When Fabio Goes, Who Should Replace Him?

In about 10 months time Fabio Capello will be standing down as England football manager.

When he goes, who should replace him?

I personally favour giving 'Psycho' (our current U-21 manager) a go, but what do you think?

Stick in a comment below with your pick for the new England manager, even if you favour Roy Hodgson!

Villa Buy Someone!

Right at the last knockings of the summer transfer window, Villa buy one, get one on one years loan from Spurs. Up to then we had more players out than in (as can be seen here), but now we have picked up Alan Hutton (permanent signing), who has played under McLeish, and Jermaine Jenas is with us on a years loan.

Even with the upcoming (January window) signing of Stevens from Shamrock Rovers, I still think that the numbers and quality of players out are greater than the numbers and quality of the players in. I hope I am wrong in this, and Villa get better for these transfers.

Well at least we aren't doing too badly to date.

See Also: http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/08/villa-sell-another-good-player.html

Villa Sell Another Good Player

Well we're still selling off our good players! Now Luke Young has gone to QPR on a 3 year deal.

While Luke may find this a bad deal if the SuperHoops go straight back down next year, it still worries me that Villa are still selling with little likelihood of buying any replacements.

Is Randy Lerner trying to extract money out of Villa, or is there something deep going on here that I am unable to fathom

At least we managed a draw with Wolves today to stay near the top of the Premiership. How long we can stay there remains to be seen.

See Also: http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/07/villa-winger-replacement.html

The Riots in Croydaon - The Response From Crystal Palace FC

Crystal Palace (the professional football team based the closest to Croydon), are giving away 1000 thickets to their home game against Blackpool on the 27th of August.

The tickets are going to the people who have been the most affected by the riots in Croydon on the 9th August (homes destroyed, businesses trashed, etc.) and members of the emergency services who helped them on that night.

I commend their altruism and community spirit, especially as they are not the most wealthy of football clubs.

Oh, I'm an Aston Villa supporter in case you were wondering.

Please do the poll above before it expires.

Sporting Congratulations

Firstly may I congratulate the England Test Team on a splendid victory over India (England v India score card). This win places England at the top of the ICC test standings (however accurate you think these may be). It is unfortunate that India have played so poorly  in this series so far (poor warm up, too much T20 cricket in the IPL, series too close to the one in the West Indies - take your pick on what you think the reason is). Well, congrats again to England for topping the ICC test standings.

Also congratulations to Aston Villa for playing out a boring 0 - 0 draw against Fulham. At least they didn't loose!

See Also: http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/07/villa-winger-replacement.html

Villa Beat Blackburn To Get To Final

Villa have beaten Blackburn 1-0 to go forward to the final of the Barclays Asia Trophy! Darren Bent scored the only goal. 


Match report.

FIFA - Cleaning The Augean Stables?

Mohamed Bin Hammam has been banned for life by FIFA for attempted bribery. FIFA are obviously coming down hard on corruption in football! Good show!

Or is it that the Qatari former head of the Asian Football Confederation is being punished for having the timerity to challenge Sepp Blatter for the presidency of FIFA?

I leave it to the reader to apply Occam's razor to determine the most likely reason for the banning.

Villa - Winger Replacement

Well, we finally got Wigan to sell us Charles N'Zogbia! So we have replaced one of two wingers we sold, wonder if we will get a replacement for the other?

See Also: http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/07/villa-replace-goalkeeper.html

Villa Replace Goalkeeper

Well finally we have goalkeeper after signing Shay Given. However, after flogging both our wingers, Wigan won't sell us N'Zogbia!

If there is a plan for the future of our great club, I can't see it at the moment!

Aston Villa - No New Moves

The only thing I want to know is why Villa has not yet bought anyone to replace the players they have sold off. I suppose I should be glad that the only really big player we have lost is Young to Man U (sorry while I was my hands after typing that), and that we have managed to hang on to Cuellar. But the loss of our experienced Yank keeper and the fact that we have not replaced him yet worries me.

Pity we got McLeish rather than Jol.

Related: http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/06/hi-ashley-young-has-gone-to-man-u-we.html
              http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/06/villa-dublin-cup.html
              http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/06/aston-villa-managerial-speculation.html
              http://deadmanchatting.blogspot.com/2011/06/aston-villa-what-expletive-deleted-is.html

Villa - again (Sorry)

Hi, Ashley Young has gone to Man U & we have not got anyone in. McLiesh needs to get his ass in gear or we'll go the same way as Brum!


FIFA, they are so, so trustworth aren't they!

Villa - Dublin Cup

I expect that we will be last in the tournament in July.
Also our new manager is highly likely to take a massive amount of stick, especially against Celtic.
Why are we going?

(This was posted via e-mail as a test)

Villa Manager Search

Why are we trying to recruit a manager that took his team down this year?

McLiesh is a decent manager, but he got Brum City relegated (Hooray!!!) and failed too win anything after they stumbled into winning the League Cup!

It seems odd that Randy chose him after looking at Roberto Martinez (who can work on a shoestring) as it does not show any consistancy. More fans will hate this than the putative signing of Mclaren as Manager!

Do we have any vision for next season?

(OMG, I'm looking for a vision statement! Dilbert would kill me!)

Aston Villa - Managerial Speculation

More worrying news from Villa vis-a-vis the possible new manager:

• Raffa - Wants to spend too much money on players (£30m minimum).
• McLaren - Fans don't like him as he made such a SNAFU of the England job (even though his club pedigree is not too bad).
• The current Wigan manager - (Sorry I can't remember his name) Works well on a shoestring budget and engenders loyalty in the team.

Maybe Randy Lerner is channeling the spirit of Doug Ellis!

Sure looks like it.

Aston Villa - What the "expletive deleted" is going on??

OK, you're going to have to be a Aston Villa fan to find this post interesting.

What is going on over at Villa? OK, I can understand why Houlier was let go, health issues, not that I liked it. When he got the boot from Liverpool for basically the same reason I didn't like that. I can understand Carrew being let go, he was out on loan and that usually signifies that the player is on the way out.

But that leaves us with no manager, hemorrhaging players (Friedle, Reo-Coker gone, Ashley Young worried about getting a decent level of play) and fans felling a little confused. We haven't signed anyone (well we may be in talks with some Yank midfielder) and everything seems to be way up in the air!

I think the board/management need to make a statement quickly to calm down the fans before we think the club is 'going to hell in a handbasket'.

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Sepp Blatter - don'tcha just love him?!

Plausible Conspiracy Theory No. 1

Here's a plausible conspiracy theory for you (I doubt very much that it is true, but what if it is ...) ...

Just suppose the the Champions League was all fixed!

• Lets say that the majority of people who watch the matches do so via satellite television (either at home or in the pub). 
• The satellite broadcasters provide UEFA with a fair amount of the money to fund the competition.
• The broadcasters wish to maximise their viewing figures to gain the maximum advertising revenue.
• They therefore conspire together make sure all the clubs with either a reletively small fan base or with a large fan base in a relatively poor country go out in the group stages, regardless of how well they play or how good their players are.
• In order to ensure that all the broadcasters maximise their viewing figures for the final, the quarter-finals onwards are manipulated so that not too many teams from a single country get through, and that each broadcaster gets to choose the winner in rotation too keep their viewers comming back.If they hadn't Barca would have won for the last 2 or 3 years (& Man or Chealsea for the 3 years before that).

As I said, this is almost certainly not true, but if you tell your mates in the pub after a few pints ....