good luck and hope your wife gets better soon

Thanks. Very nice of you.

Maybe a good thing you stayed at home, Downing is laughing at you.
Hope the Wife gets well soon

I'm listening on the radio.
The whole PL is laughing at the villa atm.
Terrible.

You have no depth to your squad fella, get a stream on your computer instead of the radio.

We're just a very bad team now. We should have had more depth this season than last season yet in the summer we sold more players than we brought in. It's crazy whic hever way you look at it.

In my eyes we have four good players: Bent, Gabby, N'Zog and Given. That's it. One or two have potential like Albrighton and Clark. After that, we have a selection of awful or average players who are bringing us right down. Our defence is shocking and why Clark can't get a game I don't know. If players like Bent and Gabby played for a top six team they'd probably only be on the bench as well. Shows how mediocre we are when you think of this.

McLeish is a bad manager but we're a shocking team. If Lerner can't put money into the club why won't he sell up? Because it's so depressing watching our "performances" every week.

I love how instead of accepting Liverpool are playing well. A manuree fan says Downing is laughing at Aston-villa.which he isnt do none of the kind.. But then Man-united do often tell lies.. Aka Evra...

@Know-it-all

Liverpool playing well, erm no Villa are poor.

The Villa fans are giving Downing some stick, Liverpool are winning, Downing must be very happy, hence the term laughing at you, not that he is rolling around laughing, you clown.

Evra telling lies, how can he be telling lies when Suarez has said he called him something that is acceptable in his native counrty and Liverpool have bought in a language expert to try and prove that.

Lets talk about Suarez's past shall we?

jog on half-wit

Gosh, Villa are bad. Just rolling over for Liverpool. You did the same for United, so i can't complain.

Apparantly Darren Bent has had less touches than any premiership player this season. Says a lot about your creativity.

Dont like those streams. Spent ages cleaning up spyware and rogue programs after using one of them. Horrible things.

It doesnt matter how many good players Villa have, if your manager is crap, they wont be able to play together.

I wonder what excuse McLeish will use in the post match interview....'well players didn't do what they do in training'

What's wrong with McLeish? He's got a proven track record. You only don't like him because he came from Birmingham.

It's your limited players that are the problem.

i havent met a single villa supporter who cares where McLeish is from, its simply not the case.

You tell me what is good about him, as Im struggling to see the positives?

He gets the best out of average squads, similar to O'Neil.

That's exactly what Villa need, because you've not currently got a top four side.

No better manager is going to come to Villa.

Tokyovillain

You tell me what is good about him, as Im struggling to see the positives?
==============
nah can't think of any myself.
-----
Sorry about the off topic comments earlier, but clowns like Know-it-all
who are so blinkered and narrow mind grate on me after a while.

Yeah when Liverpool win its always the opponents who are poor..

you have to be a WUM

Last season, we were playing good football, our last two games of the season were victories over Liverpool and Arsenal.

If Houllier had remained in charge, I would be watching a decent team by now.

Instead we have got a manager who plays defensive football, signs te likes of Hutton, and does not know how to motivate a team.

We do have a decent side, I can promise you that if Oneill or Houllier were in charge of the current Villa squad today, we would have achieved more than 4 victories this season.

I could go on and on, but whats the point, by the time Lerner realizes his error, it will be too late.

We will lose Bent, and Albrighton and then be looking to avoid relegation rather than achieve European football.

@Know-it-all a

And when Liverpool lose its everyone else's fault grow up

having seen that load of spineless over paid clowns roll over yet again im so glad i didnt renew my season ticket. roll on 17th jan i'll be soaking up the sun in Dubai watching the cricket.

