VillaAndLoyal

The mileage is about 50k I think, so not too bad. The pages I've found on the internet so far are very contrasting - some seem to think £300/400 is reasonable but others say you could end up paying £1,200. I guess it depends exactly what the damage is? I just hate how every time I get a phonecall off this garage they seem to just pluck a figure out of thin air almost. They probably don't, but that's certainly what it feels like. Thanks for the responses so far chaps.

So today on the way to work, five minutes away from work in fact, my 1.4 Fiesta Zetec went caput on a motorway sliproad. The garage (private business) have just called and said the head gasket has gone, and have quoted me about £800 to fix it. I know nothing about cars if I'm honest but reading a few related internet pages I think the gasket would probably need skimming as the car failed during use. Does anyone know whether that seems a fair quote or should I ask around? I can't really afford £800, especially as it's only 12 months since I paid £3k for it. Any help would be most appreciated. V&L Donations are also welcome :winkold:

I have just tweeted a number of people about Villa fans' idea for giving Stan a standing ovation in the 19th minute in every home game from now on. Like others have said, this weekend a fitting and deserved tribute was held by fans of both Villa and Chelsea, as well as Celtic today, and other support from all quarters of the footballing world has come flooding in. But this fight has only just started and as Stan is well and truly 'one of ours' we need to show him our ongoing and unwavering support in what will undoubtedly be the biggest battle of his life. By taking just a minute out of every home game to show our support we will be keeping his efforts to rid himself of this terrible illness at the forefront of our thoughts. Those I have already tweeted include: AVFC Official, Support4Stan, Darren Bent, Andi Wiemann, Jack Grealish, Dan Harrison (AVFC website journo), Paul Merson, Jack Woodward, Rob Bishop, Tim Abraham, Matt Law (Express journo & Villa fan), Ian Taylor and Mat Kendrick. Can others please do the same, as well as spreading the word on Facebook and other Villa websites, and we will get the ball rolling and this cracking plan will come to fruition I'm sure. Thanks. By the way, great idea Trent.

Definitely. He needs support throughout his treatment, and this should happen every home game for the duration. Saturday's showing was a reaction to the news, let's now show him that we are with him all the way, throughout his struggle. This. How can we spread the message? It needs to be done every home game.

Agree with everything except the Cahill comment... It's not as if he left through any anymosity... It's not as if he left for more money... It's not as if he left for Champions League football... And it's not as if he left because he thought he was better than the team... He left because he couldn't get a regular spot... And he went to a club (at the time) below us in the standings... The fact that he now is deemed good enough to come off the bench for Chelsea is probably more of a reflection of the management that let him go, more so than the player himself and any supposed "loyalty" he should have had... Applauding him for achieving that is clueless? :shock: Dear me... Someone clearly wasn't at Bolton away a couple of seasons ago when he cupped his ear and goaded the Villa fans after scoring, despite getting a good reception from the majority earlier in the game. He's a rocket polisher, and that is why the above poster called people who gave him a standing ovation yesterday clueless. Dear me...

This match is irrelevant now, couldn't care less what the score is. I'm going to support Stan the man and hopefully everyone going will sing for him for 90 minutes. He deserves nothing less.

In the awful day we heard the news about our fantastic captain, Villa Talk's thread has reached page 19 by midnight. The number this brave warrior wears for the Villa cause week after week. Maybe, just maybe, that is some sort of positive sign.

Why does it always happen to the good guys? Devastated by the news but everyone at Aston Villa and in the rest of the football community is 100 per cent behind you. Like many have said, he is the model profesional, much like Muamba. And like him, you will fight back from this my Claret & Blue brother even stronger than before. Pray4Petrov.

Completely true. And what people fail to understand is that Lerner has actually been a failure from the very start, not just the last 18 months. It was him who sanctioned MON's crazy transfers and wages which we clearly couldn't sustain. Our wage bill was higher than Spurs, despite their squad being far superior both in terms of quality and size - yet Lerner gave the go ahead to all these deals. Only now (or for the last 18 months or so) are we seeing the true fall out from this. He is a complete and utter liability, who knows nothing about football or running a successful sports business.

'The General' was class? Christ, you're easily pleased. Krulak came across as patronising, arrogant, far too easily wound up, and it was a PR stunt gone badly wrong from the very start. Him leaving this board was fantastic and not before time.

