CrackpotForeigner

Thing is we need someone who isn't that good a footballer. We need someone who puts the sodding ball int he back of the sodding net. And Darren bent fits the bill perfectly.

It's a huge amount of money. it's too much in all honesty. But it's a player we desperately need, and nearly every fan has been saying we need a player of that ilk for years and years. now we look to be getting one. If 20 odd million gets it tied up quickly without any other clubs coming in and stealing him from us, then go for it.

The Rt Hon Sir This McThis

I was under the impression that there werent too many Darren Bent fans on here. Im not a major fan tbh. Certainly not at 18m.

Good signal of intent!!

I dont think hes worth that tho.

Check the goal scoring stats.

Only Rooney and Drogba scored more goals than him in the last 5 years.

#I think£24m is a bargain.

Ive checked them - 15 penalties

Well we bloody need someone who can take penalties.

We also need someone who can score goals, who will sign for a club that's 17th in the PL, and doesn't insist on Champion's League football.

The fact that we can get someone with a record as good as DB's is fantastic news, whether you think he's world class or not. There would hardly be four world class strikers in the whole of the PL in any case.

all of our remaining games are winable.

A bit of confidence in the team and we could go on a great run.

I am less worried now than i was.

Fixed.

But yeah we do have a good run of fixtures coming up.

Ha ha. Woke up this morning and saw, in-between server failures, about a million VTers on line, looked a bit lower down and thought WTF, 35 pages about DARREN BENT???!?

Still, will feel a lot happier when he's actually signed, although sellyoak seems pretty confident.

Rumour on BBC site is that Chelsea are planning a hijack.

Has this got to the stage where it's hijack-proof?

You'd think Bent would be crazy to join Chelsea from a career perspective, but if he fancies earning more money, living in London and sitting on the bench at Champion's League games...???

Is passing a medical, agreeing terms and looking at flats in the Birmingham area enough to suggest he'll sign ?

Usually. :?

Rumour on BBC site is that Chelsea are planning a hijack.

Has this got to the stage where it's hijack-proof?

You'd think Bent would be crazy to join Chelsea from a career perspective, but if he fancies earning more money, living in London and sitting on the bench at Champion's League games...???

all Sydney teams are scum (Swans, Roosters, Blues, whatever)

Aha, so it's a fight you want

Sorry, but you're not pushing the right buttons. I'm not from around here, so I'm prepared to agree with you if you'll be my friend

I must admit I quite like GH. But that's not to say he's definitely the man for the job.

He has made some pretty misguided remarks, starting with what he said about 7th to 12th place when he joined. Hard to forgive the fiasco at the Liverpool game - for the way we played AND the way GH carried on. Also hard to forgive a few of the other performances, like the game against SHA in the league cup. Also, he hasn't been able to get decent performances out of Ireland or Carew. Then there's the defense, Richard Dunne has made some dreadful blunders, but still seems to get picked every time. Ditto Warnock, but at least he's no longer getting picked.

On the plus side I actually like most of what he says, and he says quite a lot! I also agree with his intention to make the players live locally - how else do you get a sense of belonging to the club?

It's early days, but he seems to be half decent in the transfer market.

Most important of all, he has weathered the recent storm (partly of his own making, but mostly not his fault) with a reasonable amount of dignity, despite looking a bit gormless in the dugout on occasion.

I think there's a decent chance that the worst is behind us and we can build a bit of positive momentum for a change. If we can do that, it's just possible that GH can win the fans over and actually build a very good legacy here. We may yet start to love GH.

Bah, there's only one football league for me. Hats off to the Aussie league for trying, but it will never compare with the PL, IMO, sad to say.

I went. Second to our equaliser, the best bit was dancing with the Mackems

in front of the Geordies to celebrate their last minute equaliser. (their game was on downstairs on the way out).

While I am not sure who precisely is to blame I think you could probably add James Milner to the mix. Whilst not a cause he was certainly the catalyst for a whole heap of shit hitting the fan. Butterfly effect so to speak.

Was just thinking the same thing. There's a sense that Milner wanting to go kindof killed the dream a bit for MON, not to mention we miss him as a player.

Randy for listening to the wrong people.