Piedpiper is a tool of the biggest kind, and I think a WUM, because how anyone can regard McLeish as a "proven" manager I don't know. He's got Birmingham relegated twice, did well in an awful league, and got a few good results as Scotland manager. This does not make him any good. And no, we don't dislike him because he's a former Birmingham manager, if Alex Ferguson had previously managed Birmingham no Villa can would care one bit. The reason no one wants him is he doesn't have the quality to take us forward, we need a young Wenger type who identifies top players from a young age and turns them into great players. That is the only way we will be able to commpete with the top sides if Lerner insists on not selling up. We don't have the money to get there now.

However, I won't deny we're an average squad. We don't have enough good players. I think we tried to win today, which is utterly unlike McLeish, but Liverpool had more quality than us up front and didn't have rubbish like Collins and Warnock defending for them. I'm praying things will change in the new year - hopefully with Lerner selling to a richer and more ambitious owner and Ancelotti appointed manager - but it's not going to happen without any protest from the fans and there doesn't appear to be much at the moment for some reason. Maybe once we lose to Arsenal, Stoke and Chelsea fans might really push for change. At least I hope. The club has gone so downhill since last season. If Houllier had stayed I believe we would be pushing for top six this season, playing good football, and have a much more star-studded squad. As it is we're deep in the brown stuff and we need to be very careful.

villa1987 - I agree except that Lerner selling up I don't think's the answer. There are very, very few really rich, committed and competent potential owners out there. There are an awful lot of moderately rich, incompetent, and even crooked, ones. As owners go I think Lerner is still pretty much OK, in spite of recent mistakes.

But I definitely think you're right about the manager being critical. We do have resources. The right manager would build on those and take us forward. We're a long way from being thought of as a top 4 side. But we could be a strong prospect for a top 6 side in a season or two. With McLeish we're going to be a struggling side going backwards. Even if he goes we're going to be lucky to get in the top 10 this season; if he stays it could be a lot worse.

As for today, the only pluses for me were that Delfouneso had an outing; he's got skill, loads of energy and loves to attack, what he needs is game time. And N'zogbia was really trying hard, and is improving. Other than that, we were awful, and could easily have lost 0-5. A different manager would bite the bullet, and drop Collins. A different manager would have done something about our inability to defend set pieces. And what on earth did Heskey do in the match?

Villa1987, not wumming, but I think you need to remember that under Houllier you Villa came very close to relegation. Less than 3 weeks before he went down with heart problems (21/4/11), with 30 games played, Villa were below Blues in the table and two points off the relegation zone.

The fact is that up to the 30th game of last season Villa were right in the middle of that dogfight. Admittedly, a brace of wins agianst Newcastle and WHU had relieved the pressure by the time Houllier went off ill.

I think Villa are in pretty much the same position this season, in the sense that they may flirt a bit with 14th/15th place at some stage of the season, but the idea that you'll go down is - maybe not laughable- but unlikely. There are far far poorer teams in the Lancashire trio who currently occupy the relegation
zone.

McLeish is c r ap - no doubt about it, but the main difference between this season and last isn't Villa's position, but their style of play and weaker squad.

Incidentally, at this stage of the season last year, Villa had 20 points from 17 games (much the same as this season) and had played Man U, Spurs, ArsenalChelsea and Liverpool. This season you've already played a similar number of 'top six' teams in Man U, Spurs, Man CIty and Liverpool, so the argument that was around amongst the anti McLeish brigade (that Villa might be mid table but have had an easy set of fixtures) is starting to wear thin.

My own prediction stays much the same as it has all season: Villa to finish 8th-10th after a short flirtation with the lower part of the table around Christmas and the New year.

Good luck for the rest of the season by the way. Everyone needs a bit of that.

bluenoseden: the difference between this season and last season is that last season Villa started with the shock of MON's departure, and by the time Houllier took over we'd already thrown away several winnable games, we had a huge injury list and the team had come unstuck. Houllier's (and McAllister's) record in 2011 was pretty good, largely down to getting Villa's strengths back coupled with a better style of play.

This season McLeish had a full pre-season, far fewer injuries, yet weaknesses have surfaced and haven't been addressed, the style of play is desperate, and team selections are poor. It won't get better.