I’m gutted that none of you have questioned why I haven’t posted lately.
I could have pegged out and none of you would care, it seems!
Nah, I’m only joking; the site is most important and my views are only the same as any other Villa fan’s.
The truth is, I didn’t get time to do a preview of the Peterborough game and didn’t even hear a single thing about it while it was being played.
But once I heard that Bruce had made 10 changes and we’d lost 3-1, after being thoroughly out-played, so I was totally despondent.
Many of you will know my stance regarding cup games and my belief in playing every game to win, as old-fashioned as it might be and Bruce went 100% against that.
He says he put out a side that he thought should have beaten the Posh, but to me that’s rubbish.
For a club the size of Aston Villa to lose so convincingly to a League One side, at HOME, is an utter disgrace, it’s as simple as that, in my opinion.
And I’d be very quick to say that it just proves that our second string, particularly the kids, just are not good enough.
Except, the only saving grace for me is that making 10 changes is asking for trouble and not giving the players a chance from the off.
While I can see the argument that we need to concentrate on the league, I just can’t see why we couldn’t have made fewer changes and used the game as training, with the aim being to actually win.
Bruce is frankly a disgrace for practically conceding the game and has gone down massively in my estimation.
I will never admit that we aren’t good enough to try and win any game that is thrown at us, plain and simple.
Hence me just deciding to take a few days away from what’s happening at Aston Villa.
Yet while Bruce couldn’t give a toss about the cups (where Posh brought 4-5000 supporters?) so he’s concentrating on the league.
Which means he’s made a rod for his own back now.
If we don’t beat Forest, he should expect the same backlash that MON got after the Stoke game that followed a similar poor attempt at winning in Europe.
And rightly so.
So I have to give this post a title, yet I don’t really know what to write.
“Sod the cups, we’re going for the league” seems apt, but it doesn’t feel right.
And then I’m seeing rumours, where someone has put a £3 million bid in for Davis.
Where does this sort of crap come from?
He’s just signed a new contract, for a start and if a club wanted him, I’d suggest we’d be looking at nearer £10 million.
Which of course is stupid money.
But we paid £15 million for McCormack, who proved a total disaster.
Talking of whom, should we bring him back, after scoring 10 in 15 or whatever in the A league?
Not a chance, as a) it’s a piss-poor league and b) RM and Bruce loathe each other.
Forget that one totally, I’d say.
About the only half decent rumour I’ve seen is Ulloah, or however you spell it.
Decent player, but I wonder why he can’t get a game?
I expect very little to happen in the window, maybe the two loans in, apart.
In the meantime, I’m trying to gee myself up for the Forest game.
But I’m finding it difficult to get motivated, given how volatile our play is.
The thought of another 5-1 whupping of Bristol City has me licking my lips.
But we all know it isn’t going to happen.
That’s for another day, though.
I don’t know.
I’m pretty non-plussed lately.
Batter BC and then get well beaten by Peterborough?
It’s certainly a roller-coaster.
Brucey is caging his bets but I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to lose the Posh game. He tried experimenting and tried easing in his recovering injured. Maybe that’s all he really wanted. We need Terry fit and we need to give the likes of O’Hare serious play time.
In summary, I think he took a risk in order to give select players competition time. We’ll see if he made the right decision or not.
The thought had crossed my mind where was you Badger, but having a job that calls for unsocable hour’s and like me mad that we was exit from the cup, what is sport all about? to me it means pitching your skills against others, and when people pay to see you lose , youve been robbed. I hope he gets a result this week because I see all hell breaking out for him.
We made 10 changes for cup game against Peterborough and lost whilst Forest made a couple of changes from Leeds game to play Arsenal and won, so it will be interesting to see if the theory of resting players brings results. I’m the same as Badger in that you should always try to play strongest possible team with maybe resting 3 or 4 to win the game and keep momentum going, also to reward fans who turn up in freezing temperatures! Bruce has made a rod for his own back now, and defeat like O’Neill did when he was in charge (as Badger mentioned) will turn more fans against him.
I’m expecting WW3 if we lose at Forest on Saturday but if we win Bruce will be given the freedom of the city such is the pathetic expectations of Villa fans.
I guess winning the European Cup 36 years ago gives us fans a divine right to think we should be 60 points clear at the top of the league with an open chequebook to boot.
Wake up people. We are in the 2nd tear of English football which is tougher than the Premier League.
