brummie

I HATE Man United, so it hurts to say this, but those shirts are absolutely excellent.

As I said the other day, the thing I am impressed with so far is that we've clearly been working on a list of players we'd decided on a while back. It is almost - almost - as if, for the first time since Lerner bought us, we've started to realise that to make the most of your money, you need to be clever about who you buy. I can barely begin to explain properly how much I wish we'd been a proper set-up when Lerner turned up and MON started spunking huge sums on meh players.

Usually, when a team gets signed up to wear Nike shirts (rather than paying them to do so), as we did five years ago, people get excited. What actually happens, though, is if you're not one of their most important handful of clubs - (which then, in the UK, was Arsenal and United plus the obvious foreign clubs, you get a distinctly less impressive deal. They produced some really good kits for us, that's true, but they also fobbed a lot of templated shit on to us as well. A few years ago we had a home shirt from them with a sort of check-ish pattern down the sides. Turned out to be a template of a Lens (I think) top from a few years before. Not only that, but one season they didn't get the home kits on sale until December - they'd fucked up the manufacture and the club rejected them and sent them all back to them, they were so shoddy. Arsenal and your Puma kits, if I am honest, I find horrible (especially Arsenal's), but I wouldn't assume the deal is much better anywhere else unless you're one of their most important accounts.

That's a brilliant idea.

I'm just throwing names onto the pitch and not really thinking about positions. I agree re Richards. I am not massively convinced at all with him at CB. He's done ok in preseason, but remains to be seen how that pans out.

"Disapproval" http://blog.vh1.com/files/2007/07/kells_disapproving.gif Is "disapprovement" not a word then? Not in the sense of English as spoken by the Queen and her subjects. Maybe the Americans use it, mind.

They're going to be confuse and struggle to decide who to lay into first, the poster using "use" that way, or me being vaguely optimistic.

Just to ram it home.

"Disapproval" http://blog.vh1.com/files/2007/07/kells_disapproving.gif

I read about it last night, but have no idea if it is true. Apparently came from a journalist in La Coruna (saying Deportivo had failed to sign him as he is coming to us). Might be a decent punt if he's still physically realistic. We're signing a lot of real promise, we could do with a few more experienced players. Interesting season ahead for use like, some exciting signings plus more to come, pressure on Sherwood in his first full season. Any idea how you will line up assuming you secure your targets? Maybe: Guzan Hutton - Clark - Richards - Amavi Sanchez Westwood Gil or Grealish - Veretout - Ayew Gestede / Adebayor / Kozak

what happened to the striker you had who broke his leg a while ago brummie? Kozak. Returned just in time for pre season. Has scored a few in friendlies. I actually really like him. Started 7 or 8 games plus a few sub appearances and scored 4 times before his injury. He looks like a big battering ram style forward, but actually isn't, he's a pretty intelligent striker.

I read about it last night, but have no idea if it is true. Apparently came from a journalist in La Coruna (saying Deportivo had failed to sign him as he is coming to us). Might be a decent punt if he's still physically realistic. We're signing a lot of real promise, we could do with a few more experienced players.

He's potentially a decent player, but for such a big bloke, he is ridiculously injury prone. Him and Vlaar as half of our CB options was never clever.

I don't really know anything about Gestede other than the youtube compilation I just watched, but he looks like he could be a Benteke replacement, in terms of style. For a manager who has never managed through a transfer window before, Sherwood has certainly learned quickly. We've got a head of scouting, a sporting director, and someone to deal entirely with the mechanics of transfers these days, too, though, so he is at least getting decent amounts of help. Apparently Nathan Baker is going to Burnley (where Lowton went) for 2m, which is good business, too.

With N'Zogbia, Bennett and Tonev, I think the plan is just to stack them up down the far field at the training centre and set fire to them.

