Darren Bent

[Richard]

There is more to playing a part than that, as I suspect you know (or should do). Do you not think that he spoke to Downing at all and turned his head ? Of course that is unknown.

so if i see friends on holiday i ask them to they have jobs in their company, and what conditions are like dont see the problem

You can do what you like in your own personal life but I'm afraid you cannot equate that to the game of football. You see in football if proved it is called tapping up.

In addition I am fine with you thinking it is acceptable , absolutley fine. When I said that I wouldn't want Carrol here and mentioned that as being one of the reasons I was actually talking about why I wouldn't want him here, not you or anyone else.

[TheDrums]

Bent said this today:

"I've scored 20 a couple of times for my previous clubs so hopefully I can do it here over the next couple of seasons.

However, modern day footballers...

[OnlyOne]

No offence to Bent but I don't trust a word he says. Applies to all modern footballers really.

[Richard]

Bent said this today:

"I've scored 20 a couple of times for my previous clubs so hopefully I can do it here over the next couple of seasons.

However, modern day footballers...

I am absolutely sure he is sincere when he says that. I am sure he would love to score 20 goals for us over the next few seasons if the club wants to keep him

However, modern day Villa.....

[Ulver]

If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him.

Unbelievable.. i'm actually speechless.

Take no notice, he just posts for effect

[Richard]

If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him.

Unbelievable.. i'm actually speechless.

Take no notice, he just posts for effect

You are incorrect there.

I may not agree with all of his opinions but PB most definitely does not PFE. This site is much better for the likes of PB posting on it and if not for him we may not actually have this site in its form today.

[CI]

No offence to Bent but I don't trust a word he says. Applies to all modern footballers really.

Agree, if he see's himself slipping down the England pecking order, he'll be off quicker than a rat up a drainpipe

[Woodytom]

So if we are selling our record signing who gave us so much hope last year because as expected, he doesn't fit in with the new manager's anti-football philosophy - it makes this appointment even more ridiculous.

Whether the appointment of mcLiesh was a ridiculous one or not, it was none the less the decision the board reached. Alex mcleish IS the manager of Aston villa, he isnt going anywhere anytime soon and so the football club sinks or swims with him, so personally I'm all for him being successful, which means him being given the tools HE wants, not the tools i want him to have.

If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him. As i said, i wish it was different, but wishes dont mean jack.

Sorry PB but should we have demonstrated such passive acceptance of , for example, Ellis being Chairman. Should we have just said then that he was the man running the club and was not going anywhere anytime soon? That the club would sink or swim with him and that he should hope he would be successful? Or perhaps when Mcneill became manager we should have accepted that, or during the reign of Odreary perhaps we should have just sat back and accepted that as well?

Richard, you say that like the fans were responsible for those departures??

O'Leary wasnt sacked because the fans were unhappy.

O'Neill didnt resign because the fans were unhappy

and

if Ellis sold the club because the fans were unhappy (which I doubt it), then it took him an age to get the message.

I fully agree with PB. Darren Bent is not the be all and end all and if he doesnt suite Mcliesh's game, then so be it. We rely on the manager more than one player (who will no doubt jump at the first opportunity regardless of the manager anyway).

[CI]

Eck has always liked a targetman so lets just get it done

Swap with Carroll anyone ??

[PeteStan]

I completely agree with PB. He is only being completely realistic. AMc is going nowhere soon, whether we like it or not. All this divisiveness is doing us no good at all. The best for us as Villa fans is if we go and thrash Chelsea tomorrow, McLeish gets widely lauded and the boys steadily climb the table with improved performances and results and we start to get somewhere again.

And to achieve that? He does need to be given his head in the transfer market and as he is being given limited, if any funds; he will have to find a way of 'trading carefully' but effectively. Unpalatable I know, particularly if it means selling 'the family silver'!

Face it he is our manager, like it or not. Recent games have shown it doesn't have to be all negative football. He is a genuinely decent man who seems to lose no opportunity in talking up the name of Aston Villa, quite unlike that runaway character who now plies his trade in the north east.

And no he wasn't my choice either. But I guess my love for Villa and desire to see us succesful far, far outweighs any slight, negative feeling I might have for a small club across the City.