I want to shake your hand. Thank god someone else can see the bigger picture. I cannot comprehend the viewpoint of countless Villa fans who still in some vastly misguided way think Randy has been good for this club. What has he actually achieved? Absolutely nothing, bar a few aethetic changes designed to appease fans. He is a coward, a spin doctor and liability, plain and simple. I really hope he manages to sell to someone reliable in the not too distant future. He has drained the positivity from the fans and the club by his monstrously bad decision in appointing Alex McLeish. The appointment before that was almost as bad (GH) - and as for his use of money - just don't get me started. It's a joke to be honest how much money he has pissed up the wall from his father's inheritance. I bet he's turning in his grave.

Villa in anti-football shocker. I actually don't know what to say. What can you say about that? Villa are draining every last bit of optimism from me. It was a cracking sunny day down in north London and to be honest the players looked as if they were pissed off they weren't sunbathing. I'm going for a meal tomorrow at the VMF restaurant at Villa Park and I'm tempted to break into the board room and refuse to leave until Lerner sacks that useless ginger muppet. Oh wait, Lerner won't be there, he never is...

Massive win. I thought first half we played our best football of the season, particularly at home. Was horrible seeing it almost kick-off big style in the upper holte though. It was like seeing half the silly arguments on here pan out for real in the stands. I guess this is what you get with a man like McLeish at the helm. McLeish out.

Dull, uninspiring and past its sell by date. I'm talking about the pies, not McLeish, by the way.

McLeish aside, £295 for a season-ticket in Villa's main stand is fantastic value, there's no doubting that fact. By making certain tickets as cheap as that, it's a clear indication in my mind that the Club recognises ST sales could well be down again next season. Obviously no-one can predict exactly what will happen in the future, but by putting some of the prices that cheap does it suggest AMC is here for some considerable time to come? Reading between lines perhaps suggests the answer to that question is 'yes'.

You don't look at the thread anymore, yet you're still posting on it. Quite a skill you have there.

Most of us good Villa fans were supporting McLeish a few weeks ago But not any more Speak for yourself. The very moment his name was mentioned in the same breath as Aston Villa I thought it was an abomination. Nothing I have seen since has changed that viewpoint. That's not to say I haven't supported the team every game, but Alex **** McLeish? Randolph must have smoked some serious weed the day he appointed him. In fact, he must like the odd joint, as he appointed Houllier too.

Add two of them to that list Trent.

What an utterly bizarre viewpoint. Going by that logic, the (at a guess) 3,000 or so Villa fans who so vocally turned against McLeish a week earlier at Wigan also became "fickle" the moment they started singing obscenities? I'm sure you would have been among the first to complain had that "pathetic" banner been unfurled from the off, so when exactly are fans allowed to air their views in your book? When everyone has gone home? I don't think anyone has blamed McLeish for the individual incident leading to Blackburn's goal, have they? What people have, quite rightly, blamed him for is sending the side out second-half to defend a 1-0 lead and inviting pressure onto ourselves which was always going to lead to the inevitable equaliser. What people have also blamed him for is taking off our brightest attacking player in that game (Charles) and a player who is good at breaking up play (Herd) for a Hollywood passer and an unproven PL midfielder - both hugely inexperienced. They have blamed him for masterminding yet another draw, which could quite easily have been a loss, against one of the poorest sides we have come up against this season. The fact you don't pick up on any of this perhaps suggests you were spending too much time gazing at the banner?

Anyone else watch this documentary after MOTD? Extremely interesting and followed the Club behind-the-scenes over the past four years: from the time they were taken over until their promotion to the Premier League at the end of last season. I cannot for the life of me work out why QPR allowed the BBC to film and broadcast some of the things i've just witnessed. In my opinion it made them look terrible - from caretaker managers being verbally abused by the owners, to the owners discussing sending text messages to the management staff about the team selection during games, to Flavio Briatore threatening to sell the club because fans dared to boo him inside the ground. It was fascinating and disturbing at the same time and I can't understand how anyone could say this reflects positively on the Club. What it did do is give ordinary fans like you and I a massive insight into what really happens behind the scenes at football clubs in this day and age - albeit this was perhaps an extreme example. I couldn't help but make comparisons between QPR and Aston Villa. In the first two/three seasons after QPR's takeover, they had no 'football men' running things from the top - just big business men with even bigger egos - and it showed. They got through a succession of managers - or 'idiots' as they were branded - and it was only when that management structure and the Boards approach changed, that changes started to occur on the pitch. An argument put forward by many a Villa fan recently is that these poor decisions from the top of our Club also stem from the fact that we are being run by people who don't come from footballing backgrounds - and thus don't know how to run a PL football club effectively. Is the problem which we saw highlighted on this programme at QPR also a mirror image to what is happening at Villa Park? For those who haven't watched it, I highly recommend you watch it back on BBC iplayer.

