NIVillan

3 hours ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

We have indeed.

Daley, Hadji, Carbone, Solano, Milner and A. Young are modern day greats that sping to mind.

 

Hadji a great???

Being Old I would Add Morley and Walters to the mix.

Gabby!!

Dave Wakeling of the Beat (Mirror in Bathroom, Tears of a Clown) is a big Villa Fan.

On 01/06/2019 at 21:37, villa4europe said:

According to my Twitter katharine merry, 400m swimmer, won bronze in Sydney 

No but Swimmer Commonwealth Champion Adam Ruckwood is a big Villa fan, last time I saw him was the A Madrid Match in the holte.  British Olympian Swimmer Jamie Salter also a Villa Fan.

18 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

Me either. I’d question why we hadn’t announced it, if it was. The only reason I can think of, is that Villa might have not wanted to announce anything slightly controversial (essentially cutting a contract short due to a player being unfit) during our good run of wins.

Perhaps due to the state (alleged) of Ross's mind, the player himself didnt want anything announced and more wanted to slip into the background.

Simples - We do our best and see what happens.

To me Steer is like Nigel Spink.  Good Solid all round Keeper.  Will do Ok for you overall.

What we need is a Bozzie type.  Yes has a clanger in him and perhaps lower attributes in certain areas when compared to steer/spink (Thinking Distribution Here) but when really needed can pull out the execeptional, amazing and put on a one man show.  The Game that I think back to is against Sunderland in the League Cup the season we won under Big Ron.  They hammered us and Bozzie in one of his first starts was a one man army against them pulling amazing save after amazing save.  He broke the Sunderland players himself and we won 4-1.

Not sure what Klanic is like yet but our signings in Jan have so far been good so I cant see us wasting 7 million on a sub par goalie.

Thinking about it though Steer might just develop into that sort of Goalie when considering the Save he made first leg against West Brom.

The main difference in Steer to me is that he was sent out to play under Smith without having to worry about making a mistake.  Under Bruce he was never given any encouragement that he would be given a long term chance and was not as confident in his play.  Smith must have given him that for one to bring him back off his loan spell where he was doing well and then this time when Steer did make mistakes (again thinking against West Brom) he didnt crumble.

It will be interesting battle.

29 minutes ago, sne said:

Might have to do with some insurance thing if we are trying to pass him off as a crock and are trying to get some money back?

Think it is, Im sure I read somewhere we will get more money if we waited out his contract than terminating early.

13 hours ago, HeyAnty said:

Could be totally wrong but was he involved with the Barry saga? They messed up big time there by being indecisive 

No the Barry to Liverpool thing went tits up because after whispering sweet nothings in Barrys ear the FSW told Barry he was going to play left back for them.  Barry wanted to play midfield and was unimpressed with them changing what they told him before.  Man City stepped in and gave him the playing position he wanted.

3 minutes ago, Mazrim said:

Alberto Moreno is free. Could be a decent option for left back. Maybe him and Rico Henry?

Not sure why Rico Henry keeps being mentioned apart from he played for Smith at Walsall and then Brentford.

He had a serious injury that kept him out for a long time and was solid enough but is he really someone who would walk into the first team of a premiership club?

Going back a bit but in the book Ron Saunders Scrapbook, Im sure he mentions the one delight in being a manager is taking a player from another team that hasnt worked out and making him work in your own team.

He should finish his career up at Rangers

Be interesting seeing Hutton and Scott Brown having a go at each other in the Old Firm game

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

I don't really care for Xia but it looks like Rongtian He was there and enjoyed his day.  He always came across as a good egg to me and it seems like he has caught the Villa Bug. 

I think Rongtian He was actually there before Xia arrived.  HE went to Uni over here and Supported Villa before coming over.  He was working at Vila in a Graduate role??? and was noticed by Xia because being Chinese speaker etc.

Okay when the team was announced wasnt Villa a Premier League side?  Not sure on the timings

1 hour ago, Ingram85 said:

We have opposite tastes then as I bloody love that yellow Henson away kit . Theres a guy doing licensed repro's and I'm very tempted. 

We must do!  Though I prefer the yellow to the home one.

The one I am suprised hasnt made a comeback is that Le Coq hooped yellow thing.  Remember being on a Football Tour down at Western and someone was wearing it, must have just been released as everyone was going What the hell is that!

It has sort of grown on me

19 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

The tour de France away shirt that we got relegated in was a nice shirt. A colour and a team's form are not exclusive. We had a shit team in a nice kit. It happens. I'd like another yellow shirt.

I don't think it was overblown, they were genuinely nice kits and the vast majority thought so. It's ok to just not like them and leave it at that. People aren't going to buy a horrible shirt at £50 just because of a fellow fans input.

I'm excited to see what fanatics/kappa have come up with. I'd like to see it now though.

But it has been overblown.  The stories promoted claiming this was the best kit ever / past 40 years.  From a logistics point of view the Current Kit especially for the kids has been unavailable for large parts of the season.  My boys liked the 3rd Kit  and we went into the club shop just after it was released and they had no stock availability, wasnt just the 3rd kit though, couldnt make up a complete kit in the other designs.  Luckily just before xmas I was able to jump on quick enough so my youngest could get a goalkeepers kit but again the availabilty didnt last long.

