brummie

My football life. Right there.

There has to be at least 48 hours between matches for teams in the Premier League. Stoke played late on Saturday, hence the stupid KO time today.

Given my season ticket away for this one. No way was i fucking up my easter monday to trudge 40 miles to watch what is going to be amongst the worst games on the calendar.

*snigger*

Typo I said he wouldn't get them "about eighth" it should have been "above eighth".

Are you for real? Villa put too much trust in O'Neill. O'Neill's idea of a transfer policy is that you have no scouting network (genuinely, that's not an exaggeration, we didn't have any), and that you buy only from the home market. He bought 30 odd players at Villa. The number who weren't playing already in the UK? Two. And one of those only happened because Lyon got on the blower and offered him to us. MON will only work somewhere where he's the undisputed power - on and off the pitch. That's why Quinn has been shunted away. At Villa, MON worked with three chief executives - Richard FitzGerald, Michael Cunnah and Paul Faulkner. The first two left because they found MON impossible to work with. the final one was the one who told him he had to do something about the wage bill. He refused, hoping he'd win again, only not to, as he was up against one of Lerner's closest advisors. So what did he do? He threw his toys out of the pram and left, *five days* before the start of the season. That screwed up last season for us, and if you want an indicator of where his fucking shameful transfer policy left us, look at the logic in buying an enitre defence in 2008-09 (Friedel. Shorey. Curtis Davies, Cuellar, Luke Young - who he could have had for 2m the year before, but waited and paid 5m for) then, deciding he didn't rate them almost immediately, going out the next season and buying ANOTHER entire defence (Beye, Warnock, Collins, Dunne). You can point at Ashley Young and say he was a good signing (he was), and Milner was superb for us, but as he'd already spent a year with us before, that one was hardly earth shattering in terms of him scouting out a gem. When he left, he left us with a wage bill that was 88% of our turnover, and at that point I think we had the sixth or seventh highest turnover in the league - so go figure that one out. That's why we've had Habib Beye here for three whole years, now aged 35, picking up 40k a week. Thats why we bought Curtis Davies for 10 million pounds - think about it, ten million pounds - only to see him fail and be moved on to Blues for a pittance. That's also why we're paying Emile Fucking Heskey 65,000 a week until he's 35, too. You can kid yourself about "oh, it'l be different this time" but it will not be. When he left Celtic, they had the same problems. They were paying Bobo Balde the best part of 40k a week. In the SPL. Think about it. I note also that you're needing to buy strikers this summer. Well, good luck for that. I remember us clamouring for a reliable scorer to get us into the top four. Martin went out and bought Harewood, then Heskey. At the time Darren Bent went to Sunderland for a measley £10m. He'll almost certainly sign Kevin Doyle for you, and you'll have misgivings and convince yourself it's about what he does in a Sunderland shirt that matters, but good fucking luck with that, because O'Neill couldn't pick a striker to save his life. Don't get me wrong, MON had us finishing sixth (as, however, did O'Leary, which puts it in context), he's not a bad manager at all. But I'll tell you this for nothing, he'll never get you finishing about 8th or so (which these days is the new sixth, as it's harder up the top than it used to be), for two reasons. Those reasons are that to make that extra jump, you need two things - you need to play the transfer market effectively, and you need to be tactically sound. Those, by coincidence, are MON's two major weaknesses. I've already covered transfers, but about now you should be getting the general sense that although it's ace when his Plan A works (soak up pressure, counter attack, like an away team), he genuinely does not have a clue about where to start iwth having a Plan B. In four years with us, I also genuinely can not remember one single instance when he made a substitution which changed a match, or changed the way we were set out to play. I suspect he's probably not changed much. I bet, for example, if i look at your last fixture, he'll have made a change at around 75 minutes. I bet he's done that in almost all your games. Over the course of time, it'll be one player more than any he brings on (for us it was Sidwell, another execrable waste of money). For you, no idea who it'l be, but it'll happen, believe me.

After the goal you stopped trying to play football completely. Must be infuriating. Yep. Infuriating and incredibly predictable under McFuck.

Just shows how piss poor we are this season, we can't even beat Liverlol at Anfield FFS

The Tines reporter tweeted this during our match. Made me chuckle.

Yeah, and what's worse is I was hanging around this place that season as your relegation unfolded, and am now trying to convince myself there are no parallels at all. The difference is our 'McFuck' was only meant to be there for 6 games. You gave yours a full contract and a transfer budget! Kinnear's appointment was far worse IYAM Not convinced. It certainly can't touch the inexplicability of this one. Imagine if McFuck was Sunderland manager, and got them relegated twice in four seasons whilst playing football of a style that you pissed yourselves laughing at, it was so utterly piss poor and unambitious. Imagine that on the last day of last season, you'd spent your time pissing yourself laughing at his latest relegation (which happened in such a limp, unambitious, unchallenged way that it looked even more pitiful). Then imagine that less than a month later, Ashley appointed him Newcastle manager. That is what has happened to us.

It is almost as if Lerner thought "what can I do this summer that will damage the club most, alienate the fans as much as possible, and reduce season ticket sales to an all time low? And then he did something even worse. it makes zero sense on any level. What is even more mad is that his choice before McFuck was Martinez - another "bottom feeder", but one who at least tries to play football. So how did he go from Martinez to McFuck?

Yeah, and what's worse is I was hanging around this place that season as your relegation unfolded, and am now trying to convince myself there are no parallels at all.

Not compound your misery mate, but what would the outlook be for Villa if relegation were to happen? Like us, would it perhaps be a blessing in disguise (shifting the shite, rebuilding, etc) or would it have cataclysmic repurcussions? I genuinely don't know. I think the main problem is the manager. Unfortunately, I don't think Lerner would sack him if we went down, he's bought into this McLeish nonsense so thoroughly.

