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I would lose a great deal of respect for Milner if he handed in a transfer request. Maybe I'm living in delusion about Milner's loyalty to the club; I always thought of Milner as a committed man and respectful to his current employers.

If this becomes reality then it would reignite the fact that footballers are generally selfish and disloyal to the supporters and the clubs themselves. I thought Milner was of a different mentality, and I hope he is still committed to us and this is all fantasy talk.

He wants to win things and would presumably want to be at the most likely club to do that (ala Dwight Yorke). Nowt wrong with that if you ask me.

It's when players move just because they can add more millions to the millions they already have that I get pissed off (ala Barry).

I'm not questioning Milner's desire to win trophies and medals, I'm sure all top quality players have the same mentality and ambitions. We competed a cup final last season and a FA cup semi final, surely most players in the Premiership would be please with this kind of ambition.

It's the loyalty that bothers me about modern football; I believe when you sign for a football club you should be completely committed and respectful to everybody connected with the club. Handing a transfer request in is disrespectful to Aston Villa FC, especially when we've developed Milner over the past two seasons.

What piss me off, is Milner has ambition and I believe City has more ambition than our club. Today money talks and loyalty is not in footballers dictionary.

Of course 30m. is lot of money, and we can get Aiden from Celtic + others. BUT I want both Milner and Aiden.

But what is happening? How did City get Barry? First, in spring was roumor City wants Barry. We said, nonsense. In beginning of next season, Barry wanted to go and he in the end signed City.

Now, How will City get Milner? They use same tactic. I say it should be our principles we should never accept this way of negoatiation. If City want this player, they should talk direct to our club not try to affect directly to the player. We should sell Milner, but NEVER to city.

But now-a-days no one act like gentlemen, simply money talks. (My opinion; The main cause of money invasion, is Champion League.)

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I LOVE that lion shirt.

Awesome.

I love it too. Would it be better in colour?

I think Ivory Coast, with some changes, could be fine.

Villa Dutch (Croatia?)

This is the right colour I believe. But this is not perfect.

I really want to win this game. Finishing 6th is a great achievement this season with the money spent by Man City etc. To finish in front of Liverpool would be great. Please don't blow it Villa. Finishing 5th would be even better but I expect Man City to beats Spuds to grab 4th.

Yes it would be great. But we should not forget we still can get 5th place. West Ham can win M.City.

3 pts, 3 good points. Away win is always nice.

I don't believe we can be 4th, but I hope 5th. But if we want to be at top five, we cannot loose any point. We have to win, Birmingham, City and Blackburn.

Maybe this is more likely,

Aston Villa

Birmingham , home 3

M.City, away 0

Blackburn, home 3

M.City

Arsenal, away 0

A.Villa, home 3

Spurs, home 1

West H., away 3

Tottenham

M. Utd., away 0

Bolton, home 3

M. City, away 1

Burnley, away 3

Liverpool

Burnley, away 3

Chelsea, home 3

Hull, away 3

Total

Tottenham 71

M. City 69

Liverpool 68

Villa 67

From another angle he gets nowhere near the ball

Terry's disgrace. From this angle, Terry was not trying to get the ball. From the other angle, watch the ref. He was in good position to see what happened.

I hope Pompey will show Chelsea that David can beat Goliath.

Despite the non penalty, it wasn't down to to the ref that we didn't have a meaningful shot on target for the rest of the game, nor that once again we totally gave up at the end. As for bringing on Heskey - how inspirational. Not.

O'Neill clearly doesn't have the tactical or motivational ability required at the highest level. I hope he does the decent thing and pushes off at the end of the season.

I think you are unfair, we simply need bigger squad. We need better strikers and need extra player for rotation.

Why was there even 4 minutes added on?

Steve, that is not important. The game was already over. But I agree 4 min added was too much.

Your right it's just another frustration that almost every decision favoured Chelsea. There was no real reason for 4 added minutes 2 or 3 at best. 3-0 is flattering enough but I could handle 2-0 as the game was over by that point.

But why are we frustrated? Is it because the ref. failures? Or is it because we didn't finsihed the game by ourself?

I hate to say, eventhough the ref made mistakes that was not "vital" in this case. Because I really believed that we could score. Chelsea where better after 0-1 thats it, not before.

Of course missing penalty is vital, but I will focus on what we are lacking of. The main reason we didn't finish this game and C.C. final is our performance.

WE HAVE TO FOCUS ON WHAT WE CAN IMPROVE.

Why was there even 4 minutes added on?

Steve, that is not important. The game was already over. But I agree 4 min added was too much.

We played great in first half. I really belived in my team. Defensive was great, midfield was great but like always attacking poor. We could get the ball into the box, but thats it!!

Second half, Chelsea where better team. BUT WHAT DID THE CREATE BEFORE DROGBA GOAL???? Nothing.

Like before, we have no plan B. What can our team do when the other team scores? We had no chance after Drogba goal. We had no chance after United equalizer in Carling Cup Final. WE HAVE TO FACE IT!

Nothing was happening in Chelsea penalty area.

We should have gotten penalty in first half, and the corner (when Drogba scores) was no corner.

But the ref was in general ok. We need new tactic when we are 0-1. We didn't belive we could equalize. BUT ANCELOTTI KNEW WE WOULD NEVER SCORE AFTER 1-0. Ancelotti took is best man, Drogba, off. He knew this game was finished.

Finally, I want to say thank you to Villa players. They did in general well, Milner was our best man today.

(ok Drogba was not best man in this game, but he is always important)

Just had a bit of a read on 606. Lots of trolling going on there and it's been said that O'Neill has left and it will be announced tomorrow, O'Neill has left and they're trying to talk him out of it or O'Neill will be leaving at the end of the season. Most, if not all of these rumours are probably a load of bullshit but they linger at the back of your mind.

