kayarcee

I disagree with that; Clough was never quite the same after he fell out with Peter Taylor. Wenger never reached the same heights after Pat Rice left. Other side of the coin, yes, Ferguson was able to reshuffle with multiple assistants, as has been Mourinho.

Or the Bobby Roode entrance theme: "MARVELLOUS! He won't give in he won't give in till we're victorious he will defend he will defend, and he'll do what he must no he won't give in he won't give in oh so Marvellous until the end until the end"

Either says a lot for him, or a lot about us, given that I don't remember Barry even getting that kind of a sendoff. Yes, his Liverpool Summer likely contributed to that, but far more frequently our support gets on the back of a player if his skills fade or he moves on for more money.

Charles N'Zombia was right there, and you reached for that?

I think we run the risk of UEFA/FIFA sanctions far outweighing what the eventual compo for Baticle would end up if we were to talk to him without permission, as he's contracted to the club. Would be similar to tapping up a player.

And to be perfectly fair, Hogg was fine -- not exceptional, but not terrible. I remember him being a decent, tidy player. He was never going to pull up trees, but was able to effectively move the ball to the players who could.

The concerning thing regarding Sherwood is that his previous job came about because the team he was a coach for sold their best player, bought heavily, and the existing manager struggled to fit all of the new pieces together (on top of Sherwood himself manipulating his way into the frame). You would think that his biggest piece of advice from that experience would have been to consolidate the existing squad and buy only a few players to help the squad kick on and improve in one or two position. Not double down on the Spurs strategy and buy a whole new squad.

Barry Bannan brought more to the team than most gave him credit for. Barry Bannan and Ashley Westwood are two sides of the same coin. With Bannan it was all "he never does the simple things! He's all Hollywood balls!" With Westwood it's "why doesn't he try an attacking pass! I only ever see him pass sideways and backwards!" When the reality is somewhere in the middle for both.

I bought the first year Macron top during Villa's preseason tour in the states, and have had no peeling issues, no snags, no issues whatsoever. Also bought a long sleeve glow in the dark from that year that's held up in a similar fashion. Then again, I always wash my shirts in cold water and air dry them.

Considering that for baseball, there are 30 major league teams with 25-man squads, plus 5 or 6 farm teams of the same, plus American universities and high schools, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Japan and Korea, the talent pool isn't that much smaller.

Not quite. While there is a draft in major league baseball, those players aren't expected to immediately contribute, and are often assigned to farm teams for a year or two. Imagine if Villa owned Walsall, Tamworth and Coventry, and then could distribute players as it saw fit amongst those four entities. That's how baseball is structured, and has been since around the 30s (before that, it was a series of regional leagues with a similar transfer system to world football). There is no salary cap. The actual Moneyball philosophy istlef is based on "market inefficiencies," i.e. players that are valued lowly by the rest of the league, but have an attribute that in the right environment could be maximized while the team has them under employ. For example, signing multiple doubles hitters while the league prefers to chase guys with high home run and RBI numbers. To an extent, I suppose that's what the emphasis on Ligue 1/2 players was all about this Summer - the French league is becoming "flatter" (i.e. the power structure of L'OL/L'OM/PSG/Monaco is eroding), and so the players across the league there are more competitive, and more likely to quickly cohere than if we had purchased a "world XI" of similar players. That said, Sherwood probably should have piped up that buying a whole new squad in one go didn't work when Spurs sold their big money player, and that we'd be better using that money for a small handful of players that could drastically improve our situation. But he didn't, and so here we are.

By that logic, Sir Alex bought Bebe, Veron and Kleberson!

Two games? Great. Roll on with KevMac until Bob can come in.

Actually, as an American, I can tell you he can be quite inspiring. He's exactly the opposite of Sherwood. He's soft-spoken, his teams play organized and disciplined, his teams are often the fittest in their competitions (we will never be outworked). He'd be working with a better selection of defenders than he ever did with the US.

Quite honestly, I'd RATHER have it sans sponsor if I could, rather than being a walking billboard for a casino.