VILLAMARV

For me, Baker is a CB plain and simple. If he could stay injury free along with Vlaar I think it's the way forward. He's a big lad and can really head the ball. when we have played him at LB in previous years he has been found seriously lacking in pace imo. anyway here's what I thought about yesterday.......now I've calmed down a bit!! Guzan - made some good saves. Ooozes determination. different class to Given on the last 2 years evidence imo. Bennett - was really poor again yesterday though. Dont get me wrong the lad applied himself and didnt just get mauled like when he was faced with Lennon. But he doesn't look ready yet (I'll not write him off forever just yet) and I saw someone say on another thread that we've won only one game he started this season - and that was when he got stretchered off at sunderland. Lichaj or Enda should be given a run - if nothing else to take bennett out of the firing line a bit. Clark - for me is going to end up a DMC like Barry. He also lacks the pace to be an effective LB and certainly doesn't have the physical presence to be a CB. Really poor game yesterday. Vlaar - was our best defender, which may not say alot! but better players than him have and will be caught out by a fellaini header from a baines corner. Wish he would concentrate on the ball a little bit more than the man at set pieces but without him we would have NO defence. Other than the 2 corners he's been at fault for (Bradford/Everton) what have people got to complain about with this guy? I don't get the criticism of him from some quarters. Lowton - great assist and application. Never seems to know whether to press the ball or stay in line for 2nd and 3rd phase attacks though. Decision making will need to improve with experience but I believe it will. KEA - Total passenger. Game completely passed him by. Westwood - GOOD GAME. not too much posession but great cross for Gabbys goal. He seems to me to be the only midfielder whose positioning is any good. closes down well, competative. Best performance Ive seen from him in claret and blue so far imho. Weimann - not his best game but not his worst. Gutting he wasnt on the near post for the corner though. could've won the game, chance was on his wrong foot. May not be "a winger" but runs good angles and is a handful for the opposition. Nzog - as someone else has said. Good first half, lost in the second. Great ball to Benteke for the first too. Gabby - We'd be SOOOOO **** without him. keep it up Benteke - There is nothing I need to say here. When his first touch improves he's going to be unstoppable. made Heitinga look like a Villa defender. subs: Sylla - came on for Nzog originally. Was visibly nervous. obviously told to patrol the half way line and close down in their half. I liked this and thought it was a good idea from Lambert in not putting too much pressure on him. KEA went off Sylla went back alongside Westwood, showed good application looked like he hadnt trained much with us tbh. As everyone said, hard to judge on a cameo. looks like a battler though Holman - Came on for KEA (did he get a knock?) totally ineffective - took over the Nzog/sylla role. Ran around and closed down as ever. cant remember him touching the ball Baker - came on for gabby at the death, mostly to run the clock down a bit add a bit of steel. shame he didnt double up on Fellaini in hindsight!! late sub not involved basically. All in all a heart breaking, spirit raising, bitterly crushing, moral boosting draw clutched from the jaws of victory. In the cold light of day though I gotta say they showed the fight they need for the run in. I'm starting to think 1 clean sheet from anywhere, anyhow would give the nippers so much self belief. Being 2 up and conceding 1 this team has just simply GOT to find "another gear" from somewhere. The equaliser was inevitable, and in truth we were lucky to come away with a point at the end. Everton are a good team and showed it. We weren't embarrased like we were at VP though. draw was probably a fair result overall. and yeah the ref was shit.

bad game again today. too lightweight against Anichebe. No Idea why Baker didn't start.

Low expectations this month. 3 points in Feb would give me hope. March is HUGE imo coz we need back to back wins against Reading & QPR. I can't remember back to back wins. I literally can't remember the last time it happened.

IMO Bannan is one of the few midfielders we have who can actually cross - Ive seen it with my own eyes before. Just not this year so much. If you've seen the last 20 or so Bannan floaty corners you would understand the fans frustration. If you've been watching this season you will now remember all the times he has come deep to get the ball off the centre backs or full/wing backs to stop them just lumping a long ball forward and then just lumping it forward himself and losing possession time and time and time again. his positioning has also been questioned in that he leaves fellow midfielders isolated on the ball. It's probably fair to say that lots of people just come here and say "he's shit" but to suggest there's no reason why we're criticising him and that no-one ever says why is simply untrue. He's the "scottish Iniesta" isn't he? Some people thought that meant he was from Scotland and played like Iniesta i.e. world class. They didn't realise it's just what Iniesta's game would be like if he eat Battered Mars Bars for tea, liked the pop and went out drink driving on the motorway I've got no problem with people using evidence to back up their opinions. even if i dont agree with them. Fair enough its gone a bit off topic in here, but in fairness to con his hatred of the 3-5-2 is well documented (along with most of us) and people like Cambridge-AVFC (see above) want to see some evidence to back up peoples opinions.

lol not in the back 4 imo

talk about thrown in the deep end eh?

yeah, just making the point (albeit sarcastically) that it doesn't really matter where they come from. aimed at those saying sylla must be crap coz i don't know the club we've bought him off. Mark Delaney played for Carmarthen Town for instance and I doubt many feel he was a bad signing or not good enough even though he spent less than a season at Cardiff before we snapped him up. I'm sure League deux is of higher standard than the league of wales.

back 4 with 2 holding midfielders? sounds far too sensible!

season is over in the US and his loan expired. Still contracted to Spurs till the summer. San Jose want to sign him in the summer and have made that common knowledge. so since he's got a few months to decide what to do (and see who offers him a contract) Lambert's decided to look at a player now before he will be free in the summer (unless Spurs re-sign him again) and see if he can cut it in the prem. Even if Spurs offer him a new contract there's no reason he would sign it and if he does well here he might end up with contract offers from all 3.

need 3 points against W.Ham ( I reckon Big Sam has done pretty good for them this window. Interesting Loans, lets hope they dont gel quickly) and 3 points against Reading (need to be 3 up with 10 mins to go). If we can keep the game respectable against Everton, Man City and Arsenal I'll be happy and the team could gain some heart (3-2 loss to Man Utd had plenty of positives......well 1st half did anyway!!!!) Looking at the other teams fixtures and form too it suggests that the table will be looking worse before it starts to look better. If we lose the next 5 or get a couple of draws out of them we are seriously getting into the realms of mathematical possibilities rather than any sort of probability. 2 HUGE games are so so so badly needed from somwhere as a bare minimum and fast. If we can find 6 points from somewhere before we play QPR we just might do it......

He's certainly got a career lined up in the MLS if it doesnt happen over here so in that respect he's probably got a bit of a safety net to fall back on even if Spurs let him go. If he's here treading water until he gets to move back to his life in California maybe he wont offer alot? but if he wants a career in the UK this is a great opportuntiy for him to prove himself. hopefully that desire will be what we see from him.

To be honest whatever happens on the pitch will be a bonus for me. If he goes in that dressing room with a smile on his face and a positive attitude, maybe just maybe it will rub off on a few of them. Having a guy whose career was seemingly threatened by injury only to battle back to fitness over a long time to talk to might also raise the spirits of a few on the injury list, give inspiration to the youth players and generally have a positive influence behind the scenes. Having been shipped out on loan to the MLS it seems he took a year to settle then had a good season last year. So he got a chance at last.......and took it. What more can you ask of him than that? I'm sure he will be going all out to impress in training or on the pitch if he gets a game. whether he turns out to be holman or young remains to be seen. Also there may well be a commercial angle here too. His stock in the MLS certainly rose last year. In a land obsessed with sporting statistics he was as productive as Donovan last year (as someone else here said). So this signing will be getting press in the US, raising the profile of the club in a market with a huge potential revenue stream. We are already mentioned alot (and our games are shown alot) on american soccer channels due to interest in Guzan, Lichaj and having Friedel before them so we have pretty good exposure over there. as doug said its low risk high potential gain Or maybe Im wrong! just my opinion.

brilliant

you been watching too?

Think I read someone saying that the main difference between watching him in Holland was that he used to press much higher up the pitch and being asked to sit deeper doesnt suit him. Im not a watcher of Dutch footie though. Ive said before I'm a big believer in foreign players being given time to settle - look at begkamp at Arsenal. hopefully Sylla might bring the best out of him as the only real problems with him I could see when he was playing were being caught out by the physicality and pace of it all (which hopefully he'll get to grips with like Petrov) and the crab like passing he's famed for. I would agree with the poster that said he's the one central midfielder we've played this year that moves into good positions after releasing the ball too.

