mallett

Yeah its the coldest time of the year here and still got to over 30 at lunchtime. At night though the temperature might dip to 19 degrees which is quite refreshing.

That's weird I'm watching this in Madagascar - does keep freezing though!

Based on this performance besides a new striker, I'd like us to sign Morrison. A front 3 of Morrison Grealish and Ayew behind either Bamford or McCormack would be good. It looks like we are going to have a lot of the ball in games so we need players who can unlock a defence. Back up of Traore (if ever fit), Green and Hepburn Murphy offers pace and possibly width.

I may be wrong but I think Morrison played for QPR in the championship at the same time that Kevin Bond was there in 2014. It also was his most productive spell in first team football. Over the three months he was there he played 17 games scored 6 goals, with 2 assists and a further 19 key passes. His pass success rate was 90%. One of the main issues with the Villa team last season was the total lack of balance. Recently I watched a video of the championship winning Villa team and it was really clear what a well balanced team it was. I think Morrison brings quite a few qualities currently missing from the Villa team. He would bring a little bit of pace, the ability to beat a man, creative passing, goals and some dead ball expertise. All areas our midfield last season lacked. He also brings a questionable attitude and very little defensive contribution - qualities that many of the current squad also have. He would be a marked upgrade on Westwood or Gil or Veretout in terms of actually affecting a game. When he is playing well he seems to work hard as a player - it is just that it is a big when. It would seem RDM wants to play 4-2-3-1 and Morrison fits in well with that. I personally like the idea of the 2 in that midfield being Gardner and Tish. Let's sell Gana as he wants to leave anyway. Gardener, Tish and Morrison has quite a nice balance to it in theory although they lack experience. Birmingham Mail says Villa are looking to offload maybe 8-9 players - let's hope we are more successful than previous attempts to do the same.

You are almost certainly right if we don't have a change of owner but that is the reason why we are going to be playing in the championship next season. It could also be the reason why under the present owner we will not get back into the premiership. The £7m was to be the total outlay on two players in midfield. If the club was any good at getting good deals for players it would help but we always seem to pay over the odds for whoever we buy. We lost the spine of our team last summer for a cut price amount - the team lets goals in very easily and never looks like scoring - it is going to take some good new players to resolve those two issues and good players normally cost a bit! These days the manager doesn't sort out the fees its the club management - anyone got faith that the club management under Lerner will get good deals for Villa? Bentley might be a good option as keeper and given his contract situation might be available for less than £7m. However as he is under 24 Southend would be entitled to compensation even though he is out of contract. This scout report suggests that while promising and a good shot stopper he could be better with his feet and distribution and be more commanding of his area. Two important areas to work on. His fee will include the extra amount for being English. Another issue is would Bentley sign - plenty of other clubs are interested. He has probably been watching match of the day and seen Villa on the TV and what professional player with any ambition is going to want to pay with the current group of players that we have? The club needs to make some good signing to convince others to join - a top manager can help do that - their reputation for winning or developing players can be the tipping point for attracting good players.

