KMitch

ANOTHER ONE! COME ON BENTEKE!

What a chance! How did he miss that?

Completely biased Manc commentary here in the States. Saying Villa needs to start getting yellow cards because we are "Destroying the game", Manchester United are "dominating" the match, Westwood's free kick was complete luck and we are "lucky" to be in the game. Lol.

To be honest, if it wasn't for that questionable penalty, we'd go into halftime two poorly playing, evenly matched teams. Lots of mistakes all over the pitch from both sides. What a free kick by Westy, though.

Westwood has been out best player this half and he gets subbed off? Sylla has been off the pace all game. Lol

Westwood and Delph seem to be the only ones trying to drive us forward.

Brilliant run from Delph. Stupid from Benteke. Why argue with the ref? Not going to change anything.

And Lambert brings in Sylla when we're behind????! WTF is this.

He had to. Weimann and KEA both had hamstring injuries. He was just going to bring on Albrightion for KEA, then Weimann pulled up short.

Baker getting slated by the pundits on tv (Andy Townsend and Curbishly) over here..

The American commentators are doing the same.

This is the reason why Paul Lambert will never be a good enough manager. From the tactically genius against Chelsea to completely inept against Stoke.

You can't blame Lambert for this. He set us up right and we were a goal up after 5 minutes. Our defense has been daydreaming.

If I was Lambert, I would let them have it at halftime. I'm sure he would have warned the to not become complacent after last weeks performance, and they obviously weren't listening. He set the team up right, we were a goal up within 5 minutes, and they completely threw it away with awful defending.

Awful awful awful defending. Bacuna and Baker have had bad afternoons so far. Sylla looks completely off pace.

YES!!! We're going to run away with this one now!

Away section of Villa Park completely empty. Not used to seeing that.

Albrighton is a much better impact sub than a starter for me. I'm glad Bertrand got his spot back. He's been our most consistent performer since he arrived in January.

I think Dembele is a bit out of our league and Ki is too similar to what we have in Westwood and KEA. Granted, Ki is much better than those two, but not by much. I think we need a similar player to Dembele, but he'll have to be an up and coming player from the continent.

Our boys play much better when they have nothing to lose, which is why we've played so well against the top sides this season. I think after we have 40 points in the bag, we'll start lighting up teams to finish the season out. Benteke knows he needs to start putting in some performances before the World Cup to beat out Lukaku for that starting spot on the Belgium team, so he'll be hungry. Delph will be looking for a plane ticket to Brazil, Okore will probably be back for a game or two, Weimann will want to find his scoring boots again, etc.

Does anyone know who the leaders are in the changing room and so forth?

From what I understand, Vlaar, Guzan, and Gabby are the vocal leaders, but you have many others who lead by example, ie Westwood, Delph, Weimann, Clark, etc.

I would love to see Gabby close out his career with us. You don't see that kind of loyalty from players anymore.

We do have a lot to offer, though. We have a manager who speaks German, Premier League football to offer, a world class training ground, a very tight knit up and coming hard working squad, and probably wages on par with the "next level" German clubs. We beat out a lot of other clubs to Okore's signature, so you never know what could happen.

What's up guys?  I've been lurking for years, as I post regularly over on Vital Villa, but things are getting a little too depressing and cynical over there for me, so I'm going to move over to Villa Talk for a while.  I've been an AVFC supporter since 2006, when I started following football after the World Cup and watched the whole takeover saga unfold on FSC here in the States.  It was love at first sight and I've stuck with the club through thick and thin since then.