brummie

"Aston Villa are completely useless", says Chairman of a club who have just been beaten by Stirling Albion, who were, according to their leagues, the 40th best club in Scotland. Maybe one day we will see the two big Scottish clubs in the PL. Celtic and Hibs.

Are you talking about those two spazzers talking about their historic moment of beating Man City? The bloke's eyes were all over the shop. I thought he was blind or partially sighted or something, but yes, he could well have been pilled off his tits.

Interesting strategy. Is this the longest contract a PL manager has ever had? There will doubtless be clauses, but if you ever want to get rid of him, that's going to cost a lot of $$$$

£10 tickets apparently to get it to near capacity. It's almost as though some common sense has been used. 8,000 Covscum there, too.

Very hard game. Nah, not even for us.

Swindon town away? I'll take that one.

The wage bill is the big issue, but that should be far more under control come the end of this season. That will, however, be three entire seasons to recover from the shit we were in when he walked away. Thank fuck Lerner didn't give in and give him what he was demanding to buy Aiden McGeady. Lerner said "how much do you need?", O'Neill said "whatever it takes". You can't really argue with people when they're like that.

They played some beautiful stuff though with real penetration of the defence Forest's style of playing there is totally incomparable to the way MON's teams play. Forest would keep the ball and pass you to death, playing little triangles over the pitch. MON's not a big fan of actual passing.

http://www.nufcmismanagement.info/img/freddys.jpg Wasn't MON linked with your job under FFS? I can only begin to imagine the carnage that would have unleashed. For starters, you'd probably still be paying Steve Guppy 60k a week, and he'd have 4 years left on his contract.

Incidentally, he hasn't a prayer of getting Sunderland to sixth, the football landscape has changed, and it is much, much harder. He'll struggle to get them tenth or above.

The first 2 stats sound impressive in a way. However it's not that they've just happened to be poor in different games but had the resolve to get something - the issue is O'Neill actively encourages that brand of football and there's only so many times they can nick points. They'll have to start playing a lot better if they want to do anything this year. The major thing with that style is that it works away from home, counter attacking, but as soon as teams start to show you any respect at your own place, they're not going to recklessly attack you and create openings. There's also an ethical discussion to be had about counter attacking at home. Ultimately, it means drawing lots of games at home. That led to the sort of tedious football that got Villa fans slaughtered in the media for DARING to complain or moan about. This is our record under MON for the last two seasons: 08-09: Home - W7 D9 L3 Scored 27 Away - W10 D2 L7 Scored 27 09-10 Home - W8 D8 L3 Scored 29 Away - W9 D5 L5 - Scored 23 Look at those home records, lots of draws and 27 goals one season, 29 the next. However, in both those seasons, we had two home games in which we thrashed some shit team (Bolton, usually) and scored 5 goals. If you take out those two anomalies, that leaves 17 goals across 17 home matches one year, and 19 the next. That basically equates to a lot of games where MON teams struggle to break teams down - because there's no alternative if it's not working, and he doesn't "do" tactical substitutions beyond changing the right back. The problem is the media never, ever seem to spot this. It's like they don't want to see what is going on. I reckon right now, there will be a lot of Sunderland fans who are starting to think "errm, hang on, maybe the Villa fans were right, after all". O'Neill has other qualities, chief amongst which is the ability to motivate shit players to deliver more, which is very useful to have, but there's a quite definite glass ceiling to his abilities - and that's pretty much where he got us, sixth. To get any further than that he'd need to be savvy in the transfer market (he isn't) and tactically clued up (he's totally not this), and that's why his answer to push us on was to just buy more of the same sort of player we already had, and hope for the best. It didn't work, and just landed us with a bloated squad of average ability and a huge wage bill. Look at us now, having been the 3rd or 4th biggest spenders in the English game for a few years, having invested so much, ultimately O'Neill's approach meant it was all built on foundations of sand. How is it possible to have had such an enormous wage bill, but wind up with a squad of players nobody else would want, and to have to rebuild like we are now? Still, it wasn't Martin's problem to deal with, because the very first time Lerner suggested he do something about the squad, move some guff out (players who never featured but were costing us a fortune), Martin stormed out, five days before the start of the season. There's a reason MON ended up in a totally underwhelming job like Sunderland. Not all chairmen are daft and naive to not understand the way he works.

