Grumpy_Lion

Kit looks good. I see some people not really liking the tag line and though it's cheesy it is the way we want to be heading towards, we are a big club and we should be performing like it.

should be going live any min now I think =. http://avfcplc.co.uk/avfckitlaunch/

i think it's 9 or 10, we seemed to be linked with a few 9 and a few 10 million pound players now.

Maybe Sherwood has seen something we haven't but Gil seems to have something about him and I really doubt you could get someone as good as Gil for much lower than we will sell him for so i'd quite like to see him given a chance this season.

I've just read were linked with a wonderkid (i've never heard of) called Breel Embolo to replace Benteke. In fairness his name would fit the Benteke song.

I agree with your Benteke statement but have we actually announced Delphs release clause publically? or is it just paper talk?

I think we all worry this about every new player we haven't heard. We really got burnt with Tonev it's hard to trust any new faces now :-)

I'd love to keep him but he doesn't want to play for us, he hasn't for a while. £30 million isn't a bad return and without that money we probably don't have all that much to spend and we have quite a few issues around the pitch that need sorting. So without the money coming in from him we would probably stay with a similar team to last season and most teams just doubled up on Benteke which meant he was very quiet so perhaps this gives us a chance to buy a handful of players who are able to find the back of the net rather than just one.

it's looking more likely now as Skysports are now saying he is currently having his medical with us after agreeing terms, i'd be very surprised if another club managed to sign him from under us now. But it is at least encouraging that other clubs are chasing him.

I've watched a few clips of Gueye playing since this news broke and he looks decent, there's a video on youtube of him against Everton where a lot of the play went through him and he rarely gave the ball away. He also didn't seem afraid to push forward when he could and also seemed to like a shot when it was on. The prem might be a bit fast for him at first but hopefully he will settle in fast. I'm quite surprised like a lot of you that we have found 9 million to buy a play like this.

After watching some clips of him, i'm hoping we do land this guy. He looks pretty decent, but then I guess so did players like Tonev when I first watched clips of him. Fingers crossed though, this guy seems to have a bit more about him than our signings of the last few years.

his socks are also missing too :-)

So they actually used a Benteke photo and then removed it as soon as the news broke?

Quite pleasing to see Rickie Lambert is now odd's on to join wba, which mean's we won't have to have him wondering around up front for us next season.

Are the reports that he's on around 65k a week really true? I always thought he was more around 30k, if he's really on 65k the surely he needs to be on the top of our list to move on now.

Firstly Benteke has been great for us and I believe if he were to stay he would carry on doing a good job. A few things that bother me though. I don't think he wants to be at the club, this can't be good for club or player. He also started to get found out a bit towards the end of last season,many clubs just doubled up on him. When they did this we hardly saw him, so for him to stay and be useful we would really need to buy quality around him to so they could excel while he got heavily marked or for new threads to worry clubs and then let Benteke get more space. So I don't want to lose him but if he doesn't want to be here I would take around 30 Million for him and hopefully we can start to rebuild. I'd actually probably be ok with a deal around 27m with say Borini, but I really have no interested in having Lambert in our side.

I'm really pleased now we've landed him, hopefully this is a sign of things to come for the club now.

Could be a joke photo for all we know, I doubt his mates left him outside did they? no I doubt they did, but I would imagine his mates thought it was funny to all move away and take a photo of him like that so it looked as if he was all alone and passed out. I would imagine in reality, they helped him up and took him home shortly after taking the silly photo.

I've just been reading we are in talks with a Sheffield Wednesday Defender called Dielna. Has anyone else heard this rumour? From what I read he didn't really impress too much at championship level but we're still interested, seems very strange to me. I'm assuming it's just paper talk but I was interested to see if any one else could confirm this.

Since he moved from Man city (on loan) i've always thought he would be quite a nice fit for us and a player we could attract so i'm pleased to see we are finally making our move. Hopefully we can land him by the end of today, a perfect match hopefully.

I actually think the contract offer is a good move. If he signs it, great but most importantly what this offer does is starts the ball rolling. I said in a previous post that if he stays or goes it needs to be done fast so we can sort out the club ready for the new season. So for me this new contract offer says, were making steps to keep him, if you want him come and get him. So I like to think this is a clever move by the Villa board to basically get the issue sorted asap.

I don't want to lose him of course but we really need his future sorted asap. Sherwood built a team around him and if we are to start building for next season we need to know if he is going to be at Villa or not. For me it's better if he goes early this summer or at least tells us he is staying put. If this is dragged out it only hurts us. So if he stays we can start building a strong squad around him and if he goes and goes early enough we can start to use his money to build a new team.

He had a bumpy season but I think keeping him for a few more years couldn't hurt. He has quality, he just needs to keep showing it and keep working hard. He is an experienced pro who performed very well in a world cup we shouldn't forget, so having that sort of experience around the camp surely can only have positive effects on our young defenders.

I think we owe Cleverley a lot of thanks for still being in the premier league. The last few months has been great for both parties and I hope each remembers this. Firstly i'd like to see us sign him, he worked so hard for us under Sherwood and he deserves to be at a club that want him. He also needs to remember we do want him, a lot of the fans want him here and we all saw how much effort he put in to keeping us up. Lambert's management wasn't great and it showed with Cleverley and the way he was playing and during that patch I was really disappointed and had been thinking perhaps he just isn't good enough, but he proved me wrong. When being managed correctly he has been immense and added goals to a midfield which just weren't there before. It could have been easy for him to have just disappeared and let us sink while only a loan player but he didn't he fought and gave us a great engine. People can say what they like about him, but he was one of the reasons we stayed up this season.

It's all about being smart in the transfer market. Too many clubs buy players because they become available. We need to buy players for positions we need. I'm sure they are already doing it but they need to sit down and work out our weakest points/players and look how we solve that. Just take left back for example, we all know we are weak there so we need to spend some money and resolve that by buying a decent left back. Right now we don't have lots of money to spend so personally that's how I would do it, spend money wisely on players we need not players who are just there to buy.