brummie

Class feeling to have complete faith in a manager, isn't it. It isn't as simple as having complete faith. One of the reasons i think Directors of Football and people other than the manager choosing which players get bought does not work is that you take away the manager's ability to stand or fall by his own choices. With a DoF, if the signings don't work, then the manager can say (with justification) 'not my fault, I didn't sign them'. If the manager has identified them and got them in and they don't perform, then it is his fault. All this DoF nonsense just blurs the boundaries of responsibility. Although I'm clearly preaching to the most converted audience anywhere at the moment on this subject

results do not prove that a 4th choice centre half was the right move. if so we should have been happy with dabizas/o'brien/titus as centre halves cos we finished 3rd with them No, they don't, but Knight did a decent job last year. We actually had our best defensive spell when he was in the team. I was one of the people covering my eyes when we signed him, but he contributed last season, and now he's down the pecking order with much better players in front of him

Obviously, my official stance is that he is a potato-headed loser, but my actual opinion is that he's a more than decent manager.

The thing about MON buying players like Knight and Harewood is that, whilst it is embarassing when it happens, and you want better, you just have to trust the manager to get the right people in. Knight at the time looked a mad signing. That was only a year and a bit ago, and now he's fourth choice behind Laursen, Curtis Davies, and Cuellar. If I'd have thought back then that would be or CB line up, I'd have spaffed in my pants. Sometimes he does some stuff which looks mental, but he can point at the results as evidence that he was right. *shrug*

One human rights abuser shakes hands with another at Man City. Football. All wrong, really.

Nah, plenty of possession and passing but they never really looked like it was going anywhere. Three away games in six days, on of which in Bulgaria, and we've won them all. Can't really ask for much more than that.

Very good match, this.

If you weren't happy when KK said he couldn't compete with the top four, you'd better get used to O'Leary talking you down even more when, after the initial improvement which comes with a new manager, you settle into a rut. Let Hughton do it, FFS, don't appoint this arrogant numpty.

Rubbish performance. We looked tired, and the pitch made us look very heavy legged. Still, 3-1. That'll be enough to get us through to the group stages.

We've been so rubbish.

Fucking hell. Don't get me started on that self obssessed pug nosed wanker. I'd not realized how grim things are up there if any of you think o'dreary is a good move. I'm speechless

Maybe it would have been as easy to get Ellis out had you actually tried to remove him, just a thought there. As for the last line, does not compute just about sums up your point. You seem to be saying that because some people think he's a business man with no attachment to the club they shouldn't complain about him actually being a businessman with no attachment to the club, how does that make sense? Those people simply feel that they've now been proven right. Do you really think Villa fans didn't try to get rid of Ellis? Jesus, you couldn't be more wrong. Do you think we were happy through years of parsimony, ego building, the dismantling of a European Cup winning team, the relegation, the spell of mediocrity? Don't you think we tried turning up at the ground, waving banners and calling him a cunt? My point re Ashley is that you said you wanted him out, and he's trying to get out. I honestly think you should be celebrating the fact he's such a bottler and shat his pants at the first hint of bother. Ellis would have laughed at you and carried on regardless. For years. You're very lucky on that front. He's on the way out, isn't he? Yes, he's asking for too much, but if he gets anything like such an overblown figure, anyone prepared to pay that much of a premium for the club is clearly not going to go and set a 20m per annum transfer budget, are they?

Can you not see potential parallels here though brummie between Ashley & Ellis? Not in the most important sense, no. We spent decades - literally, decades - telling him to fuck off and sell the club to someone who was interested in something other than his ego. He refused and said he'd leave VP "in a box". In the end, he won. It took 20 years to shift him, and he only sold because his health was so poor he was practically dead. He won. With Ashley you started telling him to get out of your club, what, two weeks ago? And he's said he will sell. At the end of the day, he's buckled incredibly quickly. It seems that a lot of the concern is that he's asking too much, or he's going to sell to people who might not necessarily be any better than he is. There's a chance that may happen, but there's a chance it might not. Either way, you can hardly blame Ashley for wanting to get as much profit out of it as he can, and for not really worrying too much about who he sells to.

I don't understand. You said you wanted him out, he said "OK, I'll go when i find a buyer" and he is now looking for a buyer. I fucking wish Doug Ellis had been so easy to get rid of, and I bet you wish FFS had been so compliant, too. Now people turn around and complain when he acts like what you've been telling him he is - a businessman with no attachment to the club - and tries to maximise his profit. Does. Not. Compute.

Great opening line from the Guardian report:

LOL @ Spurs mongs outside the ground at WHL. That bird on Setanta has a nice shape to her.

if only Villa had signed him, his career might really take off.

Pretty good performance from us. That's the value of having a manager who can build a team rather than a collection of individuals, which is what Ramos has done at Spurs (albeit some pretty impressive individuals).

What was Jenas's comment?

We can't defend. ^^^ Advance warning ^^^

Crikey. Reo-Coker. Given what happened in this fixture last season, I'm only watching the first half.

I think the figures look a bit on the low side, but summer 2007 (which was Lerner's first summer window in charge, it has been two years, he took over just after the 2006 summer window closed), there was hell on amongst our lot as we'd been outspent by Fulham. It has really only been this summer we've splashed the cash again. Although, general consensus is that the reason we didn't spend big before that was because the manager didn't want to, and Lerner wouldn't let anyone make transfer decisions other than MON. Which brings us back round to Ashley and KK's situation.

I don't think you'll find a Newcastle fan who doesn't want to see us building on a sound financial footing. And all of the sensible ones fully accept we're not in the position to be spending silly money right now. Your club is doing it right. Imagine if after all those years of hating Ellis, Lerner came in and regardless of the managerial issues, spent precisely fuck all on new players. Would you be happy? I doubt it. I don't deny it for a moment, and I'm not casting doubt on the stuff Ashley has fucked up since he came to the club, you lot know a lot more about it than I do. My point is more about the way football fans (all of us) have become whores for whoever waves the most money nowadays, and I was wondering how much this was a factor with Newcastle. Interesting that you mention Lerner. There are actually Villa fans who are now starting to doubt him as "we can't compete with Man City, we'll never make fourth now, he's not rich enough". That says it all, really.

Oh, the fickleness of football supporters. I'm fully aware of the folly of appointing people to buy players for Keegan (and any manager worth his salt would walk out on that situation being imposed, so fair play to KK for doing the right thing), but is there truth in the suggestion that one thing which has pissed people off is that Ashley has said he wanted to put the club on something resembling a sound financial footing rather than throwing huge chunks of his personal wealth at a mad chase for success? I wonder, these mentalists come in and buy Man City and fans of the clubs already considered (well, this time two weeks ago) lucky enough to be owned by billionaires are now thinking "oh, hang about a minute, their lot are worth 200 squillion, we can't compete, maybe we'll get someone even richer this time around". Being able to go out and offer stupid money for Ronaldo or whoever is all very entertaining, but personally I'd rather my club was put on a well funded but realistic footing than be at the risk of oblivion should someone whose interest in the game goes back a couple of years decide they're bored now. Sorry. Slightly off tangent rant, there.

This spheres of influence thing. Professor Tom Cannon on Villa v Everton as an investment opportunity And, to contradict myself, if you follow this "natural area of support" argument, Villa would be playing in front of 100k every other week. But we're not. My conclusion from this is that the whole "we've got x millon people on our area" argument doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.