Here are my thoughts on how to improve the squad. Goal Keeper New Keeper (£7m) / Steer / Sarkic Reasoning: Steer has been OK for Huddersfield this season but we need a keeper who will be one of the best in the championship if we want to get promoted. Sarkic is the developing keeper. Out: Guzan (£1m?) – everyone has seen the reasons why he needs to go Siegrist (free?) – Contract up and hasn’t made the grade Bunn – (£500K) not as good as Steer as a replacement with less potential to develop, get rid to save on wages Left Back Amavi / Cissokho Reasoning: Amavi won’t be going anywhere until he has shown future clubs he has fully recovered. I don’t love Cissokho and would sell if we got an offer but I don’t think we will. Cissokho is more defensively minded than Amavi so offers a different option Out: Kinsella (free) – contract up and rumoured to want to play somewhere rather than being reserve. Richardson (free) – contract up and he’s no good! Bennett (500K) – Not good enough Right back New right back (5m) / Hutton / Webb Reasoning: I don’t think RB is Lydon’s position, I don’t think Webb is ready yet and Hutton isn’t good enough to win promotion with. But Hutton has shown good character out of the first team before. Modern football requires a lot from the full backs. Central defence Clark / Mason / Sulliman / Toner (need to take up contract option) / Baker / New Centre back (5m) Reasoning: Baker, Mason, Toner and Sulliman are only good enough to be backups. Need a new quality centre back to partner Clark (ideally a little bit classy). Out: Donacien (free) – contract up – not made it at this level Crespo (free) – not good enough Okore (£3m) – I would want to keep him to partner Clark but we have probably gone past that stage. Worth more but only has a year on his contract. Richards (£3m) – Isn’t a centre back and seemingly can’t do the running to be a right back either hopefully believes he is too good to stay at Villa. Would save some wages – would offer him on a free to get rid. Lescott (free) – Might have wanted to keep him but has burnt his bridges with the fans. Legs have gone and has not always shown the attitude to make up for it. Defensive Midfield Gardner / Lyden Reasoning: Gardener has played the role well at Forest and even offers some goal threat from the position with his long range shooting and free kicks. Lyden’s best position. Out: Sanchez (£2m) – if he cut out the mistakes he’d be a Champions league quality player but he hasn’t and he’s at an age where he won’t. Just too much of a liability to keep in the team which is a shame as he is a great ball winner. Gueye (£7m) – would love him to stay but he’s already agitating for a move. Not good enough to be a midfield general but good defensive midfielder. Midfield Veretout / Westwood / New midfielder x 2 (£7m) Reasoning: Need a goal scoring midfielder (perhaps Bradley Dack?), plus someone with a real physical presence and pace. Westwood has always tried but needs better players around him. Veretout might not stay but could be good in the championship. Out: Bacuna (£2m) – Has lost the fans and needs to get rid of his attitude. Otherwise I’d have been tempted to keep him. Needs to find his best position and a new club to have a fresh start. Attacking Midfield / Wingers Grealish / Sinclair / Green / Traore Reasoning: I would be tempted to get rid of Traore because his contract is bad for team morale but who is going to give him a better deal? I would look to build a midfield around Grealish that compensates for his deficiencies and builds on his strengths. Sinclair offers goals at championship level. Out: Gil (£3m) – too lightweight for the championship and hasn’t shown the character to overcome it. Also lacks pace which makes him too similar to Grealish. Nzogbia (free) - finally! Strikers / forwards Gestede / Hepburn-Murphy / Kozak / New striker (£9m) Reasoning: Would get rid of Kozak but I think he would have to have played to prove his fitness to a new club. Gestede is proven at championship level but really needs someone else with pace to play with or be competing for a place with. Hepburn-Murphy shows promise Out: Ayew (£8m) – will want to move on Robinson (free) – hasn’t made it – contract is up Agbonlahor (free) – Get rid of his bad influence. Would spend money to move him on. Total Cost = £6.5m

I'd like us to sign players who really are 'young and hungry' as long as they are also talented as well. Under Lambert we kept signing players nobody had ever heard of because they didn't stick out in the lower leagues as being of a higher quality. None of them were a player like Rico Henry or Lewis Cook who look a cut above the level they are currently playing at and will inevitably command a higher fee because of it - this was the type of signing Delph was at the time for us when we looked like we were going places. There were some unpolished diamonds in Lamberts signings but they never really developed because our whole outlook was about cutting costs not about going anywhere as a football club. The other issue is if you are genuinely hungry for football success you wouldn't sign for Villa at the moment. The only reason for joining from another club is because the money is better and that attracts a particular type of person we already have plenty of. We need to turn around the culture of the club so that the players currently with us and those looking to join believe it is a club which is going to win the championship next season and then push on. This requires a change at the club that is fundamental and without any compromises as Bernstein said. We should pay off some of the dross such as Agbonlahor (if we can't sack him which I suspect we can't) to change the direction of the club which will be expensive. We also need to start bringing in the type of players which tell other players we are going to win the championship next season. None of which I can see happening under Lerner. Tom Ross quoted Ron Saunders as saying that a good team makes good players - think that is true - I also think we have been a bad team that makes players bad. It is the whole culture of the first team. I think it is one of the reasons our academy players have not really broken through to the heights they should have. Westwood is a good pro - his stats show he works hard in a team which is frankly lazy - but he's always played in a team which doesn't make use of his strengths, moving the ball on quickly and has emphasised his weaknesses by having no ball winners or goals scorers in midfield to balance his deficiencies. Now I suspect his confidence has been destroyed. You need to believe you are a quality player to play the ball forward instead of sideways or back but with the pathetic movement around him there often aren't great passing options. Quite how Reilly has kept the gig is astonishing. For all his analysis of stats it was clear on paper that there were very few premier league goals in the team. Gestede despite having had a good season at Blackburn had failed in the premier league with Cardiff. Ayew's goal scoring record was nothing to write home about even if it was in a rubbish team - players don't suddenly improve their goal scoring when they move up a level and he was going to play for another rubbish team. All that analysis and the team is so obviously and fundamentally unbalanced. We also paid top dollar for all our 'cheap' French players all of whom were unproven at the higher premier league level. As we will prove this summer when they leave for a loss. Ayew has worked hard but his goal return is not that good, it wasn't in France and the price we paid for him was too much given his record. Similarly for the other 2 French players + Adama. These might have been OK buys if the basic core of the team was sound but we had finished as low as you can without being relegated and then lost our 4 best players (3 of whom left for nothing or a cut price amount). People keep saying we spent over £50 million on players in the summer but we lost players worth more than that from an already rubbish team leaving us with a net loss. Let's hope Reilly leaves before the transfer window opens again.

Back on topic. These two have resigned over issues regarding the football board. Essentially it would appear Randy has been interfering. I wonder if one of the issues is the closure of the upper tier of the Trinity Road stand. Getting large crowds into the ground on cheap tickets could change the atmosphere in the ground which is essential if the team is to improve its performance on the pitch. I wonder if that is what Adrian Bevington was referring to in his recent tweet. Incidentally how long will he hang around? Talking about improving the atmosphere, winning matches would work as well, scoring goals, running hard all those sorts of things that real teams do. The players may be toxic now but if they put in some consistently decent performances and got some good results people would soon forget it - things move on quickly in football. Closing the upper tier seems to be a small minded commercial decision, missing the point of the club which is the performance of the team on the pitch. Long term there is a need to reconnect with current fans to get out of the current, all encompassing sense of malaise and also to build a base with a younger generation for the future. But if you are an owner desperate to sell do you really care about the long term? Particularly if you are an owner who has the opposite of the midas touch in every business you are involved in. Another issue could be the failure to get a budget in place as needed to appoint a new manager - it really isn't that difficult to do. We didn't buy any players in January in preparation for the championship so why couldn't we have prepared a budget for the new manager we were clearly going to need. On a personal note I feel pretty gutted - they were part of the one piece of hope I was clinging on to that the issues were being resolved. Their resignation makes it clear that it was just a sham and the club really is just a car crash. I think Hollis is making a decent enough fist of things but unless he finds a buyer he's just blowing in the wind.

Garde is playing a losing hand very sensibly - unfortunately we needed someone who could bluff the players that they were good enough to play at this level. The problems go back a long way before Garde and won't be solved until the real leadership of the club changes. In the summer after a season where we finished just above relegation we lost our four best players Vlaar, Cleverley, Delph and Benteke. Two of whom left for nothing and one for a cut price fee. We then replaced them with hardly any net spend (particularly if you include the fees for other more peripheral squad members who left). So I think we might just have got value for the money we spent on players in the summer - we simply didn't spend enough. In attack, even on paper before the season began it was difficult to see who was going to score the goals for us - Ayew or Gestede had to become the new Benteke just for us to equal our 17th position of the previous year. Even with Benteke in the team we were breaking records for not scoring - serious rebuilding of the team was necessary to fix it. The midfield has long contributed very little to the goals for column. Cleverley showed he might have gone on to change that after Sherwood arrived but he saw the direction of the club and left (I don't blame him!) In defence, Richards isn't as good as Vlaar (who was hardly amazing given his injury record) There is a reason he was free and we were able to sign him. I don't think his body can do the running necessary for full back anymore and his positional play (which is probably the most important aspect of a central defender) is not good enough. He was a good free transfer to bolster the squad but not good enough to fix the major faults in out first team. The reason he came to us is because we promised him the role he prefers and pretty much a guaranteed place -nobody else thought he was good enough for that. I wonder whether Sherwood has made Okore knee injury a long term chronic problem by continually playing him last season when he wasn't fit. I think it misfired badly at the time as I think it contributed to the huge Southampton defeat which for me was one of the big turning points in Sherwood's reign. Okore is clearly still struggling with the problem now. Lescott was a desperate effort to buy some experience and proven quality but you would have to back Pulis's judgement on calling time on him even after he'd had a great season. I think time has just caught up with him. Amavi was a great buy (although not cheap) but is crocked. Hutton tries but hasn't been good enough for a long time. for some reason Sherwood got rid of our two back up left backs (neither of whom improve the first team). The mix of players is all wrong - Joe Cole said he has never been at a club where the competition for places is so tight between players of similar ability. The club convinced themselves that this was strength in depth but in fact it is just that none of the players improves the first team. We needed to concentrate on a players who improved the first eleven as we only finished just above relegation

