The Villa Times 03/04/2006

Vital Villa asked which player would be the first out this summer. The majority – with 53% – said ‘more to the point, who will want to stay?’. The Djemba twins were the favourites to depart with 30% of the votes. 10% said Ulises de la Cruz will be off, 4% said Lee Hendrie, just 2% reckoned Mark Delaney and only 1% thought Jlloyd Samuel would be first out of Villa Park.

In another poll we asked if Villa would sell Milan Baros in the summer. 69% said yes, we are a selling club. 11% no and 20% weren’t bothered!

David O’Leary is about to launch his next book, this time about his time at Villa: Full tongue in cheek article! Click Here

Wigan and Middlesbrough have both been linked to a £1.5million bid for Jlloyd Samuel. Tell you what, lets keep the left back and sack the management team? He was going great guns before DOL and his crew came along.

David O’Leary is insisting he has the majority of fans behind him. ‘The fans are frustrated and it’s been building up for a long time. I can understand that frustration because it’s built up over so many years. They want to know now what’s happening. There’s a certain section who take their anger out on me, but I understand why and that’s up to them. But let’s not judge it on what we read in the papers.’


The facts on DOL so far: Click Here

David O’Leary has also been quoted in the weekend press moaning at the vendetta some of the local press have against him. I can’t be bothered to look the quotes up, if he thinks the likes of Bill Howell at the Mail is the reason for our woeful season, then ……… ? Puzzling.

An email doing the rounds at the moment rates if football teams were women: Click Here Villa come up, rather depressingly: Aston Villa – Dido: Bland, boring and still trading off the one big hit they had years ago. 🙁

Stats from our 5-0 loss to Arsenal. The worst one being the possession stat of just 27% for Villa. 27%? As Shaun Custis of The Sun said on Jimmy Hills excellent Sunday morning show on Sky Sports, ‘the minimum requirement is fight and the fight is not there with Villa’. Full stats: Click Here

It is the end of season awards time. The suggestions were put to Vital by the message board members. I will now run a series of polls to see who the eventual winners are. The first poll is asking for DOL’s best excuses. The other categories include player of the season, young player of the season, best beard of the season (done so Mellberg wins something whilst at Villa), goal of the season and the biggest let down. Click Here

The Sunday People and the Express and Star have reported that Juan Pablo Angel would be leaving in the summer. ‘Hopefully in the summer we’ll be able to bring people in,’ said O’Leary. ‘I badly want to bring in centre-backs and a big, James Beattie-type centre forward.’

O’Leary also admits that forgotten boy Mathieu Berson will probably be sold to Auxerre as he has excelled there. Some reports are suggesting that Berson could now be on the fringes of the France world cup squad. Certainly not good enough for Villa eh?!?

Other reports suggest that Villa will be able to buy James Milner but only if we sell Gareth Barry as part of the deal. 🙁

The official site says that Olof Mellberg and Milan Baros should return for Sunday’s game v WBA and Villa are also hopeful that Barry will return from an injured knee that he picked up v Arsenal.

Here we go, two weeks of quotes from the club telling us how well we will do in the two local derbies. Shot stopper (or sometimes shot stopper?!) Thomas Sorenson told the official site: ‘Now we have to look forward to the derbies. They’ll be two great games – totally different from Saturday. We’re up against different sides and it’s all about pride, passion and the determination to get results in those games. I’m sure we’ll put our foot down get the results. I think it is significant that we’ve beaten both West Brom and Birmingham this season. But we need to show character to get results in those two games, for the club and for the fans.’ I’d rather they all stayed quiet and did their talking on the pitch, nothing short of two derby wins will be acceptable.

The Aston Villa Blog is still running a petition to get David O’Leary removed: Villa Blog – Click Here Damian has now been joined by a new O’Leary out site: O’Leary Out.com – Click Here Happy days.

Looks like Martin Laursen could well be on the comeback trail. Wonder what odds you’d get for whether Doug Ellis or David O’Leary will be the first to say that his return is like a new signing?! He said: ‘I want to be back playing at the very top level and I am young enough to do that. I still have a lot to prove at Aston Villa and I owe a lot to the manager and to the chairman.’ He also says that his target for a first team return is mid-September. Full article: