Aston Villa and the big push

I like the positivity! Up the Villa!

I think we'll be a completely different story when we play a team who actually come to play football. I can see us beating Liverpool at home and hopefully we'll see a couple of new players doing their bit too!

[quote]Liverpool had their chance to keep ahead of us but then found that they couldn't afford £18m for Barry. [/quote]

Christ on a bike! That's positivty gone to the head Andy, Liverpool are [u][b]WAY[/b][/u] ahead of us.

liverpool did spend that much money on a player - 20m on robbie keane - where as we didnt and they bought 2 far better full backs than we did in dosena and degen hence they bought to further increase the difference between us and them. they have also bid 12m on a winger today. ffs stop saying they cant afford barry they just dont value him at 18m.
and if u think we can finish 4th or win silverware u r deluded.
whats positive - we have bought 2 full backs that look very average and who should have been brought in earlier ina hope they might gel together but werent due to our manager!! we are playing a holding midfielder right wing and unless we sign someone in 5 days may have to cope with that. that has already cost us points!! our most senior player has no wish to be at the club and would rather be at liverpool where despite what some of u say he will challenge for trophies. we have the same number of players as last year which oneil admitted we were lucky to cope with- sos why hasnt he addressed it? and we have a manager that is so tactically inept he takes off shorey puts luke young left back, nrc right back to bring wayne on!! and our defense is up there with the worst in the league!!! keep the faith tho!!

if we dont strenthen our sqaud further we will struggle to maintiane 6th spot

Pete2222 - You have a very valid point. We have a good/annoying habit of playing to the standard of whoever we're against, ie absolutely dreadful against poor teams but really well against the better ones. Not including ManUre.

Appreciate the positive outlook though...IT'S UP FROM HERE

Hot damn, now that is more like it.

Saturday was a bad day, but it wasn't the end of the season. My main question is not can we have good cup runs and finish fourth, but could we do both?

I do not think we can. We can't guarantee a cup win, too many mini cup finals to go through, but it is possible. 4th will be dificult but can be achieved. Give Liverpool or Arsenal a successful cup run and they can be stretched.

Both? Unless we strengthen now, 2/3 players at least and again in January, where we might be better placed to attract players, I can't see it.

For all the naysayers who are bound to come on and proclaim the end of the world, if this makes me a sheep,then bah bah.

Yeah its all good and well keeping positive, but not when we crumble against the tin hat teams!

I'm not entirley convinced on Shorey, i wasn't to begin with, but hopefully he'll stick my words where the sun don't shine!

I just hope Saturday is just a mishap, and we'll stuff Harfnafkjsdfhijdidgihgdidur 8-0 and stuff the scouse next week!

UTV

HEAR,HEAR! Andy. I hope the Holt gives Liverpool some grief

'friedel looks solid' i have to disagree with that statement as in my opinion brad friedel has been far from solid the martin laursen incident solid i think not the ricardo fuller goal was also a lapse i feel where i feel brad could of done better. im not slating brad or at least i dont mean to i honestly think hes a great keeper but he just hasnt looked solid for me so far

on another note i see and hear that swp is available at 9m now for me this is a bargain and if we dont make some sort of attempt to sign him i will be more than dissapointed i feel he is a much better option than milner as he simply just offers more going forward

kevin doyle one word nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
sorry kevin no offence. nikola zigic anyone hes a good target man kevin will just offer us nothing different and i just dont rate him and hey im irish for god sake

sorry about the rant just had to get it off my chest ahhhh i feel so much better now bring on thursday and bring on those scousers and bring in a few nice faces

utv

There is a lot to be positive about.If we had to loose one of our opening fixtures i would have picked the stoke match every time.The Britania Stadium could yet turn out to be a real fortress this season and it was an away match after all, even though against weaker opposition.

Yes, the vast majority of us expected to win but the most important thing was to beat Man City, which could end up being a very important 3 points come May.Im looking forward to seeing Cuellar and Sidwell in the squad now against Liverpool aswel and i don't see why we canot win the match and take another important 3 points towards finnishing above our rivals, but our back four have to be alot sharper.

Andy...Do you also write for the Official Villa site, because that sounds exactly like the stuff they put out.

It's great to be so positive and your deserve all credit for rallying the troups, however with all the boastful predictions like the OS site does it really makes for later disappointment!

You say about Gabby scoring goals....Well there's loads of people on here saying they don't want Doyle because he's average and won't add anythingto the squad. Well you know what, over the last two seasons Doyle actually has a better games to goals record than Gabby. Does that make Gabby an avergae player that's going to get us nowhere?

I keep positive, but I hate it when people start predicting a rose-tinted future, cos it really does sound li'ke the same old stuff we see on the official site! The 'what ifs and but's' against Liverpool and Arsenal, so what, they were results. What if Stoke had not got a penaly and we had or whatever. The plain fact of the matter is MON 'HAS' to make signings that are not damaged or 'works in progress' which seems to be the new buzz phrase used by the OS today!

I'm sick of being the Bolton's and the Man Cities of the Premier League...Let look to have some players that we 'know' are top 4 player, not one's we have to pray and hope will be top 4 players...! ;)

Up The Villa ;D

We are still shipping too many soft goals. Man City's second and Stoke's first are a case in point. Davies is looking great, he is everywhere, but I worry about Shorey and Taylor. I'll be happier when Bouma is back in Jan - we certainly need a strong right winger, and it should be SWP. Doyle is not a bad shout if he's happy to sit on the bench, but £7.5M is far, far too much. Rather go in for Davies from Bolton for that kind of cash.

I like the optimism, but the truth of it is, we're still behind the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool. The difference is consistent competition at the level which gets them into and competing in the champions league each season.

We might be on a level that we can do damage to their league aspirations, or even rival them for 4-5th position, but we're definitely not at their level yet.

Fernando Torres/Adebayor vs Carew/Gabby? Come on, we're not even close to having a striker like that.

I think we could do well against Pool this season, but not with Reo Coker playing right. Can we please have a right winger? SWP now!! What does Kevin Doyle do that is better than what Marlon Harewood does? Sorry but Doyle makes absolutely no sense what so ever. The signing of this Zigic guy, would only ensure another season of long ball crap. Lets get an athletic natural striker, Kone, Fred or any player that only uses one name!!!!!! I think we will show up for the Liverpool game this time, but how many times do we have to say it? Sign some bloody players, no more deadline panic dross, or even worse nothing

Yes very positive - But to be honest we showed again what are problems are - I think its a hard season ahead. We need to sort right midfield out - Another option up front pronto to give Gabby a rest now and again .... Also Petrov is crap! I'm still waiting for him to make two good games in a row

Dont worry cockney villan, me and the boys in the lower north stand will give them scousers some serious stick. The lower north is the new holte end!

Atmosphere at the stoke ground was superb, wish it was more like that at home, couldnt hear the holte at man city....but the man city fans heard us alright!!!!

Up the Villa!!!!!

Damian, why do i keep getting an email every time someone is replying to this article and how do i make it stop?

I agree with your assessment of Arsenal Andy, they the most likely of last years top four to struggle we just need to be in position to take advantage of any slip.

be nice to see a right sided midfielder along with Doyle and Villa's summer will have been a good one.

And despite how poorly they have played Liverpool have 6 points and we only have 3. If the Arsenal don't strengthen then that's the team we might have to beat to have a run at 4th. I hate to keep stressing this, but we won't have the whole picture on Friedel or the defense until Carlos Cuellar is fit and playing. He is obviously going to be the key figure to our back 4 this season. Just as long as MON doesn't put Nigel Reo-Coker in the defense again!

That said I would feel a lot better with 2 or 3 more signings this week.

Until Villa can get the ball down on the floor and play through the midfield we will never be a real threat to the top 4. Thats why we drop so many points againest the weaker teams. Long ball tactics don't work as effective aainest teams that sit deep. I really hoped that MON would make an effort to bring in players this summer that would change the way we play but he obviously has a different outlook on football. Personally i think you only have to look to see that the more suceessful teams don't contnuously give he ball away. Again I'll say that MON still hasn't realsed that the league has changed hugely since 1997 and his leicestor days. Petrov by the way is about 2 secs too slow for te PL. Going nowhere with a guy like that in the centre.

Think somebody's getting a bit carried away. We lost to Stoke, I think we need to wait until 10 games in to see whether we can say we're closing in on Liverpool and/or Arsenal.