Some thoughts on our manager and other things: I like lots that Garde is doing at the moment, e.g. handling of Grealish, improved organisation and team tactics, better fitness, the way he handles the media, getting rid of the useless and bad eggs in the squad etc but to state the obvious he really needs some wins. He seems to be a very sensible manager - thing is in our situation in the league we need a 'magic man' to quote Garde - someone who could make the team add up to more than the sum of its parts. For all his faults Sherwood was more that type of inspirational manager when he arrived - although that quality had left him before he left villa. I am not sure that Remi has the qualities needed to break the current vicious circle of poor results leading to no confidence - leading to poor results. Remi seems to be more the type of manager who is working for the long term - steady progress - which is what we are going to need in the summer whichever league we are in. What he says is still making sense - I always think you know manager is getting close to the end of their time with Villa when their version of the match that has just finished bears no relation to the game everyone else was watching. However, the truth is all this talk of the manager is all missing the point. The main problem is the owner - he has publicly stated he wants to sell and has infamously failed to do so. That undermines whoever is the manager of the football team, the CEO and everyone else running the club because everyone beneath them knows there is no long term plan or vision to buy into. It makes the club a hard sell to any players with real ambition to who know anything about the state of the club's ownership. At best the owner seems to be aiming for the club to just tread water while waiting for the sale to come through but this isn't a league you can tread water in. In the summer we lost our four best players in Vlaar (best defender), Cleverley, Delph and Benteke. This was from a team which was the worst team to remain in the league. We spent virtually no more money than we received and clearly did not get a main striker to replace Benteke despite having struggled for goals for several seasons even with 32.5 million worth of striking talent. On paper it was not easy before the season started to see where the goals were expected to come from and that has been borne out by the performances. It was always unlikely to be good enough unless by some fluke we discovered players with the untapped potential of Benteke when we bought him. We can learn something from history at this point. I actually think some of the players we have bought will go onto prove themselves good / decent premier league players much as many of the players at Villa last time we got relegated did (c.f. Spink, Elliot, Dorigo, Hodge, Daley, Walters, Keown, Birch) but the balance of the squad is totally wrong. They are playing in key positions but are too young / inexperienced to change the fortunes of the team. Like the squad in 1987 we lack strikers that are good enough for the top flight (c.f. Stainrod, Aspinall and co.) and have some real dross (past it, uninterested, just not good enough) in the squad. Poor ownership has given the impression of a club that is only moving in a downwards direction and the players are aware of it so there is a terrible spirit behind the scenes - consequently some of the more mercenary /ambitious players leave c.f. Delph / Hodge. The ownership issue means that I am not sure that even in the summer Garde will be able to turn the club around. In 1987 a new manager, Graham Taylor was the solution for the club because he acted as a driving force to revolutionise the club at every level he could to make it a club which was looking to move upwards. But he was working with an owner who for all his faults was committed to the future of the club. Now, however, any new manager just hasn't got a mandate to make the changes necessary to change the direction of the club (even if we ignore the game's much greater complexity which makes the CEO a more important figure) because they won't have the fully committed backing of the owner because the owner is not fully committed. For these reasons I don't feel confident about the future under Garde and the current owner. Which is a shame because under a different owner Garde might be a great manager (or mediocre - the jury is still out). Still as a fan I find a small part of my heart still hoping that the January window will show the club's owner realises he needs to massively invest time and money to change the club's direction while my head tells me to remember Simon Dawkins. I hope Garde can turn the club around but remember if he doesn't - it isn't Garde who is the problem it is the owner - it doesn't matter who we the manager is the owner needs to change.

I think Garde has gently made the point that as a player who has grown up at Barcelona - he has already been at the best place in the world for learning to pass and he still doesn't do it. There is a fascinating stat from an article on Bleacher Report. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2546620-why-barcelona-starlet-adama-traore-is-worth-the-premier-league Last season at Barcelona B Traore completed 243 successful dribbles (considerably more than 2nd placed Eden Hazard - 180 and 3rd placed Messi - 173). His success rate was 58% which is reasonably impressive but also means he attempted to dribble 419 times and lost the ball 176 times when dribbling. That is an unprofessional level of selfishness - more akin to schoolboy football - and is not very good for any football team let alone one in our position. It represents an enormous number of missed opportunities to do something else which would have developed the team's attack. Remember it didn't do Barcelona B a whole lot of good as they were relegated. He is a fantastic talent but Garde is right to need him to pass more before he brings him into the team properly.

