gilbertoAVFC

Are you sure about that? I don't think I've ever seen pre-match violence as bad as yesterday if at all. Granted, you always get some afterwards but before? No. There were loads of fights breaking out on Witton Lane just randomly. New St was chaos as well at one point. About fifty inbred scummers (probably about three went to the game) were outside the ticket barrier and then decide to start charging. Glad I didn't hang around for too long. Any news on any more town trouble?

**** genius comment

Friedel - 7. Made a great catch from the Jerome/Zigic chance) Young - 7. Solid, looked alright going forward. Dunne - 6. Better than previous games, still looking ropey though. Collins - 7. Won a lot in the air vs. Zigic (who was atrociously bad) but distribution wasn't great. Warnock - 7. Back to his reliable best and posed some problems for them going forward too. NRC - 7. Real bite, passing pretty good. Silly booking though. Sidwell - 6. Alright, just doesn't add anything really. Clark - 8. MOTM. So composed and very solid in the air/defensively as a whole. Unlucky not to win it. Downing - 6. Poor compared to recent standards. Young - 6. Very frustrating today, KNOWS he is our best player and thinks he can take on the world. Heskey - 7. Worked hard and did his bit but nothing outstanding. On a side note, Craig Gardner seems to be extremely bitter about us! Stupid brat. Zigic is undescribably bad. Warnock outjumped him at one point! Stephen Carr made me laugh with his little wave to the North Stand at the end. Ferguson and Johnson are class acts.

Is Albrighton definitely out for Saturday then? Thought it was just cup competitions, probably wrong though.

^ 20 mins in, be patient.

Three of the lads (including me) who have downloaded the demo have all had their game crash on them. Anyone else affected by this?

Friedel - 7. Didn't have many saves to make but solid when called upon. Beye - 6. Bad on the ball, pretty good defensively. Gave away a couple of needless corners. Collins - 7. Won most things in the air, but Anelka is a lazy sod. Solid. Clark - 7. Looked very composed and fearless. His inexperience showed at times but looks a great prospect. Warnock - 8. No idea why people slate him on here, so so consistant and offers good attacking outlet. NRC - 8. Everywhere in that midfield. Would be a 9 if he'd scored that! Petrov - 7. Solid as usual. Better in first than second half - as usual. Downing - 8. Made one brilliant tackle and is much quicker than people think. Great shift. Young - 7. He can play better, can play worse. Was our biggest threat as per. Ireland - 6. Good at times, but didn't really make much impact. Carew - 5. So frustrating when we have it in wide positions and he doesn't get in the box! Want to re-itterate the Cuellar situation, this annoyed me yesterday! In my opinion he is our best centre-half and to be behind Beye AND Clark is just ridiculous. Don't know the story obviously but Houllier needs to explain this.

Erm, without a booking history you'd might struggle against United. Do you know any season ticket holders/friends with decent booking history you could arrange to book them through. You may be ok, just touch and go really - depends on the sort of run we're on going into the game I guess.

Means absolutely nothing. NRC captained the under 21's for two seasons! I think Kenny Lunt captained the under 18 side Michael Owen was in. I'm not saying he has no future, but to say he is 'surely' a future England captain. Yes, that's ridiculous.

He looks good, and was very good for the youth team when he played for them. Despite that, I really don't think we should pin our hopes on him. He's looked competent in the games he's played, and that's reason for optimism, but I'll reserve my judgement fully once he's played in more difficult games. Against Newcastle he was woeful, and his other games were at home against teams who didn't look like threatening. Calling him a future England captain (surely?!) is ridiculous at this stage. He's hardly proven and like I said has been competent thus far in games that have been little test to him (bar Newcastle).

Wow, this looks very encouraging. A lot to be optimistic about at Villa at the moment. Especially now athe team doesn't pick itself. Viva la revolution! (we've all heard that before)

Great to see Young and Heskey dish it back out to those Dingle w*****s when Emile nodded in the winner. Both were our best offensive players overall IMO. Can't believe how little NRC's performance has been mentioned - he picked out better passes than Petrov today (and usually I'm a fan of Stan) and ran himself into the ground. Cuellar was class, Luke Young his reliable self. Question marks over Warnock in terms of diving in. Petrov worst game I've seen him have for a while and Albrighton seemed to run out of steam after a bright start. Not the best performance, but it's all a learning curve and as the players adjust to Houllier things will run more smoothly. Encouraging!

