Baggio

Anyone read the write up in The Sun?

If we beat West Ham on saturday and they lose away to Fulham then we'll go above them.

Doesn't work anyway, just jumps staright to the end for me Works for me.

I'm not sure he's recovered properly from the injury that kept him out.

I can live with a shite performance like that as long as he wins us the game, it's hard for a striker to make an impact when his team is under pressure like ours was for most of the game. We really miss Emre in midfield as he's the only player we have who can control the tempo of the game.

3 points off 7th now

Are we really only bringing 4 subs? Luque doesn't even make the bench??? And he doesn't go on loan to PSV for 1st team football? I expect Luque to be packing his suitcase tbh

If he wants to play Dyer in the middle then why doesn't he play O'Brien down the left?

I hope he doesn't put Pattison on the left like he did against Birmingham

The bench... Alan O' Brien 37 David Edgar 30 Andy Carroll 39 Steve Harper 12

No Emre or Parker? Shay Given 1 Peter Ramage 26 Paul Huntington 32 Kieron Dyer 8 Nolberto Solano 4 Steven Taylor 27 Antoine Sibierski 20 James Milner 16 Matthew Pattison 35 Nicky Butt 22 Obafemi Martins 9

No he hasn't. Sky Sports say only Mascherano has been worse than him at West Ham this season.

Parker better than Alonso too!

Said he was better than Given That's all I need to hear tbh, i'm all for opinions but that's just lunacy. Lunacy? Don't think so. If we enlist third party opinion (which is not necessarily fair), take Sky rating. Given - 6.7 Foster - 7.1 Going by that method Kieron Dyer is better than Steven Gerrard!

I stand by what I said about Rossi. If we could tie Rossi to us for long term at £10 million then we should. Gerard Pique, Johny Evan and Paul McShane are not marginally better than Edgar/Ramage/Hutington. They are significantly better despite slightly younger. And they have much better promise and potential too. Pique starred was man of the tournemant for Spain in under 21 European Championship. Evan has had a couple caps for Northern Ireland and had done excellently. McShane, despite not as refined as Pique or Evan, has leadership and thou-shall-not-pass qualities which are not present in Edgar or Hutington. I don't presume all the youngsters I have suggested would do well for us. For instance I suggested Slyvain Ebank Blake. He is not even getting games in Plymouth at the moments. They will be miss and hits. But if we could get these people cheaply, the benefit we would reap from the likes of McShane would far outweight the insignificant money we spend in acquiring other false prophets. I don't think we have any realitic chance in acquiring the creams like Evan, Rossi and Pique unless we pay a huge sum (£10 million). But for other promising youngster (McShane, Jones etc) who left Man U because they wanted more games, we should at least try to get a couple. At the very least they will increase our squad depth which is thread bare, and they will provide stiff competition to our own youngsters to spur their growth. At best they flourish into good players who would bring us returns in both results and finance. Good post Delima. But we should also look at youngsters from top Euro sides who are also getting impatient and have a policy of getting at least 1/2 in a year. As I've said, we need players for the first team which none of these are good enough for, Rossi was supposed to be the best player in their youth set up yet looked no better than Chopra while here, paying £10 million for him would be madness!

You said we should pay £10 million for Rossi IIRC. What would be the point in spending money on young back up players who may be marginally better than the back up players we've got? you're also presuming they're better than our lot because they've performed well in a lower league (Chopra, Andy Reid, Rasiak etc) We need to strengthen the starting 11 which none of these are good enough for.

But he's young ( ) and English which means he's worth twice what he would be if he came from France or somewhere like that.

