Rich

He's not a striker, anyway. His best position is right-midfield, surely. He's only playing up there because there's nobody else available. Things start to get difficult for him if Owen and Martins stay fit because he'll either oust Milner or Butt from the starting eleven, both decisions that will not prove popular with the masses. At the minute he's been relatively free from critique (aside from Ally) because he's being played up-front alongside a similar sort of partner, rather than alongside a Shearer/Ameobi. When he starts playing badly and he's keeping a fan-favourite out of the team, you'll see far more people calling for his head. Hopefully that won't happen and he'll be fucking mint, but it's extremely doubtful.

Richard Dunne is the white Titus Bramble, fact. He's fucking hopeless That settles it, tbh. I'd definitely have Dunne here now.

Who would buy him? How much for?

Ok I missed Toldo... Esposito I'll look up....He is actually Italian. blueyes.gif Wow!! We found another one. So there are two-thirds more Italian players at the club than you said there were. I grow more and more suspiscious of you by the day.

It's great how Villa fans are actually giving O'Neill time and patience to put his stamp on the club, a manager most people on here would have jumped through hoops to get ahead of Souness and Roeder, and we're slagging him off for them because he hasn't turned them into world-beaters in 8 months. People are quick to forget that the whole club at Villa is changing/being remodelled after Ellis, it's not simply a manager stepping into an already-prepared set-up, the whole club has been shaken to the core and is probably getting turned around for the better. I hope he does well there, because Villa are one of the few clubs I can't say too many bad words about - if any at all. Actually, Lee Hendrie are two that I could say, but that's about it - and he's not even really there at all these days. Martin O'Neill as well, I can even forgive him his shite punditry because he generally seems like a bloke with his head screwed on. Villa deserve some respite after suffering Ellis for as long as they did towards the end, I don't know how anyone could deny them a bit of hope/optimism, despite their current situation.

About the high-ball situation: there was a concerted effort on Monday to play it out from the back, from what I could see. With a proper left-back in there and another centre-back who is decent on the ball (i.e. not Onyewu), this gave me quite a bit of hope for next season as it seemed a definitive new "ploy". Most of the time it went to waste, like, because Harper came on and was about as horizontal as possible, constantly wasting outlets that Carr and Solano had attempted to provide for him. Nevertheless, it definitely seemed to me like the penny had dropped and that we're going to attempt to build from the back in future a bit more. I don't see it as concerted effort to play it from the back but more the difference that Emre makes to the team. He is always looking to come back collect the ball from the defenders and then play it out. This simply doesn't happen with Parker and Butt in the middle as neither ever come looking for the ball, forcing our defenders to hoof it long. Fuck's sake man, that's not what I said at all.. If you watched the game you should have noticed that the full-backs were constantly dropping deep and asking for the ball from Given/Harper in order to build from the back, instead of lumping it forward to Martins/Milner at every opportunity. Even Taylor and Onywu got balls to feet at some points in the game. It had absolutely nothing to do with Emre being in the team at all and was most definitely a case of "let's stop hitting aimless balls forward". Unless Emre told Roeder to employ it, he cannot take the credit for it. As I said, most times we missed out because of Harper/Given taking too long and then being forced to punt it towards Milner (who again won his fair share), but it was definitely a gameplan to get the ball to defenders if the opportunity arose and to build from the back. It was as plain as day to see inside the ground.

About the high-ball situation: there was a concerted effort on Monday to play it out from the back, from what I could see. With a proper left-back in there and another centre-back who is decent on the ball (i.e. not Onyewu), this gave me quite a bit of hope for next season as it seemed a definitive new "ploy". Most of the time it went to waste, like, because Harper came on and was about as horizontal as possible, constantly wasting outlets that Carr and Solano had attempted to provide for him. Nevertheless, it definitely seemed to me like the penny had dropped and that we're going to attempt to build from the back in future a bit more.

Espositio is Italian, is he not? What about Toldo?

Thing is, as I've said re: Walcott, the media hype in this country and the money in football is such that young players tend to be worth ridiculously high amounts of it, meaning that it's an obvious solution for clubs to look elsewhere (like we have done with Krul and N'Zogbia). If Wenger was bringing in truckloads of shite, then I'd understand your point a bit more and sympathise more, but the fact is there is not one player in the 16 named yesterday who I would say "no" to Newcastle having in various capacities. I'd be interested to know if Wenger could have realistically signed English players of similar/better quality to the likes of Clichy, Eboue, Toure, Aliadiere and Diaby for the same sort of money.

My other post was better, comment on that one as well. As for the Shearer comment, it's another difficult one to call because when young players are good enough they are generally still given the chance to play. Rooney at Everton is the obvious recent example and there are numerous others littered throughout the current Premiership who prove that there is still a decent turnover of quality players coming out of this country. In the long-run it's quite possible that the likes of Arsenal and their approach could benefit our game at all levels, because people have had their eyes opened to the importance of scouting networks and young players who can be signed for relatively small amounts of cash. No doubt we will have missed out on some potential quality lately, but has it ever been different? It's really the lower level clubs who need to carry the baton for development of this nature, because they are the ones who will benefit the most from it. Although they obviously have less money and power than the likes of us and Arsenal, they are generally more reliant upon local talent and should perhaps be given more funding to improve their own academy systems/youth set-ups. That could be another alternative, right there. Why should all quality players come from Premiership academies? It's probably better for all concerned if "lesser" clubs were given help in creating the stars of tomorrow.

