Laivasse

Whining geordie fans acting like the ref's against them, when he's blown 15 times against us and 3 times against them.

Fuckballs. Nothing you can do about that

Holman's came into the game with a lot of confidence and positivity against Everton. He's been among our less reliable midfielders today and has been anonymous in some other games so I wonder if it's a case of nerves with him.

For me he still flatters to deceive. He'll help win us the occasional game but over the course of a run of games his liability in possession is a net minus, IMO. I think he's put in 2 crosses, both have been complete, and one created the goal, which is kind of great. But I can't recall him completing a single forward pass from midfield, which is kind of terrible. So you're right, mixed bag. Now that the geordies are ramping up the firepower he doesn't contribute to winning the ball back either.

I'd like to see Gabby on in the last 20 minutes if we're still one up. For now just give Holman a bit of the hairdryer and tell the lads to keep the ball on the floor like they did for the first 25 minutes. Otherwise, we're on course. Great half from Brad.

We've struggled to keep the ball since the goal, few too many balls treating Bent/Weimann as target guys. After HT I'd like to see us reset to the style we started with.

Yesss, that's what a bit of attacking play gets you.

bannan is a bit like a broken vending machine doling out footballs to the opposition. Clark and Lichaj need to cut out the hoofball too. In contrast, KEA and Ireland look like the ball sticks to them velcro style. Holman needs to calm down and assert himself with a bit of confidence. That'll be the key to holding onto it long enough to bring Weimann and Benty in.

I think we''re insane to not have got in another CB. At this stage I think only Vlaar has the talent for the prem and even he's unproven. Baker represents pure potential, Clark isn't good enough and Dunne is on his last legs. We will ship goals.

Would be really gutted if we didn't get in a CB, but I'm not hearing anything about us not being in for one. We needed improvement there even before Collins and Cuellar went. Getting in Vlaar on his own doesn't cover their loss and doesn't deal with the reinforcement that was needed. Clark's not good enough and Dunne's soon for the knackers yard so it's like we're assuming Vlaar will stay fit and pinning all our hopes on Baker. We are threadbare! BUY A CENTRE HALF, LAMBAROONIE

http://www.herald.ie/sport/soccer/impressed-ireland-eyes-new-villa-contract-3215397.html Controversial stuff, there. String him up :yawn:

He's one of our better performers every time he plays, so I really have no idea what standard his critics are measuring him against. People seem to do nothing but clutch at straws when it comes to knocking Ireland - mentioning wacky shopping behaviour, grandmothers' funerals, saying he was disliked by some of the worst Villa coaching staff in decades... The one valid point is his inflated wage packet, and it's certainly up for debate whether he's worth £60k+ week. The problem is that under our setup over the past few seasons, there isn't a single £60k/week player who would actually play like a £60k/week player. My position is that if there's one thing that's driven us close to disaster over the last couple of years it has been panicking too rashly over wages, while the one thing that has kept us away from disaster last season was the effort of a couple of isolated players like Ireland.

Good solid win. Let's hope we can carry that feeling over into the league. People actually did that? I'm gobsmacked. It gets to the point where it seems people actually want a player to fail, at the team's expense, because it reinforces their preconceptions.

The goal sounded scrappy but we take what we can get. With some settled nerves I don't think it's too outrageous to hope for a couple more. Ireland sounds like he's central to everything, feeding Bent and Weimann.

I've played the original Shogun:TW, Shogun 2 and Medieval: TW 2, so some of the more melée centric titles with more faction specific units and less gunpowder. I've enjoyed them for the sense of tactical accomplishment when you come out the other side of an epic battle triumphant, but the feature-bloat on some of the more modern titles started to turn me off. It got to the point in Medieval 2 where sooo much stuff was happening in a single turn that I got overwhelmed by micromanagement, couldn't be arsed to continue with the game. I also hate the way EA nickel and dimes users with DLC, taking stuff that should have been in the game originally and selling it a portion at a time. You know those limbs and guts you miss, hogso? Well now you too can paint the landscape red with the Shogun TW 2 Blood DLC, a steal at £1.50! (Check Steam, it exists...) That's just one example... Another is when I was playing Shogun 2 myself, I checked the in-game encyclopedia to see what units I wanted to build and what tech tree I should follow. I painstaking built all the necessary buildings, over several dozen seasons and many hours of play... only to discover that the monks I wanted to build were a DLC item, unavailable in the vanilla game (and this was not mentioned in the encyclopedia). Soon after that I dropped the game and didn't go back. Kind of a shame since Shogun 2 felt like a good refinement of the franchise's strengths. I own Empire as part of a bundle but never installed it. Not sure if I ever plan to... the gun combat is something I could never really get my head around and I hear that the interchangeability of units is a little bit disappointing.

no. it took us 46 mins to have a shot at home. we seem to have no organisation and no idea what we are doing. it is all very clueless. the defence is the worst is has been in about 25 years. its woeful all round. Thats disappointing to hear. mcleish was very negative but at least there was some sort of game plan even though it wasnt entertaining at all. After 2 games of lambert i can honestly say i have no idea what we are trying to do at all. alarmingly neither do the the players :? I don't agree at all that we ever looked like we had a gameplan under McLeish, beyond "let's try to lose 0-1 instead of 0-2", but it is true that we've looked aimless and clueless in these two opening games. I'm happy with Lambert's appointment and think we've potentially got a very good manager, based on what he did at Norwich, but he needs to take some of the stick for the way we've started this season. It's not all about squad weakness. He's made some very poor tactical calls and I hope he starts learning from his mistakes quickly.