If we don't bid for SWP i will be gutted, he was class at City and would allow us to play a proper formation

I personally don't see what all the fuss is about, we lost so what!! The script was written, Stoke were always going to win their first home game in the Premiership. That was there cup-final its just unfortunate that it was us that had to play them, just like Hull did the week before! As for squad size, we may have the same numbers as last year but the quality, although not good enough to win the league, is far better than last year! The real test will come this weekend against the Scousers. Both teams will have something to prove and it wouldn't suprise me if Barry got a hatrick! He may have wanted away to better his career, but at least he didn't start crying about it like that big baby Berbatov has at Spurs! My only concern is our attacking prowess, Gabby although brilliant against Man City was nowhere on Saturday, he seemed to loose all intrest after his penalty shout was turned down. He has the ability to become a great player but could do with learning off a star quality striker. Unfortunately I can't see who Villa are going to be able to attract!!

ak27, I don't get complaining about the attacking style of our team, as we've got six goals in two games and I'd hope this was one area where we can rest.
Shorey doesn't look fit and having a brand new defence in front of a goalie, who's only just joined himself, could make even a legend like Friedal have 'a moment', like he did against Stoke.

I would like to see a creative playmaker in though, as ak27 does have a point in getting the ball down, and retaining the ball, if only to take the pressure off the back 4.

having looked at man utd at pompy last night reminded me of how far we have to improve in midfield to compete with them
Every time a player lost the ball in midfield last night he battled sprinted and got a tacklre in and won the ball back more times than not
our lads at the moment give the ball away and jogg back letting the defence take the pressure of retrieving the ball
Barry is not the fastest player in the world but needs to roll up his sleeves along with reo and actually get the ball back or at least put the pressure on the opposition

i would gladly let both reo and barry go and get some replacements with speed who can tackle
petrov was working alone last two games trying to retrieve situations this is where we are going wrong and the reason the defence is looking stretched and unsettled

I'm with you, Andy. Saturday's result was dreadful--as was the performance; but I think the fact that we've scored six goals in two matches speaks volumes for what we couyld accomplish this season. We just need to shore up the back and get reo-cocker off of the right and back in the middle and I think we'll be fine. I'm expecting big things. Maybe not this year. But certainly in the next few. It takes a while to build a team and to think how far we've come in three seasons under O'Niell--it's remarkable. Let's stay positive. Up the Villa!

Parisian Rob, 100% percent agree.......By the way Andy, except for Man U we do well against the bigger teams. Thats not the worry, its games like Saturday when we play dross and look awful. Just like the games against Sunderland and (the worst game ive seen in my life) Fulham. Again we hear today from O Neill that he wants to strengthen........cmon, put the bids in. 28mil, Cole and SWP, who cares if we loose Barry then? Lets just have some creativity in the middle.

andyanarchist you put it best; "Let's look to have some players that we 'know' are top 4 players, not one's we have to pray and hope will be top 4 players...! September 1st is calling Martin. Keep the Faith. UTV

wasnt it a late steven gerrard free kick that stopped up getting the points?? correct me if im wrong

Kieran, first game was the Gerrard free kick, second game was crouch scoring late after The Hare scored that awesome volley...

[quote]fitzy said:

kevin doyle one word noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooo
sorry kevin no offence[/quote]

Don't worry Fitzy I'm sure he won't take offence at that!!!

Like the upbeat nature of the article. Looking forward to Liverpool but can't help thinking that Barry won't be playing if Sidwell is fit. Just think he'd find it too weird, be interesting to see though.

There's just been an interview with Nicky Shorey published where he states he thinks Doyle will stay with Reading.

Shorey goes onto say the following..

[quote]"But he will come back to his top form and when he is on top form he is a real handful and a very good player."
[/quote]

That's my point above....Why would we want someone that needs to hit 'top form' to be a handful? We don't NEED such players.

It was stated last week that there's a 'war chest' of money. And that MON stated he need three players in the positions everyone else says we need to strengthen. Around £25 million stated? If that's the case spend it on some quality that will get us up the Premier League, anything else is a bonus. We have enough squad players already to do the other early cup stuff and the game this week against Haaaafffffeeerrrrstafferwhatevertheyarecalled?

Anyway I'm sure we won't find out until the dust settles next Tuesday morning how ell MON's done in the transfer window. Just please meet our expectations Martin this time...Instead of all the clap trap over the last 4 transfer windows. :'(

The Stoke performance was not a shock to me. We have no balance, no plan B, no rythem to our play and no-one on the bench that can make a difference.

I strongly believe that unless A) O'Neil signs at least three quality players in the positions that we need i.e. not another goalkeeper or B) We are blessed with no injury worries all season, then we are looking at finishing between 10th and 14th. And lets face it he wont sign anyone of any use if at all.

He harps on about the squad size and about quality. He signs players that are small fry because he wants to seen as the messiah who turned these average players into top stars. The man is on an ego trip. Time for Randy to look long and hard at his head coach.

