hopeful.villan

And I think thats our first "how did Bent not score that..!!!" moment

Yes he is! here comes trouble To be fair, although it is quite a ridiculous comment.... he's obviously from a different country, i get the sentiment, moving from Cork to Manchester and Manchester to Birmingham is similar to stayin in the same country, similar lifestyle, same language, weather. Its not as if he's come from central africa. And yes I'm from Ireland

Great post and good idea. Songs like this don't need to be changed. Sing it as it is, we already have a connection to it with our holtenders in the sky song. Leave it as it is and sing it loud. I can imagine it, slowed down slightly and being sung by 20 or 30,000 fans. Pure class. A few big flags waving.. Maybe someone needs to inform Brigada 1874 or whatever their name is. If anyones gonna start it maybe these could, at least they are an organised group, if they started others might follow..

All the twitter accounts have gone very quiet.. must be somethin goin on in there

This is the most important question of the afternoon. Better that Georgie??? I hate being at work. not sure if anyone is better than Georgie to be honest... This one looks like she'd do bold things to you though

This is the most important question of the afternoon. Exactly. To hell with Bent, Play her up front and I'll go to every game, even if we're in the conference

Sweet Jesus.... I think I have a new favourite sky sports news presenter lady...

Was just about to ask the same.... Have been watchin it ona stream all day but its just switched to the australia game... Could really do with another stream

Well you gotta hand it MM on this one. Big bid for a striker, will send the forum into meltdown... Got that pretty spot on.. 40 pages of posts in the last few hours.. If you're looking for meltdown though, check out the sunderland boards... my god its chaos.. Makes you appreciate the work of the mods on here, lockin posts keeping things organised. The sunderland board has a new post every 2 minutes, all about Darren Bent, impossible to make any sense of it. Lets hear it for Villatalk and their version of organised fun.

hope we don't sell downing although I can see ALbrighton and Bannan ready for next season. Perhaps he can go in the summer. We do need a LB and possibly a CB. But I think CB can wait until the summer. offload Dunne Davies Warnock Petrov L Young (even though I really like him when he plays for us) bring in 2 CB and 1 midfielder and another Side back (hopefully Walker) I echo this, A lot of talk of who we are going to sell now... I think we have a fairly set list of players that we can sell and should sell and I'd be dissapointed if we sold anyone from outside that. Davies, Warnock, Beye, Reo Coker, Luke Young, Carew. I would keep the rest, including Stephen Ireland, Petrov, Dunne and whoever else we might be disappointed with now. With the addition of some quality players such as Makoun and Bent we might just start to see a different side to these players

I don't think our results under houllier have been seized upon with more dram than necessary, they are terrible and thats the most important thing. I think so called issues are being exaggerated as yet another excuse for houllier. I was referring to the wailing about GH's 'so called' love-in with another club. I disagree very strongly with your last statement. In my opinion there are a few fans who really can't grasp the size of the issues inherited by GH also and struggle to look past the very, very short term. I think there are plenty who can see certain issues and except a drop this season was going to happen, some just don't think those issues should see us in the position we are. I don't think there are any Villa fans who see this as an acceptable position to be in regardless of what excuses we may have. But I think that most logical football fans can see that the way out of this is not by gettin rid of the manager right now. Surely you can see that this would only plunge us into more turmoil. We've won in the cup, we got a draw against our most bitter rivals away. We're out of the relegation zone and we're coming into some very tough games. What good can come from gettin rid of a manager now... when its possible we may be on the verge of turning this around. If we could take a point from city and beat wigan I think we'd be on the road to mid table mediocrity. Which I would have settled for as the minimum when GH came in. Now I except that those are very big ifs.. I except all the points that another manager would have come in and made the most of what he had, not caused so much disruption and turmoil and maybe gone through the season getting average results. This clearly isnt GH's style. He came in, didnt like certain things that he saw and tried to change it. Has it worked so far? no. Will it work? I think so. He's a manager with proven ability. He's very stubborn and that has been his downfall this season. He tried to quickly to change to much, he rocked the boat and refused to back down on certain things. But he is still a quality manager. At the end of the season, if we finish 16th or 17th, i still think he can attract his type of players to the club. The type of players that can take us forward. This season is a disaster, nothing good can come from it (except an unexpected cup victory..!) We need to build for next year and secure our place in the league and the only way to do that is to let the manager get his own players in.

Back him, we have no option now. Too late to get anyone else, and would only disrupt things further if he went. I'm afraid GH is with us for at least this season. Having said that, I do feel he is working with a group of players he , (a) doesn't really seem to like and ( don't suit his style of play whatsoever. I think by the start of next season we will be looking at a very different Aston Villa squad, first team and style of play, and we'll all be looking at GH in a new light. I think spurs have shown you have to play some decent football and have a few really creative players to break the top 4. I think we could have persisted with MON for the next 5 years and he wouldn't have done it, Ged may not either but at least we can have a go at it in a different fashion.

Yeah Reo coker did the hard work today, trackin back and tackling, neither him nor petrov offered anything goin forward, if anything they hindered us, everytime it cam to them, they stopped, turned, had a look, turned again, stopped and then passed it back. I'm very certain if we had a midielder who could collect the ball from the back four and actually pick a forward pass that wasnt a hopeful 50 yard punt, we'd have hammered them today.

I definitely think this is bigger than the cup final. 3-1, not comfortable, the usual hanging on but I think we'll nick a third at the finish. COME ON YOU VILLA

**** King Kenny, possibly the most significant second city derby in living memory and all they can talk about is Dalglish. Jamie stayed in his house once you know, I wonder did Kenny touch him inappropriately. Come on the Villa. This is truly a must win game. Show some **** spirit.

Not to worry guys, just played the scum in my football manager game and beat them 5-1 at the sty. Hat trick for gabby, I'll take is a good omen that we have this game in the bag tomorrow.