GeauxVilla

I reckon Bent could have his lowest scoring season in many a season.

Yep.

McLeish hasn't a clue how to win to games.

He is naturally negative.

Birmingham lost ONE more game than we did last season.

Wolves lost FIVE more games than they did ...but it was Birmingham who went down.

We are playing his antifootball he had the Blues playing.

Utter shite manager and should be nowhere near a Premiership side let alone us.

to me, that is an astonishing stat. Anybody who thinks we can't go down this season needs to look no further than right there. Early in the season drawing a lot of games might not seem like such a bad result but if we don't start picking up some wins soon (in January, hopefully) this moron could be relegated for his 3rd season in the last 4.

the guy is killing my love for football more and more every week

This is exactly how I feel. McLeish Out! Would rather go down fighting than go out without a whimper under this muppet.

Given - 6. Not much to do, watching our team make two passes, go back to the keeper and hoof the ball forward towards Bent/Heskey can be pretty uninspiring though i suppose he was following instructions

Hutton - 0. Hope I never have to see him in a Villa shirt again. Pathetic. Offers nothing going forward and cant defend for shit. Thought the tackle on Long might have been an outlier but he should have been sent off today within the first 5 minutes. shit footballer and scumbag

Dunne - 6. Certainly our best defender

Collins - 4. Between the hoofing and allowing Lita to turn so easily for that chance he should have finished had another in an extremely long line of disappointing games. Surely he has to be dropped? (said that a few months ago...)

Warnock - 3. Beaten way to easily by Dyer and still dives in way too often.

Herd - 4. Seems like a good kid and always works very hard but I can't imagine Herd making it at Villa, atleast not as an anchor man in midfield. Would love to see Herd/Cuellar switch off at right back for the rest of the season.

Delph - 3. Still hoping we will see a better side of Delph but had a very poor showing today, few if any positives to take from it. Agree with the popular sentiment that playing out of position is not helping him

Heskey - 1. This one clearly doesn't need explaining

N'Zogbia - 5. Still disappears way too much for my liking and certainly not a great display by him today but I think he looked a bit better today but really needs to start producing some end product.

Gabby - 7. No question our MOTM. How many times have we said this season that he is the only one who looks interested or capable of making something happen?

Bent - 5. Once again I don't blame the player here and I can't help but wonder how much longer things can go on like this. Looked lonely and frustrated up top, a feeling that is certainly understandable.

Subs were good, should have been on much earlier.

Its not his form - thats how good he is!

So you're honestly saying that the way he's playing now is how he's played for his entire career? This is him? Hard to imagine such a shit player single-handedly keeping a team up, as he did with Wigan last season.

Inexplicable hate, all of our players bar Bent and Given really, get some.

It's quite funny really, if one of our players has 5 or 6 bad games then they're shit. Like Warnock last season, yes he had a terrible start to the season but all of a sudden he was shit. It seems nobody is allowed to have a dip of form without being completely written off.

I agree with your point but completely disagree with your example. Warnock was shit going back to the Carling Cup final loss against United. He picked up a habit of wandering out of position and giving away fouls in spots that cost us goals. Most of us had been calling for Warnock to be dropped for the last 4 months of MONs last season and about 8 games at the opening of last season. Of course his moronic interview he gave where he trashed the city of Birmingham to engineer a move away from the club certainly didn't encourage Houllier to recall him from the reserves.

its scary the amount of player threads we have going on VT right now mostly full of pages and pages of posts of "dont rate him"

I tend to agree with the sentiment on this one, Collins can be a beast an his day. However he overcommits way too often, leaving the rest of the defense seriously exposed. Also agree that his long passes out of the back tend to be very disappointing and he tries these way too often.

Villa are acting disgracefully over this deal. Liverpool started off by offering £15m for Downing but we said we wanted £20m and held out for it until they met the price. Why should Wigan accept £9m when they have stated that they want £10m?

Our board - probably Faulkner - needs to stop **** around and pay the asking price for a very good player before we end up with him going elsewhere and we are left with no choice but to go and pay close to the same amount for McGeady, who is a very shit player!

This is like the Robbie Keane from Wolves deal all over again. I cannot help but feel that we are going to be in the bottom 6 or 7 come January and Big Feck will be given no choice but to do some panic buying

We obviously won't know whats going on with this deal until all has been sorted but it goes without saying that the circumstances are completely different to Downing. Nzogbia has 1 year left on his deal, it has been known for quite some time that he would be leaving Wigan this summer. Downing was not for sale, he had 2 years left on his contract (which was for probably atleast triple what Nzogbia makes at Wigan) and he is an England international. Liverpoool paid a premium because they went after somebody who is an England international on good money at a big club where he is not for sale.

That said I do agree with your pessimism, a truly shit season it will be!