When MON was in charge, his style, the players he bought, the wages he paid average players were criticised. It was felt from the not-very-well educated that with the players we had, if we had another more tactically astute manager who didn't invite pressure for long periods of the game and made time-wasting substitutions at the end of games where we conceded late on that we would be top-4 and would be able to win trophies. MON, it was thought, was standing in the way of us going further.

My belief is that after the wage bill had gotten so high on players that MON never played, Randy and his advisers decided that he didn't really know what he was doing with transfers, and his training methods and playing style were antiquated so they decided to pull the plug by making a few of the decisions for him with transfers and effectively taking his power away to negotiate contracts himself. As this happened, MON decided his position was untenable and walked. I don't believe it was done out of spite, it was simply unfortunate timing.

Now, anyone with a balanced viewpoint could see that the stakes were simply so high for MON during his 3 years here that to really have a crack at the top 4 it needed significant investment and a lot of financial speculation before reaping the rewards later down the line. Players don't want to come to the Midlands to live or play. Even the North-East is seen as a nicer place to be than Birmingham. Therefore, to even get mediocre players they would have to be paid over the odds wages. I believe this was part of the deal that MON and Randy had when he was first brought to the club, and why I believe the relationship starting breaking down, when Randy starting reneging on the deal. He couldn't afford to take a chance on young players he wanted to bring through, he couldn't afford to lose a single game more than he had to.

MON was entirely a pragmatist. Attractive, free-flowing, passing football was discounted in favour of counter-attacking and wing-play. From my own point of view, these are perfectly acceptable tactics for levelling teams. How many times did you see us match the 'big 4', only to be humbled by relegation fodder the next week? Year upon year we saw progress, but with moneybags City turning cheat-mode on and Spurs suddenly seeing their investments come to fruition I think significant investment was required to make the next step, which is what Randy withdrew from.

The point where it needed a fair bit of money thrown at it to make the next step and continue challenging the outside of the top 4, Randy withdrew, after the general viewpoint of the majority of the fans reinforced his own suspicions.

It was then a valiant attempt to use our main asset of youth, and bring in a youth developer such as Houllier to set us up well for the future, but Houllier is not the pragmatist that MON was, he's an idealist. With the right continental flair players his teams will play beautiful football, but in the meantime we will get some hammerings. If MON was still here in this situation we would have had almost no kids in over these months, but we would be in the top half. Sidwell would have featured a lot more, but we would have had a few more 0-0 draws.

So right now, Houllier is trying to be Arsenal with inexperienced players when more experienced, less skilful players would have been more solid.

Sorry for harping on about MON so much in this, but he really knew what he was doing. Randy lost faith too early, took his support away and now we're suffering the consequences.

This is brilliant. The last word IMO.

Bringing on Bannan, not Pires, for Delph was the way to go with (and probably without) hindsight.

Other than that I agree he was decent enough, and outstanding when you take his year-long absence into account.

For me, one of the best things about the game was Lichaj's performance. Defensively no worse than Luke Young, and put some lethal crosses. His long throw is looking very good too.

Albrighton showed how much we've missed him lately. Fantastic player. Downing top notch as usual.

Heskey's goal looked anything but accidental, a very well-taken header imo. Hate to say it, but he looks much more of a threat than Gabby at the moment.

CC has to be first choice. Collins and Dunne can fight it out for the other spot.

Barry Bannan hasn't had a good game for a while now. Should maybe start him on the bench v Wigan.

Hogg did his usual thing - mostly neat, tidy and invisible.

Warnock did HIS usual thing - Very good in attack and very shaky in defense. Lichaj RB and Luke Young LB for me, if LY will play there.

Friedel not really tested, which is just as well these days.

Good news for us it that their right back Jara is a red card waiting to happen and our left winger is a falling over machine.

Hear hear to singing the CC song whether he's playing or not.

And interesting that some are suggesting playing Albrighton in CM. Great player, but wouldn't that be a waste of his brilliant crossing skills?

Well the answers are pretty loaded aren't they. I voted no, but I don't think you should shut up with it.

I just personally don't get why everyone is so obsessed with standing up, if you've got kids or your a short ass its a nightmare to see when people are standing. I quite like the great view I get from my seat. (when the tall guy in front is in his seat too)

Well at least you've come out and admitted you voted no!

