New Contracts?

[PaulWinch again]

Right Delph, Jack and Vlaar please.

[Gregorys Boy]

Right Delph, Jack and Vlaar please.

How ironic it is the important ones that we still haven't tied down (yes I Know me saying that could be ironic in itself!) typical Villa!

[Matt C]

Looks like we're knocking in the easy ones first...

[PaulWinch again]

''We have a long-term vision for Villa and Paul is completely integrated into our plan to manage the club carefully and ambitiously back to a position in the Barclays Premier League appropriate to our history and collective expectations."

This is a very interesting comment from Tom Fox, particularly 'long-term vision' and getting back to a position 'appropriate to our history'. Does this suggest there has been a change?

[*shellac*]

Right Delph, Jack and Vlaar please.

This.

[Dante Lavelli]

''We have a long-term vision for Villa and Paul is completely integrated into our plan to manage the club carefully and ambitiously back to a position in the Barclays Premier League appropriate to our history and collective expectations."

This is a very interesting comment from Tom Fox, particularly 'long-term vision' and getting back to a position 'appropriate to our history'. Does this suggest there has been a change?

I didn't think so.  The word which jumped out at me was carefully, meaning not spending much.  I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the statement is (deliberately) vague enough to mean a number of things.

[Tony Erdington]

i think the purse strings are going to loosen, but when citeh, chavski, red bindippers, yanited come poaching players the price goes up, Randolf i think is back in with us and is just trying to play a cunning plan. ie clubs for sale and im not a mark.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

''We have a long-term vision for Villa and Paul is completely integrated into our plan to manage the club carefully and ambitiously back to a position in the Barclays Premier League appropriate to our history and collective expectations."

This is a very interesting comment from Tom Fox, particularly 'long-term vision' and getting back to a position 'appropriate to our history'. Does this suggest there has been a change?

A 20 year plan where each year we finish one place above the previous season is my guess.

[Gareth]

With this latest recurrence of the calf injury & each time it seems to take forever to get fit I think we can see why the deadline passed & Vlaar was still a Villa player

[ozzjim]

Lambert saying he knew it would happen suggests its a problem that won't ever really go away too.

We need to get Delph and Grealish sorted, and offer Vlaar a decent deal to keep him and then wrap him up.

[silhillvilla]

With this latest recurrence of the calf injury & each time it seems to take forever to get fit I think we can see why the deadline passed & Vlaar was still a Villa player

Yep. Equally you can see why we may not be offering earth moving amounts to keep him (if indeed that is the case). With age, you can only see the frequency of injuries increasing aswell as the recovery times.

[PeterWithesShin]

Mirror

Aston Villa are battling to keep Fabian Delph.

Arsenal and Everton are among those closely monitoring the situation of the new England midfielder.

The 24-year-old has been offered a new deal by the Villans to prevent him leaving on a free transfer at the end of the season.

But he has yet to sign the bumper contract – a fact noted by the Gunners' manager Arsene Wenger and Roberto Martinez, his counterpart at the Goodison Park club.

Wenger has an abundance of midfielders, but his squad – Mathieu Flamini apart – lacks an energetic, ball­-winner such as Delph.

Wenger will try to bridge that gap in January. He is also impressed by Southampton’s Victor Wanyama and Morgan Schneiderlin, as well as Borussia Dortmund’s Sven Bender of Borussia Dortmund.

[Rigadon]

Impossible to know if that is Delphs agent or genuine.  It'd be pretty galling to lose delph to the likes of Everton.  Or anybody else as it goes.

[supertom]

Delph is energetic certainly, but I don't see him as much of a ball-winner. His tackling is Scholes-esque. I don't think Arsene would find space for Delph in his side.
Everton however, is a different story. They could do with Delphs pace in midfield.

I hope we keep him though. I think we'd suffer a lot losing Delphy. At our best this squad is solidly mid-table, but lose 1-2 of our better players and it's a relegation scrapping side.

[ozzjim]

After comments from Delph last season and in the summer, and how much time and effort the club have put into him, to lose him from a position that looked unlikely would be pretty galling.