Bruce’s job is to get us promoted. We’re 5 points off 2nd with 60 still to play for. Like Bruce has said it’s hardly a time to be panicking is it?
It won’t be WW3 but it also on the other hand won’t be acceptable. Nobody has a divine right to anything but in the context of our season, we have spent an absolute fortune at this level and gambled heavily on promotion. If Bruce is prepared to take that gamble along with the board, both he and they have to deliver promotion. Anything less is a failure and finishing in the play offs is too risky, therefore only 2nd place will do now
The way it looks we run 3 teams at Villa Park, Senior, under 23s 18, and so on, we don’t use youngsters, we have a two managers one for the seniors the other runs the 23s, if your playing for the under 23 or 18 you would work your socks off the get into the senior side, it don’t happen , looks like we have a set up that only buys and sell. Im defiantly at a loss to how they work the system at Villa, can someone enlighten me as to why we don’t.
i think come next season. we have a few players in the under23 ready to play championship. but this season with all the pressure on the villa team. its not the place to play the youth, which are just a tiny little bit off the pace. bruce has already decided to play experience, rightly or wrongly time will tell.
davis has done well. but its taking its toll on him. the burden of playing the lone striker. not just holding the ball up and laying it off to a claret. but scoring too. for a novice he has done really well, if we get ulloa then davis will then not be under massive pressure and it might help in many ways.
i would send ohare and hayes out on loan for a month only let them get a proper taste of 1st team. like onomah has got at villa. they would learn so much more than the under 23 games. which was really slow other week against fulham
4 or 5 of main under 23 side where missing v fulham other night so step back and look at side again,
Then there was a brick wall.4 or 5 was missing from the 23s.
Unfortunately the FA took out the option to loan for 30 and 90 days. It’s either half a season or an entire season loan. Bruce doesn’t want to loan out O’Hare and Hayes out for the rest of the season, which you can’t blame him completely for.
i didn’t know this. couldn’t they agree to loan the until the end of season . but include a clause to recall. like the goalie they recalled from wigan today.
it doesn’t matter, that we all think them two kids are good enough now, the manager does not. so not allowing them to go out and taste 1st team might be the fruitful thing for us to do. they would improve loads stepping down into the division 1 for the rest of season. the way peterbro ripped villa apart its not that much of a step down.
i have said all season we fans are taking this league too lightly, but i believe the players are also making that same mistake. even the manager stated before the peterbro game that he needed to rest his players, but were at home,we should be fine. trouble is when you start thinking shits gonna be a easy ride, your hearts not in the fight when the shit hits the fan. you are found wanting.
will be interesting to watch the forest game. to see if villa have really turned the corner. or bristrol was just a blip, they did come off a tough game, plus they faced a tough cup week following the villa game. anybody know how forest play?? are they a standoff team or are they gonna squease the life out of us. how do Aitor Karanka teams play. they will be on a double high. new manager and turning us over, villa players will need to fight.
Karanka tends to play very defensively. Middlesborough were good defensively but didn’t score many.
I guess we will find out soon enough. You are right about the Bristol City situation. We probably caught them at the right time. I’m really not sure what to expect at Forest. Terry appears to be a doubt, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing. Looking back he took a few games at the start of the season before he started to show his worth. Maybe at his age he he doesn’t recover full match fitness quickly.
U23 won recently (3-0 I think) after the loss to Fulham. I noticed RHM didn’t play. Is he injured again, or maybe just being rested?
I see our young lions won tonight 3-0 well done the lads.
Dr Tony Xia has upset Wolves fans for saying they have an unfair advantage with their agent able to bring in big names. It sounds like sour grapes to me. If he had same situation then we would all be delighted, but we have the waste millions on players and hope a couple shine philosophy. Apparently Gabby is planning ahead with a new clothing line. Good news and hopefully it will be a full time job pretty soon.
Agreed. Wolves owner was smart, became friends with Mendes, their manager is friends with Mendes. They’re invested in each other. So the owner makes good on investing in Mendes and Mendes invests his clients into the team. Instead, Xia decided to go the other way by getting in old men like Wyness and Rounds, who decided the likes of Whelan, McCormack, etc were good signings. You don’t even need to be friends with a top agent to understand scouting. Bonatini was playing for Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia. Is he going to blame Leeds for becoming a partnership with a Qatar based academy? Signed 2 Japanese players and a Dutch player. It’s our fault we went old and stupid, instead of new and fresh like Wolves did. Not saying Xia hasn’t done what he thought was best, and has put a lot of money into the team, but it was a pretty stupid comment.
