Mowen

Has Shola been awarded player of the month yet?

Rumour he may start on Sunday, thats how much he has impressed. Fucking hell. Would be very surprised, but would be pretty exciting. I'll have to try and fit his name into a chant on the train down.

Would enjoy seeing him get a bit of pitch time (i.e. 30mins+) at Peterborough.

Yep. The difference Capello has made is that he's finally turned a squad of talented players into a cohesive team. And you still get pundits complaining about the selection when Defoe doesn't start, despite us being the top goalscorers in qualifying. Mental.

Just saw the highlights from last night, absolutely pissed it. A couple of things that stuck out to me; granted Heskey didn't score (and should have done) but I didn't see the world's greatest goalscorer Jermaine Defoe creating the space and getting on the end of passes in the same way. Heskey is excellent foil for Rooney imo, needs to stay that way. Also, whilst Johnson probably shouldn't have let the cross come in, Terry was utterly woeful for their goal. He gave Eduardo a free header and then dashed to the line rather than staying with his man (which would have given him a chance to clear it). Pure attempt at hollywood defending rather than using common sense.

Everything in Bolivia is the highest in the world, if they play in La Paz that's the highest altitude capital city in the world so it would make sense.

I've got a feeling it was only invitational to the extent that you couldn't have two clubs from the same city in europe, other than that it was on league placings? Sure dad told me the year we won it Man City actually finished higher in the league but we took their place as ManU were already in europe. He could be wrong though, he's a bit of an idiot.

Not that surprising...wasn't it their re-branding to create extra TV revenues etc? It's clearly a continuation of the same thing with a slightly different format, much like the Intercities Fairs cup -> UEFA Cup -> Europa League etc.

Thats like saying the FA Cup is the is the same as it was when Wanderers beat the Royal engineers in the final. No it isn't. YEs it is. It isn't. I also wouldn't say that no royal engineers players had scored in the FA cup. Villa's European cup goals shouldn't be discounted because of a name change, it's the same competition. The same way the Prem is the same as the old D1.

Thats like saying the FA Cup is the is the same as it was when Wanderers beat the Royal engineers in the final. No it isn't.

Exactly! Too bad noobs like Mowen don't get the Shola-love. Me and Mike were the pioneers of Shola lovin' tbh.

Villa won the European cup in the 80s. Same competition.

Shola's got more in Europe than the mackems though.

Just go to it on Safari...it's f***ing quality! Expensive lunchbreak today... safari ? I'm interested to know as I'm tempted but my browser on the phone is soooo ssssssllllllllloooooowwww. Pretty sure it's iPhone specific as it redirects you to iphone.betfair.com It's absolutley quality though, probably easier to use than the main site for my limited requirements.

Just go to it on Safari...it's fucking quality! Expensive lunchbreak today...

Anyone used betfair on an iPhone? Does it work on the browser or is there an app? This could be dangerous...

I read this earlier. I'd honestly love to see it.

It's a problem. And I seen refs give yellow cards for diving in incidents like this. But a start would be for the ref to only give a penalty if he's 100% sure which I would say would reduce the number of pens by about half, tbh. Yup. They're reluctant to book divers when they're not certain, don't know why this seemingly doesn't apply to penalties.

DJ

Ashley was lambasted for not investing heavily. Pretty certain he did exactly what you've just asked for, until the Wise/Keegan situation. I'm pretty sure Ashley didn't do any of what I asked; run the club sensibly (allowed wage bill to bloat further and then refuse transfers - not that sensible) and with ambition (def not). A small amount of speculation (made a profit on transfers...nope, no speculation) and cut the dead wood (brought more in than he's shipped out). Get in a manager who you trust (didn't do that) and back them (def not). So it's easy to get rid of overpaid players who nobody else would want, whilst at the same time bringing in better players without overspending? I can't believe people actually think it will be easy for a new owner to turn us back into a force without hevaily investing. Didn't say it was "easy" to turn us into a force, all I was showing in my above post was that Ashley had done everything wrong. The first sentance in your post is to do with (what I described as) getting a manager you trust, backing them within reason and speculating a bit - our starting platform wasn't that bad when Ashley took over and had he done any of these things we'd be in a significantly better position than we are now, and probably better than the lower mid table we were when he started.

It needs to be said because people make rash statements such as it being easy to turn this club into a success and other daft comments such as they don't want to see "son of fred" in charge (whatever that means). The fact is it is not easy to turn a football club into a success, implying it is easy does a disservice to a group of people who did a decent job for most of their time in charge. I realise I'm pissing against the wind because their work wasn't appreciated (and still isn't) by a lot of members of this forum. They even take large crowds for granted, as though we've always had large crowds. I don't think it's easy to make it a success as such, but I think it would be relatively easy to make it a moderate success (i.e. more than we'll achieve under Ashley).

The thing was at the time with N'Zogbia he was playing worse than Duff. Don't know what happened to Zog since Duff arrived. Not looked anywhere near at that level ever since, for anyone. Maybe he was just playing above himself. Not his fault though according to many. ...how could it be? Seems strange that under several different managers and even at a different club he's not been able to recapture it mind. Still, don't really care about the grotty little cunt after his 'performance' at Blackburn last year.

The thing was at the time with N'Zogbia he was playing worse than Duff. Don't know what happened to Zog since Duff arrived. Not looked anywhere near at that level ever since, for anyone. Maybe he was just playing above himself.

Ashley was lambasted for not investing heavily. Pretty certain he did exactly what you've just asked for, until the Wise/Keegan situation. No, he wasn't. He wasn't lambasted much at all until Keegan quit and we noticed the promised investment in the squad amounted to leaving us one player short compared to the previous season. Running the club "sensibly" does not mean turning it into a selling club. He was rightly lambasted for not investing and backing Keegan in January. We needed investment in that window but got away with it.