brummie

From today's city pages in the Torygraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/citydiary/10875766/City-Diary-Lord-Mandelson-rents-modest-farmhouse-from-billionaire-Rothschilds.html PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE IT TRUE QUICKLY

Jores Okore, Libor Kozak. Lerner doesnt want us to get relegated if he wants to sell us. He's not that stupid. He is stupid enough to get us relegated accidentally though. Okore is talented and looked a good prospect for this league until he tore his leg against NUFC. Kozak is complete rubbish. Kozak did ok - he started 8 league matches for us and scored 4 goals before his injury. I wasn't impressed before he came, to be honest, and he's not the most mobile of strikers, but he did pretty well. Lambert does pretty well when he spends over 5m, it's when he spends a lot less that it looks less impressive.

Jores Okore, Libor Kozak. Lerner doesnt want us to get relegated if he wants to sell us. He's not that stupid. He is stupid enough to get us relegated accidentally though.

Sidwell is fucking awful. The single most anonymous player I have ever seen play for us. He'd go month after month playing every game for us, and I genuinely wouldn't notice him. Then he got into a "bring him on on exactly 75 minutes" routine when MON went a bit nuttier. Total nothing player

Ameobesque

I still can't believe anyone plays him anywhere that isn't through the middle (I mean in the absence of lots of amazing midfield options to choose from).

I was just making myself a nice cup of rooibos tea in the kitchen (caffeine free, full of anti oxidants) and found myself wondering, as I slowly nudged the tea bag around the cup, if it was worth asking a bookie for a price on both Villa and Newcastle to go down next season.

How come Roy Keane's not one of the pundits? *slashes wrists*

Just out of interest how do most Villa fans feel about things at the minute? Do you have a disturbing number of numpties who support every bad thing your club does like we do? You mean people who say things like "he's coming as a fourth choice in his position" and ignore the fact that we haven't signed anyone to fill a first choice spot for about two or three years? Yes. Although the general mood is utterly suidical. We have a chairman who has seriously gone nuts. Look at this evidence, and this is only some of it: - Totally withdrawn his interest two years ago. In the first four years he'd be here for away LC matches at Doncaster, he was here all the time. It's easy when you're a billionaire with your own jet, mind. Number of matches attended in the last two years? Zero. Mind you, I don't blame him, I have been to loads and it has at times made my eyes bleed. Word is he's got a new Mrs who hates football and his involvement in it. The fucking pussy. - Slams the spending brakes on so firmly we go from 6th to 9th (hugely flattering) then 16th, 15th, 15th. - Appoints Alex McLeish (think about that one, can you imagine you lot appointing someone who got Sunderland relegated the year before, playing football that was so bad it actually made you feel sorry for them?) - Gets it into his head that you can build something special by buying almost exclusively lower leagues players - despite three years of evidence it doesn't work - Spends 8 years not speaking to the press at all, then suddenly makes a statement saying Lambert is doing an amazing job (yes, first time in 140 years we've lost 10 home league games in a season, that's pretty "amazing" indeed), and goes on to say he is disappointed we are not all talking about the marvellous result of the day before (a goalless draw at home to Southampton, seriously, I shit you not) - says "I'll make a statement about my ownership at the end of the season", causing a few weeks of total confusion, then does so and comes out with some truly bizarre incomprehensible guff saying he's going to sell the club (google it, references to "like the Shummanite i will walk among my own", WTF?) - So now, we have a manager who just keeps saying he can't do much because Lerner wants to sell the club (means no money). This is a manager who in 2012-13 gave us the worst home record in 139 years, and then the following year gave us the worst one in 140 years. This is, however, a manager who after his first season had truly unbelievable levels of support from the fans, meaning Lerner got an incredibly easy time of it. - We also, a month before the end of the season, sacked lambert's right and left hand men, and promoted Gordon Cowans (fine), and Shay Given till the end of the season. Shay Given, of course, one of the players christened "The Bomb Squad" who were judged to be earning too much money and therefore weren't even allowed to train with the first team squad. Given, Bent, Hutton, Ireland, N'Zogbia. Tell me, how does having that sort of nonsense in place help you sell players? It doesn't. Anyway, Given went from leper to coach in 24 hours. Madness. - So now, we can't spend money till he sells the club, the manager knows that if Lerner does sell the club, he'll almost certainly get the sack. Two of our best players - Delph and Vlaar - have only one year left on their deals, but apparently there won't be any movement on contracts "till the club is sold". What happens if the club isn't sold for months? Or years? At least they'll have a justification for not spending - "we are trying to sell the club". So, in all, it's a total fucking mess. Lerner is a nice bloke who has spent a fortune on us (mostly totally wasted, though, due to his inability to run a piss up in a brewery), but he's totally lost the plot. If we are not taken over by the start of the season, get some cash on us to go down. I was reading a Villa forum the other day and they were discussing "how will Lerner be remembered", and someone posted "As a well meaning div". Spot on. Some terrifying parallels between us really. http://th07.deviantart.net/fs70/200H/f/2011/288/7/a/i_know_that_feel_bro_by_rober_raik-d4cxn5a.png I tell you what the similarity is in one sentence. Not just the end of ambition, but the end of even pretending to be ambitious.