It’s never a good idea to comment on other teams unless it is positively. It always tends to backfire. In this case I guess it’s irrelevant as they are streets ahead of us and it’s hard to see that changing
we have been doing too much of this. commenting on other teams. we seem to do the opposition team talk for them, like they didnt have enough reasons to perform above themselves already playing us
Xia should look at Wolves in envy. They’ve done fantastically well and its no fluke – a tactically excellent manager supplemented with players that are clearly a step above the rest in this division. They’ve got all the big decisions right.
They also have players and a manager ready to step up immediately next season. Thats another issue we have, even if by some small miracle Bruce manages to get us promoted, we’ll need huge reinvestment to the point where 75-80% of the squad would have to be new to give us a fighting chance. Take out the loan players, Terry retiring and those that aren’t good enough to step up and there’s very few PL quality players there.
Nevertheless i can’t see the above being an issue as I expect if we do scrape the play offs, Bruce will bottle it with his ultra cautious tactics.
Aston Villa are growing anxious that a loan move for Manchester United ‘s Axel Tuanzebe might not be pushed through before the end of the month.
The Villans have an outstanding enquiry with Old Trafford chief Jose Mourinho and are now waiting for a response.
The 20-year-old centre-half is a former winner of the club’s young player of the year award and has broken through under the Portuguese and has been training with the Red Devils’ first-team squad.
However, Mourinho wants to give the youngster, born in DR Congo, frontline experience and Villa boss Steve Bruce believed they were in with a good shout of landing the powerful defender.
so is bruce going to drop chester to play this utd lad,assuming terry is shoe in when fit
Seems Terry has had a setback from his injury. And I’d guess Elphick will be let go now.
Another player that Man Ure might loan to us that will a) add value so they can make profit from or b) gain experience at nursery club to push him closer to their 1st team erm NO THANKS! What about Suliman for ***** sake!
Not sure but I thought I’d read that Sulliman going out on loan along with another youngster, this I don’t understand.
We’re particularly close on one – let’s hope it can happen.”
Villa are yet to make an addition this month, but they have been linked with a range of players.
The claret and blues are expected to strengthen up-front as a matter of urgency, as their current options are limited.
Villa have suffered badly with injury, and have had to rely heavily on youngster Keinan Davis as a result.
Villa are in fifth place in the Championship table as things stand, with their next match coming against Nottingham Forest tomorrow
Bruce is saying two will be add to the squad to bolster the attack.
on Villa have rejected several enquiries from lower league clubs for their talented youngsters – but Steve Bruce will allow some to leave this month.
First team regulars Andre Green and Keinan Davis are completely off limits for League One clubs while the manager has confirmed Callum O’Hare will also remain at Villa Park.
However, Bruce is open to letting the likes of Easah Suliman and goalkeeper Matija Sarkic out to gain first team experience.
England under-20 defender Suliman made his first team debut in August but remains down the pecking order and is attracting attention from several League One clubs.
Sarkic, meanwhile, spent the first half of the season on loan at League One leaders Wigan Athletic and made three appearances in cup competitions. The Montenegrin has now been recalled with Villa less than impressed by his lack of exposure to first team duties.
a mate told me this utd kid we have been linked too. is a good player. he is a centre back but can operate in midfield. so maybe this is the area which bruce is thinking about regarding this kid.
i reckon we introduce on Friday’s footballing tips for the weekend games. my selections this season have been crap. so i would be interested to see if any of you guys can do better. so i can steal so of your luck, just a idea.
He has like a minute of league game time, and can’t get into a team that has started Smalling and Jones, two of the worst defenders in the league. He definitely shouldn’t be getting in over Chester and there’s no reason why he’d get in over Elphick (unless Bruce is going to let him leave now). Seems Terry has had a set back.
he apparently played played right back against sanchez and marked him out of the game. i didnt see the game i was told by a utd fan. not all youth players have same abilities or are progressing at the same stages, from what i been told, he is very strong, pacey and versatile. our youth defenders havent got a lookin this far. so they are probably not getting in for some reason. samba and Eplhick who was in the wilderness get in before the youth defenders.
So – a newspaper article linking us with a Manure kid suddenly becomes gospel. Not only that we are now discussing the possibility of Bruce dropping Chester to play him.
Where do you guys get this crap from?
I despair.
Keeps me amused to Hitch. 🙂