New_Jersey_Villa

Awesome again today. Deserved a goal with that run in the box.

9 minutes ago, Jimbop said:

His best performance for a long time. Looked faster, stronger, more aggressive. Sprinting 70 yards to press and gain territory in the last 10 minutes, no lack of effort tonight. This needs to be the start of something.

Agreed. I made a pretty nasty comment about him yesterday not being able to tackle. Proved me wrong today, really put himself about. Had a good game today.

Congratulations on the first win Remi!

Westwood's biggest problem is that a wet brown paper bag is likely to win more challenges over the course of 90 minutes than he is.

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Nobody's going to be 'picking off' Ashley Westwood. 

Except maybe Mrs Westwood.

6 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

You can't look at it the situation in a vacuum like that. It's not just the quality of player he's had to work with, which is very low indeed. It is the situation he found them in emotionally and physically. It is the HUGE gaps in the squad that will need to be filled no matter what division we find ourselves in. It is the complete lack of belief and the extreme apathy of the crowd. Year after year many of these same players and particularly the fans have been through the same bullshit, those that care are probably exhausted and those that don't simply don't deserve to play for any football club, never mind one as wretched as ours. The club is rotten from the inside all the way out, I bet even poor Doris has ran out of teabags. To say "oh well he has some decent players" is way too narrow minded. 

As poor as I think he has been in many aspects so far, this is no time to judge his longer term ability. He hasn't had the short term impact we needed and now that opportunity has come and gone. So we switch to plan B, lets see how he builds from here. Because that is the one part of his CV that appears strongest. 

6 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

This is the part I can't get my head around. I completely acknowledge he inherited a mess. I just can't put my faith in Garde if anything like this run continues until the end of the season though. If I was to do that what would I be basing that faith on? His CV as a manager is limited. He had three seasons at one club where by most accounts he did well. However he had zero experience of going into a struggling side, zero experience of going into a club mid season and has zero experience of managing a club in a second tier and zero experience of getting a club promoted. Nothing on his CV suggested he could drag a club in the shit out of it and nothing on his CV points to him being able to bring a club on its knees back up.

In my lifetime I have only come close to experiencing anything like this once in 1986/87. At that time the man who came in to rebuild a club that was a shambles was Graham Taylor.  A guy with vast experience of lifting a struggling club, a guy with vast experience of building a team, a guy with vast experience of multiple promotions a guy whose CV told you he could manage on a budget and take average players and mould them into a team and get average players performing to a level above and beyond their natural ability.

If Garde had that kind of CV I could put my faith in that. I could cling to that. Gardes past never really suggested he could come in here and turn things around quickly and instil confidence into players devoid of it, quickly organise us and at the very least have the players giving their all. We had to have a little bit of blind faith that he could do that and reading this and other threads at the time he was appointed it seems most of us believed it was possible to get more out of this squad. Certainly the board did as they spent millions making the change. He has had no short term impact though so that somewhat blind faith was misjudged.

If we do get to the end of the season and results have stayed pretty much as they have been under him so far then why should I again put faith in Garde if he has had no positive impact on results or significant impact on performances. His CV doesn't give me any indication he can get a club promoted as Graham Taylors did back in 1987. You can't just throw blind faith into a manager simply because we think chopping and changing managers is the wrong thing to do or because we don't know if the next guy the board appoint will be any good. If that was the case we may as well have stuck with Tim Sherwood and I don't remember many calling for that 10 games into the season.

While the above two posters have very different points of view, I couldn't help thinking to myself that it's a pity the players can't express themselves on the Football pitch in similar fashion. Some thought and effort goes a long way.

I'm not sure what the hell happened after the West Ham game (Dressing room bust up maybe?), but the small baby steps Garde appeared to be taking in getting us pointed in the right direction have evaporated, as the last three games have shown.

I'd say stick with Garde until the end of the season at the very least. I don't think anyone could save us at this point, so changing the manager would just add more fuel to the fire and make us an even bigger laughing stock (If that's even possible at this point)

Remi WTF happened after West Ham? You had the team playing very well, ever since then we've been shit.

