thunderholt

I don't think he's capable

Was there any booing at the end of the game??? I missed the final couple of minutes due to my internet stream fecking up.. I heard the "you're getting sacked in the morning" chant a few times but i wondered if it was the Bradford fans having a dig

Anything happening Randy?

At last a word from our owner.....

Very concerned now, got a horrible feeling Ol 'Arry is signing some quality at QPR & i bet he keeps them up & we'll go down because Lerner & Lambo didn't sign anyone during this window. What if Randy had bought QPR instead of Villa, i could see him not sacking Mark Hughes, not investing in the the jan transfer window & wondering why his team got relegated.. scary times ahead. If Lerner keeps faith with Lambo they have to strengthen this window, i cant believe we would go in the Bradford game without help. do they want to throw it away

Damn the deal is off.... Wikipedia has been changed back to him playing for Toulouse

It's on Wikipedia, so it must be true lol "On the 15th January 2013 Sissoko signed a four year deal with Aston Villa for a reported €3.5 million."

Fantastic game, my favourite of the 2012. Was a little disappointed at first, thought i'd made a massive mistake as the first level was a bit boring but from then on it just got better & better & better. I'm halfway though my second playthough, 1st time using stealth & non-lethal takedowns but this time i'm killing everything with a bodycount like an 80's "Arnie" movie. thoroughly recommend it & at around £20 at the moment.. it's bargain

Much prefer Black Ops 1 multiplayer than BO2. though i did enjoy the campaign on BO2 more than BO1. BO2 multiplayer is a definate improvement on the dire MW3 muliplayer but doesn't compare with BO1

i still play black ops 1 on occasion as i still think it's the best for on-line multiplayer. i got very bored with MW3 quickly as graphically & playability wise it wasn't as good. i'm still on the fence with new black ops 2 as i think it's miles better than Mw3 but not as good as black ops 1. so tend to play either black ops 1 or 2 depending who's online & if no-ones online then it's Dishonored...

i don't think there is a inbetween.. Randy can't/won't spend the money. i would have loved say 2/3 quality prem players to compliment what we've signed but then it's back to the reducing the wage bill issue again. we have to have affordable players now. we could never have paid AJ's wages. that is where we are as a club now unfortunately.

i look at it like this.... PL knows as do most fans that most of the current squad couldn't give a monkeys about putting on the villa shirt & giving their best week in week out. bringing a few Top Drawer signings isn't going to help get rid of the dead wood in the team & we will struggle. We need a whole new team which gives you 2 quick fix options. Learner gives you £100 million to go & buy a team of "household" names, which he isn't going to do (wheather he has the cash or not) after getting his financial fingers burnt by MON or the other option is you buy a team of cheap unknowns & take a gamble In reality we'd all like a £100 million pound team but as it's not possible i'd rather have a team of talented unknowns who will wear the shirt with pride & give a 100% than half a team that can't be bothered. if we do struggle (& i think we will) i'd rather have a team of fighters & tryers than a team with one eye on their relegation clauses. well done PL

Amazing - if McLeish had made these signings, people would want him hung, drawn and quartered. I am glad he has gone but equally I am surprised at the amount of faith people have in Paul Lambert. If Mcleish had made these signings this place would have gone in to meltdown. alex mcleish doesnt have a proven track record of buying surprise packages from lower leagues, lambert has done it very well. that's the difference there's plenty to be excited about from the players who've come in. we've brought in a dutch international feyenoord captain in vlaar, feyenoord's best player of last season in el ahmedi, a striker from a very exciting young belgian international team in benteke, middlesbrough's ex player of the year in bennett, a young leader from crewe in westwood and a very highly rated attacking full back in lowton then there's holman who could be okay, a squad strengthener more than anything but potential there to be a kuyt-light style workhorse who'll score a few goals and be a nuisance, and bowrey who's a really unknown quantity that nobody's expecting anything of part of the excitement comes from the unknown there, and the fact that we'll have so little premiership experience is a concern to some, but that's not really the issue. the problem will be integrating everyone into an already very disrupted squad. we've had more managers in the last few years than anyone else with o'neill, macdonald, houllier, mcallister, mcleish and now lambert all managing the side, and players brought in by each of them for different styles and systems still there lambert obviously has a gameplan in mind. he's not gone out and randomly signed all these players. they'll each have been bought for a particular reason, so simply saying "he's from a lower league club so he's shite" is a bit nonsensical for years we've looked on jealously as other clubs have picked up gems, and complained that we didn't appear to have any kind of scouting system in place. now we have a manager who knows the lower leagues, and has successfully signed from them in the past. he's gone for young, hungry players highly rated by their previous clubs, and added a few older pros as well. maybe not ones with premiership experience, but they're internationals. we've signed 8 players this summer, 4 of them are full internationals, and 3 of them are underage internationals i find it a bit strange that we had people on here complaining that we werent after the likes of charlie adam and scott sinclair, 3 years ago charlie adam was on loan at blackpool from rangers, and scott sinclar was doing nothing at chelsea. christ, swansea signed him for half a million in 2010. there were people on here complaining about not signing players this window we wouldve complained about signing 3 years ago we're now in the position where WE'RE the club bringing those players into the league. the benefits are two fold with that. firstly if even 50% of them are successful, we become a very, very good option for the most promising lower league players. secondly, there's a massive sell-on for those players should they become very successful. yeah we don't want them leaving, but if you can buy someone for 2m and sell them for 8m a few years later, you're in a good place. eventually, you'll get to the point where they'll be staying at the club instead of going elsewhere look, the team isn't going to settle immediately. they're going to need 10 games or so to really get to know each other, but once there's a long term focus at the club in terms of playing style, and everyone signed is signed for that system, then we'll ultimately end up a lot better off than signing "established premiership players" for three times their value, massive wages and no sell-on price ultimately, if someone said at the start of the summer that we'd bring in a moroccan international, a dutch international, a belgian international and an australian international, and some very highly rated young players from the lower leagues, would we have had much of a problem with it? Spot on for me,