Should add that having a minimum requirement of English players in a matchday squad would definitely give clubs more reason/incentive to get involved more in development from the earliest of ages, which could perhaps only be a good thing for youth football and the future of the national team. It tends to be dog-eat-dog and so in the short-term a solution like this one could have it's problems, but they may well get ironed out down the line when more and more money has been put into academies and youth development, in order to make sure that the English players in squads are good enough to actually play.

16 players and no Englishmen IS a worry, no doubt. Surely working at the root of the problem (grassroots football/youth football) is the way forward, though, at least for now? If English players were good enough to play for Arsenal, then they would play, it's as simple as that. I'm sure Wenger scouts in this country as much as he does elsewhere, but the difference tends to be the money he paid for Walcott versus the money he'd have to pay for a 16-year-old from Senegal or France who had shown similar promise to Walcott. I think bringing in a player limit could bring as many problems as solutions as some clubs would be forced to have sub-standard players, it could harm the development of some youngsters rather than help it if they were getting fast-tracked and people could just buy English to conform to the rules, then never ever play them. Which does even more harm than good to our game. It's not as simple as putting a cap on foreigners or something like that. My initial thought was to suggest increasing the number of subs to 7 and then asking for 3 of the 18 named players to be English, in England of course, but then I started seeing that even something like that had it's fair share of drawbacks.

Yep Owen and Martins, I can see them wroking aswell. Owen is a instinctive predator who hangs around waiting for a chance where as Oba likes to drop deep, pick up the ball and hit belters from distance. Bit more work needs to be done on Martins overall build up play but they could be exceptional with each other! For the record, I can't see them working, but I hope that they do.

I'd be interested to see how many times he has done and like I said before, I'm sure the Doc will fill us in on this whole thing. To me, Dunne seems to be more of a leader and we already have the obvious Irish connections here that would be a platform for him coming. It's obviously all pie-in-the-sky as he might not want to leave City, but I think he'd probably do better here than Sylvain would.

Has to be Owen & Martins, simply because of their reputations/price-tags. I can't see Ameobi getting a game ahead of those, if they're fit, whatever game it is. Like I've said elsewhere, it might not come off or one of them might get a bad injury and Ameobi will come back into it, but he's most definitely going to be "3rd choice" initially - and rightly so. A lot of people cannot wait to see Owen and Martins together and I'm one of them, I just really hope they click. Or even if they don't click, I hope they score plenty of goals apiece.

Don't see a better team coming in for him....atleast in terms of wages anyway. I don't think he left on a bad note. Have you missed the numerous "only one greedy bastard" chants directed towards him over the years after he went to Man City ahead of us for more money? (When we were in the Champions' League and Man City were mid-table.) I'm sure one of his own reasons behind it was because he didn't want to play left-back, as well, which is where Bobby wanted to use him. Two birds with one stone, there. He certainly left on a bad note, though, but he'd soon be forgiven if he came back and played well.

Dunne is a good defender, but he has his moments and at City there isn't so much pressure on him so any mistakes don't go that much noticed. At Newcastle... I prefer Distin myself who is a much better all-round defender and he can play at LB too. Except he won't, which is why he didn't stay with us a few years ago.

Rather have Richard Dunne than Distin, although both are better than Moore/Bramble/Onyewu/Taylor/Ramage... I'm sure Dr. Spectrum will back me up on this if he's around somewhere. I'd be interested to see who he rates more highly out of the two, as well. Obviously Distin makes more sense because of the freeness, but will he come back here?

Funny thing is, that's the exact opposite of what NE5 tends to say.

Egg-ferkin-zactly.

Agree entirely. Although Sibierski has had his moments, Shola was starting to look like a Premiership player towards the back end of last season. If he really was suffering from a dodgy hip the entire time, then surely he'll only get better if he's fully fit? If he was playing up-top with Martins yesterday I reckon we would have butchered Arsenal, because Toure/Gallas were having a difficult enough time with Martins alone. His goal ratio of 1-in-2 under Roeder is fair dinkum for someone who has been called worse than shite on numerous occasions. He'll never be Shearer and he's probably as infuriating as Oba can be at times, but they both have more than their fair share of flair and unpredictability about them - something that defenders definitely don't like. I just hope all three of them can stay fit for the vast majority of next season, the difference it could/should make to the team is probably immeasurable. If Owen/Martins prove a few of us wrong and hit it off, then we'll be laughing, because contrary to belief we do have a few of the required players to provide the bullets.

Well, I saw one from juniatmoko... but howay... it's juniatmoko...

Am I wrong for being happy to see Big Shola back in business? Obviously, the real delight comes with Owen's impending return - of course. I know Oliver said today that neither will be involved at Fratton Park over the weekend, but surely if they came through this then an appearance in the squad/on the bench shouldn't be completely impossible to forsee for at least one of them. Failing that I wouldn't be surprised to see both on the bench against Chelsea in order to try and instill some positive vibes amongst the other players/crowd pre-match. Ease them into things nicely so that they find their feet a little bit and then it'll be pre-season time, not exactly ideal, but probably not a bad thing after two incredibly serious injuries.

Me either. I'm going to have to get a fucking job to pay for it. THE HUMANITY!