Didn't watch the game just saw the highlights.

How ASTON VILLA cannot comfortably win that game is shocking .

Utterly absurd result. Players really need to man up and take a look at themselves.

37 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I don't like saying nice things about Delph but I will say this - he was a big game player for us. He put in some massive performances last season and he was a leader on and off the pitch. I have my doubts that we'd be in the position we are if he were still here.

£8m was a joke fee for his ability and he handled himself very badly. But he was a good player and would certainly be our best right now.

This.

I've been very angry at Delph for a long time, due to the way in which he left the club. I'm not saying that we wouldn't be where we are if he stayed, but he's a very good player. Anyone who says the squad wouldn't be better with him than without him, isn't being honest with themselves.

3 hours ago, chrissmith921 said:

No JG was great - loved having him in charge of the club.

Point stands that Little shouldn't have ever received shit from the Holte!

Yeah I don't know anything about the incident at all, but there is no way Brian Little deserves any shit, especially from the Holte End of all places.

3 hours ago, chrissmith921 said:

Brian Little had hate from people at the end of his time here.

Brian **** Little should never get shit from Villa fans - ever. Same category as Paul McGrath and Franz Carr for me. Untouchable.

Maybe not Franz.

Little for me just tried to fix something that wasn't broken. 5-3-2 had worked very well for us. Of course signing Collymore was supposed to push us onto that next level and he tried to accommodate Yorke, Milosevic and Collymore in a 4-3-3, which just didn't work out.

I'm too young to remember Little as a player, but some of best memories of being a Villa fan are when Little was was the manager.

Only had that one league cup to show for it, but we destroyed Leeds that day. DESTROYED!!

8 hours ago, a m ole said:

For me the major issue is not the quality of our players (which may be a minor issue but I think most our fit match day squad are good enough to play in this league) but how they fit into an XI. every squad and player has weaknesses but a good XI counteracts those weaknesses with complimentary players.

so we've targeted some good players, some decent players and signed who we could. That's Reilly's job, as far as I'm aware, to find players with strong attributes to present to the manager. Surely what Sherwood's job in the committee was, you have to assume as the football manager in charge of tactics, to look at these players and say - "we can't sign him because he wont track back for this average player, these players won't work together as the current player isn't physical enough, we don't have enough pace in this partnership to sign him, there's not enough movement in the front line for him to be useful, we don't have any crossers of the ball to make the most of him" and so on.

Then the job for Sherwood was 1. to quickly integrate a number of new players into the team and into the country and 2. get them working in a system that suits them. He definitely failed number 1, and was on a hiding to nothing with number 2 due to the totally mismatched players he approved of.

The biggest failure in the summer for me was Sherwood's inability to spot what type of players he needed and in what positions to create a unit that worked.

This is, simply put, a fantastic summation of our current predicament.

6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Several questions occur to me:

1) Do you ever think you're incompetent?

2) Can you confirm whether Hendrik Almstadt is involved in anything more than doing a little light photocopying and inflating footballs, and if not, can you tell us why you chose to give him the title of 'sporting director', when he doesn't actually direct any sport?

3) Do you feel that the kind of inflation provided by having a 'Sporting Director' who doesn't direct any sport, and a CEO who has no experience of being a CEO, is in any way indicative of the shambolic shite served up to paying customers at this football club?

4) Do you feel ashamed?

6) If you were a primate, but not a human, which primate would you be and why?

Questions 2-3 has had me chuckling for most of the evening. Good Stuff!

Something along the lines of this: 

5 minutes ago, villan_007 said:

There's 54 points to play for.

We've been in this league from day 1 - if that has taught me anything, it's that anything can and always does happen in the second half of the season.

Keep the faith until the letter R is stamped next to us on the table.

Scrap all this about start building now for the championship, pay a load of mercenaries a fat wedge to come and have a crack at keeping us up. Fight it till the end.

Never give up.

