BG_Villa_Fan

Had a hattrick against Man U. Btw LOL @ Chelsea Getting rid of Sturridge to get Ba. Getting rid of Lukaku to get a 50 year old Eto'o.

Everton are a joy to watch.

BOF, I disagree. Di Canio might have been a tit but players shouldn't do things like that. I fully expect their next manager to get rid of anyone who was involved in this.

Tbh Torres should have been sent off the first time. As for the biggest howler(s) did you see our friend Friend's performance at Hull?

The only chance FIFA would be forced to take some action would be if some of the bigger nations openly announce they would boycott the event. Unlikely. It's repulsive playing in stadiums where tens of enslaved labourers have died.

Agree with most of this. I'd put Southampton in the teams with clearly more talent than Villa too. 11th to 16th is wide open, though.

Disagree - the right players for the correct positions require the right wages too, which is apparently out of Villa's capacity. He's either trying to build a squad or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

I disagree. It showed last season when he was injured. He's poor if you compare him to the CBs of some top half teams but a Clark-Baker pairing would be worse IMO. Vlaar is OK for Villa's current level.

Oh I see you've rather conveniently only posted the MLB salaries. I'd rather wait for you to post all major leagues' salaries before I comment on the 10 times wages difference.

IMO their way of thinking is that it would require too much spending to jump up the table significantly - a level of spending they cannot afford. They'd need to spend at least 150 mil to get into top 6 - Man U, Man C, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, Chelsea. They'd need to spend at least 50 miil to get into top 10 - Everton, Swansea, Southampton, Newcastle. Then there's the tier they're aiming for - 11th-15th, where no such investment is needed, as long as relegation is not looming. The investment to jump from that 11-15th bracket to 7th-10th is just too big.

Why?

It's nothing like rebuilding in American sports for two reasons - first, as you mentioned, the relegation thingy and second, which is more important is that you have a relative parity in spending in American sports, so when you rebuild you know you'll have the funds to create a team as good as any if you make the correct decisions. No such thing in football. The Man Cities will take your best players and let them rot on their benches, while you're buying a bunch of low cost cloggers in the hope that some will turn out good and help you avoid relegation only to be nicked by the Man Cities. Rinse and repeat.

Great laughs this thread has been much more entertaining than the game. Good night lads.

ha ha ha ha the ref is a clown. Edit : a blind clown

If you want possession - buy players that can pass the ball. How? The most expensive player in our midfield cost 2.5 mil or so. You can't get players that can keep possession and control the midfield for that money, the occasional gem aside.

Why hoof it to Kozak only to have the nearest Villa player at least 20 yards away? Tbh he wins a lot of these balls but there's no Villa player anywhere near him. Can't believe Lambert has told them to play this way,it makes no sense.

A very even contest

Imagine what will happen when half naked fans start drinking beer or when Larissa Riquelme shows her tits in the stands... Oh wait, none of these will happen.

Surely McLeish will have a go, he's used to going for poisoned chalice kind of jobs, because he apparently has big balls is desperate.

He's a good player but IMO he's a luxury player for bottom dwelling teams. He's not good at covering the defence and he's not particularly creative either. He could do a job in a formation that has a proper defensive midfielder as a deep lying playmaker, a sort of a homeless man's Carrick.

How could we score first when we get about 25-30% possession in the first 30 mins of all games?

He can't do this. He doesn't have the players for it. We don't have a single midfielder who can play even passably well in a 2-man central midfield and we don't have proper LMs and RMs who can protect their fullbacks too. Also, as we know, no one who has proven to be able to be a 10. Thus all of his options include playing 3 central midfielders, who generally sit way too deep isolating the striker(s). Every time he tries playing 4-4-2 it fails miserably, even when he does that for parts of a game only - Liverpool first 35 mins and Newcastle last 20 mins. He really has zero options to play with the formation as he doesn't have the players for it. I've no idea why he hasn't tried to improve the midfield.

Pretty sure Villa's fewer home than away goals is an anomaly. Check other teams with really big pitches and the trend is exactly the opposite - Barcelona, Man U, Real Madrid. Of course really strong teams ( who normally have bigger pitches ) are more likely to give someone a thumping at home than away.

Exactly. Villa Park's way too wide for the manner in which we play. Make it as narrow as possible and we may even have some success utilizing a 2-man central midfield.

I don't think that's exactly true because these Belgium players get the chance to play regularly for their teams, albeit weaker than Prem league teams, and show what they can do before they're bought. And in a lot of the cases they move to some other country and club before they get to the top 4/5 leagues. English players rarely get the chance to play consistently even for weaker teams. Even if they do, at the first glance of real talent they get bought immediately by some of the top 4 teams and begin rotting on their benches, see Jack Rodwell, Scott Sinclair and others.