Guardian podcast

[Mister E]

The first part of this is quite good - journos shooting the breeze about Villa, in a reasonably balanced way. Shock.

[JJ-AV]

Not listened yet, but they've been very positive about us for a few weeks now. Comparing us to Dortmund a few pods ago.

[garyshawsknee]

Yeah,they spoke well about us after the Arsenal game,Glenndening and Barney Ronay especially. Its a really good listen and pretty in-depth,compared to the tired old lot on the beeb.

[Dave]

The first part of this is quite good - journos shooting the breeze about Villa, in a reasonably balanced way. Shock.

They tend to always be pretty balanced. They say that we're good when we're good and say that we're bad when we're bad.

[lovejoy]

This is the best football podcast out there. It might be a bit big club centric at times but does a good Europe round up and James Richardson is a natural humorous presenter.

[Jarpie]

I like the commentators, they know what they're talking about and they are actually balanced, at least most of the times.

[claretandbeer]

Why isn't  James Richardson on MOTD or ITV? Far better than Lineker,Murray or Chiles.

[pauliewalnuts]

This is the best football podcast out there. It might be a bit big club centric at times but does a good Europe round up and James Richardson is a natural humorous presenter.

Agreed. Barry Glendenning is very amusing too.

[unclefabio]

The lad who runs the Zonal Marking site (and sometimes appears on this podcast) wrote a good article about us yesterday. It's about how Lambert prefers multi-dimensional players to Bent, Given, Dunne etc.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/blog/_/name/tacticsandanalysis/id/575?cc=5739

[Monty]

The lad who runs the Zonal Marking site (and sometimes appears on this podcast) wrote a good article about us yesterday. It's about how Lambert prefers multi-dimensional players to Bent, Given, Dunne etc.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/blog/_/name/tacticsandanalysis/id/575?cc=5739

Michael Cox is getting better than Jonathan Wilson in my view. Wilson has a pretty clear ideological drum he's been banging (though Inverting the Pyramid is largely fair) - see his 'tactical review of the year' column in the Guardian where he says the possession game is everything and strikers are being outmoded, then uses Bielsa and Dortmund to back this up - very silly, considering Bielsa and Dortmund care more about transitions than about possession percentage and like to play with out-and-out strikers like Lewandowski and Llorente, sometimes even going two up front, mostly to help press really high up the pitch. It's wrong to say that only Barca and Spain can play the possession style that they do because they have Xavi, Iniesta et al - look at Swansea this season and last - but theirs is not the only along-the-floor, progressive, proactive and attractive way to play the game. Cox recognises this - Wilson less so.

Anyway, rant over. I really like the Guardian Pod, James Richardson is terrific at the ol' sarcasm, Glendenning is very funny and all the panel actually try and argue the facts, not the cliches. They are also very fair - they hated us last season because of our horrible football, and I really couldn't blame them - to be honest, I almost agreed with them. This year, things have been getting better and they're more complimentary. Very fair I think.

[midnite]

"Top clubs simply don't contain footballers as basic as Villa's forgotten trio."

Harsh but true.

[ClaretAndBlueBlood]

is it the same James Richardson who used to do the Italian footy on Channel 4 years ago?

[Ger Regan]

The very same.

[dekko]

I love how they described the other weekend when there were a lot of 0-0s:

'More zeros than an attack on Pearl Harbour, more nils than a Danish phonebook, more bore draws than a south african cabinet maker....'