Same shit, different week. The only reason we looked half decent first half was because Blackburn were absolutely dire. If you read Steve Kean's comments he said it was their worst 45 minutes for a good few months. Second half they predictably played better - and all I can do is be pleased they didn't play like that for 90 minutes otherwise we would have lost. McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner - Collective OUT.

I don't mean to pick on you personally, but it's this kind of attitude I really don't understand. Lots of people have been saying "he started off well, and only now has made a few bad decisions etc etc" - but in my opinion this is totally wrong. He's been making bad decisions from the get go. Who was it who sanctioned, what were, quite frankly ludicrous wage and transfer deals for a Club who (even with Randy at the helm) never had the wealth of the Chelsea's and Man City's of this world. Randolph Lerner. Who was it who agreed to have a wage bill higher than that of Tottenham Hotspur when they (quite clearly) had a first team and squad far superior to ours? Randolph Lerner. Part of the problems and drastic cutbacks we are now facing are a direct result of how Randy has run the Club since he first stepped foot inside Villa Park. I don't understand this mentality of thinking things are only now going wrong - we were living outside our means and only a foolish businessman and neglectful owner would allow this to happen. Risso's analogy of this country's financial fortunes is completely right - we spent foolishly and are now paying the price. The parallels between us and the Cleveland Browns are uncanny and, as the seasons have progressed, we've seen less funds invested in the team, less interaction with the fans, higher ticket prices, and less of the man himself attending games. Far less. He came into the Club and was a breath of fresh air, or so it seemed. He seemed to have bought into the whole ethos and history of the Club but when you delve beneath the surface - past the refurbished pub, Villa tattoo, free scarves and new mosaics - the way the Club has been run since he bought us (for a very cheap price I might add) has been nothing short of atrocious. With a man at the helm, in Paul Faulkner, who clearly knows nothing about the qualities needed to be a successful Premier League CEO. I don't blame Mr Faulkner for that - he just took a job - and after all his background is in American banking - I blame the man who appointed him, Randolph Lerner. So in terms of running the Club financially he has chucked and largely wasted a load of money in something before deciding he/we can't sustainably live that way and therefore panicked and cut right back in the space of 12 to 18 months. Arguably a very dangerous thing to do when your Club is still competing in the PL. Does this strike me as a person who knows how best to invest money in football? Or a person who is up to running a top English PL club? No, it certainly doesn't. The other major thing Randy has had to do is appoint managers. Two in six years. Whatever you think of Ellis and O'Neill - it was Sir Doug who secured the services of MoN on the proviso that Villa would soon have a new owner with more funds to invest. Doug stuck to his word and soon sold the Club. It was not, as some people have suggested, Randy who appointed O'Neill. Martin may have left the Club in a disgraceful way and certainly had some very major flaws, but he did still secure us three very respectable finishes and got us to Wembley twice. Was he mislead into thinking this glut of investment was going to carry on before being told - after three seasons of progress and other teams strengthening - that he was going to have to cut right back? No one knows but the events since suggest that may be the case. The two managers Randy has personally hired have been nothing short of disasters. Gerard Houllier, a man who was all but retired until he got the call from Randy, was clearly never in a fit state to return to the Premier League. Despite the very obvious risks to GH's health, our wasteful owner ties him down in a long-term lucrative contract which, again, comes back to bite us sooner than we bargained for. Again, the actions of a responsible person when it comes to money? No, most definitely not. Houllier was such a bad choice for Aston Villa it was embarrassing - he insulted the fans, insulted the Club, fell out with players, had public spats with them, implemented bizarre rules, openly admitted to "throwing" games he didn't think he could win - and all that very nearly got us relegated. The thing that saved us? Darren Bent - a panic buy in January - as Randy full well knew that the £18million he spent on Bent would be more than paid back by keeping us in the league. Alex McLeish. I say his name and I still can't quite fathom that this man is in charge at our football club. A man with successive PL relegations to his name, a man renowned for his boring negative anti-football, a man who was managing our greatest rivals, a man who managed to finish 3rd with Rangers in Scotland in a two-team league. The list goes on. When his name was first mentioned, I laughed it off. No owner of AVFC would be so foolish than to think AMC was in any way the right man to run our great Club. Especially after we had just been linked with Martinez, a man who plays attractive attacking football, the opposite ‘style’ to Alex. That in itself makes you question, what on earth was Lerner's thinking in appointing McLeish? What was his plan? Did he have one? I'm not one for taking the internet too seriously, but within days of his name being mentioned 15,000+ Villa fans had joined a Facebook group against the ludicrous idea. That should have given Lerner a good indication that McLeish was neither wanted nor needed. I stick to what I have always said - find me a more bizarre managerial appointment in the last decade - or since the PL was formed. It is THE most illogical, mystifying and outrageous appointment I can personally ever remember. It defies belief and still does, when I remember back to that awful day his name was first mentioned. Randloph Lerner made that choice. No-one else. Now look where we are. One point less than Birmingham City had at this stage last season. To add insult to injury, we paid Small Heath millions of pounds in compensation to secure his services. Isn't that something you do when attracting a top manager from a rival (in terms of league placing) club? Not Alex **** McLeish. I ask the question again - is this something a responsible (and arguably sane) owner would do? No way is it. I think the question of who would you prefer "Ellis or Lerner?" is pretty silly. My answer is neither, to be blunt. The Ellis years were often blighted by one thing or another - and he put himself first rather than the Club. But the reason for my post is to show people: isn't that exactly what Lerner is doing as well? Both are woeful owners in my opinion. When people come on here and say, almost without thought, "Randy without doubt", I do wonder whether they are really examining all the facts or are still just taken in by the few clever stunts RL has pulled to gloss over the fact he is reckless with his money? Let's face it, Randy inherited his wealth, and in five/six years at Villa and far longer at Cleveland Browns he has nothing to show for it other than bizarre decisions, waning popularity and hollow gestures. Ellis, not good. Lerner, every bit as bad.

