tomav84

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.

so if city draw/lose vs newcastle on sunday they will give up vs QPR?

really cant see it, after watching them vs chelsea i cant see anything other than QPR losing by around 5

I agree but for some reason others think that QPR will become one of the best teams in Europe overnight ;-)

no one is saying that...i'm just hating the pure assumptions that city are going to beat qpr and we will be fine. yes they probably will...but its 11vs11 on a one off game and by my predictions qpr only need a point to keep them up and send us down. MUCH stranger things have happened

been saying it all along - even when o'neill left...slavan bilic. think he would be brilliant

call me superstitious but cant help but think all this 'were definitely staying up' and 'qpr are definitely losing at city' is jinxing things somewhat...relegation threatened teams can pull all kinds of results out when they're fighting. look at west ham v man utd a few years back

How unbearable would life be if SHA came up and we went down!

think thats where the headlines get changed to "McLeish sacked" to "McLeish in police protection" should that occur

How can it mathematically work out so that we are safe going into the last game assuming we draw/lose against Tottenham. (iv already ruled out a win, I cant consider victory)

a draw vs spurs and a qpr loss - qpr draw and its still a 9 goal swing required to send us down. this is assuming bolton win next 2 games too. spurs and baggies do us a favour and we could find ourselves in the dizzy heights of 15th by the end of next weekend

ive just done the predictor as negatively as i could

bolton winning midweek and beating west brom, drawing to stoke - theyre safe

qpr beating stoke but losing to citeh - theyre down

blackburn beating wigan losing to chelsea - theyre down

wigan lose to blackburn but beat wolves - theyre safe

we lose last 2 games narrowly and stay up on goal difference

IMO unless QPR can manage a result away to city last game of season we're safe...rather they just failed to beat stoke though and us be able to enjoy the day at norwich though!

just seen interview on sky sports from dunne who indicated the boos etc affects the youngsters

i think it was less insulting to us when we never heard anything

IF we fail to win or even draw I can see the media throwing us into their 'relegation battle' bollocks with the rest of them.

And rightfully so, we're already in a relegation battle. If you don't think we you're deluded!

good...the players need to realise we're right in the middle of it hopefully the press will help get that fact in their heads

dont know why we use this at all. My spurs ST holder mate says he sells his back to the club and they rack up the money from his ticket sales throughout the year and give him the money off next years ST rather than cash. i raised this to the general some time ago as it would a) reduce the number of empty seats from non-attending season ticket holders and increase the number of renewals.

perhaps the ego steps in with these players. they think that once they've played a few games that they've 'made it' and stop trying. i last heard stefan moore is driving a cab for extra cash as he doesn't earn enough playing for halesowen town or something to make ends meet...classic example of stopping your work rate. bannan could be another of these...possibly not as extreme as moore but along the same lines. i just hope that the latest crop of youngsters we have breaking through keep up their hunger and don't go down the same road as i can see bannan back in the championship before too long...yes, probably playing for us!

A very mixed game that could have gone either way. I had to smile as MON was interviewed on Five Live as we drove home from VP. One eyed to say the least.

Conveniently glossed over a potential penalty for their keeper bringing down Weimann, the hand ball outside the area by their keeper which could have been a red card. John (I am good cos I played for Man U) O'Shea's cynical push on Lichaj which could also have been a red card

The positives for me were:

Lichaj - MotM by a mile, we have a great full back in him.

Baker - just gets better and better, very impressed.

Herd - another gem in the making.

Weimann - never stopped running and worked really well with Heskey. Let down by his finishing.

Collins - imperious until injured. Has stepped up to the plate.

Heskey - surprising good, Weimann worked well off him and I have to say 100% commitment.

Negatives:

Albrighton - terrible corners and crosses. Great commitment but a very poor end product.

Bannan - drinking in the last chance saloon for me. He is going backwards. I would much rather have seen Caruthers come on.

Hutton - beaten for pace again and again.

So so:

Given - little to do.

Cuellar - a much better CB but awful positional sense at RB.

Ireland - loved the tackling back and the runs forward but held onto the ball too long.

N'Zogbia - better game but ran into too many blind alleys.

Gabby - clearly up for the game but ineffective overall.

Just about happy with a point but a typical McLeish negative fest killed it for me. Properly organised there were three points for the taking. Had to smile when the "Martin, Martin you're a clearing in the woods" chanting morphed in to "Alex, Alex you're a clearing in the woods" So, so deserved IMO.

Overall another point towards safety but not much else.

Laughed when Gardner got sent off but fair play to the lad he was wearing a Stan teeshirt and made a point of showing it, so respect there.

As for MON, I hate him for what he did to us but I'd have him back in a heart beat compared to the useless fool we choose to call our manager.

i would upgrade ireland to 'positives' and downgrade n'zog to 'negatives' but aside from that pretty spot on here - particularly regarding bannan