Oh and we're signing Senderos and appointing Roy Keane to the coaching team. *shoots self in face*

Just out of interest how do most Villa fans feel about things at the minute? Do you have a disturbing number of numpties who support every bad thing your club does like we do? You mean people who say things like "he's coming as a fourth choice in his position" and ignore the fact that we haven't signed anyone to fill a first choice spot for about two or three years? Yes. Although the general mood is utterly suidical. We have a chairman who has seriously gone nuts. Look at this evidence, and this is only some of it: - Totally withdrawn his interest two years ago. In the first four years he'd be here for away LC matches at Doncaster, he was here all the time. It's easy when you're a billionaire with your own jet, mind. Number of matches attended in the last two years? Zero. Mind you, I don't blame him, I have been to loads and it has at times made my eyes bleed. Word is he's got a new Mrs who hates football and his involvement in it. The fucking pussy. - Slams the spending brakes on so firmly we go from 6th to 9th (hugely flattering) then 16th, 15th, 15th. - Appoints Alex McLeish (think about that one, can you imagine you lot appointing someone who got Sunderland relegated the year before, playing football that was so bad it actually made you feel sorry for them?) - Gets it into his head that you can build something special by buying almost exclusively lower leagues players - despite three years of evidence it doesn't work - Spends 8 years not speaking to the press at all, then suddenly makes a statement saying Lambert is doing an amazing job (yes, first time in 140 years we've lost 10 home league games in a season, that's pretty "amazing" indeed), and goes on to say he is disappointed we are not all talking about the marvellous result of the day before (a goalless draw at home to Southampton, seriously, I shit you not) - says "I'll make a statement about my ownership at the end of the season", causing a few weeks of total confusion, then does so and comes out with some truly bizarre incomprehensible guff saying he's going to sell the club (google it, references to "like the Shummanite i will walk among my own", WTF?) - So now, we have a manager who just keeps saying he can't do much because Lerner wants to sell the club (means no money). This is a manager who in 2012-13 gave us the worst home record in 139 years, and then the following year gave us the worst one in 140 years. This is, however, a manager who after his first season had truly unbelievable levels of support from the fans, meaning Lerner got an incredibly easy time of it. - We also, a month before the end of the season, sacked lambert's right and left hand men, and promoted Gordon Cowans (fine), and Shay Given till the end of the season. Shay Given, of course, one of the players christened "The Bomb Squad" who were judged to be earning too much money and therefore weren't even allowed to train with the first team squad. Given, Bent, Hutton, Ireland, N'Zogbia. Tell me, how does having that sort of nonsense in place help you sell players? It doesn't. Anyway, Given went from leper to coach in 24 hours. Madness. - So now, we can't spend money till he sells the club, the manager knows that if Lerner does sell the club, he'll almost certainly get the sack. Two of our best players - Delph and Vlaar - have only one year left on their deals, but apparently there won't be any movement on contracts "till the club is sold". What happens if the club isn't sold for months? Or years? At least they'll have a justification for not spending - "we are trying to sell the club". So, in all, it's a total fucking mess. Lerner is a nice bloke who has spent a fortune on us (mostly totally wasted, though, due to his inability to run a piss up in a brewery), but he's totally lost the plot. If we are not taken over by the start of the season, get some cash on us to go down. I was reading a Villa forum the other day and they were discussing "how will Lerner be remembered", and someone posted "As a well meaning div". Spot on.