I live in Madagascar. Villa are on satellite TV pretty often which can ruin the weekends. I'd recommend living abroad somewhere and learning the language. living abroad can change you though which is something you should know.

Ray Wilkins was quoted in the Birmingham Mail of having said on BEIN sports that Villa have some really outstanding youngsters coming through. Who does he mean? Which age group? Anyone who watches the youth know why he would say that? I was under the impression there was a dip in the quality of the academy's product since the heady days of the Next Gen victory. But SGC says he thinks this is potentially the best crop ever - why? If we were relegated would that be a chance for them to get a game that could be the making of them or see a mass exodus a la Dan Crowley? Any thoughts? Dreaming about potential in the academy is more fun than seeing the reality of the first team!

Ba has a chronic degenerative knee condition that is expected to end his career prematurely. Early on in his career he had a number of different injuries including a broken leg in 2006 which required pinning. Back in 2009 the pins had to be removed in an emergency operation in a German trauma clinic during which a tendon was injured. Before signing for West Ham he failed medicals at Stuttgart and Stoke. The injuries have consistently affected his selling price. Pardew stated that Ba was mentally the strongest player he had ever worked with which accounts for why he has carried on so successfully. See this link for guardian article with details: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2012/dec/31/newcastle-demba-ba-knee However at 29 all of those injuries are going to catch up with him at some point soon. £10 million would be utter craziness - I can't see it happening at anywhere near that price just because of the injuries - He also has no sell on value - if there is any truth in these rumours that we are interested at all!

I have always thought that Bent has never looked the same player since his bad injury in the McLeish season. He has always been a limited player in terms of his all round game but he was always a consistent goal scorer. However since that injury his goal scoring record is none too hot. Lambert did give him a go at the start of his reign and he didn't deliver many goals. Perhaps he would have done with more games but he did nothing at Fulham in the year he was there either. I think he lost something with that injury - and that is not Lambert's or Bent's fault. I also think that if he did lose something with the injury that the club and Bent would hardly advertise that fact as it just devalues one of their top assets. However the bomb squad also devalued Bent to potential buyers so that is something Lambert can be held accountable to. On the other hand - was the bomb squad about avoiding further payments to Sunderland based on appearances? Who knows? I wish we would sign another expensive striker - not another Bent - at peak age and value - but a top quality young player. Our team would look very decent on paper with two top quality forwards, with goals and pace in them, who could play the wide forwards in Lambert's preferred 4 3 3

I saw a link to this blog post - 'Aston Villa - Prophets and Losses' on the Guardian website. The blog is called the Swiss Ramble. It has an interesting analysis of our financial situation. Here is a small excerpt from it: "This marked a change in Villa’s strategy under Lerner. Initially, they spent big in an attempt to reach the promised land of the Champions League, but the prophet failed to deliver. The heavy spending only took the club so far, even though Krulak felt that it should have produced more, “We believed we had set the club up for success.” They had possibly not reckoned on the changing environment, whereby Manchester City’s new found wealth added a further layer of inflation to that already established by Abramovich’s Chelsea. Even though they invested significant sums, it was not enough to consistently compete with the leading clubs, despite a series of hefty financial losses. It now looks as if Lerner has pulled back before the wage bill becomes completely unsustainable, which is the sensible thing to do – though it may mean that Villa have to settle for mid-table anonymity instead of challenging for a place in the top four in future. Still, as Tennyson said, ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." blog

For what it is worth I think Figo's legs have gone. He's lost that edge of pace somebody with his game needs. While I think it would be great if we bought some super South American - it ain't going to happen. We did it once with JPA and Doug had that transfer investigated. D'OL is a traditional manager from the 80's/early 990's who likes British (& Eire) players with foreigners being Scandinavians

Why isn't Bruce Langham's name included?

Though I can see what people are saying about the aggression and passion thing - Alan Smith for me would be a wrong move. The problem is that he just doesn't score enough goals. His career average is nearly one every five games and even at ManUre he has only got 1 in 4. We've already got enough strikers who don't score. That's why DOL was interested in Beattie. True more creativity in the rest of the team would help our strikers but Vassell has never had the necessary self belief and JPA seems to have lost something since he got lame in the summer.