brummie

I think he'll probably keep you up. The problem is, the football will be awful - he is straight out of the MON 'slap them on the back and get them fired up' school. He doesn't 'do' tactics. The closest he came with us was - and this is bizarre - a long diagonal punt from the keeper to a well-advanced-up-the-pitch El-Mohammedy. It happened so often it had to be a planned 'thing' Also, nothing is ever his fault, never. He had the fans on his side for a long time at our place but it was the constant flailing around looking for someone else to blame when things went wrong that lost him that - at which point he started blaming the fans too. Very quickly you'll get stuck of hearing 'we'll be there or thereabouts' as his answer to everything. You put up with a degree of the above if the results are worth it, or if the football was good to watch, but it isn't. It's relentlessly old school. You get away with that too a certain degree in the championship, but not in the top flight.

His son is a right arsey twat - posting piss taking stuff whenever we lost after his dad got sacked. Went strangely quiet when we then won ten games in a row. Bruceball. It's fucking grim. Guarantee you the first thing he'll do is try to sign James Chester.

Unfortunately Bruce was on a rolling contract with us too so wouldn't surprise me if that were true

I think we'll stay up. The Fulham thing is nonsense, like. As if the sensible thing to do would be not to sign new players.

What's it like being a Villa fan atm? Optimistic, I assume? I tell you the big thing. Until we went down, we'd had six or seven years where I hated going to the matches. Going down (although ideally it would not have been for three years) at least meant I started enjoying going to matches again. Smith's impact this season was remarkable. Winning ten matches on the bounce to easily qualify for the play offs when we'd been 13th in March was incredible. The major thing is the new owners. They're both super-rich, which helps, but as you guys (and us with Lerner) have seen, that's not a guarantee of them doing what they say they will. So far, though, they've been brilliant. We've sold more season tickets than for 40 plus years, apparently, there's a degree of optimism that we are starting to recover. We'd pretty much all take staying up next season, at this point, though. This season there was a really clear bond between fans and players too (that's one reason Mings is so popular). Someone said something somewhere (twitter probably) the other day - that for years he'd loved the club but for the first time in a while, he loved the team too. Which I thought was about right. If you'd said just over a year ago when I left Wembley after losing to Fulham in that play off final - you're about to narrowly avoid a winding up order, get bought by some extremely rich, benevolent people, struggle for a bit, ditch Bruce, appoint a progressive coach who tries to play the right way, put together a record winning run and then go up through the play offs, I would have thought you were fucking insane, honestly.

This. Also, Hause made permanent - word is that James Chester's totally fucked. Forced (by Bruce) to play through the pain barrier far too much last season.

Not a prayer - that is exactly the sort of signing we've been told we're staying away from.

If you look at our squad last season, we had Abraham, Tuanzebe, Mings, El Ghazi, Hause all on loan. Purely to replace the loan players was going to cost money, there's no getting away from it, it was going to involve players coming in. All this talk about doing a Fulham, though - what are we meant to do? Attempt to stay up without spending money? The new owners are doing what they said they'd do, even though injecting money is harder these days. They've pulled the stadium into a different company and done several share issues for 30m or so each time, so they are doing things the right way. End of the day, a huge amount of activity was always going to have to happen this summer. It's no surprise. I am just glad the new owners are finding ways to put so much cash in now, because - and remember, we were literally days away from a winding up order last summer - the club needs it desperately.

The cabbage thing worked for us.

5/6 is not nearly certain Its when the bookies suspend betting that you need to worry Ryder is tweeting betting suspended on Bruce New manager markets are closed overnight by most bookies. Any football journalist with half a brain would be aware of that. For all the 'the bookies know something' stuff on here, the odds are just reflecting where people are putting their money, nothing more than that, so I'm not really sure it's worth getting too concerned over that. It's like with us under Lerner. Every time we were looking for a manager, Bob Bradley would spent a while as hot favourite work the bookies. Purely because half wit punters would pile on purely because he's American. Finally, new manager markets are very small, it only takes a relatively small amount of money on someone to move the odds disproportionately. This message brought to you by the British Council For Not Worryong.

The other thing about Bruce getting the job would be you'd suffer from exactly the same MINDMELTINGLY ANNOYING thing we used to get about McLeish, and also to a lesser extent about Bruce. No matter how awful the results, no matter how dreadful the football, no matter how abject the lack of ambition the team shows, if you criticise Bruce, you'll get told by pricks like Danny Murphy that it's "because he used to manage Sunderland" that you don't like what he does. You could play 9 at the back week after week, never get out of your own penalty box, let alone your half, fail to even try to mount attacks and STILL they'll tell you it's because he used to manage Sunderland that you're moaning. And then, after a while, he'll start using it as an excuse himself. Jesus. Just remembering all that shit has made me feel like puking up a kidney.

Fucking hell, if there's any truth in it, I feel sorry for you. He's not a dislikable man but his methods are utterly archaic - MON levels of archaic. The contrast between him and Smith (though Smith had his rocky patch) for us this season was monumental. The impact was too - as soon as Bruce and his horrific football had been fucked off, attendances went up sharply and so did the feeling of optimism. This would be an utterly insane appointment - a preparation for the championship.