16-bit games that tried to go the 3D polygonal route were usually terrible. It was usually in direct contradiction of the hype they got, since journos would just harp on about how amazing the tech was while enjoying their industry freebies. I've played a lot of terrible games but these early polygon-based games felt like the worst, since the shattered expectations were like salt in the wound. So in that spirit, my choice is Corporation, an early FPS on the MegaDrive: This green guy from the intro screen was like the game's scary gimmick, like Quake's shambler or Silent Hill's Pyramid Head. Meet one of these and it was pretty much instadeath, mainly due to the shite controls. ^That's supposed to be a door. Scary robot. Like I say, this was more a case of unfulfilled expectations rather than it being literally the worst game ever. It had some really novel ideas for its time, as the cluttered interface with its multitude of interesting bits and bobs hints at. It got something ridiculous like 98% in whatever Sega mag I was reading at the time, but it felt utterly broken. The amount of times I got stuck in doorways as the black doorway polygon filled my entire screen, and I would slowly rotate my field of view until I saw a sliver of not-doorway that I could desperately move towards... but somehow fail and end up stuck in a doorway or wall again. Maybe not the literal worst game in existence, but surely my worst and most disappointing experience ever playing a game.

OMG theres a cryptic message in here about us signing someone, I just know it. Robbie Fowl-er coming out of retirement??? Or does it mean that Lerner has mucho DINNER-o to spend, and therefore we are going to buy Gerard BEAKué??

Plays like a more attacking version of Petrov, which I think is great, as someone who always rated Petrov.

As someone who once though he might have some potential I have to accept the evidence of my eyes. He's not a team player, he's a glory-hunting, static creative type - that's a combo that doesn't work. It means he's always looking for a pass that will blow people's minds and put him on a highlight reel, but most of the time it just means possession just turns over. His hunger to look good means he'll sometimes rarely succeed with one of these passes, or he'll pop up with a shooting chance, which glosses over his flaws for a while. However, in terms of long range shooting he thinks he's Ronaldo so he blazes it out of the park more often than not. And that's the stronger part of his game. The weaker part is that he's completely invisible in any game which requires some kind of physical presence or tackling, so practically every top league game. It really worries me that Lambert has immediately taken a liking to him.

That seals it... he's got a funny dog and is so lazy I didn't even see him on the pitch today. Ship him out.

What's he done now? Bought a t-shirt that was too gaudy?

I suspect that was every bit as much to do with Everton taking their foot off the gas as anything we did. You know how a cricket team declares when they think they have an unassailable lead? It happens in football too sometimes. Dont let the last 15 minutes gloss over a performance which was as bad as anything served up under McLeish. I mentioned it this in the match thread but I don't think it was entirely down to this. Our first touch suddenly looked crisper and we looked braver, despite the fact that Everton were still attacking and hammering us (some evidence being Mirallas' offside goal late on). Definitely one of the worst performances I've ever seen, but the point I'm trying to make is there is a very strange problem with our mentality as a team that Lambert has to sort out on top of everything else. He has to instil the players with confidence and give everyone a sense of purpose. I honestly think that playing better at the end was less about Everton dropping off (because they didn't, really) and more about the players loosening up and not stopping to overthink things.

Terrible performance, made slightly less bad by a strange change in mentality that came over us about 15 minutes from the end. Suddenly we didn't give as much of a shit, which allowed us to take an extra clever touch here and there, the finest example being the work down the left wing which culminated in Weimann hitting the post and Bent missing a chance at the second goal. N'zog was part of that move with a lovely little overhead flick to set off Holman - the rest of the game it was like his mentality and confidence wouldn't have allowed him to do something like that. MOTM was KEA for always looking assertive and capable in possession. Also don't attribute his goal entirely to bad keeping - it swerved like a crazy bitch and put Howard completely on his heels. However KEA was crippled by having Bannan beside him, a complete non-entity. Apart from KEA only Herd had a decent game, strong in the tackle and positive on the ball. Given was terrible, Clark, Baker and, I'm afraid, Lowton just aren't good enough. Lowton was massively helped out by Herd doing a super defensive job out on that side. Speaking of which, the line-up was bad. Bannan starting was dumb, Clark's selection over Baker at CB proved to be a liability, Herd out wide didn't work, and where was Ireland? Fonz tried but accomplished very little after a good run in the first minute of the game. Lambert didn't pick the right team, didn't set them up right, and didn't change enough at HT to give us a chance. Even with 10 men we got 1 back and should have had 2 while playing poorly - some better recovery tactics could have seen an equaliser. I hope Lambert learns from his mistakes fast. More importantly Lerner has to unzip the wallet and buy a whole defence.

Should be 2-3. I think we could have come back into this with better changes at HT.