He has definately been shit this year, no doubt about it. The thing I dont get is wasnt he a left midfielder at some point? he runs about alot, and can cross the ball. thats a winger isnt it? or is that me remembering him before his head got turned by Arsenal and he started getting arrested on drink driving charges? I dunno

Yeah, wasn't saying it must be anything. just reminding people that while it's entirely fair to criticuse Lambert for things on and off the pitch we ultimately dont know why Bent's on the bench, stripped of the captaincy, we dont know why Ireland doesn't perform unless he's advertised on Twitter the previous night. In Irelands case his whole career looks like a missed opportunity & I dont think we can blame lambert for that, for example.

YAY POSITIVITY!!! Beat West Ham, QPR, Fulham and Sunderland at home and get 6-8 points from Reading, Stoke, Norwich and Wigan away. UTV

Totally agree with the sentiment, just feel more confident when watching us this season that we are gonna score when Gabby, Weimann and Benteke are on the pitch and Bent is on the bench. If we go to a 442 at all he may yet well score the goals that keep us up though. totally!!

Wasn't attacking Collymore - just using it as an example that ability as a player and the way you're managed by individual managers aren't the only factors that can affect what happens on the pitch. Some people dont want to accept that Lambert isnt the SOLE reason the players aren't performing. Ireland is indeed a conundrum. If conundrum means you only get a performance out of him after his mrs posts pictures of him smoking pipes on the internet. I think the Bent thing is going to go down in history with half our fans as dropping an underperforming player and the other half as the thing that cost us / nearly cost us premiership staus. delete as applicable come May.

This is a point fast forgotten here I think. well said. I agree Bent and Ireland COULD be 2 very important players over the next few weeks we all know the ability is there. But are they really interested? Lambert might have alot to do with that. Whoever said he mismanaged the captaincy issue may have a point regarding Bent's apllication since being dropped.Personally I'd rather a manager who doesn't just play the big names come hell or high water. If lambert was this we would have been watching Gabby - Bent upfront all season instead of Benteke - weimann and I know which I prefer to watch.

I just couldnt agree more with the start of this. I think McMuppet was well out of his depth to be honest but there's no doubt in my mind that the somewhere in our group of players there is something very rotten indeed. The fact that some players are paid alot adds fuel to the fire of criticism but ultimately it is about performance and application. The idea of buying "young, hungry players" might say alot about the finances at our club but also says alot about the application and desire of some of the old heads IMO. Think back to Collymore for instance - undoubtedly talented, showed great application at forest and early Liverpool career and was a REAL player. Did he lack desire for us? well as a fan the obvious answer is no, but by his own admission his head was never really right when he came here. We had a great player at the wrong time in his life. Brett Holman is a great example to back up the point of trying for a new manager. If our "more talented players" (the ones who can actually pass!) could show the same determination on the pitch as him I doubt we'd be in the bottom 3 Tough to defend Lerner though no matter how much money he's spent. Many feel after disposing of Steve Stride and never replacing him he deserves everything he gets. I do feel that we are only part way through the costcutting process. I suspect Lambert is quite sensible and thought he could go down / stay up with villa or norwich this year. I dont think its a bad decision on his part to join a club with a bigger stadium, fan base, and if you can clear the books then budget.

and con, if you could find a stat for "player that makes the crowd groan with disappointment most" in a game I assure you this season Bannan is waaaaaaaaaay out front

not saying Sylla's gonna be mint coz ive never heard of him either but does anyone remember that young kid we signed who never went on to do anything in his career here or elsewhere that graham taylor took a punt on even though he played for some shit part time club on trinidad somewhere. Talk about a nowhere club in a nowhere league. Hadnt even scouted him just saw him play against us in a friendly I believe. Nightmare. Never played in a top league and he was like 15 or something!! what a stupid idea that was. much rather we signed players with prem league experience like Djemba Djemba - Beye - Heskey - Warnock - Hutton - Shorey - Jenas - Ireland......zzzzzzzzzz

so we all know Lerner is ultimately to blame along with Faulkner et al for the financial mess we're in. as ever some people say Lambert in some people say Lambert out some say shake it all about Im gonna hit the hay but I'll be back tomorrow when we can all pick ourselves up and go again!! UTV and welcome to Sylla and Dawkins