Aston Villa v West Ham United Pre-Match Thread

[Mortimer's Bear]

Someone needs to tell Vlaar that looking like a big hard bastard isn't enough, on Sunday he will need to play like a big hard bastard!

[achilles]

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.

But as you say that is speculation!

[achilles]

Anyway to win a game we seem to need to score at least 4 goals, which is asking a lot in every game, therefore I am going for a draw and yet another nail in the already firmly shut coffin!

[dave.woodhall]

Anyway to win a game we seem to need to score at least 4 goals, which is asking a lot in every game, therefore I am going for a draw and yet another nail in the already firmly shut coffin!

Because making up two points in 13 games is clearly impossible.

[andyaston]

My word we are 8/13 to get relegated!

[SoccerHQ]

A win would be massive on Sunday. On 24 points and with over 10 to play, suddenly 35 or 36 points wouldn't seem that far away.

Need it as we'll do well to even get 1 point from Arsenal away and Man. City at home so we will be further adrift if we don't win on Sunday.

[Witton Warrior]

I noticed against Noocassle that I now have no expectation that we will win. For the first tme in 40 years I am going to matches not thinking we may win. That has never, ever been the case before.

But then again - it is only West 'am

[Drummond]

In March It will be 35 years ago that I went to my first Villa match. We beat West Ham 4-1.

I'm going for that.




I've had wine.

[mr-villa]

May not get to the game now, travelling down from Sheffield and have just watched the BBC weather forecast for Sunday and it seems lots of snow is forecast.  Any chance the game may be postponed due to snow?

[dave.woodhall]

May not get to the game now, travelling down from Sheffield and have just watched the BBC weather forecast for Sunday and it seems lots of snow is forecast.  Any chance the game may be postponed due to snow?

Not anymore it isn't. The BBC forecast has changed about six times today.

[eamonn]

I'm getting a bad feeling that for the rest of the season we'll continue to have spells in games of scoring great goals and fleetingly looking as good as any other team going forward but invariably we'll not capitalise at key moments and shoot ourselves in the foot at the other end.

The events of the past six weeks just seem to have aligned the stars ever more to set the scene for plenty more glorious failures between now and May. I just can't see us winning a game even though we're capable of it, if that makes sense. These lads must feel like losers by now. I really hope I'm wrong.

[Louzie0]

In March It will be 35 years ago that I went to my first Villa match. We beat West Ham 4-1.

I'm going for that.




I've had wine.

So have I. Will be in the pub with lots of Hammers on Sunday. Goodness me, I hope we win.

[Doorbell]

It'll be tight, but I'm going for a win...we need to win, we must win!!!

[Mister E]

In March It will be 35 years ago that I went to my first Villa match. We beat West Ham 4-1.

I'm going for that.




I've had wine.

Remember that well; I was there. It seemed at that time that we were indestructible.

[Mister E]

My word we are 8/13 to get relegated!

Surely not a surprise. We ahve the worst trend-record in the division, tkaing the last 12 months. We are in freefall.

As DW points out, though, we're still not adrift. and as PL says, we don't need many wins to get us sufficiently out of the mire.

But we do need to start the escape tunnel this weekend.