Summer transfer rumours, speculation and out-and-out b*ll*cks.

[spangley1812]

You can't sign pre-contract agreements with players who play for teams in the same country.

Chris Smalling from Fulham to Man U?  Didn't he sign for Fergie and then play out the reat of the season with Fulham?  I'm sure he did.

Didnt Fergie sign him in Jan 2009 and then loan him back to Fulham for the rest of the season   

[Holtenderinthesky]

You can't sign pre-contract agreements with players who play for teams in the same country.

Chris Smalling from Fulham to Man U?  Didn't he sign for Fergie and then play out the reat of the season with Fulham?  I'm sure he did.

Didnt Fergie sign him in Jan 2009 and then loan him back to Fulham for the rest of the season   

Hmmm.  Weird one.  According to Wikipedia:

"On 27 January 2010, Manchester United announced that they had signed Smalling, for an undisclosed fee, with the player staying at Fulham for the remainder of the 2009–10 season before joining United for 2010–11.[20] The transfer officially went through on 1 July.[21]"

So they can't have loaned him back as the transfer didn't officially go through until the end of the season.  It must have been a pre-contract agreement of sorts I guess.

[Billy Walker]

"Force through", "dream move"   This is always the way the media portrays Villa players leaving the club.  I find it a pretty insulting picture that they paint of Aston Villa.

Ashley certainly won't have to force through a move.  If he wants to go I don't think anyone  will be fighting and campaigning for him to stay.  He's a modern footballer and can do as he wishes.  As long as Villa replace with better - and I think we can - then we will come out well from this. 

It's hardly insulting, it's the harsh reality. We're not a big a club as Man Utd and never will be. We've gone backwards this last year or so. It's our own fault our better players want to leave.

I don't agree.  We've been a far bigger club than Man Utd in our history and we can be again.  Birmingham's major club should be more successful than Manchester's major club - it doesn't make sense that it isn't.  That's a debate for another day, I suppose. 

[eastie]

Maybe a 100 yrs ago Billy walker but the fact we've won one league title in the last 100 yrs and no fa cup in the last 54 yrs means we cannot possibly think ourselves in the same bracket as a big club as man utd are.

[Holtenderinthesky]

"Force through", "dream move"   This is always the way the media portrays Villa players leaving the club.  I find it a pretty insulting picture that they paint of Aston Villa.

Ashley certainly won't have to force through a move.  If he wants to go I don't think anyone  will be fighting and campaigning for him to stay.  He's a modern footballer and can do as he wishes.  As long as Villa replace with better - and I think we can - then we will come out well from this. 

It's hardly insulting, it's the harsh reality. We're not a big a club as Man Utd and never will be. We've gone backwards this last year or so. It's our own fault our better players want to leave.

I don't agree.  We've been a far bigger club than Man Utd in our history and we can be again.  Birmingham's major club should be more successful than Manchester's major club - it doesn't make sense that it isn't.  That's a debate for another day, I suppose. 

Man United grasped the chance to be cataputed in mega stardom by pipping us to the title in 93 and then going on a run of destruction (of everyone else) just as the SKY money started to pour in.  When Villa won things in the late 70's and early 80's the game was nowhere near big enough for it to make too much difference to our future.  Winning the league now would set you up a hell of a lot better than it would have in 1981.  Ditto the European cup.   Entry into the CL group stages now pays far more than even winning it did back then.  In fact, had we have won it in 93 we may well have been what Man United are now, who knows?  Blackburn won it in 95 and if Jack Walker hadn't cashed in his chips with the sale of their top stars they could have been a big club.  One thing is for sure though, Man United are now on another planet to us in football/status terms and to even reach anything remotely resembling parity with them would take donkey's years.  If anything, depressingly, the gap between us and them will increase over the coming years rather than us catching them up.


Oh for the referee to have not given Man United those 7 minutes against Sheffield Wednesday......

I wonder where we'd be now if he hadn't.  *Sighs*

[eamonn]

I think even if we had won the league in '93 it would have just delayed the inevitable. United were still seen as bigger and had greater potential for growth and success - their famous ''class of '92'' youngsters were going to come through, Old Trafford was being expanded, Edwards was less parsimonious than Ellis and happy to pay high wages to the likes of Cantona, Kanchelskis etc. They had a stronger team than us, it's to big Ron's credit that we came close to pipping them that year.

[KevinGage]

According to Fergiescum, one of the chief obstacles he faced in his first decade is that Man U wouldn't pay top whack wages when it came to players, hence players like Paul McGrath actually getting a payrise when he joined us. (Indeed, even when they 'broke through' and were competing in the CL, the PLC wouldn't pay the wages needed to attract the best foreign talent.)

Unthinkable that a senior player would come from there to here and increase his salary now.

We'll never know, but I reckon we might have had a similar reaction to Leeds when they won it post 1992. Highly unlikely that we'd have gone on to dominate the game. But winning it then would have re-affirmed our status as one of the genuine big hitters in the land -and it would have always been in the record books  that we were the first side to win it.

There's also a strong possibility that had we genuinely taken it to the wire and Man U had bottled it (again) Fergie might have been eased out. He'd have been in the job close to seven years then, and -apart from the ECWC win in 1991- it would have been viewed as seven years of underachievement without landing the big one.

