Aston Villa v West Ham United Pre-Match Thread

[UK Redsox]

Westwood also a doubt with a bug

Have they tried turning him off and turning him back on again ?

[UK Redsox]

I see that Messi's in the squad.

Therefore, how come he wasn't in the Scotland squad ? How bad do you have to be to get dropped by Scotland when Alan Hutton is deemed good enough to start for them ?

[PaulWinch again]

Dunne 'a long way away' from being fit enough to player. That is not good news, so it's even more crazy we didn't sign a centre half.

[Jockey Randall]

Paul Lambert believes Aston Villa need at least five wins & a couple of draws out of the remaining 13 to avoid relegation.

With Villa on 21 points & without a win since mid-December, Lambert says that victory at home to West Ham is essential.

"We must stop conceding so many unnecessary corners. It's time we turned our good performances like last week at Everton into wins. We need at least 5 wins but that also depends on how other teams are going."

Lambert said that Richard Dunne has had another setback with his groin problem & will return to the USA for further treatment. 'It's a blow because we miss his leadership & experience. He's weeks away from playing for us."

And he knew Dunne was fucked before the window closed, which makes me increasingly angry that he didn't get a centre half in.

There's no doubt in my mind they would have tried to get an experienced centre half in on loan till the end of the season. Everyone could see it, we were all crying out for it on here. I very much doubt there would have been one available to fit into our wage structure at the minute though, I can imagine someone like Upson turned round and told us to stick our £20k up our backside.

[tomd2103]

Provisional squad: Jaaskelainen, Spiegel, Reid, Tomkins, Pogatetz, O'Brien, Demel, Nolan, Noble, Diame, O'Neil, Collison, Jarvis, J Cole, Taylor, C Cole, Vaz Te, Carroll, Maiga.

Those look very weak defensive options.  Hopefully we can really get at them on Sunday.

[Clampy]

Dunne 'a long way away' from being fit enough to player. That is not good news, so it's even more crazy we didn't sign a centre half.

Got to agree. It was a priority even if he had have been fit.

[eastie]

Dunne 'a long way away' from being fit enough to player. That is not good news, so it's even more crazy we didn't sign a centre half.

Got to agree. It was a priority even if he had have been fit.

Doubt he will play again for us .

[TonyD]

5.3 to us

[maigrait]

There've been some 'must win' games over the past few weeks but given how they went this has become the biggest 'must win' of the lot. I think we'll eek out a 1-0 win tomorrow, can't see us winning by any more than the odd goad, if at all

So a must win of the must win?

Now lawro has cursed us by predicting 1-0 I sense we will better that with a 3-0 showing... Come on the VILLA!!!

[Drummond]

5.3 to us

Could be worth a couple of quid!

[jonzy85]

Paul Lambert believes Aston Villa need at least five wins & a couple of draws out of the remaining 13 to avoid relegation.

With Villa on 21 points & without a win since mid-December, Lambert says that victory at home to West Ham is essential.

"We must stop conceding so many unnecessary corners. It's time we turned our good performances like last week at Everton into wins. We need at least 5 wins but that also depends on how other teams are going."

Lambert said that Richard Dunne has had another setback with his groin problem & will return to the USA for further treatment. 'It's a blow because we miss his leadership & experience. He's weeks away from playing for us."

And he knew Dunne was fucked before the window closed, which makes me increasingly angry that he didn't get a centre half in.

There's no doubt in my mind they would have tried to get an experienced centre half in on loan till the end of the season. Everyone could see it, we were all crying out for it on here. I very much doubt there would have been one available to fit into our wage structure at the minute though, I can imagine someone like Upson turned round and told us to stick our £20k up our backside.

He went to Brighton, they are hardly paying more???

[Damo70]

This is the Brighton who's contribution to season long loan player Wayne Bridges 90k a week wages is £2 a day tuck money ahd £5 on a matchday for sweets and a comic.

[eamonn]

At least half of Brighton's defence would do a job for us. Have no idea who else plays for them back there but Bridge and Upson would give us a lot more know-how at the back than Clark, Vlaar and Bennett.

[TopDeck113]

Who knows?  I've gone for draw, but any of the other two results are equally possible. We'll score. So will they.  Just comes down to whether our defence capitulates at more than one corner.

I won't be watching - either at Villa Park or online.  I'm going for an early taster of live Championship football: Middlesbrough v Barnsley...

[Jockey Randall]

He went to Brighton, they are hardly paying more???

Who knows? It's all speculation. Things we do know are we now have now have a wage structure in place and can't or won't fork out a big amount on wages. We also know that Upson was one of the players on massive wages at West Ham and Stoke have spent quite heavily recently so I'd imagine he wasn't earning peanuts there either. Maybe Stoke didn't want him coming here? Maybe Brighton thought £40k a week or so till the end of the season was worth a gamble to try to get promoted? Or maybe Lambert thought even with his experience he's no better than Clark or Baker? None of us know for sure. All I'm saying is I would be absolutely gobsmacked if we hadn't at least tried to get an experienced centre half on loan till the end of the season.