MrDuck

I think he'll struggle to get back into the Villa team, England is a million miles away for him.

Yeh, i suggested this a while back. Good striker I reckon, excellent finisher.. hasn't worked for him at Spurs, but he's looked really good whenever I've seen him play for Russia.

MON should pick the team he feels best capable of getting a result against Burnley.

Jol was deemed not good enough for Tottenham, and failed to break the top 4 with them... what makes you think he could do it for us? Houllier did a very average job for years at Liverpool with a ton of money. Bilic failed to get Croatia even to the world cup play offs. McLaren? God, I think I'd rather have Venglos back. From your list I think only Moyes would be a possible step up from MON, and that's debatable.

I wonder where these expectations come from? Since we last won the league, we've had a couple of decent 2nd place finishes, other than that we've generally been around the top 8, but also had a relegation and a few low-mid table finishes. O'Neill, by Villa's recent standards, is doing an above average job. Then consider that he's also come to us in the era where any team not playing regular champions league football is massively handicapped from the off, so I'd say he's doing a great job. I can't remember too much of the football we played before Taylor's first reign, and I was too young to make a judgment on it anyway. But apart from Big Ron's team, most of the recent sides have played some pretty dire stuff a lot of the time - DOL was the worst I've seen, Gregory and Little's sides were great on their day but too often sent me to sleep and both really struggled to score goals. My enduring memory is endless low scoring draws. By Villa standards, I'd say O'Neill's team fit right into expectations. Basically, based on the size of our club and resources and the current benefits enjoyed by the CL clubs, I would expect Villa to be competing regularly in the top 8, anything better would be something special. I don't agree with everything he does, but I think O'Neill is doing as well as can be expected.

Because there is something horribly wrong with our players attitude towards the less attractive fixtures. Even the General has alluded to it in his thread. I'm really not sure this has anything to do with attitude. The top teams attack us and leave us space upfront for Gabby, Ash and Milner to exploit. The lower teams mostly sit back against us, and we simply don't have any players with the creativity to break them down.

Ah, Newcastle... you couldn't make this shit up.

Be stupid not to take him I reckon. We have no better poacher available, and he just has a knack of scoring important goals. Maybe not a starter, but much like Beckham he could be an important sub.

My band has a twitter account, but only used for shameless self-promotion. I do enjoy reading the tweets from a few people - Bill Bailey and Eddie Izzard spring to mind.

Brad you bloody legend!

Nicely put, couldn't agree more.

Bringing on a player like NRC to "shore up the centre midfield" in the last 10-20 minutes can be a very dangerous game... it's not easy to come on and step right into a game, especially towards the end. Usually takes some time to adjust to the tempo, and this is when you're likely to make a costly mistake, which you don't want in the closing minutes of the game. Stan tired a lot last season I think because Barry could be very lazy at times with regards defensive duties, and left a lot of hard work for Stan. This season he is running the game for us, everything goes through him - if you take him off for the last 15 it leaves a huge hole, especially if you replace him with a player like NRC... who for all his energy and fight is not the best at retaining possession. I think this is why MON doesn't go down this route. A better bet is to bring on NRC for a forward instead... and I think the reason this hasn't been happening is because our games have been pretty tight so far and MON wants players on the pitch more likely to give him a goal. Even Heskey is more likely to do that than NRC.

The whole thing has a distinct smell of 'amateur' doesn't it?

Is there anything you don't have a stat for?

How about hammocks?

Well thank God MON is manager and you're not. We just deservedly beat the favourites to win the league, and still you're not happy. MON got everything right on saturday. Would you still be saying this if Anelka and Deco had scored when they were clean through? Of course this is hypothetical but we could have drawn or lost on Saturday. . But they didn't score. And we didn't draw or lose. Hypotheticals are entirely meaningless here.

Maybe we should start a trend instead of following one. Let's replace our bench with sofas and lots of big comfy cushions. Maybe a few bean bags too for the younger lads.

Well thank God MON is manager and you're not. We just deservedly beat the favourites to win the league, and still you're not happy. MON got everything right on saturday.

Stan "completely bossed the game and outshone the Chelsea midfield" Petrov in a 4-4-2? Crazy idea, simply not good enough for the Villa.

Let's just play Baros up front on his own.

Spot on.

Yeah, that was a great film. Brilliant sound-track too.

Can't drop Sidwell, he's our lucky charm

Why since Nov 2008? Seems a bit of an odd arbitrary starting point.

So true!