[Billy Walker]

Things don't stay the same for ever.  When they were winning the European Cup in'68 who would have thought we'd be winning it fourteen years later?  Things change in football.  When we beat them and won our seventh FA Cup in '57 they only had two on the shelf.  Football ebbs and flows. 

At the moment it seems like they will be number one forever but they won't be.  Aston Villa have as much right to be number one as anyone else - we seem to be browbeaten into thinking we have no right to win things when history says otherwise.  This mentality holds us back.  When newspapers talk about "dream moves" it just adds to this nonsensical mindset that Villa should be viewed as second rate or a stepping stone to a club from a city not even half the size of Brum! I don't buy into it.  It would be a "dream move" to be leaving a Coventry or a Norwich for Man Utd but not an Aston Villa.

Yes, Man Utd are currently very popular around the world  but, then, so is Susan Boyle.  The media is a powerful thing. Things change!

[KevinGage]

Think it was Ads who mentioned as recently (if we can call it that) as 1993 we were on a par with them for total trophies won. Incredible to think how far they have pulled away since.

Yet even prior to that, they had a fanbase country wide that could be tapped into. A fair chunk of that was to do with the wave of sympathy after Munich, fans of other clubs almost adopted them as a second club (some, anyroad) and people who didn't have a club felt an irresistible pull towards them.

As you say BW, the thing can come full circle again. But we'd need to make some monumental progress whilst they'd need to hit the skids PNE/ Huddersfield/ Wolves style for us to eclipse them.

[Dave]

We need To sign two goalies to battle it out for the number one position- freidal and guzan are not good enough.,Westwood and given or Robinson would be ideal in my opinion.

You repeatedly seem to ignore the point that Guzan has been better in the Championship than Westwood has over the last few months.

So why is one not good enough and the next is going to be our next great hope?

[Shrek]

We need To sign two goalies to battle it out for the number one position- freidal and guzan are not good enough.,Westwood and given or Robinson would be ideal in my opinion.

You repeatedly seem to ignore the point that Guzan has been better in the Championship than Westwood has over the last few months.

So why is one not good enough and the next is going to be our next great hope?

You repeatedly seem to ignore Westwood is a very experienced Keeper that has played over 300 games and has been consistently a very good keeper, granted not top level, but he hasn't been sat on a bench for years, he has progressed year on year and would be great for us IMO.

We are not going to be spending millions like years gone by, we simply can't sustain it.

[Dave]

We need To sign two goalies to battle it out for the number one position- freidal and guzan are not good enough.,Westwood and given or Robinson would be ideal in my opinion.

You repeatedly seem to ignore the point that Guzan has been better in the Championship than Westwood has over the last few months.

So why is one not good enough and the next is going to be our next great hope?

You repeatedly seem to ignore Westwood is a very experienced Keeper that has played over 300 games and has been consistently a very good keeper, granted not top level, but he hasn't been sat on a bench for years, he has progressed year on year and would be great for us IMO.

We are not going to be spending millions like years gone by, we simply can't sustain it.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that a keeper that we own and that most seem keen to get rid of is performing better at the same level as a keeper who people seem desperate that we sign.

[Billy Walker]

KevinGage - Man Utd only overtook our trophy haul during the Premier League era, Arsenal, too.  Things change and we must never fall into the trap of thinking we can't get back on top again - that's what will hold us back.  We'll be winning trophies again.

[KevinGage]

We need the culture and -dare I say it- expectation to win.

If you don't have that in place, you don't have a hope. Some of our fans have it, plenty don't.

Some of our older fans weren't particularly enamoured with 6th a few years in a row -how can you be when you've lived through an era of us winning the lot. But for the younger fans it's much harder to make that connection, the automatic link between Aston Villa FC and winning trophies. So mid table> 6th almost seems quite good.

People laughed at Tottingham fans and their unrealistic expectations, but it's part of that mindset, that sense of entitlement almost, that created the environment whereby someone at some stage was going to crack it. They still needed a number of other things to all come together and align at once to make it possible, decent manager (much as it pains me to say it), decent backing at boardroom level and a gap with the decline in LFC and getting in just before the full benefit of Citeh's billions could take effect.  The expectation alone isn't enough. Ask Newcastle.   It's probably a sad reflection on the game that  Tottingham can even be viewed as some form of template for modern success despite them not actually winning anything. But we'll leave that for another time.

[Holtenderinthesky]

We need the culture and -dare I say it- expectation to win.



Some of our older fans weren't particularly enamoured with 6th a few years in a row -how can you be when you've lived through an era of us winning the lot.

When you say "era" do you mean 'year'.  And when you say, "the lot". I take it you mean the league and European Cup?

Now, our success that era/year is never to be forgotten and is one of our proudest moments as Villa fans but to suggest that we should some how denounce a top 6 finish because we once conquered Europe 30 years ago is a bit bizarre. 

EDIT:  If you were including the two League cup wins in75 and 77 then a lot of the people who were there to see that would have seen us in the 3rd division as well. (Therefore a top 6 Premier League finish would not be scoffed at.)