Don,t Go MON

Aston Villa sources deny Martin O'Neill has quit as manager (Guardian.co.uk)

Maybe he will go. Benitez will leave Liverpool will O'neill go to Anfield? Lerner is doing big mistake if he change manager. O'neill is doing good job, we have too small squad and we need a new player. One or two good.. We need also some backup. That's it.

We have good defence, great goalkeepers (two) and pretty good midfield. We should strength our attack and maybe midfield too. O'neill is the right man to find the players we need.

We need some extra effort. We lost against better team. Nice strategy by Ferguson. Owen starts, and is replaced by Rooney. Eventhought Owen would not be injured, he would have been replaced in 2nd half.

We had no plan B. Of course every team has plan B and C. When ManU scored 2nd goal, we were finished. We need striker.

Ashley Young best man today. We controlled the game.

Defence - good performance

Midfield - good performance

Attacking - not good. We need to score.

It is annoying to see the team is playing good, but no result. One goal from Arsenal and the would have won, we can't score.

I reckon this will be the kick in the arse that we need.

After the Man Utd game we HAD to win against Sunderland to make that win worthwhile - we did it.

We beat Stoke at home and I think there was a visble tiredness - but we won 'ugly'

This game was a no pressure game really because our former wins meant it wasn't THAT important a result.

MON wont be happy and neither am i, but we lost against arsenal away, plenty of teams will do that. The way their fans were jumping about you'd have thought they had beaten utd!

But the loss was too big. After 1st goal, we had no chance. That's irritates me.

Winning the game was maybe too good to be true, but we had a great chance to get one point.

No overreactions folks.

Arse are a better side and been doin it for a long time.

We lost because we played too much long ball football and didn't create enough.

A tired team? Perhaps.

The ref was a joke but thats not excuse for us losing.

World class finishes.

Oh and Gabby, JUMP when your in a wall?

Some problems which have been there in other games but we've got away with....not today.

The freekick was maybe not superb, if the f* wall (gabby) has jumped. It would not be goal. 2nd and 3rd goal was class finishes.

Carew for Heskey was tactical mistake. Heskey was our third best defender!

And we need to be more creative. Heskey played greater role as defender than attacking player.

Warnock, Dunne and Heskey, thumbs up.

Arsenal match presents Martin O'Neill with sternest test as Aston Villa manager

Martin O'Neill is an indisputably talented manager but, as he peers into 2010, he knows he faces the sternest test of his time in charge of Aston Villa.

....

I totally agree. If we get a decent result (good game + min. one point) we can be at top four.

This is an important game, and is the key to our future.

They haven't really got much to lose. They're on great form but they know they're not favourites...that's what worries me.

Yes, I'm genuinely worried we won't win 7-0. But we'll probably win by 3 or 4.

I believe 65-69.

I just watched Gabby's reaction when Cana was sent off. He stares with his Gabby face before simply pointing to the tunnel. Great stuff

I want to see this!

Great team performance, Everyone worked FOR each other. The amount of coverage by the whole team is amazing. Everyone accounts for each other and when they get some passes together its really great to watch. Long may this form continue.

Every players played their part and worked for the result. Hard to pick out one in particular but Milner was great and his goal was superb. Top shelf peach.

3-0 to the Villa on Saturday.

The game on Saturday will be difficult. We have lost 3 games. Wigan, Blackburn and West Ham. Stoke is in same group, we should win.

We have to win the ''easy'' games. That would change a good team to great team.

[quote="AVFC-

Yeah of course but give him credit, he made the run outwide to his right and played the ball into Agbonlahor, could of easily messed the pass up, picked the wrong option, not made the run in the first place.

We can do better but the subsitution worked, you can't deny that, we got the goal we were looking for. An indivudual mistake cost us, that's it.

We got the goal yes. But my opinion, we didn't play well. Simply poor performance.

Because there's more to tactics than just formations.

I agree with this. Formation and substitutions are one component of a tactical approach, albeit a fairly major component IMO.

But do you think that MON is right to persist with the 4-4-2 with JC for Emile being pretty much his only change when things aren't working?

There is a debate to be had about tactics I think. I know Big John would like to restrict participation in this debate to the 20 or so premier league managers but I am guessing that would restrict many of us from expressing any views on our club on this site and leave it all to the posts saying "Isn't MON great" or "Should we sign XXXX in January" - not that stimulating for many of us??

Of course it shouldn't be his only change, I'm dissapointed at times when he fails to make a subsitution like it but I don't think it's cost us too much this year just yet. So it's hard to judge, because it's not as if the subsitution he's making constantly doesn't work.

Wigan - Bad starting line up.

Liverpool - Spot on.

Fulham - Spot on.

Blues - Spot on, from 4-5-1 changing to 4-4-2 (A tactic I'd like to see emplyed more)

Portsmouth - Got it right choosing 4-4-2.

Blackburn - Starting with 4-4-2 weren't too bad, although bringing Heskey on for Delph and losing our shape cost us in my opinion.

Man City - Starting line up was decent, although 5 minutes before the City goal, he should of made the sub to go 4-5-1 as we were getting over-run!

Chelsea - Spot on.

Wolves - Actually worked the Subsitution bringing on Heskey, as he created the goal, similar match to Blues, we held on against Blues, this time 1 individual error cost us. Apart from that, we looked comfortable for the win.

Heskey made this goal. I'm not sure others (most of them) in the team can control the ball like Heskey did on saturday. Why can't we do better? Well I'm not sure sacking MON is the solution. It's happends again, again and again.