I would be devastated if we spent even 5 million on him. Football really is fucked if he's going for that. You obviously aren't aware of the transformative effect he had on us. He was phenomenal for us last year. In fact, his arrival was just as influential as grealish returning on us winning ten in a row and getting promoted. He's brilliant on the ball, brings it out of defence superbly, never resorts to hoofing it, almost always completes his pass (and I am not talking about to someone stood five yards from him), commanding in the air, and it was his leadership that changed our defence from being a mid table comedic mess to one that barely conceded for a large chunk of the season. You will not find a villa fan who disagrees with that. During one game, the guy who sits next to me turned to me and said "I know this sounds nuts but he reminds me of Paul McGrath". Obviously, comparing a mere mortal to a deity is not acceptable, but I understand why he said that. I CGAF if he cost 20m (20m being the new 5m), I am extremely relieved we've signed him. And that folks, is how we should all equate a player’s value as a footballer rather than ££££. Yes fees are insane, but if this lad is a good player for Villa and having him makes them a better team, whether he cost 1m or 50m, that’s all that matters. We should know. Rondon for 30m would be worth it. 16m is a steal. There is always the flip side of that of course when the likes of Joselu cost 5m. Regardless, Villa are investing in their squad and showing ambition and a desire to pay whatever they can afford for players they rate. If that means 20m + for Mings when you get 5 times that just by being in the league, it’s all relative anyway! John P's point above is very valid, too - that was in the championship, the premier league is a different thing altogether, but that's the case for a lot of our players. Mings deserves the chance, though, based on what he did for us. Another point, the fans absolutely love him. He's a cult figure, not getting him on a permanent would have been a massive blow to morale, it's good to see the club acting on it (and I accept, knowing that, Bournemouth were in a strong bargaining position). One reason the fans love him: this is him at Bournemouth station the day after the play offs win. He'd travelled down on the train in full kit, medal round his neck.

I would be devastated if we spent even 5 million on him. Football really is fucked if he's going for that. You obviously aren't aware of the transformative effect he had on us. He was phenomenal for us last year. In fact, his arrival was just as influential as grealish returning on us winning ten in a row and getting promoted. He's brilliant on the ball, brings it out of defence superbly, never resorts to hoofing it, almost always completes his pass (and I am not talking about to someone stood five yards from him), commanding in the air, and it was his leadership that changed our defence from being a mid table comedic mess to one that barely conceded for a large chunk of the season. You will not find a villa fan who disagrees with that. During one game, the guy who sits next to me turned to me and said "I know this sounds nuts but he reminds me of Paul McGrath". Obviously, comparing a mere mortal to a deity is not acceptable, but I understand why he said that. I CGAF if he cost 20m (20m being the new 5m), I am extremely relieved we've signed him.

From the outside looking in, this is all sorts of batshit mental. I am used to this sort of sudden disengagement, from when Lerner dropped us, but even he wouldn't have been so stupid as to have driven away a clearly world class manager - one who had stayed with the club in the Championship - like this. I don't know what it is with Ashley? Is it some form of spite? Is it self-harm, or a cry for help? It isn't actually sudden disengagement, it is prolonged, arrogant not-giving-a-fuck. What an absolute circus.

Ha ha ha fuck off, Leeds. Derby suits me fine.

Have a fucking piece of that, you Pulis-loving Yam Yam fucking tramps.

Why reward him?

Although pre-rebrand, we got 48,000 at home to Bournemouth in the Third Division (in about 1972).

We've scored 17 in our last 5 matches. We've also been away at Derby and Boro in that spell and won both 3-0. In the three days from last Sunday to Wednesday, I saw us at home twice and we scored 9 goals (and for extra excitement, conceded 7). It is fun again. We were excellent today at Boro. I can not believe how much Dean Smith has changed this side in 9 matches, it's just remarkable. It reflects really badly on Bruce, but we are playing great possession based football, attacking with real verve, and although we look occasionally iffy at the back, that can be addressed in January. Smith in his post matches talks about things like compiling videos to show the players where they are going wrong at half time, and having systems in place to cope with the opponents on the day, all stuff which you can't imagine someone like Bruce even saying, let alone thinking up.

Well, that was a fucking insane match. 10 goals, 2 down after six minutes, two all after 14, two more goals disallowed, a red card, and a player scoring four goals. Some brilliant attacking play on offer but some iffy defending. I love the Smith era so far. After the mind numbing dullness of Bruce, we're brilliant to watch going forward at times. If we could only manage defending (need a keeper and a centre half). It's not boring any more.

Worth mentioning as he was a man who contributed greatly to the managerial merry go round over the decades, but Doug Ellis has died, I see.

Terry will be a disaster. He’ll be plotting and waiting for his opportunity to stab the manager in the back, he’ll even get the players who’ll already be his friend to back him in a power struggle. When we signed him as a player, I was very much of the opinion that he was a bad egg looking for a last pay day. I couldn't have been more wrong - he was utterly inspirational the whole season, and gave 100 percent in every way, playing a big, big role in geeing up the other players. He was excellent for us.

Dean Smith and John Terry, plus a Sporting Director who worked at Valencia and Atletico Madrid. Finally, some proper sensible thinking. Smith gets teams playing good football, and is a Villa fan and Brummie. Terry knows the club and we need some serious fucking help in defence right now. Pitarch a sign that we have finally, finally understood that you need switched on people overseeing this stuff, no matter how much money you've got - something Lerner totally failed to get. Henry smacked of starfucking, Faria would have been a decent appointment, but this one looks to me a case of serious, grown up thinking. At the very least we will start to play actual football rather than the eye-bleedingly shit dross we played under Bruce.

Thank God for that.