Wouldn't surprise me like. They're a bunch of horrible cunts. Turned out to be bollocks, thankfully. Some nonsense started on Twitter.

Was thinking along the same lines earlier. Granted it's a bit weird to be a trophy snob when Newcastle haven't won one in ages, but it still wouldn't really be winning one in this Mickey Mouse competition where even Wolverhampton fucking Wanderers changes 10 players and fields their juniors. League Cup is a glorfied reserves cup. In fairness, when we reached the final a couple of years ago, it ceases to be insignificant at the point at which you're within touching distance of winning it. It's the general disdain it is regarded with in the interminable rounds up to that point that devalue it.

What Man City are doing is ultimately the sort of thing which is going to ruin football, but let's be honest, if it was our club, we wouldn't give too much of a shit. I don't normally care much for Mancini, but the ruck last night was apparently about something I absolutely can't stand, the waving of imaginary cards at the ref. For that, he's a cunt.

I don't think 23k is that bad an attendance, to be honest. They've got plenty other things to play for, its what most would assume was a relatively routine win before the match. It was pissing down with rain, etc etc. Basically, the League Cup really needs to be strangled off for good.

Yeah, it just needs to start in the right direction. Two years ago we played them in the cup up there, and Houllier surrendered before the match, then said after we were never going to beat them. Had McFuck taken us there in the cup, he'd probably have done the same, and then sent them an apology letter and offered to pay their expenses. Lambert at least got them believing a bit. It might not have been City's best XI, but apparently their starting XI cost £187m, so it was hardly a bunch of shmucks. Good to see Gareth Barry doing something for his old club, too, mind.

Some talk going around that the Man City fans were chanting "let him die" during whilst the Villa fans were doing their 19th minute applause for Petrov. That's disappointing, if true. I hope they didn't.

Think that's part and parcel with a new manager coming in, takes a while to adapt tbh Quite right, plus we'd sunk as low as I'd seen us since 1987, under McFuck last year.

I think we're going to have a mentally up and down season. We had 55% possession at the Etihad, and won 4-2, three days after losing 4-1 at Southampton, including shipping four goals in the second half. At least it's not going to be boring.

As someone I sit near said to me "you could hold a music festival in the space Hutton leaves behind him when he wanders out of position, looking for someone to kick"

Did well for us right up till Valencia took him to the cleaners at the CC Final, then became awful overnight.

A moment of silence in appreciation of the terrible ordeal Randy Lerner put that horrible little PornDwarf and his side kick, Mr Tumnus through when West Ham visited Villa Park

So, farewell, then, Stephen Warnock, now you have joined Bolton on an emergency loan. To sum up the reactions of the Villa faithful to this terrible loss, here are the last few responses i just saw on a Villa forum discussing it. Far too many.

http://www.birminghammail.net/birmingham-sport/aston-villa-fc/aston-villa-news/2012/09/18/aston-villa-emile-heskey-signs-for-newcastle-97319-31859985/ On the bright side, he's strengthening you.

It's a matter of time, to be honest. He;s been a touch unlucky, too. There's an argument that we can't really afford to play with Bent, as he's only about goalscoring and contributes nothing else, but Lambert, certainly in the last game and to a lesser extent, the one before, has got him dropping back and helping out a lot more. I actually really like the look of Weimann up front, though, I think he's got a decent future ahead of hime. Benteke did well when he came on, too. I think getting Agbonlahor fully fit will help, too, as we sometimes lack that bit of pace to stretch teams. It's all interesting. Early days yet, but 100 times as interesting as the snoozefests of the last two seasons (and, to be honest, it's more like the last four seasons at home).