Senderos having a medical with us. Does anyone have a gun, and if so, are you willing to travel down to the Midlands this evening and shoot me in the head? Thanks.

What is going to happen is that Blatter is going to strip Qatar of the competition, point out that he never wanted them to have it, and lap up the praise as the rescuing hero. Whatever happens, Sepp always wins.

Apparently we are thinking about appointing Roy Keane as coach to work alongside Lambert. Honestly, I genuinely think Lerner has had a nervous breakdown or something. Genuinely, I do.

Football clubs are only too happy to claim that they need to be run like a conventional business, but they're also quite happy to go on milking the fact that the fans see it as anything like a conventional business. Which predominantly means unbelievably loyal "customers" who spend half their lives thinking about their clubs, and whose daft loyalty leads them to pour money into the clubs year after year, regardless of the shit returns you get from them. When was the last time you saw anyone with a Marks and Spencer or Cisco tattoo? I don't think there is a business of any type anywhere in the world which has given me as little pleasure as paying to watch Aston Villa over the last two years - 11 home wins from the last 38 - and continued to benefit from my largesse. And that is why clubs which run themselves as conventional businesses are having their cake and eating it.

It is sad to hear football clubs are actually conducting research into things like that, it really is. Mostly because, even if they said, "we're doing it so we can make better informed decisions", everyone knows that what that means is "find some statistics to justify a total lack of ambition". I will never understand why clubs like you, us, or others with no chance of winning the league again, but have "expectations", show such scant fucking regard for cup competitions. It's the only chance of winning things. In fact, scratch that, I do know why they act like that - because winning things isn't what drives them any more, it is all about what goes in the accounts at the end of the year. If being a football supporter is underpinned by something as fucking blank and emotionless as balance sheets, we might as well all stop bothering with the game, and start following the FTSE index or something.

How fucking depressing is this for all concerned? Interesting, good points about FFP, too. The ladders have been pulled up. http://www.thejournal.co.uk/sport/sport-opinion/agenda-aston-villa-experience-alter-7116825?

He's a nice bloke, but needs to be absolutely nowhere near the control seat of a sporting institution. Either side of the Atlantic.

It'll be more Americans. He's good at selling sports, err, "franchises". He flogged the Cleveland Browns for nigh-on a billion dollars last year.

... Jesus, what's that like?! He has cut spending way, way too quickly for my liking, and made some truly awful decisions (I mean, he actually thought that taking Alex McLeish from Birmingham just after they'd been relegated playing awful football and appointing him to our job would actually *work* FFS), but there is absolutely no doubt he is a good bloke at heart. I do not think for one nanosecond he'd sell us to wankers.

Jealous. Surely that depends on who he sells to? I hope Mike Ashley sells us to get the cash to buy you. No offence. Ha ha, no worries. One thing I do trust Lerner about is that he'd make sure he didn't flog to mentalists. Which is something which, much to his credit, Doug Ellis did. Ellis was approached by Gillette and Hicks before Randy came in, but sent them packing as he'd sussed them out. I think Lerner will have the same approach. I just hope that it really is true that a deal is done or almost done, because after four years of being spoon fed warm vomit week after week, a summer of shitness and uncertainty means almost certain relegation.

Jealous. Surely that depends on who he sells to?

Our players are taking this season's horribleness pretty badly, I see. http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnY4MzpIMAEn51e.jpg I hope the coach plunges off a cliff.

Seems like you played well today. You must be joking, we were pathetic. The fans were amazing, though. It's a horrible mess.

If Shearer says after this that Lambert has done a good job, I'm going to put my fucking foot through my telly. Twice.