MarbellaVillain

given, hutton, warnock, dunne, gabby, nzogbia and bent are all players we are missing. there are just too many young players in this team.

lambert really just does not know what he is doing does he

Warnock and Hutton aren't going to make us any better, come to think of it, neither is Dunne.

any streams?

What have people got against Sven, he has by far a better managerial record than MON had, ditto Jol, Hughes, Klinsmann, Curbishley and the other so called candidates.

With Gothenburg he won the Swedish Cup twice, the league once and the UEFA Cup once.

With Benfica he won the Portuguese league 3 times, the Portuguese Cup once and took them to the final of both the European and UEFA cups.

With Lazio he won the Italian league once, the Italian Cup twice, the UEFA Cup winners Cup and Super Cup once and took them to the final of the UEFA Cup.

With Sampdoria and Roma he won the Italian Cup.

So he's won 15 trophies in his club managerial career (18 if you include the Italian and Portuguese Super Cups), he's taken 3 different teams to 6 European finals winning 3 of them. He's won a treble with Gothenburg, won a domestic double with Benfica a year later (narrowly missing out on a treble) and also won a domestic double with Lazio, he remains the only manager to win doubles in 3 different countries.

It could even be argued his tenure at Citeh wasn't a total disaster, he gave them a double over United and their joint highest points finish in the Premiership, if it hadn't been for that meddling Thai nutter who owned them at the time, I'm sure he'd have done better.

I personally think with all his experience and contacts, he's by far the best candidate to manage our great club.

Even at £25Million, if true that's a great bit of business for us!

Driving across from Marbella on Saturday morning, looking forward to it!

The Sun

MARTIN O'NEILL is weighing up an £8million bid for Mario Mandzukic.

Aston Villa's boss sent scouts to check on the Croatia striker on Tuesday and is ready to step up his interest.

O'Neill has received glowing reports on Mandzukic, 23, who struck twice for Dinamo Zagreb in a 5-1 Champions League qualifier win over FC Koper.

The Irishman can bolster his transfer kitty with the anticipated sales of Nigel Reo-Coker, Steve Sidwell and Luke Young.

And he is prepared to use a large chunk of his expected transfer pot to lure Mandzukic to Villa Park.

Mandzukic has guided Zagreb to back-to-back league and cup doubles in Croatia in the last two seasons but wants a fresh challenge in the Premier League.

His representatives are actively looking to find him a top-flight club here and Everton, Tottenham and Arsenal have also expressed interest in him.

HAHAHA The Sun got this wrong, printed into todays rag paper!! This guy signed yesterday around 3pm for Wolfsburg

I can't find any reports of him signing for Wolfsburg, if you look on Wolfsburg official website, there is nothing about the signing, surely if they had made a significant signing like that, the OS would have it!

Has the team been announced yet?

Carling Cup doesn't effect Prem on suspensions does it?

yeah it does, cards all count for the next game whether collected in the league, fa cup or league cup

After 31st Dec, no player will be suspended until they have accumulated 10 yellow cards

According to Yahoo livecast line-up, Delph and Carew start, the rest unchanged, not sure how reliable that is though

Good commentary on Radio WM

any ideas on the times for KO

If the group games are anything to go by then our semi will be a British 21:30 kick off on Friday. But we'll need to confirm that.

No Kick off is at 20.30 local time on Friday, 19.30 GMT

I was at the match last night.

Firstly despite the result; it was great to be able to watch the Villa close to home, I don't get the opportunity to go to many matches at Villa Park these days.

However I feel I have been a little premature buying tickets for the Semi-Final next Friday and the Final in Seville next Sunday, looks like I'll probably be watching Malaga in the semis and Juventus or Madrid in the final

I know it was only a pre-season game and we shouldn't read too much into it, but still it was our 3rd pre-season game and also it is a semi-competitive tournament with a €2 Million prize and some prestigious teams taking part, so I don't subscribe to some of the excuses being banded about on here.

There should be no excuses on fitness, these guys are all professional sportsmen in great shape and just because they haven't played a competitive match for a few weeks doesn't mean that they should all of a sudden become kebab eating sloths. They have all been doing plenty of training and for the majority of them it was their 3rd pre season match, so fitness should not come into it.

Bottom line we were extremely poor, several of our players looked completely disinterested about being there, which from my point of view as a fan is unacceptable in any game, friendly or not. I hope MON gives out a bit of Fergie hairdryer treatment to the worst offenders so we might see a better showing on Wednesday night.

What was so disappointing to see for me was that we were outplayed by a very poor Malaga side who we should have dispatched with consumate ease, we lacked creativity in midfield and only mustered one wildly off target shot all night, not what you expect to see from a top Premier league club.

MON clearly knows that we need more players and has admitted as much, selling Knight only makes the problem worse, however we have 5 weeks of the transfer window left, so I'm hopeful he's going to address the issue during that time.

Positives from the night as mentioned by others were the youngsters, Albrighton was very good and Bannan showed some excellent touches, Lichaj was also promising depsite the mistake for the goal.

Most apt chant of the night: "Get your cheque book out MON"

Good preview.

I'm fortunate enough to be going to all the Peace Cup games, hopefully we'll make the semi-final and the final!