Peter Griffin

I agree, the way people appear able to accept basic mistakes from players in our team is unbelievable. Suggesting it is just one of those things and these things happen is really silly, People need to realise that for Villa to move forward and up the league table we need to remove the sentimentality and be ruthless with every aspect of the club.

Bruce is up for that challenge

The could buy a few defenders from us for 100m in Jan

Edit: off the knee LOL

Cracking header

The commentary on Sky is unreal. 'If Bruce does leave Newcastle I am sure there will be many many teams looking to take him on" What on earth would make any team want to take Bruce on as manager

Amanda getting a first hand look at exactly how much work is ahead of Newcastle. Dreams of Champions League may have to be changed to dreams of becoming a Premier League team.

At least they stop the Toon's football from being the most embarrassing thing at St James' Park today

But I said "They will set their expectations for success based upon what they agreed with CP was a sufficient investment amount". They will have evaluated what was needed to be spent and agreed this with CP. It doesn't matter after that. It is up to CP to deliver. If CP believes DS is underperforming he will likely be replaced. It really is that simply, there will be very little wiggle room.

Their 5 fixtures in Dec are against Leicester (a), Liverpool (a), Man City (h), Man Utd (h) and Everton (a). Would any manager want to take over before Jan 1st

This may very well be Bruce's last game in charge. It ain't going too well. I would say they are finding it very difficult to find a replacement. The time to take the Toon manager's job is in about 2 years time from now for a quality manager. Managers between now and then will be stopgap solutions

It is over 3 years that NSWE have invested the money and I would suspect they don't really care what the big have spent in the last 5 years. They will set their expectations for success based upon what they agreed with CP was a sufficient investment amount. If they feel that 350m+ should deliver a fight for Europa or top half finish then that is what will need to be delivered or CP and DS will have failed to deliver what they are tasked to deliver

It is way in excess of 300m. It was 350m on player transfer fees plus the investment in infrastructure and facilities. All of this is there to help us achieve our goals

I would hope it is our CEO that makes the decision to sack him or not, that is his job and not the job of the owners. Owners set the high level strategy and funding and it is up to Purslow to deliver. If NSWE start interfering in the management of the club then I would expect Purslow to walk. That would be really bad for us

He is playing for Strasbourg this season

And to make matters worse we are inconsistent with both the good things and the poor things. It is really pissing me off these days that I have no idea which Villa team will show up each game.

I agree with that. A big problem with defenders is that they are less likely to get away with an error than any other position on the pitch. Having a CB that is immense for 80% of the time is not much use. Its like saying the brakes in my are are excellent but the don't work every now and then. Mings needs to be upgraded imo

I would have much preferred to see Guilbert come on for Cash yesterday, I would love to know what happen there.

At his stage of his career and is time with Villa I really can't see how that can be fixed. It is could surely it would have been done by now

Defeatist nonsense. Accepting a sub par performance is not going to get us to where we are trying to get to i.e. Europe. Suggesting this was a random result and it was their turn is utter tripe. We messed up, our standards dropped and stupidly threw away 3 valuable points.

I agree it would be knee jerk to sack DS now but he must learn from this. The point you make about the players needing to step up. I disagree with this from a somewhat pedantic perspective. The players needed to play at a certain standard and not step down with their performance. I know it is a subtle difference but I think an important one. Persistent basic errors are unacceptable from any player. If players can't maintain the standard required they need to fix that or leave the club. We will need our players to 'step up' in order to qualify for Europa and finish in the top half.

More bullshyte. We are talking about DS because it is a DS forum. What are we meant to discuss?

If you read the comments on here it is not quite the extremes you suggest. I think most people really like DS and would love him to be our manager for years to come. However, some people recognise some weaknesses and would like to see those improved. Suggesting it is Smith is God v Smith out only adds to the stupid rhetoric

I am not worrying about things 12 months away. The discussion was about Smith's security as Head Coach. I stated that I agreed that this season he was safe but if we were lower than 12th that next season he would be under greater pressure and I said he would be on thin ice. I then explained what I thought the expectation would be for next season. Please read the thread properly and stop trying to twist thing to suggest that everyone is anti Smith. That is just not the case. It is a football forum, the thread is Dean Smith and it is just a discussion. There is no worrying about next season and there is no doomsday predictions. It is normal football discussion without the need for a bias

I don't think it matters what happens with the squad. We are no doubt going to get some new players between now and next season and regardless of expectations of fans I believe NSWE will want results. And by results, I mean a very concerted effort to get into Europa. To me that mean being in with a shout of qualification with 2 to 3 games left in the season. If we don't have that next season then Smith will need to go