http://astonvillacentral.com/2010/04/imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery/

you’re right, we continued to progress without barry, but there’s an argument that we could possibly have achieved more with a committed and motivated barry *and* milner, but, after all, that is just conjecture.

my personal view is that while it’s a lot of money on the table for milner, we still have to go out and find the replacement(s). if it were that simple, that’s what city would be doing, they’re not though, they want james.

Capello is definitely an established manager, he isn’t used to not fine-tuning his squad week in week out so I can imagine how difficult it could be for him. I trust he will take all the negatives from this World Cup and learn from his and the players mistakes, everyone deserves a second chance and sacking Capello will put us back to square one again.

On the Milner subject, I feel as if i’m being too over-confident with him not leaving. He seems like a player that has his head screwed on so surely he must see the potential and progression within our squad; I won’t be too worried if it happens as I remember how I felt when Barry left and look at us now!

I wonder if we could have a cheeky bid for Adam Johnson, he fits into O’Neills usual English wonderkid criteria (which I’m heavily in favour of)…thats if Man City haven’t got him in their future plans.

i know tottenham fans have bemoaned having their players poached whenever they’ve got close to challenging the top in the past.

a liverpool fan friend of mine used to chuckle whenever i’d complain about it. it’s just the way these things work you see and i’m just a naive little villa fan. not so cocky at the moment though!

agree 100% about the national set up and that was some of the flavour of my post on it. to re-use the quote “we must be the change we want to see”. it’s about us all accepting that we have to go through a period of rebuilding and we’re actually not the greatest team in the world.

haven’t been for quite some time and won’t be again until we make changes. not sure that attitude will sell many papers though.

What a sorry state the game is in if that’s what it boils down to these days

I’m pretty much resigned to losing him, but still want him to stay.

So Capello stays, that’s good imo.

Next step, dump the “golden generation” and come straight out saying we are looking to build (much as the Germans did, I think) for the next WC, which may be at the cost of the European qualifying.

Do that and I reckon the fans could live with it.

It won’t happen though.
We’ll perpetuate the same media driven myth that we’re the best in the world.