It's not Roeders squad, either. I don't agree with that, we maybe have have a few players on the books who Roeder would like shot of but he had all summer to get the squad how he wanted, whether he wanted the job or not he's been caretaker manager since February so he must of had an idea who was worth keeping or selling. He signed Martins, Duff, Sibs, Rossi and Bernard yet chose to not sign any defenders of quality for whatever reason. Our defense is shite because he didn't get any in. O'Neills situation is different altogether, he took charge at Villa near the end of the transfer window, the club was in the middle of a takeover so little money was available to spend, he hadn't had any time to assess the squad and see who was worth keeping or selling and has to do a complete rebuilding job. On top of this the squad Roeder inherited has far better players than the squad O'Neill was left. I'm sure he's highlighted defenders, but it's up to Freddy to buy them. Bernard's never played, Rossi was a loan and Duff's hardly played. Also, he spunked 8m or Petrov, did he not? I'd love to see Villa cope with the amount of injuries we've had. Lets just work it out: Agbonlahor- Owen Angel-Ameobi Moore-Duff Melberg-Bramble Sorensen- Given Taylor-Harper Hughes-Carr Petrov-N'zogbia Bouma-Ramage So the Villa team... GK- Olejnik Def-Ridgewell Def- Osbourne Def-Cahill Def-Laursen Mid-Davis Mid-McCann Mid-Gardner Mid-Agathe Fwd-Sutton Fwd-Williams As I've said, he spent what little money he had on Petrov, a player he felt could do a job at Villa, he didn't have any time to assess the rest of the squad or bring in any other targets, he didn't have the whole summer to go scouting Kuyt or anything like that. Also Duff has made 20 appearances for us so he's done more than 'hardly play' As for highlighting our squad against Villa's injury wise, all that proves is Villa had a far worse squad than us to begin with. They have a far superior back four, even when ours is fit. Melberg, Hughes and Barry would stroll right into our team now. Barry hasn't played regular at left back for years now although I'd still rather have Bouma over Babayaro, Mellberg would walk into our team but Hughes is/was awful, Solano would be a better option than him. There player of the year for the last 2 years has been Solano and Milner, that says alot about the quality of their current squad IMO.

It's not Roeders squad, either. I don't agree with that, we maybe have have a few players on the books who Roeder would like shot of but he had all summer to get the squad how he wanted, whether he wanted the job or not he's been caretaker manager since February so he must of had an idea who was worth keeping or selling. He signed Martins, Duff, Sibs, Rossi and Bernard yet chose to not sign any defenders of quality for whatever reason. Our defense is shite because he didn't get any in. O'Neills situation is different altogether, he took charge at Villa near the end of the transfer window, the club was in the middle of a takeover so little money was available to spend, he hadn't had any time to assess the squad and see who was worth keeping or selling and has to do a complete rebuilding job. On top of this the squad Roeder inherited has far better players than the squad O'Neill was left. I'm sure he's highlighted defenders, but it's up to Freddy to buy them. Bernard's never played, Rossi was a loan and Duff's hardly played. Also, he spunked 8m or Petrov, did he not? I'd love to see Villa cope with the amount of injuries we've had. Lets just work it out: Agbonlahor- Owen Angel-Ameobi Moore-Duff Melberg-Bramble Sorensen- Given Taylor-Harper Hughes-Carr Petrov-N'zogbia Bouma-Ramage So the Villa team... GK- Olejnik Def-Ridgewell Def- Osbourne Def-Cahill Def-Laursen Mid-Davis Mid-McCann Mid-Gardner Mid-Agathe Fwd-Sutton Fwd-Williams As I've said, he spent what little money he had on Petrov, a player he felt could do a job at Villa, he didn't have any time to assess the rest of the squad or bring in any other targets, he didn't have the whole summer to go scouting Kuyt or anything like that. Also Duff has made 20 appearances for us so he's done more than 'hardly play' As for highlighting our squad against Villa's injury wise, all that proves is Villa had a far worse squad than us to begin with.

It's not Roeders squad, either. I don't agree with that, we maybe have have a few players on the books who Roeder would like shot of but he had all summer to get the squad how he wanted, whether he wanted the job or not he's been caretaker manager since February so he must of had an idea who was worth keeping or selling. He signed Martins, Duff, Sibs, Rossi and Bernard yet chose to not sign any defenders of quality for whatever reason. Our defense is shite because he didn't get any in. O'Neills situation is different altogether, he took charge at Villa near the end of the transfer window, the club was in the middle of a takeover so little money was available to spend, he hadn't had any time to assess the squad and see who was worth keeping or selling and has to do a complete rebuilding job. On top of this the squad Roeder inherited has far better players than the squad O'Neill was left.

burst bubble, pop or a "plan" gone wrong. He's got 5 years and about 8 months left on his contract. Didn't he sign a 12 month rolling contract? Stll a far better manager than Roeder.

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His playing style reminds me of Emile Heskey.

Name 75 players better than him!

You're not in the 'House of the banned' yet if you have.