show. Fonz flatters to deceive.

Maybe we want them to succeed so much we can't see that they are not good enough?

Good all round player, always liked him ...Gives his all every single game too and cares about winning every pass, tackle and shot he makes.

Great stuff, could be 4 or 5.

I put a cheeky tenner on a Villa win too - come on boys!!

The wee man was largely disappointing today, worked hard but couldn't really influence the game and made some poor passes.

I find it disappointing yet again that Heskey is slammed for the things he did wrong rather than the things he did right.

From where I was sitting he came on and changed the game, yes he missed that awful chance by a mile but at least he offered something unlike a lot of players today.

Have to agree.

This

His skewed shot was horrendous but he really caused them problems and put himself about. I'm no fan of his but he deserves a bit of credit today.

I will bash McLeish for lots of things, but I don’t think he’s not giving the “youth” a chance. I think he doesn’t rate some of them, and he rates others. As far as I know he played Lichaj and now he can’t play him because he’s injured. He’s played Herd, Bannan, Weimann iirc. And I suspect Gardner will get a chance. Yes its a mystery why Clark hasn’t made an appearance, but I don’t think he’s got a thing against youth.

Didn't Clark start against Man City? Hell of a game to throw him into and then not play him again.

I really hope Clark comes in on Sunday for Collins or at least he plays Carlos there in his proper position.

It's a great point, our 'experinced' players treat the ball like a hot potato.

He needs to learn to go both ways, wants to check onto his left all the time and its obvious what he's going to do.

McLeish rates Weimann more than Delfouneso so expect to see the latter move on.

Based on...?

The premise of reducing the number of high earners rests on the ability of the manager not to recruit players on high salaries & long contracts who turn out to be shitter than expected.... surely this is always gonna happen

The only way to mitigate is to buy younger players who will have some sell on value and are not at the top of their earning curve

I heard he was injured. Don't know if he still is. Definitely needs some playing time as I really rate him. Dare I say it, he's a once in a generation player.

In all seriousness, McLeish should be playing him.

In place of who though?

What a lovely player wee Barry is. Could be a star if he can bulk up a little bit and improve some of his decision making - will come with experience.

A bit much to expect him to become a Silva or Mata but those are the players he should be studying and aspiring to.

Ah the holding the club back because he wont spend spend spend bollocks.

What guarantee selling to someone else will be any better, or provide enough funds to compete, they could be another Man City owner or then again they could be another Small Heath owner, something you conveniently forget over and over.

The grass is not always greener, yet you seem to think it automatically is.

Where are all these owners, waiting in the wings to buy a premier league club and spend 100's of millions on players, are they growing on trees? Why are only a few clubs able to do it then?

90% of the worlds football clubs owners must be holding back their clubs then going by your reckoning.

Villa fans i suppose not just Villa fans have becoming obsessed with money, rather than just enjoying supporting their club, watching games live and on the tv, some fans have the distinct possibility of not having a club to support at all because of money worries.

Yet Randy is crap because he is trying to make us well run and self sufficient?

If you say so.

Am very interested to see Richards response to this

very poor

Nobody is going to take him off our hands, we are stuck with him. He will either find his form again or he won't but either way it will be in our colours. The only manager who might take him would be Mark Hughes but seeing as he hasn't got a job at the moment and isn't likely to any time soon with a club that would pay Ireland's wages we might have to wait a while.

QPR ?

I really hope one of Delphi or Bannan breaks through this season ....god knows we need them to

I think we've played pretty well

The best thing is that we've looked solid and organised ....don't think that was ever the case last season

Brilliant news - this guy is genuine match winner ...really looking forward to seeing him in C&B

You love going against the flow don't you Richard?

No doubt you will be on here gloating as soon as Given picks up an injury ....theres nothing wrong with preferring Foster however to call Given a 'rubbish' signing is ludicrous although hardly surprising with your penchant for coming out with such 'shock' statements

Just a point. Richard didn't say rubbish, so I don't know why you wrapped it in quotes. And while I'm in the pro-Given camp, I've seen plenty of others that aren't. The only thing I would say to Richard's point of preferring Foster is that if we do have a limited budget then the likely £12m fee for Foster would have affected us far more than the £60k p/w wages that Given will cost. So while Foster might have appeared a more ambitious move, I believe Given is the better goalkeeper and furthermore, he allows us to strengthen other parts of the squad more effectively, so for me it's a win-win. But I appreciate not everyone sees it like that.

He did say rubbish ....I can't find the post (and maybe he edited it) but he definitely said it.

I agree totallly with your post btw

I simply do not understand the disgust with which the term "sell to buy" is treated around here. I hate the old cliche about sports being a business (it's not - too many people are too emotionally invested for it to be considered just a business), but really: in what world do people think an average football owner can pump hundreds of millions of pounds into the club without even considering balancing the books? In England, we're talking about Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour are probably the only two. Liverpool and Man U similarly have great spending power, but that also has a lot to do with their huge brand that leads to huge revenues. We are still in the midst of a global recession; have we learned nothing from it? Portsmouth almost went out of existence; Crystal Palace, ditto. It is not a horrifying thing that we have owners who are doing their best to make us a relatively self-sustaining club that can run healthily for years and years to come, and it's frankly ridiculous to expect the owners to buy and buy and buy without any consideration of balancing the books.

Fantastic. Well said.

+2

Totally agree - this statement should go on the VT home page ...that way some fans might start to understand the situation!

In fact I'm going to put it in my sig

Arsenal fans on twitter are furious we've got Given.

So are some Villa fans !

Why do you not want him? Would you have liked us to go for Casillas or a Gigi Buffon.

think some fans just want to moan about anything they can

No I am fairly realistic about which players would come to us actually, not sure how you could on the one hand be called negative and pessimistic and then on the other get accused of wanting Casillas / Buffon

For Given I think he is too old and injury prone and I think his wages will be far too much in terms of restricting other potential signings.

I would have much prefered Foster and thenhave him here for a number of years with a resale value at the end should we not have progressed.

I think he would have been a realistic and more ambitious signing but there you go.

You love going against the flow don't you Richard?

No doubt you will be on here gloating as soon as Given picks up an injury ....theres nothing wrong with preferring Foster however to call Given a 'rubbish' signing is ludicrous although hardly surprising with your penchant for coming out with such 'shock' statements

Fingers crossed this is done soon, I will immediately feel better about the new season

He is a top top player ....better than Friedel IMO