I liked the design of that Macron yellow Kit as well but the quality of the kit wasnt great, felt very thin and cheap.  Macron came up with some good designs and similar in that they raided our past (White Kit striped like 82 Away).  Macron also showed great desire to understand the history of the club and incorporate that into the designs.

The UA  and training wear was great especially the quality just needed a darker claret body.

As for people not buying.  When it comes to a football club, yes they will.  Its a a habit and especially kids they want to wear what their heros on the pitch wear.  Enough people bought that Henson Kit in the mid 80s.

I dont think Lerner was an asset striper at all but that he stopped wanting to fund Villa out of his own pocket (Maybe due to his wealth going down due to the divorce).  He lost interest and tried to bring in people who would manage it for him. Then due to his bad appointments the club was struggling to survive.  But at least Lerner wasnt as bad as Ellis Short up in Sunderland.

The Doc got carried away and gambled upon us getting promotion.  He ran out of money as there were no issues when he was transferring money from China during the first season to pay and keep Villa running.  He has also swallowed his pride and found better owners to take over, and the way it worked helped them take over quickly and easily.  See Bury currently for an Owner who has run the club into the ground but will not sell to buyers who are enabling him to make a profit.

The new guys do seem totally different but only time will tell.

Never and still do not particularly like this seasons kit so happy enough with different designers.

That 3rd Kit was worse than the UA training tops (Which I liked) and just an excuse to extract more money from us fans.

I think people have overblown the design of the kit because he is a Villa Supporter.

BUT as a Villa supporter surely not copy a Kiit from a period we were on the slide big time from Champions of Europe to relegation.  AND a Villa supporter designing a kit that doesn't have blue sleeves!!! 

23 hours ago, TRO said:

You should have been in Rotterdam.....It was good training for us fans to know what Commitment is.

We do that, we win.

Man Utd under Big Ron......Leeds  under Brian Little......We have had our successes.....The latest **** runs was because we didn't apply ourselves properly, hopefully that's behind us now ..with this team spirit.

110% Commitment in Rotterdam

On 18/05/2019 at 15:32, Dave-R said:

I did say that I didn't like our finishing.

To say we didn't play well I think is largely denying the truth, that we did play good enough to win the semi's. We had many aspect of our game that we clearly needed to adjust and sort out yes, but there were many bits of both our legs where we couldn't be faulted.

I think some are using the blunders, the finishing rate of us too make it sound like we were rubbish, in what was a very desperate and ambitious game anyway Albion at certain points did look like they wanted it more. I still don't think we got out played, Albion capitalised on our mistakes, they offered nothing else and sat back for the entirety of the game. If we had not of made the mistakes we had, Albion would of looked utter rubbish given the possession and pass rate we had to them.

In times of ten man teams where one is sent off, it has been more than noted that ten man teams can often be the dominator in games like this, that wasn't the case and we shut them down completely for fourty mins of play.

I don't think we played shite,  I just think we needed to be more on point, we needed to shoot corners properly and shoot further out than trying to get inside there defence. When a team like Albs plays that defensively, it's highly unlikely they are going to be breached, so the shots must fly from outside the box.

I thought we looked a bit disjointed at times and played with fear.  One of the good apsects of the run is the playing without fear and prepared to try things.  Albions goal in the first leg came from their striker prepared to chase down lost causes, no one expected Whelan to make a howler but he was in the right place at the right time.

Against Albion I think we were a little scared to lose and played within ourselves.

But also throw in that it was a local Derby the games are often not pretty and the best time doesnt always win.

17 hours ago, Dave-R said:

Sorry I don't agree, I don't think we played white at all. We clearly had most possession,  best pass rate and largely dominated the game. However where I do draw the line was our finishing, the goal blunder that nearly cost us and that five away which nearly cost us the semi finals. When you consider the amount of crosses, shots, headers we had to Brom I would agree that our finishing was absoloute terrible.

When Paul Lambert went off and spoke to Pep at Bayern he had us play a passing game that meant we had the majority of possession in most games.  We were still shite and played like shite because we didnt create anything.  He got sacked.  Even Timmy improved on that by getting us to take a chance more (Turnaround against Leicester in Cup ).

We didnt play well at all over the two legs, slipping and sliding around.

Just put any old team out there as opposition on May 27th 

Because

We Are Aston Villa

22 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Part of the reason why we struggled to play against West Brom was because their whole game plan was to prevent us from playing whilst trying to score from set pieces. I thought they were pathetic over the two legs. If i was a baggies fan I'd be embarrassed by how they've approached the last 2 games, was Steve Bruce-esque.

So glad we have a manager who plays on the front foot every game. Breath of fresh air.

Same way we got past Boro last year, which is why I am enjoying this years attempt more than last year.

As Grealish said Last years team had a lot more experience but I just believe more in this years team

Have we not been waiting for a long long time for a manager that could identify early enough when his tactics are not working and adjust?