McLeish's car radio at the moment...

No, no and no. Never wanted him, never will want him, never will understand why Randolph Lerner made one of the most perplexing and illogical decisions I can remember in the modern game. This will only end one way, badly. And RL and his credit card manager sidekick can leave too, as they are the route of all the problems we are now seeing.

This viewpoint is total rubbish, in my opinion. Firstly, if you think negativity so easily puts pressure on a team then what about most of the threads on here and other websites tearing apart most of our players? Nowadays the internet is so easily accessible that I'd be surprised if many Villa players didn't read threads like these. Does that affect their performances? Does it heck, it's just part and parcel of being a professional footballer, particularly in the modern game. Do you honestly think a protest before the game effects an individual players morale? Especially when the protest wasn't even directed at the players. From where I'm standing, in the real world, I don't think it would affect them one jot. The majority of footballers nowadays don't have much loyalty to their clubs - yet you make out that a few fans protesting will somehow increase the pressure on the players. I totally refute that point as mere hyperbole. What does increase the pressure on players is crap results and performances – which, at the moment, is largely down to the negative dross our manager is intent on us playing. Secondly, the reputation of Villa fans? What the hell are you on about? Why are you so concerned about what people in the media or from other clubs might say? I really don't understand this mindset at all. In recent seasons, off the top of my head, Liverpool, United, Everton, Newcastle and Blackburn have all held protests of one form or another. Have they had their reputation damaged too? Every club has protests when the cause warrants it – this is just more hysteria being whipped up against those taking part. And what has the word “fickle” got to do with anything? How are those protesting being fickle? Fickle to what? Another bizarre point made without any explanation. Whether you agree with it or not, whether you think it's "small time" or not, these protests went ahead because of passionate football supporters standing up for something that they believe is not right. That's exactly what happened today. And yes, it was a pathetic attendance, and it was never going to achieve anything much, but I fully respect why some people felt the need. If we don’t pick up serious points in the next four games that number will continue to rise. I'm certainly not going to slag them off, like some have, and suggest they support another club - that attitude is far more pathetic than any protest let me assure you. You somehow try and suggest that those protesting are not thinking about the club and only themselves - very strange logic that! If they didn't love the club they would be watching on TV, like many of our armchair fans. Whether you agree with protesting or not - and I didn't attend because quite frankly I would far rather be in the pub drinking and protesting is not really my style - those that did deserve a little more respect and, more crucially, understanding than they are getting from many on here. The ONLY reason we are not in the relegation zone at the moment is because this season, more than any other, has seen the top clubs pull away and those at the bottom just cannot pick up points. Yet, the facts say we have two less points than Blues did at this stage last season - so I would say worrying about the threat of relegation is certainly not some kneejerk reaction. This is accentuated by the fact that Mcleish has a track record for relegating PL sides and seems intent to employ his "no lose" policy on our team despite the obvious negative consequences it is having on our results, performances and all round atmosphere around the club. I do agree with Risso though – the main problem is Randolph Lerner and not the shit manager he decided to employ.