The last time Villa won a premier league game without Vlaar

[Dave Cooper please]

Oh, so he isn't a member of the Dutch Royal Family then? (Was watching with the sound turned down!)

[pauliewalnuts]

Ha ha, I saw this thread had had new posts, and thought "bet this is about Pointless".

[Dante Lavelli]

For whatever reason I hadn't read this thread and have caught up with it this morning when the situation is slightly better.

If we stay up will people admit lambert was right not to splash the cash in January? Or less wrong? It's been a big risk but it looks like he's got away with it again.

Clark and Baker have more experience and touch wood there's more cash in the warchest for the summer.

Add in lescott's performance last night - the most popular target in January - and I'm not sure we'd be *that* much better off especially as it'd reduce our capacity to buy in the summer.

[pauliewalnuts]

If we stay up will people admit lambert was right not to splash the cash in January? Or less wrong? It's been a big risk but it looks like he's got away with it again.

Clark and Baker have more experience and touch wood there's more cash in the warchest for the summer.

Add in lescott's performance last night - the most popular target in January - and I'm not sure we'd be *that* much better off especially as it'd reduce our capacity to buy in the summer.

re the first bit, surely that depends on where we'd set out sights for the season. For example, if we stay up on 39 or 40 points, then you can say he was right in that we didn't get relegated through our failure to strengthen the defence, but at the same time, ask questions about whether staying up - better though it is than going down - is really anything to be congratulating him on.

I don't think there is a person amongst us who, at the start of the season, would have had avoiding relegation as the target for this year.

I don't particularly want to get into an argument about what was a realistic target, or whether we should have signed Lescott or whoever else in January, just making the point that it's not as black and white as "he was right not to strengthen, or he was wrong".

I thought Lescott had a bit of a mare last night, too, from what I saw. In his defence, he was playing against Barcelona, not something you had to do every week. I thought he'd have strengthened us quite considerably, but then again, if he was going to cost 90k a week in wages, then I understand why he wasn't an option.

[cdbearsfan]

Ron Vlaar almost a Pointless answer just then on BBC1. Oh, the irony.  Only one person in 100 surveyed named him as a member of the Dutch Euro 2012 team.

Our Wilf was a Pointless answer though.

[SoccerHQ]

Defensively we are mid table, we've conceded 38, only 3 more than Liverpool, 1 more than Spurs, 3 more than Southampton, 7 more than Man. United, all these teams have better defensive options than us it's fair to say. Infact it's been a strange prem season as with Man. City scoring hatfuls past most teams, there's only 4 prem teams who've conceded less than 30 goals?

How important is Ron? Very. He has missed 7 pre games this season, we've conceded 14 goals in the minutes he hasn't been out there so in actually appearences we've conceded 24 goals in his 22 appearences this season which is obviously very good.