We should hold our breath waiting for De La Red either considering he is becoming a regular on the Real Madrid midfield... I hope that right winger shows up soon enough, and that Petrov keeps his good play:)

Yes we may have more cash than Liverpool but they already have Torres, Gerrard, Keane, Carragher, Dossena, Alonso and Mascherano who would all be in our team this weekend if we had them. Stating that keeping Barry puts us up there with them is a delusion of the highest order.

GOD BLESSED!!!!
sign SWP already! he open and a great winger! what is he waiting for.
next, i still think we need another striker, and maybe another right back.
then we can look to go ahead.
what happend to de le red, that dude from real madrid??
splash that 30 mil and get some quality guys to push our starters better.

Really hope on thursday cuellar and sidwell are fit and can try soming out without barry in the side.

=============== Friedel ====================
shorey ====cuellar ==== Davis ==== Young
A.Young == petrov == Sidwell ==Routledge
============= Carew === thehare ==========

this is side i would try if all fit, really wanna see some fire in defence has even this lil side gave our backfour a few probs in first game. from what i hear Cuellar really reads a game well and can bring it out of defence and link up the play quite easily, would be nice if we can acctually start having alot of possesion in games and not waiting to knick the ball and counter all of the time

Kevin Doyle and James Milner are both average players and I hope we don't get either of them. When you consider that SWP is available, I don't know any sane person that would prefer to odder 9 mil for Milner. As for Kevin Doyle, why? Why don't we go and buy the whole fucking reading side? I wish we had a decent scouting outfit at the Villa, why MON feels the need to but players close to home makes no sense to me, we are lacking a bit of flair and variety, average players like milner are going to do nothing but add more squad players to our already average side.

Its interesting the switch in opinions over the weekend. Such optimism before was given a major blow to the balls with the stoke result, but it could so easily have been so different. IF Gabby had got the penalty, IF Delap hadn't dived, would Stoke have crumbled like Derby did so many times last season? Could we have taken the lead and gone on to smash them? We will never know.
Thinking about the penalty...has anyone read anything slamming Delap for the dive? The "Respect" campain should surely be looking to clamp down on incidents like that...but I hear nothing. Please correct me if Im wrong.
Lets hope for major improvement thursday.

villain of the north said have you subscribed to this blog
well coppell said he has had no interest from any club about doyle so lets hope its papertalk, and liverpool have had a bid for a midfielder accepted so that might finish the barry saga for good (apart from i didnt see it)
i think a few teams will struggle against stoke for the first couple of months til they have been found out

SWP NOW!!!!!! also get milner in no harm in havinf to wingers whether milner is left or right. also get a striker in maybe saviola?? possibly 2 strikers

what's to debate?, Kevin Doyle simply isn't good enough for Aston Villa in terms of pushing us on. He isn't a bad player but he isn't better than anything we already have!! He scored a paltry six goals last year and I haven't heard of any of our competitors being linked with him. He will not improve us. And before any says anything about him struggling in a bad side, think Anelka / Bolton; Dublin / Coventry; Shearer / Newcastle. Good players score wherever, whenever.

Well we know MON tried to bring in SWP 18 months ago so he clearly has an interest in him. I'll be bitterly disappointed if we don't at least try and tempt him to come here. We've got the money and he fills our biggest gap, why not break the bank? Most of our rivals have made at least one landmark signing this pre-season, what do we have to show?

Time to go mate. you are out of date and have lost the plot!

How much is Milner worth to Newcastle after thatperformance tonight? Look really sharp.

WALES AVFC, I'll second that team. Just the right balance and giving some of the squad players a chance.
I'd like to see Salifou play one half at least. And if Guzan is ready to play, let's have a look at him as well.

we aint going to get milner, swp or saviola!! mon cant get them he just gets has been's. how can we lose to stoke? our defence is rubbish!!!

bring in shaun teale and earl barrett!!!

that was a solid defence!!

we will lose 3 nil on sunday against liverpool!!! they are miles ahead of us!

still no fuk;ing right winger signed. still woefully short on players and there is what 6 days to go.
the players brought in so far are average. wtf has oneil been doing all summer.
he keeps saying we need to strengthen - well fuk;ing do it!! and with the quality he keeps going on about not the usual dross!!
liverpool are streaks ahead of us - they finished 16 points ahead last year and have significantly strengthened there squad where as we havent.