It would be if that was where the spending stopped. It isn't though. Baker will be going and a new CB coming in, you can bet your house on that. Clark and Richards have looked decent there pre-season, mind, and Clark had a good season last year. Midfield choices of Gueye, Westwood, Veretout, Sanchez, Gil, Grealish, Sinclair plus others give us options in the middle, too. It's also worth noting that thus far we have only just about spent the Benteke money thus far, there's also the 8 for Delph plus whatever we'd have had earmarked had those two stayed. Ayew 8 Amavi 9 Veretout 8 (apparently) Richards 0 Sinclair 2.5 Gueye 7 Adebayor I can live with, on a loan. Berbatov I find incredibly hard to believe, though. More than anything else, though, if you think the state of the rest of the squad now is laughable, you haven't been paying much attention to the spirit-sapping cheap shit we've hoovered up the last few seasons. Thank fuck some of them are moving on. Weimann has gone, Bent is off the books, Given has gone, Vlaar is off the wage bill (with his constant injuries) and I'd expect N'Zogbia, Bennett, Tonev, Senderos and Baker, at the very least, to be shifted soon as well. We needed an almost total overhaul. We've started doing it.

I'm not really sure why they'd do that, to be honest. Supposed to be about 3m euros higher, which even for English football clubs, would be extremely stupid.

I have to say, it's only a few friendlies, but christ, Amavi looks a good player. EDIT as does Idrissa Gueye, to be fair.

I doubt we have been interested in Austin, he just doesn't fit the style of player Sherwood has been after. I don't mind Adebayor, with two conditions. 1. He's not the Benteke replacement. 2. It's a loan. We need a more reliable replacement than him. Although, back from a horrible injury, Libor Kozak is having a very good pre-season. Actually, re Austin, the only place I've seen us discussed in relation to him is on here. There has been pretty much no talk of it "down here" as it were.

Bit passive aggressive Impressive they found someone in Sandwell who can write, mind.

Milner was fucking great for us. I love him. Of all the decent players we've sold and utterly failed to replace the last few years, he's the one Villa fans would most like back. Honestly, I genuinely love him, with his endless work rate, decent technique and quirky 1940s, wartime schoolboy haircut that makes him look like he should be holding a gas mask and waving goodbye to his parents on a smoggy railway platform.

I'll do you a demonstration of what he does. *puts laptop aside, stands up, runs into wall* *waits 20 minutes* *repeats* Him, Aaron Hughes and Habib Fucking Beye. Three players we had who had NUFC on their cv and all absolutely shit. And N'Zogbia and Beye were SO shit, I almost feel bad about putting Hughes on that list. Milner was mint, mind.

re Verretout (of whom I know next to nothing) is that we recently appointed Hendrik Almstadt our sporting director. Almstadt worked at Arsenal where he spent a lot of time workingwith Wenger and, to a lesser extent, Tom Fox (then their CCO, now our CEO) on linking the football and commercial sides of the business. It seems that there was a process under way, which stalled, to bring Verretout to Arsenal, and that Almstadt was deeply involved in that deal. It could be that this - unlikely sounding - deal is getting to be possible based on that relationship. In the wider story, I do wonder how come, after five years of cunting around in the transfer market like idiots, we've suddenly started to look like we know what we want to achieve, and we've invested time in finding the players to help us do it. In other news, apparently Charles N'Zogbia has this evening tweeted something about "politics", removed all Villa references from his twitter profile, and changed his profile pic to a banner saying OFFLINE. I hope that's because he's offski.

Would say so. Not a chance Decent purchases so far and we've barely made a dent on our transfer cash yet. It looks like we've sat down and thought about who we're going to buy, and have realised we need to start spending a bit more money. Three more decent signings and we'll finish top half. In any case - he's shit. I admit it's personal but i've followed his national career closely and he's terrible pretty much every time out. He's not without talent, decent pace, decent dribbler. He's frustrating as hell, can get into decent positions but the final product is usually awful. Whenever he starts I get upset. If he wasn't Abedi's son and played in Ligue 1 I don't think he would have so many caps at this point. At an age he can become a good player though. And he certainly has some tools. But wouldn't be suprised if you hated him by January. If he's got pace and get get into decent positions and has some tools, he's already significantly better than most of the utter fucking dreck we've had playing for us the last few years, believe me.

Some journalist in Nantes has been tweeting that this evening. Three Jordans from Ligue 1. Odd.