Rod Liddle in The Times

[Billy Walker]

Between charging for the website and some of the ill-informed bullshit that passes for journalism in it (and I'm not on about this kind of thing as it's an opinion piece) I've stopped taking the Times.

Same here Sandman.  The input of Tony Evans and Tony Barrett makes its football section come across as something resembling the lovechild of a Liverpool fanzine and a Spirit of Shankly press release.

[CorkVilla]

Can someone stick this twats email address on here and we can ask him why he is so utterly fkin wrong!

I'll second that!

Sorry for spelling his name wrong in the original post. I read his articles quite a bit. I agree with alot of what he comes out with but most of the time I think he is just pretending to be knowledgeable and trying to controversial. In this article he makes some complimentary remarks about Roy Keane, the same Roy Keane that he called a 'thug' amongst other things when he retired a few years ago.

[damon loves JT]

Rod Liddle seems to write that article once every twelve months and just changes the names of the clubs.

It was Newcastle last time, if I remember correctly.

He `supports'  Millwall because it offers a kind of irreproachable outsider status, and makes him look edgy and interesting to the kind of bland middle-class Oxbridge chaff he mixes with. There are a few like that.

[Archie]

Rod who?

[PeterWithe]

Didn't he have to apologise for racially abusing a Millwall player on one of their message boards a year or so ago?

[damon loves JT]

Didn't he have to apologise for racially abusing a Millwall player on one of their board a year or so ago?

Oh, casual racism, you have to do that if you support Millwall. Otherwise you have nothing to talk about at halftime

[PeterWithe]

I wasn't far off.

http://tinyurl.com/ygxguxf

[damon loves JT]

He is fat, ugly and has bad breath. Annoyingly his wife is clever, funny and very fit

[Concrete John]

When he took over he had better players than most remember. The main reason for us being so bad in 05/06 was Doolally's failure to get the best of a squad containing Thomas Sorensen, Martin Laursen, Olof Mellberg, Wild Willy Bouma, Gareth Barry, Steve Davis, Milan Baros and Juan Pablo Angel. A talented spine.

Allied to talented players who had fallen away - Samuel, Hendrie, (who MON apparently had a knack of getting the best from), some very talented youngsters - Cahill, Moore, Agbonlahor, solid and steady players - McCann, Hughes and a bit of experienced flair on the bench - Berger and Phillips...to be honest not too far off the quality Houllier arrived to find. O'Neill had a bit more time at the start and the signing of Petrov to hit the ground running.

The argument that he had to rebuild from scratch doesn't ring true to me - he had a good mixture of experience and talent to work with. 

I think you just have to look at where those players went when they left us to see how good they were.  Laursen, Mellberg and Barry I give you, but the rest went to retirement in America, bottom half PL clubs and Scotland.  It was a poor squad that needed the overhaul it got thanks to Randy's cash. 

[Macho Man Randy Savage]

"When he bought the club, you knew you were going to have to pay the price to buy it and then spend on players initially over a number of years.

"We've spent £140m on players and - net - it's still nearly £100m. 22/12/10 Paul Faulkner

Even if you allow him to stretch the boundaries of acceptable use of the word "nearly" in that way, our entire squad was built on that amount plus Agbonlahor.

 I'd be delighted to hear an objective and sensible argument for how one of the other top 6 squads having been built on less resources but I don't think there is one.

When he took over he had better players than most remember. The main reason for us being so bad in 05/06 was Doolally's failure to get the best of a squad containing Thomas Sorensen, Martin Laursen, Olof Mellberg, Wild Willy Bouma, Gareth Barry, Steve Davis, Milan Baros and Juan Pablo Angel. A talented spine.

Allied to talented players who had fallen away - Samuel, Hendrie, (who MON apparently had a knack of getting the best from), some very talented youngsters - Cahill, Moore, Agbonlahor, solid and steady players - McCann, Hughes and a bit of experienced flair on the bench - Berger and Phillips...to be honest not too far off the quality Houllier arrived to find. O'Neill had a bit more time at the start and the signing of Petrov to hit the ground running.

The argument that he had to rebuild from scratch doesn't ring true to me - he had a good mixture of experience and talent to work with. 

In all honesty some of those players you mentioned were of a poor standard when MON arrived, including Samuel, Hendrie, McCann, Hughes and Phillips.

I do think the two best players to play under MON though during his time at Villa were Barry and Laursen who were already at the club when he started.

[Monty]

There are no adequate words for how much of a c**t Rod Little is.

[Concrete John]

I do think the two best players to play under MON though during his time at Villa were Barry and Laursen who were already at the club when he started.

I think Milner deserves to be in with those two, but I get your point.

The issue is the 'scant resources' comment and that is a mixture of the finances Randy released and the existing squads ability/transfer value.  A lot of the better players we had when DOL left went for nothing, which made the need for resources that much greater.

[VillaZogmariner]

He is fat, ugly and has bad breath. Annoyingly his wife is clever, funny and very fit

Photo evidence required.

[TimTheVillain]

Rod Liddle, just as Damon described - he looks like he has bad breath...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6749156/Rod-Liddle-accused-of-racism-for-blog.html

[pablopicasso_10]

and the martin o'neill media mates reputation protector machine goes into overdrive...

whenever he leaves a club in the shit is about the only time he ever properly thinks out his "tactics", and about the only time, his "tactics" actually work...

as fr the media in this country, they are far too stupid to actually investigate the truth, and unfortunately, they dont have to, as the general public are simply spoonfed zombie sheep...

so crap like this will continue to be spouted, and then regurgitated as the gospel truth...