Eric played last night for the Americans against Guadeloupe. He played really well IMO, albeit against lower competition. I think he looked better than any other American player out there: he played very physically and provided some good attacking play on the overlap. Our national side has been playing quite poorly as of late, but it was nice to see Eric get out there and look impressive.

Yeah, admittedly it was Guadeloupe but I thought Eric had a really great game. Played at LB as well, a position he played regularly last year on loan at Leeds.

Downing yet again stated today that he wants to play in the Champions League. We signed him for 4 years in 09 so he still has 2 more years with the club. I say don't sell him this season and if after next season he still wants to leave then we talk.

I don't necessarily disagree but if we sell him with a year left on his contract we will get, at best, what we paid for him.

I know it's too early to be talking about transfers...But IF we were to get Ancelotti, do you think he could persuade Anelka to come to the Villa? What would people think of that? He's already been told by Chelsea that he is surplus to requirements?

what would we do with him exactly? pay him insane money and sit him on the bench on the off chance bent gets injured?

would rather play gabby with bent than sign Anelka for a year or two

would love him to see him in our back 4 with proper defenders next to him.

this. Assuming, of course, we buy 3 proper defenders first

Not signing a new contract and wanting to leave are two completely differnent things.

He may simply be doing this to get a better deal or maybe waiting for new signings ior a new manager etc.

Don't panic just yet.

I think you are probably right and this is all getting blown out of proportion. However, I will say this, if Downing is trying to get a move away this is clearly the right time (2 years on contract)... But after we stuck with him through his injury last year and allowed the platform to rejuvenate his England career if he was to leave us now he would instantly move to the top of my shit list.

While Barry and Milner going were definitely disappointing, I feel like I can understand why they made the decision, and we did get fair value for them. It will be the same with Ash, it will hurt but again I can understand if he feels like he needs to move on. Downing leaving now though would be unforgivable for me.

I will say though that the longer the board waits to sort out the manager situation the more likely that things like this are going to happen and we are going to be looking at another season just like last season. Nothing against Ged but we clearly need to bring in somebody younger with some vision because this team needs to be rebuilt this summer - I'm not saying crazy money should be spent but there have to be a bunch of comings and goings.

Thing is, we clearly need a new "5 year plan" to try and make another push for the champions league. Even if Ged makes a full recovery, does anybody see him here in 5 years at the age of 68? We need someone who has the time to build a new squad.

Pathetic.

Could we close this thread and open a post Wolves game poll? I think it would be interesting to see how much the results change and more importantly how many of the fans Houllier still has on his side because it seems quite a few have changed their minds, myself included

i have my doubts about Clark as a centre back im afraid. no pace, gets turned very easily, physically weak and can't seem to jump more than an inch off the floor when going up for aerial challenges. he's a decent ball player though (monday's debacle aside).

I definitely think he needs to be played next to a Laursen or Hangeland type of CB who will challenge for and win everything in the air, atleast until he grows up a bit and gets stronger. But his strengths seem to be that he reads the game pretty well, can put in a tackle and he seems well suited to play in the pass it out of the back system we are trying to adapt to.

Yeah Warnock needs dropping. And needs to be chained to a radiator in a dank, dark backroom of Bodymoor Heath with only a hacksaw and a tape recorder for company until he sorts himself out.

this.

I was prepared to give him time but last night was a disgrace,it was about him and a nostalgic return to Liverpool, we rolled over and let them tickle our tummys! Well that is not what you want from a Villa team, he showed no pssion but merely sat there admiring HIS beloved Liverpool.

The board may not be responsible for O'Neill walking out but they have made a mistake here and need to admit it and act before it is too late!!

I really hate to say it but this is kind of how I feel as well. I was admittedly not thrilled with the appointment of Houllier but I certainly thought given the available options it was a sensible one. I too was more than happy to give him atleast a season or two and give him time to bring players in to play the way he wants to play but after last night I really have lost a lot of respect for him and that coupled with our abysmal form is rapidly causing me to lose patience. I still think we should back him but if we don't start turning things around before January I think the board should reevaluate Houllier's status.

He's got excellent prediction of the ball, and to be fair, he can hit a ball, it was a sweet goal he scored.

I'm not trying to be too negative or anything, I've been mightily impressed by Clark this season, but after seeing the replay that first goal was really down to Carew being in Fabianski's eye line which forced the keeper to lean to the wrong direction. The goal was not that well placed and had Carew not been there I'm pretty sure it would have been any easy save for Fabianski.

That said I thought we were outclassed by a very good side today and nobody really covered themselves in glory - thought Clark put in one of the better performances in the claret and blue today. He's clearly not afraid to get into the box and he also seems more than happy to drop back into the defensive line and make it more like 5 in the back when we're on the back foot. Kind of funny but it seems at the moment he's the most 2-way center mid we have

the chat on the official site is great its hard for us to follow the preseason games over on this side of the Atlantic