That's the spirit. I'll share a foxhole with you. You can put me on speed dial if you ever in an "Alamo" type situation as well.

2 minutes ago, dudevillaisnice said:

Delph yesterday was completely out of depth, hooked off for Navas. Offers nothing to this City team and Pep next season or not I'll be surprised if he even makes the bench there. Still atleast he will enjoy a medal or two.

Not to disrespect wives in general, but I have to say in Fabians case I think it was all wife. "Honey you know your turning down an extra 20k a week, by staying a Villa right?". Guess Fabian wasn't too thrilled with spending the next 3 years on the couch.

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

 

He ended up replying to every comment with "ring Nicky Keye"

He was good at the start, think I used him as a service to ask stupid questions, usually about my match day experience, I don't know why some fans thought he'd start answering questions about why we sold Milner etc it's not going to happen

I was half joking about the pastie / pie comment in the AGM thread, half joking because I do suspect that the AGM will also dodge questions about players being sold and what the **** we're doing but happily discuss catering at VP and painting bridges if the train station was going to get renamed and maybe even the PA system... That was the kind of stuff you could hope to get an answer from krulak

1 hour ago, rodders0223 said:

In short, Krulak can go jump off a bridge for all I care.

Glad I asked!

2 minutes ago, honest_bertie said:

Did Vlaar want to leave or did villa decide not to renew his contract, I don't know so will take your word for it. I just never felt comfortable with Richards coming here to be a cb. He declared before signing that's his position and I think his stubbornness to be a cb is damaging to the team. Never thought he'd make a good captain either. As much as people here slag of vlaar he always seemed a passionate yet respectful captain that took his responsobilitily seriously. Micah seems like he's main passion is defeding himself on Twitter and in the papers. I hoped he would prove me wrong but I never thought he'd cut it as a captain and so far think that's the case. If he acknowledged his shortcomings as a CB to date and declared he was happy to play RB that would to me show more leadership skills and that he cares about Villa as much as himself.

I think Vlaar got offered a new contract, but declined.

For about 15 minutes of the Sunderland game he played amazingly showed some real skill on the ball. Not sure why he went missing after that, though.

2 minutes ago, Marka Ragnos said:

 

Well, you guys are sounding admirably well-behaved and sober-minded. Pat Murphy (and thousands of listeners, surely) was laughing because what was said was risible. 

Anyway of listening to this, after the fact?

56 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Just when you think things can't get anymore embarrassing. The general returns. FFS

What's the dilly with the General anyway? I met him in Ohio a few years ago when we played the Crew in pre-season. Didn't he used to post regularly on fan sites?

1 minute ago, markavfc40 said:

Tom Fox it seems since he arrived has been instrumental in Paul Lambert signing a new three year deal then 4 months later being sacked. Tim Sherwood signing a three year deal then 8 months later being sacked. Remi Garde being brought in and nine games down the line he has been unable to get a win.

Paddy Reilly has been director of scouting and player recruitment since September 2014. During that time the club has had the biggest turnover in players during one transfer window that I can remember in many a year. It is safe to assume that Paddy had a big hand in that. The squad that he had a big hand in assembling currently sits bottom of the league on 8 points after 20 games having failed to win a game for 19 games.

I think given the above it is safe to assume these guys aren't making a very good fist of what they are doing and just as many managers have paid the price for perceived failure with little positive overall effect maybe it is time we looked above the manager for where some of our failings lie.
 

Agreed. How the people who assembled this squad still have jobs is a mystery.

6 minutes ago, leighavfc said:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/doomed-aston-villa-lining-up-7122367

If anything in that article is remotely accurate then it's a pity the scouting department didn't apply the same logic when we purchased players to supposedly compete in the premier league.

Not sure why this annoys me, but I can never understand the need for people to queue outside a store for 3 days waiting for the release of a new I-Phone or gaming console. Waiting another week or so is going to kill you?

Hypothetically speaking if Lerner decided after the protest that he will walk away (Never in a million years do I actually think he would), what happens then?