brummie

Relax. Honestly, you're in for an ace summer once Martin starts getting to throw the money around. It's hilarious. I see he's being heavily linked with McGeady again. It's like he's doing his scouting with FIFA10 or something. Which he probably is.

He won't be free but there are ways to get around his wages as Ade wants the high wages to maintain his charitable work in Togo, Spurs could make charitable donations and preserve the wage structure. At least City and Spurs are still talking about a deal. I imagine HMRC would take a keen interest in such an arrangement. They've probably still got Harry on speed dial.

I reckon Spurs will spend most of this summer getting linked with real top-level names, and sign absolutely none of them. As per.

England have more chance in this tournament than any recent one. The best any manager can do with such a limited set of players (Downing, Carroll and Henderson, FFS, after their season) is organise them and hope for the best. Woy organises his teams very tightly indeed. Throw in the fact that there isn't just no ridiculous OTT expectation, but that everyone has pretty much written England off, and I think we'll do pretty well. The pressure is off, we're organised, and we're just going to see how it pans out. It might just work.

He's honestly the worst thing about football.

No worries, mate. McLeish has gone. We've got a decent bloke in. More than anything, what we need is a strong manager, one who will take the club by the scruff of the neck, and that's why Lambert is such a good fit for us. Exactly what we need. Martinez (whose advisors approached us, but we knocked back, despite what that gobby cocksocket Dave Whelan says), is a decent manager with a good philosophy, but I don't think he'd have had the strength of personality that we need. Quite amusing that ont he last day of the season at Carrow Road, the Norwich fans were singing "Only one Paul Lambert" and our fans were joining in. Well, they've got what they wanted, and I think it's a sensible move.

Hes such a Hack! I thought he was a good palyer when Spurs signed him from Rangers. How times have changed There are three things that really get me about Alan Hutton. 1. He's so fucking shit. He's like a pissed fan has got onto the pitch in full kit and nobody has noticed. 2. Houllier's idea of a full back was Kyle Walker. McLeish's was Hutton. That says it all. 3. I can't believe we spent 4m on him, but am truly gobsmacked Spurs spent 9m on him. Christ. What a deal that was.

Jesus. The state of Gazza in that ad just now. He looks like 65 not 45.

And Alan Hutton makes both of them look like Paolo Maldini.

He's a decent player who has been fat, and awful, for two whole years now. I know he's awesome for Ireland, but he's been a disaster for us for two years. Collins is even worse.

Warnock has been awful for well over two years now. I don't know a Villa fan who wouldn't want to get shot of him. Dunne and Collins can fuck off, too. Not good enough.

No way was McLeish going to put up with any of that passing nonsense. Consider this. Makoun was shovelled out on loan, and at times last season, we played Heskey in midfield. We also played Alan Fucking Hutton (one of the worst players we've ever had) in midfield. And Stephen Warnock. God. I wish i could get some mind bleech and scrub last season out of my mind.

those Amstrad PCUs are a nightmare to type on Tweeting on an Amstrad em@iler is tough.