I'm not going, in case we lose. The thought of the vindictive pube-headed prick doing cartwheels if they score makes me want to vomit. I have a good friend who usually sits behind/beside the dugout but is quite ill. I'm not sure if it is a good idea for him to go or not. Honestly, I think you'll be OK if you get something from that match. If you lose (after the next three tough matches), well, shit. We're not going to get relegated. McLeish is a shit manager, but we're not that poor a side, plus there are a number of teams below us who are far shitter than we are. If you look at the league table for this time last year and how many points the bottom four or five had, then look at this season, it's quite noticeable how shit the bottom sides are this year. 36 points will probably be enough this year. The problem in my eyes is that whilst our squad is not a top six squad, it's not a bottom six one, either, and McLeish has made us look like less than the sum of the parts. Incidentally, a friend of mine sits near the dugout, and was telling me that for weeks now, every time McLeish or Peter Grant stand up, there's a cacophony of "sit down you stupid twat, you don't know what you doing" etc It's not a nice atmosphere.

I'm not going, in case we lose. The thought of the vindictive pube-headed prick doing cartwheels if they score makes me want to vomit.

Honestly, I know you think I am exaggerating but I am a 43 year old man (44 next month, fact fans), and the above is a sight that depresses me like nothing else. It actually makes me almost (were i capable of expressing emotions like a normal adult, which Mrs Brummie assures me, I am not, so I can't) cry.

Can you imagine what it's like watching Heskey hobble around pointlessly, and he's playing for YOUR TEAM? Now imagine seeing him played in MIDFIELD. Because your manager thinks he stiffens you up defensively, and he does it every time you play someone in the top third of the table. Despite it NEVER having worked. Literally, not one single time. Honestly, after all this Muamba and Petrov stuff, clubs should be sending their players out to warm up with t shirts saying "Villa Fans. Our thoughts are with you" and on the back, "666" with "Heskey" across the top. I am so deeply, deeply unhappy.

Heskey is on 65k a week. As revealed by the son of an AVFC board member, so an actual decent source.

I don't understand why Quinn has this legendary status? Played 160 times for them, 1 in 3 scoring record or thereabouts. He's no Ivo Stas (google him) but then again, it's hardly a record of great devotion to the club, is it? Are their legends made so cheaply?

Quality. Love the subtle play of words on his real name. Sadly a number of our employees have earned such soubriquets of late. Emile Heskey = usually known as "Emile Fucking Heskey" in the same way Harewood was always shortened to "MFH".

Check out the Swiss Ramble, Baba: http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2012/03/aston-villa-prophets-and-losses.html A few issues, but essentially their wages went crazy under MON and the transfer fees weren't much better for players who were often mediocre. He would then treat them idiosyncratically. Apparently Lerner questioned why MON had all this money sitting on the bench or in the stand, and suggested that if he wanted more he could offload some of his junk to pay for it. MON threw his toys out of the pram. They have a great youth set-up and scouts (poached a couple of foreigners and players from clubs like Watford) but with a couple of big injuries (Bent, Petrov, Dunne, Cuellar) they have been forced to play more kids than they'd like. The last match was instructive - kids like Weimann, Bannan, Lichaj, Herd, Gardner, Baker are all good but are still at the stage when they should be introduced two or three at a time max. You could see it in their play; some nice football but still learning the ropes and unable to step up the gears. They were getting muscled-out. If they come through this they'll have some good experience, but if they have to play three or four more matches together then Villa will be very, very nervous. The financial issue is that under MON the wage bill spiralled out of control. Heskey is on 65k a week until he's 35. Something has to be done about that. People forget, though, it's only just over a year since we broke our record and spent 20 odd million on a striker. The irony of the kids is that the reserves (who seem to win the league most years) play really nice football. What happens when they encounter the genius of McFuck and his acolytes is a mystery. You can't really read too much into last week's game, though - we were playing an experienced Champions League side, after all. The only reason they got that fourth was because we were pouring forward to try for the equaliser. Yes, though, the reason we're starting with so many of them now is due to injuries. McFuck should have been more ambitious (well, less gut wrenchingly soul destroyingly negative) earlier in the season when we had no injuries, and we wouldn't be scrabbling around for points like we are now. He is now rapidly approaching O'Leary levels of hatred amongst our fans, and that's including those of us who weren't really bothered about his former employer (well, not beyond the fact he got them relegated twice). Lerner was right to handle MON the way he did, and Houllier wasn't a crazy appointment, but it's hard to see how he could have made a more damaging appointment than this one. Season ticket sales next year will be atrocious. It's the only way people feel they can hit out. I won't be renewing, and I've got 35 plus years of support (most with a season ticket) behind me. The reason I won't be renewing is because it's so gloomy and unambitious. I've been actually ashamed of the side several times this season, and that is totally unacceptable.

I seem to remember SId Cowans taking a penalty, your keeper saving it, Cowans netting the rebound, and the keeper kicking Cowans' legs from under him! If you did that these days, you'd get a 10 match ban. I don't think he even got booked. Happy days.

I know how you feel. I get exactly like that at a lot of our games. The only time in my lifetime that we played Aston Villa you bummed us. I know. I was there. You were dirty feckers, too. To balance it up, 77-8 was in my lifetime as well, and you snuck past us that time.

Got West Ham at the weekend I think too. EDIT: Monday evening. Yep, as if this season weren't already sufficiently joyous, that just makes it even better.

I know how you feel. I get exactly like that at a lot of our games.