PilkyMakinMusik

That's a great point. Being at the Villa helm was probably Deano's ultimate career fantasy, once he'd been in the game a few years and worked his way up. He's been given the opportunity relatively early in his managerial career and he's absolutly got the right qualities and philosophies, and will build up the experience. You don't get long at Villa to make your mark, he's managed to get us up from a position where the playoffs looked impossible and keep us up this year when we were 7 adrift and 1/10 on to go down. The way he's dealt with the pressure of that and delivered is incredibly impressive. You don't achieve that without also having great tactical nouse to get this team set up right for the games that count, and a great ability to instill confidence and belief in a set of inexperienced players and get them fighting, when they could so easily have capitulated given where we were. I do like the 'we got promoted a year too early' line that gets rolled out. Like it was nailed on. If we didn't go up last year we'd have had our pants completly pulled down on the Grealish price, no parachute money, no stadium to sell. No Mings, Konsa, no Wes, no Dougie. McGinn may have gone. We'd only have had about £25-35m from Jack sale to operate within FFP. So to assume if we were in the championship this year it would have been a walk in the park is mental. Going up and staying up is a massive turning point in the rich history of this great club and gives us such a big springboard now to go on and compete, but it wasn't a given, and the man Smith deserves huge respect for delivering, and he will get better!

Here's a worrying little stat comparing the last 2 seasons at the same stage - Season 2011/12 Aston Villa----------P26---W6---D11---L9---PTS 29 Season 2010/11 SHA-----------------P26---W6---D12---L8---PTS 30 Currently doing a worse job at villa than he was with the scum last season, says it all really! and they had a cup run to distract them from the league, can't use that excuse here. Last season they ended up with 39 pts and went down, we're bloody lucky this year that the same points tally will probably mean safety as I think we'll only just scrape that amount. Anything below 40 pts in a season with an Aston Villa side with a £20m+ striker, a proven top drawer keeper, £9m winger and all the rest of the team well accustomed to finishing in the top 6 would be a disgrace. When you look at the resources a team like Norwich have, (I bet their normal first 11 cost much less than Bent) and see their success you realise how rich they are in the most important commodity, a manager, whereas we are managerially bankrupt. And he's ginger!

I'm sure we were all expecting his loan spell to be more productive in terms of goals but the championship is one hard division to play in at times, but it won't get any easier in the premiership. I think he's very similar player to gabby, if he was as fortunate enough as gabby to play a full season when we weren't blessed with a great deal of attacking options then I think he'd bag 10 or so goals, about the same as gabby did. He's got 4 years on gabby but unless something dramatic happens he won't be getting anywhere near the amount of game time that gabby got at that age which will hamper his progress. He's equipped himself well at international level U19's & 21's, scored a few goals for us against half decent opposition and was brilliant at club youth level so I don't doubt that he's got a future in the top 2 divisions. Having said that, the next year will be very important for him, if he hardly plays for villa and doesn't particulaly shine when on-loan then he could be looking at a move that will only be to a smaller club than villa. I really like the lad but would like to see some of that albrighton tenacity about him, you've got to show your giving it everything while trying to break into the team but talent he ain't short of, and just needs it to click at the top level. Who did he score that cracking volley against in europe?

Only caught the last 25 on a stream but I saw enough of Makoun to make a snap judgement. Gifted footballer, complete natural, oozed class and was cool on the ball. The biggest thing that impressed me was his awareness of the play/players around him. No dilly-dallying on the ball/getting his binoculars out to find the right pass, he just hit it straight to the right man whereas sometimes with our players they are a little guilty of drawing momentum from an attack and you find yourselves screaming 'Out wide, OUT WIDE! yeah or back to friedel, either suits'

The ultimate test of our resolve is coming up. Don't be surprised to see us lose though...we're going balls out to win it as a draw isn't much use to us, we've got victory in is, I'm sure.

How many days has Fulop had to reach some sort of cohesion with his defence? not many I would have thought. Set-pieces should be the order of the day, expect Ashley to do his very best extra from platoon impression!

as others have said its quite alarming how often the ball just goes out to the wings and is then lost or delivered poorly. With Jimmy in the middle you'd think he'd find some space there and link up with the front 2 but it never happens. Also agree completly with the seeming lack of effort or desire, this match looks like the easiest 3 points of the season, should have it wrapped up by now, doesn't bode well for other more difficult games coming up.

I don't think we're in a position to refuse commercial shirt sponsorship an more. It would be nice to still support and promote acorns in some way which I'm sure we will, but we already lag quite far behind the likes of spurs and city in terms of revenue never mind the big 4. Our shirt space must be of much more value now than when we last had a sponsor, Arsenal and Chelsea have long term deals in excess of £10m a year, if we could get half of that we'd be laughing. As others have said it's less than great to follow a children's charity but with a bit of clever spin the whole thing could be turned around, maybe even a cut for acorns or a pledge from the company itself, even a few hundred thousand, would probably stick more money in the coffers than the increased exposure of promoting them on our shirts has achieved.

