tomav84

as far as i am aware smoking is not actually illegal in the ground because its not an enclosed public space

smoking in sporting arenas across the board i believe is illegal - enclosed or not

and thanks to martin o'neill for giving back the big screen that he has had in his living room for the last couple of years

im surprised that stories like this still attract a debate on this forum...classic case of lazy journalism. thought there was talk of the mirror being added to the speculation source blacklist at one point?

muse tickets on sale in a couple of hours

ill watch it now that this series of jersey shore has just finished...

welcome paul...and thank you skybet for my £80

I see the rumors are doing the rounds again this morning regarding Raffa and the Villa job. Into favourite, not sure if that’s because of the rumors or if someone is ITK. I haven’t seen anything to give me hope, anyone else?

When I say hope, if he comes we have a war chest!

Well he's now the favourite in many places, second favourite in others. The strange thing about all this is that before his odds started to fall yesterday there were absolutely no rumours or whispers of Benitez to Villa at all. Why would the odds just drop like that? He was way out in the 20s yesterday.

a wannabe ITK on twitter mentioned he had been approached (KKfootball or something?) not that i really bought into it but at 25/1 i considered it worth a tenner anyway

started to type a reply but then decided not to dignify this with one...

i dont think RDM is as bad as some make out. rodgers flopped in his first management job but look at him now? so RDM didnt do great at west brom but how can anyone ignore a cup double? madness

the guy beat barceloan for godness sake and won them CL something not even mourinho couldnt do. would much rather have him than martinez whose best achievement is keeping wigan up in the last 5 games

RDM isnt my first choice but to rule him out completely is foolish considering the position we are in, we are not a top 6 club anymore unfortunately

I hear what you are saying about beating Barcelona but did you see the tactics he used to do that? It was like a scene from Custers last stand. 10 men in the box. After McNegative last year we need something more exciting to bring fans back.

I want to see us go out and attack the 'elite' teams like the 2-2 against Man Utd under Houllier and I worry that DiMatteo would be tempted to employ negative tactics instead.

What a ridiculous argument, HELLO! HE BEAT BARCELONA! WITH 10 MEN!

It baffles me it really does, a guy who has just won the european cup gets less support than a guy with one season in norway.

He didn't win a **** thing.

Chelsea were incredibly lucky and on another day would have lost 3 or 4 nil, Munich were incredibly wasteful.

This isn't FM and it isn't black and white, just cos someone wins a trophy does not make them a good manager - we should know this more than anyone.

on on that basis on another day we would have lost 3 or 4 nil to bayern in 82 we 'didnt win a **** thing' either then?? when your names on the trophy it doesnt say how it was won and RDM deserves great credit for making it happen IMO

Ok, I'm sticking my neck out here.. But here goes.

Do not lock this thread yet.

Interesting that he went out to 26-1 and is suddenly bein backed down to 14-1

Someone is still chucking money on him

saw him at 28s when i saw gaztons post and thought 'shall i?' hes back down to 2/1 joint fave now! either everyone started chucking money on, clutching at straws, or somethings going on...

Ok, I'm sticking my neck out here.. But here goes.

Do not lock this thread yet.

surely its over...

wouldnt surprise me if he wanted a clause relating to man u similar to the one he had with molde regarding prem teams. aint buying the family reasons excuse but fair play to him for going along with it in an attempt not to make us look too bad. just hope lerner had similar 'preliminary talks' with lambert

Think the majority of the excitement is us going into the unknown somewhat. Getting a young hungry manager in and we have no idea the style of football will be played...unlike the appointment made by the board a year ago. Yes this might completely fail...but for once there is as much chance that it would be a complete success too. Personally whilst there possibly has been a slight overreaction, its nice to see a bit of excitement and unity on the forum again!

managed to get 6/1 at william hill 10 mins ago...back down to 2s again now!

Live cover of the on goings here bottom of the article. Press the little icon next to the twitter icon to translate to english.

so guess i'm not doing much work today then...