[briny_ear]

If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him.

Unbelievable.. i'm actually speechless.

Take no notice, he just posts for effect

You are incorrect there.

I may not agree with all of his opinions but PB most definitely does not PFE. This site is much better for the likes of PB posting on it and if not for him we may not actually have this site in its form today.

I think PB is dead right. If a player - however good - doesn't deliver what a manager wants, there's only going to be one outcome.

(The player leaves)

[OnlyOne]

I don't agree with PB.

If McLiesh is allowed to set up his team at this club we will eventually get relegated.

Look what happened with SHA. Eventually they got relegated with his team and he spent a fair bit as well. Look what happened at Rangers when they gave him time to build over there. They got 3rd and that's like a relegation for them.

I would rather he don't bring his own players in. I don't want to see someone like Zigic as a replacement from Bent. At least that way when he does eventually leave we won't be damaged by his legacy. We're still suffering by MON's legacy and McLeish will be 10x worse. Think about it.

[Dodgyknees]

I completely agree with PB. He is only being completely realistic. AMc is going nowhere soon, whether we like it or not. All this divisiveness is doing us no good at all. The best for us as Villa fans is if we go and thrash Chelsea tomorrow, McLeish gets widely lauded and the boys steadily climb the table with improved performances and results and we start to get somewhere again.

And to achieve that? He does need to be given his head in the transfer market and as he is being given limited, if any funds; he will have to find a way of 'trading carefully' but effectively. Unpalatable I know, particularly if it means selling 'the family silver'!

Face it he is our manager, like it or not. Recent games have shown it doesn't have to be all negative football. He is a genuinely decent man who seems to lose no opportunity in talking up the name of Aston Villa, quite unlike that runaway character who now plies his trade in the north east.

And no he wasn't my choice either. But I guess my love for Villa and desire to see us succesful far, far outweighs any slight, negative feeling I might have for a small club across the City.

Shame we didn't have this opinion last year.

McLeish is rotten and will destroy our club.

[markavfc40]

I don't agree with PB.

If McLiesh is allowed to set up his team at this club we will eventually get relegated.

PB hasn't stated what the outcome will be when McLeish sets his own team up.

What PB has stated is that McLeish is now manager and that he doesn't see that changing any time soon. Lerner having employed him as manager will allow him to set the team up as he sees fit with in the confines of the clubs finances.

I agree with him. I don't see McLeish going anywhere for some considerable time yet and whether we like it or not he will be allowed to set the team up as he wants.

[Richard]

So if we are selling our record signing who gave us so much hope last year because as expected, he doesn't fit in with the new manager's anti-football philosophy - it makes this appointment even more ridiculous.

Whether the appointment of mcLiesh was a ridiculous one or not, it was none the less the decision the board reached. Alex mcleish IS the manager of Aston villa, he isnt going anywhere anytime soon and so the football club sinks or swims with him, so personally I'm all for him being successful, which means him being given the tools HE wants, not the tools i want him to have.

If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him. As i said, i wish it was different, but wishes dont mean jack.

Sorry PB but should we have demonstrated such passive acceptance of , for example, Ellis being Chairman. Should we have just said then that he was the man running the club and was not going anywhere anytime soon? That the club would sink or swim with him and that he should hope he would be successful? Or perhaps when Mcneill became manager we should have accepted that, or during the reign of Odreary perhaps we should have just sat back and accepted that as well?

Richard, you say that like the fans were responsible for those departures??

O'Leary wasnt sacked because the fans were unhappy.

O'Neill didnt resign because the fans were unhappy

and

if Ellis sold the club because the fans were unhappy (which I doubt it), then it took him an age to get the message.

I fully agree with PB. Darren Bent is not the be all and end all and if he doesnt suite Mcliesh's game, then so be it. We rely on the manager more than one player (who will no doubt jump at the first opportunity regardless of the manager anyway).

Tom a couple of things here. Personally I do think that the fans played a part in the departures of those people.

However, I think you are missing the point.

What PB is saying, I think, is it is pointless to say that we would be better off without Mcleish and with Bent. That it is ridiculous that we should lose our most valuable player and not the manager. Basically PB is saying we have Mcleish so should back his decisions, regardless.