Every single cross went straight into sorensons hands, downing for me was terrible, and they all looked berift of ideas. I don't know how you would set up with our players to go away to stoke and win but I know that certainly wasn't it. Very unambitous approach to a potentially vital game. I'd personally like to see downing dropped for a couple of games and the only logical way of doing that would be to stick albrighton out on the right and keep ash left, but I can't see MON doing that.

our strikers have only scored 14 between them all this season which is what a defoe or bent is getting by themseles right now. Its ok having a low scoring midfield if your strikers score plenty or even justifiable to have one striker not chipping in with many if the other is but we're desparatly berift of a player who can put the ball in the back of the net and seem to hae been for some time. The strike force is the only area that MON has not properly invested any money in and must be his prime concern this month (keep dreaming) or more likely in the summer. We don't need 4 or 5 players in a window any more we need a £10-15m striker who will bring a bit of class to a neglected and very important area of the pitch. All the other top sides realise the need for quality in that area and invest accordingly.

if history is anything to go by then he will wish to at least see out his 5 years with a club, which I'd imagine he'd like to think he did all he could do in that time given the restraints or unforseen personal circumstances in the case of celtic. His 5 years are up at the end of next season and I'd be amazed if we carried on progressing and somehow cracked the top 4 in the next two seasons if he would abandon a team on the brink of such glory. As much as I love Aston Villa I'm all to aware of how much we were depreciating as a respected footballing entity before MON and Randy's tenure so if he managed to turn us into a champions league side then you would like to think that by defination (perhaps more-so than in reality) be considered outside title challengers, much in the same way that all of the current sky 4 are banded before each new season. MON strikes me as a man who likes to do things the right way and on his terms and I don't believe he would be silly enough to take the united job immediatly after fergie: whoever it is will forever be in the shadow of fergie in my opinion, regardless of what they achieve because fergies won everything over a 20 year period in a fashion that would be very difficult to replicate, as much as I despise the man. Without trying to draw too many parallels with old big head I just don't see him managing a man utd or an arsenal. I won't pretend I know anything about the Northern Irish and Celtic and whether that would mean he would or wouldn't take the liverpool job, but theres something that he could achieve there; winning the league. If he can take villa into the champions league then I'd like to think that we could begin to establish ourselves as a genuine top 5 or 6 club, in an inclusive way rather than a top 4 and best of the rest. A team that could potentially, with the right backing, youth setup, infrastructure, ownership, management and performance go on to be title contenders and I believe he has the nucleus of that formula begiining to take shape, so theres not much need to go anywhere else because I believe he'd recieve more respect and acclaim from resurecting a villa rather than taking over an already established super-power.

very big game today, in this league 3 points is 3 points and we need to be winning these type of games at home. After spurs have lost to them at home and with what happened last year I'd doubt that we will be complacent and I feel more confident of our current defence being able to repel attacks and hold out a one or two goal lead. Stoke are not bad in defence at all and I feel that a nice early goal will really set the ball rolling in this match, calm some nerves and draw stoke into a more attacking mindset. We need to start like we did against hull and have the pressure on fromthe 1st minute and not take our foot off the pedal. If we can win this one it'l be 4 wins on the bounce in december and sets us up very nicely for arsenal and liverpool where we might be able to concentrate on playing our game without the fear of defeat being the 'end' of our top 4 aspirations.

I really thought we'd suffer this season, after the dissapointing end to the last, it must be so hard to pick yourselves up and have another go at cracking that top 4 and until now I've been quietly confident that we could have a decent season but now I'd say we've got ourselves into the same position as last year and a chance to have another go at cracking the top 4. We're in the mixer. For all the fanfare and exposure and brown nosing, Spurs and city currently sit 2 and 3 points behind us respectively. I am conscious that liverpool have had such a shit season so far by their standards and are still only a few points behind us, much like the goons last season but I think we have fresh experience of how to handle pressure as the season closes out. We are also in semi final of a cup competition and I for one havn't particulaly missed the europa league. We're going to have good performances against the big boys this season and lose to teams we 'shouldn't' but for us not to get any credit compared to spurzzzz and shity pisses me off! ok thats my last post of the night, the beers are really starting to take hold!

If you had to pick your favourite out of :- 2-0 Chelsea Home 2-0 Arsenal Away 3-1 Liverpool Away 2-1 Chelsea Home 0-1 Utd Away Which would rank highest? have to be todays for me!! nice to have a choice tho eh?!!