Kevin Doyle simply isn't good enough!! Aston Villa are trying to push on and break into the top four. We need big improvement in player quality. KD is no better than anything we already have. He scored six goals last season. And before anyone plays the 'He was playing in a poor side card' think Dublin/Coventry, Anelka/Bolton and Shearer/Newcastle. Good strikers score where ever and when ever. He isn't good enough for us and buying him because there isn't anyone else isn't the answer. Bring in a Wow! player.

COME ON MARTIN BUY MILNER, HE WAS CLASS LAST NIGHT.
KEVIN DOYLE IS A NO NO.

God you lot are delusional you keep harping on about bringing in that extra quality and the WOW players. Give me one name a WOW player that you can honestly say would choose Villa. Don't forget that SWP rejected a move to us in the past even though his Dad advised him that coming to Villa would be a good move for him. We are not a big enough club yet and by big I mean trophy winning and regular european football big not the history of the club. The big WOW players will only come when we are a big club until then we are going to have to rely on the 'usual dross'[i][/i] as you so elequantly put it and MON's ability to create great players out of average players. One loss and you're all starting to cry like bluenose losers!! I apologise that was a bit harsh :P

Sorry meant to add I agree Kevin Doyle is a complete waste of space and I'm sure its just newspaper speculation as we haven't been seriously linked with anyone other than James Milner who I believe would be an excellent aquisition.

Timmy rara

when o'neill first came the excuses put about abou why we were not signing top class players was 'we need to been seen to be moving in the right direction'

lasst summer it was 'we need european football'

i could just about accept those but my response to those were and to your one now is this: money talks and bullshit walks

we've got european football and apparently loads of money. There are no excuses now if those two facts are in fact true

My morning rant....Totally agree with the moaners! Other than Ash (and I think MON is lucky he's come good, because he was a gamble) not one of MON's signings have been established quality. If Salifou and Routledge are as good as MON thinks and parades such players in front of the press banging on how good they will be, for god's sake why don't he play them.

I'm not moaning for the sake of it. I just think that MON has now backed himself into a situation. THe key has been Barry. Although I would like to keep a focused Gareth Barry I think MON missed his chance not selling for a straight £15 million. Money would have been available and as they kept saying on the Official Site they wanted to get off to a flying start. Well now the message coming out of Villa Park is that they are a 'work in progress'. Now it may just work out in the next few days when other dominoe effect moves start to happen, but please, please prove us sceptics wrong MON and get some players that will sustain our progress, not ones that are going to take us back.

I'll finish by saying I do have faith in MON and his desire for success, which is plainly obvious, but you need to take the blinkers offg with regards the players that are signed. You can't always make average players good players Martin!

Sorry I forgot to mention big Brad is a good proven signing!

Rant over ;D

Damian I totally agree but I'm trying to be realistic! Re comment, Money talks b*llsh*t walks! Its not about how much we can or will bid for players its what we can offer them in terms of wages. Please correct me if I'm wrong but Barry (our best and most consistent player) is our highest paid on c.£42,000 a week. Crouch's wage at Liverpool (before he left for pompey) was c.£80,000 a week and he was by no way there best player. Therefore we are never going to compete with signing the WOW players until a)we can offer them regular trophies and european football or b) pay them stupid amounts of money! If we go down the b) route we will have a team full of money grabbing prima donnas that will want out at the first sign of failure. But that is just my opinion!

Timmy_rara, Arseanal have a very strict pay structure as do Villa - it may work against us in this occasion but it's something that all clubs need to have in order to keep the league sane. The Chelsea's and the Liverpool's are ruining the league with ridiculous wages being thrown around which in turn creates no loyalty from players other than for money, look at Ronaldo and Adebayor as examples of this. There should be a salary and transfer cap like there is in the states, where the game is much more evenly balanced and allows the teams to compete fairly.

If Abramovich walks away from Chelski and decides he wants to do something else, they couldn't afford the wage bill. Let's hope this happens as they are killing the league…

Jimmy Villan, I agree, Villa are right to have a wage structure. I come from a rugby union background having played semi-proffesionally for 10-years. In rugby there is a national wage cap which every club in the country has to abide by and it works. Players get bonuses for winning and if called up to the national squad which encourages players to give it there all every week. My point, which I think is the same as your point, is that our wage structure cannot compete with the big 4 and therefore, we will always miss out on the big name WOW players that everyone seems to be calling for MON to sign. I persaonally think he's trying but can't find anyone willing to come for the wages we can afford to pay them!!