^ That's really good, someone get this started in a pub in Wolverhampton tomorrow!

Like Davis? Far more technically gifted. Davis was just a generic box-to-box player in hindsight, in Bannan we have a player with more technical ability in his right toe. What about the growth hormones Messi was given? Or is that too late? I really want Bannan to make it, watched him a few times when he was seventeen or so and always thought he could make it, just lacks the height and physique. Real gem.

Got a season ticket, couldn't make tonight due to the fact I'm going to uni at the weekend and have no money at all.

What about Donnay

I don't really care, though the Umbro one is identical to WHU's. Why not Le Coq? Houllier and all...

In fairness, he played one peach of a cross-field pass to Downing mid-way through the first half. I agree other than that though, has a lot to learn.

Friedel - made a couple of great saves. Warnock - Best game he's had for us for a long time. Dunne - WHAT IS GOING ON? Collins - Okay, but didn't win as much as he should of. Kevin Davies was 'The Boy Who's The Thorn In Our Side' (to vaguely quote The Smiths). Luke Young - Made one brilliant block, other than that fairly ordinary. Albrighton - Still very confident and made a couple of great runs, still can't help but think he has a lot to learn still. Petrov - made a couple of good tackles, not his usual self though, poor second half. Ireland - Sidwell-esque first-half (not involved at all), a lot better second before he was taken off. Downing - Improvement, contributed to our best moves, still a lack of end product - frustrating at times. Young - Jekyll and Hyde. Gabby - lost so much pace due to his bulking-up. Fear for his season because that was his main weapon by far. Movement not good enough today. Cuellar - probably our best defender in the time he had. Carlos for Dunne? Carew - Not in their box enough. Did okay though, few nice touches.

Oh come on, give Downing some credit he was a lot better than Albrighton today. I'm not sure which one I would drop but on today's performance I'd give Downing the nod (no disrespect to young Marc, just for tactical reasons he should be made to make way for NRC). NRC-Petrov Downing-Ireland-Young Sorted.

Agreed. Why Hogg over Bannan too? If we need a goal, players like Delfouneso and Bannan are going to be more effective than bloody Heskey and Hogg. Hogg is not a creative player.

VillaAndLoyal, good post, but right now things like selling-out at Stoke isn't really the greatest of our issues is it? The most glaringly obvious thing last night was the lack of substitutions. I don't care what the score is, there is no way on earth that Stephen Ireland shouldn't have got on the pitch considering how over-run we were in the end. Marc Albrighton, as much as he is one for the future, is not ready to suddenly play every single game for 90 minutes. Heskey for Gabby? Against Stoke? Putting on somebody who hasn't scored for nearly a year for someone who might actually test a slow, but aerially dominant Stoke side? Give me a break, if Gabby was so knackered why not put Ash up front and Ireland behind him - at least then we might actually cause them a scare! To think MacDonald was so different to MON. We've got no left-back cover, so only the lord knows what we're going to do about Warnock. Luke Young at left-back? Think it might have to be, but can't see it happening personally. On a positive note our home form is good (at least in the league), so that's something we can build on, but I think we're going back to that awful away form before MON came in.

I just saw Zahia Dehar come out of the Hyatt And I just saw Luke Moore going into Dado's Tattoo shop on Station road in Erdington ! What you on about? I saw him five minutes ago asking Northfield Town's manager if he could play for them! Other side of town so can't be right!

I can tell you this has been exactly the case with Houllier. Spoken to 'a source' (I don't mean to sound all in-the-know) and he acknowledged that his organisation exaggerated certain comments made on these boards by fans/the General. I'll be on a bit more next week and post a few more little gems on here hopefully.

Hurry back...i will wait at work for an update as i dont want to leave incase i miss your update! Just back haha. Basically, Thompson had an emergency meeting with Sky blokes yesterday and they basically convinced him to stay on the easy money they give him rather than come to us, which he has agreed to. Not sure if they've given him a wage rise, but unless there's another change of heart (apparently he was intent on coming here originally), he's not coming to Villa.