Excited by this appointment. Seems like he sets his teams up to play how pretty much 99% of us want us to play.

What i will say, is that with an appointment like this, its not going to happen over night and it may well take 2 seasons for him to get us to where he wants us to be. I just hope us fans and the board give him the time to molde ( 8) ) this squad and make it his own.

The revolution begins...bright future ahead.

problem is that we arn't the most patient bunch are we? personally i think the level of investment required to bring us back to where we expect to be is not going to come in one summer, so yes it will be minimum 2 seasons before we are in the right half of the table. i just hope that he is given the time to do it by both fans and the board

my issue is that he is using us as a stepping stone to better things (dont get me wrong, happy to be stepped on if it means we dont have a season like we have just had) but he is leaving molde after only 18 months in the job...he can and will do the same to us. i say get him on a long term deal so when something better comes knocking we get decent compensation

excited about this though...liking the norwegian little scamp more the more i hear about him

wondering what this page is going to read at 11pm...

Clicky

liverpool will go for all the big names first - all of which wouldnt even give us the time of day. cant see them going for martinez / lambert

Please make it AVB

this...mainly cause i have a tenner on him at 40/1

not popping the champagne corks til i know who his replacement will be...still not overly confident of lerner and faulkner's abilities to appoint the right man

staying in norwich on sun night...anyone know where's good to drink?

Left before the "lap of honour" but they said on the radio that mc didn't come out......shows how "decent" he his..hmmmm what a joke....needs to leave our club now!

the lap of honour is for the players...the manager never takes part. just sayin...

thanks for the efforts carlos. the team needs a complete rebuild and unfortunately that includes that your good self.

gave his all today but sorry there are better defenders available if we actually do a bit of scouting and wouldnt want as much in wages

my faith in lerner and faulkner is so low that i genuinely fear of who the villa manager will be next season. it could very easily be mcleish for a start, but due to this ridiculous criteria of premiership experience i wonder who the actual candidates are. i dont think we can tempt anyone from their current job i.e rodgers or lambert, which leaves current out of work prem managers.

i have a horrible feeling he is going to appoint bruce or mccarthy i really do...

It wouldn't even be mentioned in a newspaper if they weren't footballers. Similar things happen hundreds of times a night in this country. A case of handbags if I ever saw one.

So it's socially acceptable then?

Did I say it was?

I said it wasn't newsworthy, it was an absolutely nothing incident outside a nightclub. I see shit like that every day

it shouldnt be newsworthy, but fact of the matter is that these instances DO make the news. play it down all you like saying you see things like this every day (dont know what sort of clubs you hang out in by the way!) but herd kicking the nightclub door as insignificant as it was probably would have had him arrested had the police turned up. its just bad press that villa dont need right now

There has been a theme running through this thread since the first page, in which people identify a remote possibility (Villa getting very few if any points from their remaining matches, while three out of five of our relegation rivals suddenly start picking up loads of points, including against the top 6 sides who are scrapping amongst each other for top 4 places) and leap to the assumption that it is almost certain to happen.

Sorry Gabby0878, but your post just happened to demonstrate that tendency very clearly, so I highlighted it.

I've been clear from the start that, although the possibilty of relegation is very unlikely, McLeish is so awful a manager that he will take us damned close to it. And so he has. And indeed, he still might get us there.

But it will still require an extraordinary turn of events, probably including QPR beating Man C on the last day of the season. Stranger things have happened but that isn't any justification for saying it could easily happen.

The shame is that with a little more positive football earlier in the season, we could have scraped an extra 3 or 4 points from the 36 matches we have played so far and we would be clear of relegation worries.

i think that about sums it up. we havent generally all watched a whole load of qpr / bolton matches this season where as we have been subjected to dire avfc football all season therefore we are so full of negativity that we are fearing (and sometimes assuming) the worst - even though it is obviously unlikely. all my mates say to me when i say i am resigned to relegation that we are not going down and that we are best placed to avoid the drop out of all teams involved...so that is how other fans percieve us, its just that we see the glass half empty after watching such negative football all season.