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

[Greg N'Ash]

Does anyone even know what RL's plan is?  When they first took over, we had a five yr plan.  Now that things look glum, there is nothing coming from the powers above about our new plan.  This is what annoys me about the Villa and their board at the moment.  We as fans have every right to know the new objective and the plans going forward.  The silence from the club is deafening and out of order IMO.  Ok, we are now fully aware that we wont be spending big, we'll be reducing wages and we will be utilising the squad.  What about the new goals?  What are our new aims?

Survive in the PL without losing money seems the plan. MON's style of football but with an Aldi transfer budget.....

[Chris Smith]

You didn't answer the question, Greg. Which positions?

We need at the bare minimum (assuming N'Zogbia joins) another winger, a central defender, a left back and a central midfielder.  If you add Given to that, that's six players.

As it stands we have 4 cntre backs, without selling we can't carry another.

We have Young, Warnock and Baker for left back. Young, Beye and Lichaj for right back. Do you think they'll sanction another without moving one on?

I agree about another wide man if he's intending to play with two every week.

Central midfield, I'd love Parker but again we have 6 players already for those positions.

If it was down to me I'd be signing the players and not worrying about it but as we've been told repeatedly the wage bill has to be managed and the type of spending you are suggesting without getting rid of players first will take us back to square 1.

Just because there is players there, don't mean they're any good. Jesus, not buying a fullback because Beye and an untried kid are in the squad is suicidal

Untill he moves on he's taking up a slot in the squad and a chunk of the wage bill. Or are you suggesting the thing that you criticised MON for and keeping him but not playing him?

*sigh* he's not gonna move on the likes of Beye. NO-ONE WILL TOUCH HIM WITH A BARGE POLE BECAUSE OF HIS WAGES. playing a totally shite player and not getting in a replacement just compounds the mistake and 30 a week for a decent replacement for Beye is  a lot cheaper than getting relegated

You daft sod, we're not going to get relegated.

The lack of consitency in your argumenst just proves that you moan for the sake of it.

Perhaps if people like you got off their enormous arses and went to games and helped fill the stadium the increased revenue would allow us to support a bigger squad. As it is we have to manage the wage bill and like it or not until we shift Beye that's £30k (or whatever it is) a week that we don't have to spend elsewhere.

I don't particularly rate him but he's not totally shite and we just have to hope that McLeish is able to coax some performances out of him. I should imagine he's exactly the type of player he was referring to when he talked about assessing what he has got.

[Clampy]

Like Eck has said, once the next signing has come in, he'll assess the squad and see what's what. After N'Zogbia, i still think we need  another winger and a ball winning centre midfielder and providing no-one else leaves, that might do us until January. The closer we get to the transfer window, one or two loans might be available.

It's frustrating  and we are a little short on last year, but at the same time, it's also up to the likes of Ireland, Warnock etc to prove they're worth what we're bloody paying them.

[Mazrim]

Does anyone even know what RL's plan is?  When they first took over, we had a five yr plan.  Now that things look glum, there is nothing coming from the powers above about our new plan.  This is what annoys me about the Villa and their board at the moment.  We as fans have every right to know the new objective and the plans going forward.  The silence from the club is deafening and out of order IMO.  Ok, we are now fully aware that we wont be spending big, we'll be reducing wages and we will be utilising the squad.  What about the new goals?  What are our new aims?

I may be wildly off course here but I reckon it's to win as many games as we can.

[VILLA MOLE]

Survive in the PL without losing money seems the plan. MON's style of football but with an Aldi transfer budget.....


Hey Aldi do some nice bits and bobs they might suprise you !

[Greg N'Ash]

You didn't answer the question, Greg. Which positions?

We need at the bare minimum (assuming N'Zogbia joins) another winger, a central defender, a left back and a central midfielder.  If you add Given to that, that's six players.

As it stands we have 4 cntre backs, without selling we can't carry another.

We have Young, Warnock and Baker for left back. Young, Beye and Lichaj for right back. Do you think they'll sanction another without moving one on?

I agree about another wide man if he's intending to play with two every week.

Central midfield, I'd love Parker but again we have 6 players already for those positions.

If it was down to me I'd be signing the players and not worrying about it but as we've been told repeatedly the wage bill has to be managed and the type of spending you are suggesting without getting rid of players first will take us back to square 1.

Just because there is players there, don't mean they're any good. Jesus, not buying a fullback because Beye and an untried kid are in the squad is suicidal

Untill he moves on he's taking up a slot in the squad and a chunk of the wage bill. Or are you suggesting the thing that you criticised MON for and keeping him but not playing him?

*sigh* he's not gonna move on the likes of Beye. NO-ONE WILL TOUCH HIM WITH A BARGE POLE BECAUSE OF HIS WAGES. playing a totally shite player and not getting in a replacement just compounds the mistake and 30 a week for a decent replacement for Beye is  a lot cheaper than getting relegated

You daft sod, we're not going to get relegated.

The lack of consitency in your argumenst just proves that you moan for the sake of it.

Perhaps if people like you got off their enormous arses and went to games and helped fill the stadium the increased revenue would allow us to support a bigger squad. As it is we have to manage the wage bill and like it or not until we shift Beye that's £30k (or whatever it is) a week that we don't have to spend elsewhere.