Bent & Benteke... catchy i like it, on paper it works well

does anyone know if Randy was at the Everton game?? he ought to have been there... 1st home game of the season, new manager, new players, fresh start, etc speaks volumes if he wasn't there :oops:

Very hard to make a comparison...maybe the Detroit Lions. Traditional team, industrial city, haven't won much in a long time...

I agree in some point but had Hodgson come to Liverpool from your closest bitter rivals lets say for example Everton, who had just been relegated from the premier league themselves & had paid Everton several million quid for the privilage of his services, then almost got Liverpool relegated i would then agree will you more Hodgson came to Liverpool with a very good record in England & abroad, Mcleish had a poor English record & a mixed Scottish one. Mcleish had a mountain to climb the day he took the job, but if performances & results had been a lot better then maybe things would have been different, he would have turned a lot of fans around, though some would never have warmed to him. i wouldn't say he didn't get the club or the fans, he was shite before he came here & proved he was even shitter during his time with us, tactically inept & his delued interviews were mind blowing The only similarities i see is we both disliked these managers will a passion but for mainly different reasons.... Maybe you can enlighten me on why Hodgson was disliked so much by Liverpool fans, i know performances & results weren't great under him but did (like us) the fans not like the appointment of him before a ball was kicked

There's a guy i've got to know through playing Call of Duty with over the Internet. He's Scottish, lived in Scotland all his life & is a Villa fan. i asked him to tell me the story of how he became a fan as he has no connection with Bham or family connection down here. He said, as a wee boy his dad had a mate who was a bluenose who had moved from Bham to Scotland for work. His dad used to wind up the bluenose by telling him his son (my call of duty mate) was a Villa fan. It stuck & my mate grew up a Villa fan in a sea of Scottish clubs. So the moral of the story is... Good things come out of winding up Bluenoses

bet you drive an Aston Martin too

I've just come back from travelling throughout the States & of the American Villa fans i've met the most commonest things that were the reasons for becoming Villans are... 1) Randy Learner/the Browns (obvious American connection) 2) The name of the club 3) The team colours (there's just someting about that claret & blue) But whatever their reasons for joining our club, welcome our American friends, you've joined a fantastic club with a great fan base & a long, established history. Talking of following Villa because of the name. There's a guy that works for my employers down in south London, born & bred cockney.. he's a Villa fan supported tham all his life. No connection with Brum, he just liked the name as a kid & followed them ever since. Though family & friends have tried to "turn" him to the big London clubs, he's remained a Villan. Fair play to him. I love ringing him up to chat about the Villa in his "Souff Landan" accent. As for me born & bred in south-east Birmingham, Dad & older brother were fans so just followed them, so glad i did i love this club...

Yes, I've been saying the same thing since that chicken ran on the pitch at Ewood. We will be in Blackburn's position next season if McLeish isn't sacked. Maybe we should throw our MBNA credit cards on the pitch, if nothing else it might help towards the players high wage bill

I hate to say it but i think you're right, this thread will be in the ten thousands by then. McLeish, Learner & Faulkner = the Aston Villa mental asylum

Something keeps niggling me in the back of my mind, the situation with Mc"LIE"sh is similar to Blackburn for me & how even more similar we'll be to them if he stays. rewind one year ago, Blackburn narrowly avoid the drop, after the owners (Venkey's) remove/sack the footballing people who ran the day to day stuff at the club. All the fans wanted Steve Kean out but he stayed & was given money to buy players & most of them apart from Yakubu have been poor. The Venkey's are never at Ewood park & yes Blackburn paid the price this season. i see Villa going the same way, 95% of us want McLeish out, what if Randy keeps him & then gives him money to spend to avoid being in the this league position again & McDick buys more crap like N'zog, Hutton & Jenus (Given has been good i'll give him that, but 3 out of 4 is rubbish). We have no day to day footballing people at the club no more (Steve Stride) & an owner who is rarely here & seems to not give a shit about the fans anyway. I can honestly McDick blowing a load of money on crap & we'll still be in a relegation battle next year & probably go down too. Randy don't waste any more time & money on this guy, he is simply not up to the job, before it's too late

err... NO too high profile, wouldn't come here anyway. we need to be more realistic than that

This is what has happened IMO. Alex was told in public to act like he was resigned to leaving therefore easing fan pressure on him and in turn helping us survive... the guy is gonna be here next season unbelieveable If he is here next season, then if he thinks he's got some abuse this season, he aint seen nothing yet & Learners gonna come in for some & all