brummie

The likes of Delfouneso, Bannan, Clark and Albrighton would probably have never got a look in under O'Neill. True. Although in fairness, our injury list is positively Evertonian at the moment. Agbonlahor (till tonight), Carew, Heskey, Petrov, Sidwell, Reo-Coker, and none of them are particularly trivial injuries, either. Entertaining match. I fucking knew that Harewood would score, and I knew that that pikey twat Campbell would too, when he came on. Fair play to Blackpool, some excellent counter attacking football played there, and I hope they stay up.

At least yours are available to actually buy. Nike fucked up something with the material in ours, and they've gone on sale today. At the original full price.

I would. He made a mistake going there. If he wanted to leave us, fair enough, but he should have sat tight and gone somewhere he was going to be more than an exceptionally well paid trinket owned by people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

It is just a shame only one of them is English. Clark captained England U20s but has opted for the Irish at full level. Shame. He's very, very promising.

To be honest, Disco, this season was written off the minute MON decided to bail with zero warning five days before the start of the season (which, incidentally, is the same time he normally wakes from his transfer market slumber). There was no way we could look for, find and appoint a manager and get him in place with a load of players he's never met before and have the kind of season we had the last three. One thing I do know is that Albrighton, Bannan and Clark would have been - and were - nowhere near the team under O'Neill.

We're playing much better football under Houllier than we did under MON for two years. We're also undergoing our worst injury crisis for ages. Currently Delfouneso is our only fit striker. Carew, Heskey, Agbonlahor all out, and even our other promising kid, Weimann, is out long term. Plus Petrov and NRC are now bollocksed. I'm really quite buoyant at the moment though. We're playing some good stuff, we're keeping hold of the ball much better, and we're creating chances if not converting them. Plus, Bannan, Albrighton and Ciaran Clark are all looking excellent for us, so it's interesting times.

Carew is finished with us, sadly. He's a quality player, but produces only one in every x games. The problem with him is that x increases the longer he's with a club. Houllier, when Lyon manager, swapped him for Milan Baros with us. I don't know what worries me most about that.

Yup. Played some really good football again, too. We're converting one of every eight chances we create at the moment. Not the best.

Cracking goal from Albrighton for us today (older correspondents may recall me bigging him up as a future star two years ago) - our first goal in about 6 hours in the league.

I don't know if I've watched slightly less Spanish football this season or the fact I don't have SSN anymore, or whatever it is, but I haven't heard AS much about him. It's just accepted he's going to be utterly insane. Yeah it's pretty much expected that he's going to score shitloads. He's such a massive show off.

He's already there, brummie. He's already there. Obviously, I'm speaking of a hypothetical world in which there is a greater club than Tottenham.

In this and that incident at Liverpool recently, all the talk has been "laws of the game" and making a case to support or reject the decision taken by the referee, but there has been a notable lack of common sense. It is hard to come to any conclusion other than Clattenburg bottled it at Old Trafford. And that's before even looking at the way he waved the Spurs players away like errant schoolboys, but then practically drew up a chair, poured a nice stiffener and stocked and lit a pipe for Rio so he'd feel comfortable in discussions.

Bale really is superb at the moment. He'll get a move to a big club soon enough.

He had a few niggly injuries when he first came, so is only just getting a run of games. We don't know how to use him is the main problem. He makes decent runs and gets into good positions, but we're not giving him the ball enough. He played up front last night :-/ Carew "ill" (bad dose of "cant be fucked"), Heskey on bench to start, Agbonlahor out, Delfouneso left on bench looking like Leroy from Fame.

Just under 35,000. Yeah, we were dreadful in the second half. Downing has been our best player by far this season. Heskey, though, it makes me wonder what the fuck MON was doing with him, such is the turnaround in the player. And Reo-Coker as well. Steve Sidwell is the worst midfielder I have ever seen playing for Aston Villa, and I have been attending matches since 1973, and am not one for hyperbole.

Awful game tonight. Made the monumental decision to fuck off home five minutes before the end, convinced nothing could go wrong.

Captained the England under 19s. Or something. Born here.

The only good thing about hearing this tedious story as the main headline on the news constantly is that it has replaced Liverpool's ownership as the main headline on the news. Still, it takes one's mind of Gideon and his vile Spending Review.

