Downing Completes Liverpool Transfer

[Salsa Party Animal]

I hope Alex have some ideas who to buy outside the obvious choice. Is there someone we are interested oversea ?

Milner 23 millions plus downing 20 millions plus Young 18 millions and say 3 millions for Davies,  that is 64 millions and we spend about 25 millions for Bent and Makoun. So where the money gone (39 millions). I reckon we have 50 millions pounds in Transfer kitty, but we are keeping it very very quiet.  This can buy 7 quality players.

[pauliewalnuts]

Downing for N'Zogbia plus Parker plus Given (more or less)? Bang on.

Fuck him. Spare no thought to him. Just another millionaire drifter passing through.
Onwards to bigger and better things (or to storm the gates if that cash,plus more besides, isn't reinvested in the squad Rikki fucking tick!).
A big clusterpositive wouldn't go amiss about now Villa.

That's the understatement of the century.

Something nice and positive, nice and quick, please.

[Ross]

Right - on the positive side at least its done early and won't drag out until September, but Randy and 'Eck had better pull their thumbs out of their arse and get signing some players quick.  All the talk of evaluating the squad is all well and good as an excuse for not signing anyone, but it doesn't wash when the same isn't true when it comes to selling our best players.

Distinctly unimpressed at the moment. 

[KevinGage]

Well thanks again Mr Lerner - happy now with the £20M in your pocket? Thats it, sell off all of the best players - who's next? Darren Bent? Disgrace the way the squad - sorry ''small'' squad has been ravaged. Is this the start of the new 5 year plan, I wonder?

Lets see what business we do by Sept 1st before we get the pitchforks out.

[TheSandman]

Here's one for the cynics... Wasn't the last day for renewals today?

I can beat that: Does anyone think that we appointed a manager the owner knew would be unpopular to act as a scapegoat for any unpopular decisions?

I don't genuinely believe that but it is a theory and it will be one I might start to subscribe to if we don't see some serious moves. As much as some would disagree I feel McLeish deserves better than that.

[Nirog72]

I'm glad it's done. He can do one and we can move on. He will very vaguely and rarely be remembered as a Villa player in years to come and probably the same as a footballer generally. We can and will do better.

[Villafirst]

good riddance to Downing the little worm,aslong as we get Nzogbia ill be happy!

I wouldn't bet on N'Zogbia joining - I've zero faith in this board now. Lerner has banked £36M from these two sales plus getting rid of others off the wage bill.

[Villa'Zawg]

No offence intended to anyone on here but I was with some complete ****** tonight and they thought selling Downing to Liverpool was a good deal.

[Jimbo]

This is canny business, I reckon. We're getting our fire-sale in BEFORE we get relegated to get a better price for our best players. Nice one Mr Faulkner.

[TheSandman]

No offence intended to anyone on here but I was with some complete c***s tonight and they thought selling Downing to Liverpool was a good deal.

So relations between you and Paul Faulkner have thawed?

[pauliewalnuts]

good riddance to Downing the little worm,aslong as we get Nzogbia ill be happy!

I wouldn't bet on N'Zogbia joining - I've zero faith in this board now. Lerner has banked £36M from these two sales plus getting rid of others off the wage bill.

Before we sold Ashley, Lerner's net spend since being here was 80m over five years. It is, now we've sold downing, 44m over that period.

What will tell us what kind of owner we've got is how he reacts now. That's 36m pounds recouped in the last two weeks. If he spends a good deal on that - and, let's be honest, he needs to - then some faith will be restored.

if he thinks he can hold most of it back, then he's playing a very dangerous game, as well as making us less attractive to potential signings, as we look like a selling club, and just making it harder for us to hold on to Darren Bent in 6 or 12 months time.

We need to put down a definite marker very, very quickly to show that we are something other than a club on the slide, because the last 12 months have had us look like a club going one way and one way only.

[Pete3206]

No offence intended to anyone on here but I was with some complete c***s tonight and they thought selling Downing to Liverpool was a good deal.

Hello, c**t here. What a good deal for Downing.

[Villan For Life]

£20m for Downing is excellent business. He's not worth much more than we paid for him.

If McLeish get's all of that cash plus the Ash cash  then I think that it's an excellent bit of business.

You never want to see good players leave but I firnly believe that if they want to go then let them.

Downing is now up there with dog breath monkey poo shit for brains Hodge in my all time list of despised former players.

[Villa'Zawg]

No offence intended to anyone on here but I was with some complete c***s tonight and they thought selling Downing to Liverpool was a good deal.

So relations between you and Paul Faulkner have thawed?

I'm open to persuasion .

[KevinGage]

I dunno Paulie.

I don't necessarily think it's imperative that Big Eck blows most of the proceeds from those sales this summer. It could be a case of sort out some of the most obvious gaps (GK, Left wing)  and assess the rest of the squad over the first part of the season.

If we spent £20-25 million this summer, I wouldn't automatically view it as RL giving up. If bulk of our incoming deals are budget priced stop gaps/ over the hill types I might revise that however.