I am just asking, why then is it OK to so passively accept Mcleish and his decisions, but it wasn't to passively accept those who were previously at the club (Ellis, Odreary , Mcneill etc)

Oh I can see the logic of the argument that goes "He is the manager and will make the decisions" but I cannot see why our opinions whould just accept that and not argue for his removal

Afterall people are arguing for the removal of Bent, I would actually look to the cause of why Bent is not scoring in every game.

[CI]

If McLeish stays, we will be relegated, its simply a question of this season or next

[Mantis]

But I guess my love for Villa and desire to see us succesful far, far outweighs any slight, negative feeling I might have for a small club across the City.

What do SHA have to do with this?

I'd expect the "Villa fans only dislike McLeish because of his past connections" crap from an outsider (although even they're wising up now), but not from a fellow Villa fan.

[Richard]

The best for us as Villa fans is if we go and thrash Chelsea tomorrow

This is about the only thing in your post I agree with.

And to achieve that? He does need to be given his head in the transfer market and as he is being given limited, if any funds; he will have to find a way of 'trading carefully' but effectively. Unpalatable I know, particularly if it means selling 'the family silver'!

So selling our better players to replace them with lesser ones, or ones similar to those he has previously bought. Aside from Shay Given ( this being a no brainer actually - injury problems aside) his transfer record for us has, IMO, been a total disaster. What little money we have would be better employed in replacing him with a manager better equiped to manage at this level and play those players we have to the best of their ability. Something that Mcleish has shown he is unable to do

Face it he is our manager, like it or not. Recent games have shown it doesn't have to be all negative football. He is a genuinely decent man who seems to lose no opportunity in talking up the name of Aston Villa, quite unlike that runaway character who now plies his trade in the north east.

Firstly it matters not to me whether he is decent as a man or not, it matters most his ability as a manager. He has shown he is extremely limited in that department actually and that is why I do not want him here.

Can you demonstrate where MON did not talk up the name of Villa by the way, or in fact talked us down? Quite ludicrous that. In addition, where is MON not a decent man? The reasons behind his departure still not totally known but given the evidence of the last two years, the tribunal that Lerner was forced to pay out, I rather suspect that the inconvenient truth (for some people at least) is that the club had rather more to do with his exit that some are making out.

And no he wasn't my choice either. But I guess my love for Villa and desire to see us succesful far, far outweighs any slight, negative feeling I might have for a small club across the City.

The distraction that people keep using of his previous employment is just that, a distraction. It is used , IMO, by those people who actually either spectacularly miss the point or who want to use it as a distraction because the evidence against his ability to manage is so overwhelming.

But then you see my love for Villa and my desire to see us succeed is the reason why I argue for Mcleish's removal as we will not be while he is with us

[andym]

i was reading an article in the paper today about comparisons between demba ba and andy carrol as they are playing tonight. it had a list of stats for each player and an interesting one to me was chance conversion, given ive seen a lot of "bent needs 10 chances to score and misses loads of sitters" comments around.

had a quick look around the web and found eplindex.com which had a striker comparison for arsenal, liverpool, man u, man city, spurs and newcastle players. a few examples of chance conversion-

RVP - 26%

Drogba and Anelka - 7% and 8% respectively

Suarez - 7%

aguero, dzeko and balotelli - 25%, 28% and 28%

rooney - 22%

ba- 32%

adebayor-16%

the article these came from was posted on the 28th december, so i assume they are up to date and the stats come from OPTA.

Bent wasnt on the list, but i did find some stats for his season up to the 7th november. his chance conversion at that point in the season was 28%, and his shooting accuracy was 56%. now obviously it could have changed since then (the 2 chances he missed against bolton would have an affect), but given he has missed 3 games since then and other games played have included spurs and man u where we created absolutely nothing i dont think it would be massively different.

yet bent only has 5 goals compared to the much larger totals of other players. pretty obvious to me that the problem isnt bents finishing, just that we create nowhere enough chances. i reckon if he had scored every chance he has had this season he still would still only just be in double figures.

imo its another piece of damning evidence against mcleish and his pathetic style of football, and his inability to utilise quality players.

[CI]

what was Yakubu on ?