Here's something which isn't worthy of a thread, but is a fact I feel like sharing. Ciaran Clark has opted for the ROI over England this week. He's going to be one of the best defenders in the country. England's loss.

Under Houiller, Villa going back to what's served them so well. Get everyone behind the ball when the oppo have it, then look to break at speed. Very tough to break down, and Drogba missing makes all of the difference. Can't agree with that at all. We're playing entirely differently. We're keeping the ball a lot better, to start, something we were woeful at under O'Neill. These are early days, but you can definitely see it starting to take hold. I thought we played very well at Spurs, and played very well today in spells as well. Of course, part of the not relying so much on the break thing might be that Agbonlahor, main weapon with his pace, has been out for much of this season so far, so it is less of an option. The results haven't been brilliant, but I'm enjoying watching us far, far more than I did under MON. I say that as one who rarely goes away these days, incidentally, and I'm aware that our hitting on the break game worked much better away from home, but at home the last four years that usually translated to a cluelessness in terms of knowing what to do. Apparently the coaching regime consists of training with the ball - possession, passing, shape - in the mornings and physical work in the afternoon. A few players have said that under MON it was just a couple of hours physical work in the morning, then home at midday - no work with the ball whatsoever. Quite shocking, really. I don't know if the results will ultimately make it worthwhile, and it's not really as simple as "style A is better than style B, end of", but we are starting to play a different style of football. Ironically, our record at home against Chelsea is extremely good, so MON managed to get results in this fixture. Them missing Drogba and Lampard helped, but we were without Agbonlahor, Heskey (yes, I know), Luke Young, Albrighton and Dunne, so it's swings and roundabouts. They still had enough class to hope to win the game. Incidentally, random observation, but Malouda was superb today. That fucker pops up all over the place.

That's beautiful, Parky.

That's pretty fucked up (the removal thing). And hilarious. Please, please, please, administration. Why would anyone want to buy them now rather than when in administration, and therefore much cheaper?

No, no, no. Spurs are awesome. They're so swoony and amazing.

Funny that. Our first goal was from a Pavlychenko cross from the wings and the second goal was from a Lennon cross from the wings. So therefore that according to you isn't long ball, thus concluding that we didn 't play long ball yesterday. Cheers for clearing up what is and isn't long ball Here's a reminder of that preaching. I don't know if you've noticed, we're in a bit of trouble at the moment, and having to take whatever we can whilst we're without a manager. What kind of tactics did you adopt in managing to lose at home to Wigan Athletic? We adopted the right tactics but played like morons and deservedly lost. You lot used the same damn tactics last season too tbh. Oh, that's a shame, did you resort to that lumping it long to Crouchy stuff again? I woudn't fancy watching that. Mind you, maybe I'm just tetchy about it, as I actually go to the games, which would make it even more annoying for me, rather than just flouncing around the internet, preaching on football purity whilst ignoring the predictable long ball guff my own team falls back on a bit too much. Incidentally, if you think it is a conscious tactic to cede the lion share of possession at home to Everton, you're insane. As you are if you think there should have been some gigantic change of style since MON flounced off. This is still O'Neill's team. I'm sure that, were we Spurs, we'd have turned into Brazil 1970 by now, but hey ho. Stop taking it so personally. I didn't instruct your team to play that style of football. We don't play long ball and it's fact we play good football (the way we made your team look like amateurs last season was beautiful and easy on the eye). Everton bossed you on your own turf. They play attractive football (win or lose) and played like the home team today. All you did was sit back and hit long to Young....sit back and hit long to Young.......sit back and hit long to Young. How Stoke can continuously get slaughtered for their style of football yet you lot get away with it is insane to me. Now I was as much a critic of MON's style of football as anyone, but it takes a particular lack of football knowledge to think anyone would sit there, scratching their beard like an evil football genius and come up with the concept of hitting it long to, errr, Ashley Young.

False. Countless times i've openly admitted when we've played shit. The difference is i accept when others criticise my team on a thread titled "OTHER GAMES TODAY" whilst you resort to personal insults. That's the difference. No, it's not about "playing shit". Every team plays shit. It's about you telling us how you're the incarnation of good football whilst ignoring the fact that you hit it aimlessly long more than most teams. It is a tactic you fall back on quite a lot. Like I said, it's nothing to be ashamed of, it works quite well at times. I just think it negates the high horse about football style.