That's the thing, I keep hearing people in the media going on about unreasonable expectations (funnily enough, the same stick they used to beat you with relatively recently), as if it was unreasonable to consider a season in which we had fewer home wins in any season since the football league was formed in 1888 - ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR FUCKING YEARS - to be unacceptable. And that includes seasons in which we only played 11 home games, FFS. Admittedly, we've not won much in trophies since Sky invented football in 1992, but we've finished in the top six in nine of the twenty or so seasons since then, so it's really not at all unrealistic to think that finishing with less than 40 points, in 16th position, and having averaged one goal a game is not good enough. McLeish was a disaster, and the only reason half the mongs in the media defend him is because there is a merry go round of utterly shit British managers who seem to walk into multi million pounds a year jobs without ever actually showing they can achieve anything, and the football world just consists of idiots protecting their own. There's a decent core of playres there, still - Given, Agbonlahor, Ireland (who was excellent last season, unbelievably), Bent, N'Zogbia, Makoun (who likes to pass too much to play for a McLeish side) - and some really promising youngsters, many of whom did well last season (Gardner, Herd, Ciaran Clark, Bannan, Weimann, Baker, Lichaj, Carruthers) - so there's no way we should have finished 16th. We've now managed to shift a few more of the hopeless dross MON signed on insane wages. Heskey has gone, with his 65k a fucking week. Beye, aged 35, and his 40k a week too. Annoyingly (I'd have kept him), Cuellar has still gone as well. Word is, Lerner is going to back him with 25m to spend this summer, and I think he could spend it pretty well. It really is inconceivable that Lambert could do any worse than that useless anti-football tossbag, so he's made a pretty canny decision, i think. Expectations are rock bottom right now. A mid table finish in his first season, move some of the shite on (Dunne, Collins, Warnock, Hutton), get some solid players in, and people will be very happy. Last year was a reality check. To the fans in terms of how easy it is to find yourself at the arse end of the table, to the owner in terms of what happens when you try to reduce the wage bill too quickly, and to the upper management of the club with regard to the sort of football people were and were not prepared to put up with. We were every bit as bad as you were when you went down. We were lucky not to, and if i had been a supporter of another club, I'd have wanted us to go down, so mind bendingly shit was the football we played. Almost 40 years of going to games now, and I have seen some poor Villa sides, but I've never been as embarassed of my club as I was last season. I never want to feel like that again. I think Lambert is a decent appointment. If he moves on, he'll move into one of the really big jobs, and if he's considered for those, I think he'll have done an excellent rebuild job for us. In fact, this reminds me very, very much of when Graham Taylor came in 1987. Correctly identified the club was a fucking shambles from top to bottom, and rebuilt, and had us promoted and then challenging for the league title. That's the sort of mess we are in now.

Christ, he wants to learn a bit of fucking grammar, too, spaces before question marks? You're a shambles. With regret, you're fired (or as he'd probably say, 'your fired', the halfwit).

It's just so they can get the compo, and that's fair enough imo. If he was to quit and then go to Villa just because he knew they'd approached Norwich for his services, Norwich's manager that has taken them from League 1 to Premier League mid-table essentially gets poached for nowt. It is a bit backwards as you say, but there's a reason behind it which makes sense. I think they're being sensible about it, to be honest.

Martinez is staying at Wigan as he hasn't had any more offers. We didn't sound him out this time (after Whelan made us look like idiots last year), his people sounded us out, but no go, they'd decided on Lambert. Dave Whelan really should shut the fuck up every now and then. What a bell end.

With this sequence of managers saying no, how long can it be till MON gets his dream and a call from John Henry?

All the hints are that it is, but I think Lambert is still in the hunt, too.

There's a limit to how much they can piss around, really. He's got a clause in his contract saying he can leave in a PL club comes in for him. The word on the street is that an appointment will come somewhere towards the latter end of this week.

Nah, how could anyone sack someone with that funny teenage girl face?

What have we done wrong? We asked to speak to him, they said yes. We spoke to him. The messiness is at Molde's end. Honestly, what kind of investor says he's withdrawing investment based on something like that? And then as for releasing the private conversations .... it all sounds a bit mad at that end. not saying Villa have done anything wrong its just typical of how Villa have been going lately that this has happened What has happened, though? We talked to someone about our job, he got in trouble over there with their mental owners. We only sacked McFuck almost a week ago. The new man will be in place by the end of this week.

What an absolute shambles they are. Honestly, someone should tell the owners that the best procedure towards getting a decent manager in is not to sack all the upper echelons of the club, plus the current incumbent, in the same week, then say you're going to interview a dozen or so people for it. I thought our American owners were fucking hopeless at hiring managers, but really, they're utter genius compared to these FSG bozos.

*thumbs up* He's Chelsea personified.

What have we done wrong? We asked to speak to him, they said yes. We spoke to him. The messiness is at Molde's end. Honestly, what kind of investor says he's withdrawing investment based on something like that? And then as for releasing the private conversations .... it all sounds a bit mad at that end.