I don't particularly rate him but he's not totally shite and we just have to hope that McLeish is able to coax some performances out of him. I should imagine he's exactly the type of player he was referring to when he talked about assessing what he has got.

Beye is useless Chris. He wouldn't get into a decent Championship side- he certainly wouldn't have got into AM's relegated blose defence.  Him playing regularly would impact badly on an already iffy defence. I know you and others seem to believe AM is a miracle worker who will suddenly get the best out of the likes of Dunne, Ireland, Beye, *insert any other MON transfer disaster here* but its not logical or likely it will happen.

[Concrete John]

Does anyone even know what RL's plan is?

It's to sell all the players to the point where he can get a game himself.  The General wants a go in goal and Faulkner makes a half decent left winger.  Gregnash is also invited to play if he can find his way to the ground.

[Clampy]

Does anyone even know what RL's plan is?

 Gregnash is also invited to play if he can find his way to the ground.

You can count him out then.

[godzvilla]

As many  on here criticise the Club for their ( perceived ) lack of  involvement  in the current transfer market  , it may worth noting that we are not alone . As of today Premier League Clubs have jettisoned 75 Players and signed only 44 , 18 of which , went to 3 Clubs ( Norwich , Liverpool & Sunderland ). Which means that the remaining 15 Clubs have signed just 26 Players . That said and despite the fact that we have released / sold more players than any other Club (9) the fact remains that this is a very quiet Transfer Market and I have a feeling that there may be quite a few Players out of work come August 31st  .......................Godzvilla!

[Concrete John]

Beye doesn't need to play and is a write off as far as I'm concerned.

Our defensive squad as things stand is Young, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Clark, Lichaj and Baker.

[Greg N'Ash]

Beye doesn't need to play and is a write off as far as I'm concerned.

Our defensive squad as things stand is Young, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Clark, Lichaj and Baker.

Again, 3 duffers, 2 kids, young and cueller who looks to be off. Fills me full of optimism i must say. Hopefully the ones you're pinning so much faith in are inpervious to injury as well

[Toronto Villa]

The plan seems to be to utilise the squad better, not just throw good money after bad, and spend more intelligently. That for £10m you can find better than Curtis Davies, or for £8m we can find better than a Nigel Reo-Coker both of whom ended up just warming the bench. Randy isn't advocating an end to spending. The plan is to do it better. Have a proper scouting system. use more of the kids. Clearly MON made some good purchases, but there was a lot of spending on players that in their time at the club did next to nothing. That's not intelligent spending.

The money given by Randy to MON was given with the trust that he would deliver silverware or CL football. It's no different to what JW Henry is doing at Liverpool. If Dalglish/Commoli don't deliver on that faith Henry will change direction on the investment just as quickly because shrewd and successful business people don't just spend without getting/expecting something back.

[Concrete John]

Beye doesn't need to play and is a write off as far as I'm concerned.

Our defensive squad as things stand is Young, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Clark, Lichaj and Baker.

Again, 3 duffers, 2 kids, young and cueller who looks to be off. Fills me full of optimism i must say. Hopefully the ones you're pinning so much faith are in are inpervious to injury as well

Well, if you ignore the fact that the '3 duffers' were 3/4s of one of the PL's best defences season before last, that you mention 2 kids to conveniently leave out the highly rated Clark and presume Cuellar will go and not be replaced then you're 100% right.  Again. 

[Greg N'Ash]

Beye doesn't need to play and is a write off as far as I'm concerned.

Our defensive squad as things stand is Young, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Clark, Lichaj and Baker.

Again, 3 duffers, 2 kids, young and cueller who looks to be off. Fills me full of optimism i must say. Hopefully the ones you're pinning so much faith are in are inpervious to injury as well

Well, if you ignore the fact that the '3 duffers' were 3/4s of one of the PL's best defences season before last, that you mention 2 kids to conveniently leave out the highly rated Clark and presume Cuellar will go and not be replaced then you're 100% right.  Again. 

and you're totally ignoring last season's abject performances  by the 3 duffers, probably on the basis it was all GH's fault in your warped brain.  I actually missed out baker not clark because i didn't think were being serious

[Merv]

downing/young replacements, or cover for allbrighton. A good centre half, fullback, centre midfielder

Spot on, IMO.

Frankly, we're now pinning our hopes, to a certain extent, on players who the majority of us wanted out just a couple of months ago: Warnock, Ireland, Collins/Dunne. If they recover their form and fitness, we may be okay. But it's a big gamble.

I think what's happening here, and it's being done very cleverly by the board, is that gradually we're lowering our expectations, week by week. Now some of us don't think we need a new LB, because we've got Stephen Warnock, a man banished to the outback last season.... we're okay in centre-midfield because we've got lots of players in that position, even though half of those are young lads, one is Stephen Ireland (literally anything can happen there), one is talented but injury prone (Delph), one is talented but all but finished (Petrov).

McLeish is working with these players now and maybe he's seeing some really positive stuff; if so, that's fine. But I can see why there's concern at the moment. I know one or two on here have a tendency to go a bit overboard on the panic front but even so.... I'd say many are looking to be proven wrong in their opinion of where the club is right now... and we're still waiting.

There seems to be a policy of 'make do and mend' at the club now - perfect recipe for mid-lower positioning in the league table.