But mate, if there were standing areas, don't you think it would be a lot easier to tell the tall bloke in front of you to sit t.f. down?

It's not like they're going to rip out all the seating areas. If you don't like standing, buy a seat in the seating areas. You will be with like-minded people, and everyone's a winner.

I'm surprised how few people have drawn attention to the fact that (although it was a dreadful tragedy), Hillsborough was pretty much a one-off. Fans had stood up safely enough for more than 100 years before that. Banning standing was nothing more than a classic H&S kneejerk reaction, with typical H&S disregard for anything beyond H&S (**** the atmosphere, let's make it a million times safer than it needs to be. You can never be too safe, and how dare you think otherwise).

Crackpot I'm still a sensible poster, think I may be having the Dunnesyndrome!

Don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound good

I hope you're wrong about Weimann though.

Reminds me of Paul Dickov!

Don’t mean to push you, but I am sure your scout report can be a little more expansive. Does he look like Paul Dickov? Does he have the touch of Dickov, etc

...or will he rip your....

Bloody hell Maradona, and I thought you were such a sensible poster. How much of him have you really seen?

Tbh I haven't seen much of him at all, but he seems to have a knack for scoring. Goals. Might be what we need seeing as we're doing pretty stuff without getting the ball in the net at the moment.

He tipped us "rahther in heope than expectation".

BB is a fine player, and I think one of those that everyone would like to see develop into a star.

But he really had an off day against Arsenal imo. SHA game will be a perfect game for him to take by the scruff of the neck, or the balls, if you prefer.

7 now

How did Pires look?

Wasn't really in it. Tidy enough, but nothing special. Not fast!

I can't decide whether he's going to be a superstar or a nobody, but you kindof get the feeling that it will be one or the other, rather than somewhere inbetween.

One thing that will count in his favour is that he looks like being a pretty big bloke in a couple of years.

This was the least-enjoyable game of football I have ever watched, ever. With the possible exception of the Newcastle game.

No surely not, what about the games against Stoke, SHA, Fulham, Bolton, Sunderland? All shit teams that we failed to beat and not very enjoyabble to watch.

Mmmm. Those are also painful memories, but v Blackburn it was just frustrating to watch a side that just didn't seem to have a clue what it needed to do to win.

The Fulham game at least had one of our best ever goals - Bannan and Albrighton's.

a couple of observations from the armchair

1. Ireland's attitude stinks. A couple of nice lay offs will not make up for looking like he couldn't give a toss or be prepared to break sweat for the team. Sorry Stephen, as much as I wanted you at Villa if thats 'giving your all' you can get your coat now. It's either shape up or ship out.

2. We've seemingly gone from being 'too direct' under O'Neill, to 'too fancy' under Gerard. We're now (at times) passing for the sake of passing to my eyes. In fact my Villa mad (of 40+ years) Auntie called me up up after the game and said 'why are we making 3 passes when 1 will do?'. And I knew exactly what she meant. It's not about how many passes you make, it's about how good they are.

Where's the eagerness to have a shot, or to break your neck to get on the end of a cross ?. Everybody just wants to pass, pass, pass now. Irritating.

3. Bannan was once again an absolute credit to the team and himself. The effort that lad put in for 90 minutes was a joy to behold. And he wasn't the only one putting in a good shift.

4. I never thought at the beginning of the season that i'd be mourning the fact Albrighton was missing more than any other player. That lad adds something HUGE to our side this season. And once he's missing we have nobody to fill in that gap.

5. I appreciate Gabby has been injured, and needs minutes to build up his fitness levels. But he never looked remotely like getting anywhere near a goal today.

Agree with all of this.

Thought Downing was very very good again.

Ireland's touch in about the second minute showed what a player he could be if he could be arsed, which he couldn't. Lost count of the number of times Blackburn went on the break because SI didn't feel like making a challenge.

I thought Hogg had a decent enough game, but you can't see him ever making the match-winning pass to beat Barcelona (If we were ever to play them )

Dunne had his first decent game for a while. I didn't see the smile at the end, but not impressed with that, because overall:

This was the least-enjoyable game of football I have ever watched, ever. With the possible exception of the Newcastle game.