I Like Davies, however he looked decent alongside the outstanding Laursen. His injurys although unfortunate smack of ones that will niggle him for the rest of his career, and we will never recover the transfer fee we spent on him. If you think hes a great Oneill signing why would he sign 3 center halves since signing him and have him clearly lower down the pecking order than them?

Im not under any illusions about where we were before Oneill came in, and understand the heep of rubbish he had to clear when joining the club. However you are confusing this with his job which is to spend the money he is given as effectively and to the benefit of the club as best as possible. I look at the shambles before Oneill came in and think a performing monkey given a little money could improve that team. However Villa are a big club, we have always done well in the premier league. You are referring to a period whereby we did suffer a bit, as if villa have always been down there and were lucky Oneill came in and saved us. I however beleive any half decent manager given a bit of money could have improved us. He took over a big club, performing well below its level and has now after spending quite a bit realised he still a has a lot more work to do.

The glass ceiling we find above us is that despite wins against some top teams this season, in my mind that we dont play great football and we struggle against teams we should be up against. I went to wembley twice and despite the decisions we should have got, that doesnt explain why i saw us played off the park for most of the games. Should we be a team that needs a red card to win these games? Spurs who got the top four, played football light years ahead of us the game where Dawson got the equaliser, they literally played us off the park.

Oneill has his strenghts, but the transfer market is not one of them. Most of his best deals have fallen into his lap. Like when Lyon wanted to swap Carew for Baros. Like when we lost Barry to Man City and it was clear Dunne was up for grabs so we took him. Milner had been on loan here and was already popular with the fans, im sure the existing staff where in his ear to buy him. The only transfer i could truly applaud him for was Ashley Young. However if im looking at the rest of the crap he has bought in, im not ok with his record like you are. Everton are a great example of how you can get good players without spending crazy money. Fulham are a great exmaple of how you can build a great footballing team out of talented players who arent exspensive or fashionable just from a managers tactics. I would say Oneill had his day at Leicester when he managed to unearth some players to take Leicest places. Celtic, i think none of it counts as its a mickey mouse league and all his best players he inherited. He needs to realise hes managing a little unfancied team like Leicester or a team in a mickey mouse league where you inherit a few players and play them over and over and win trophies. He is playing in the most intense competition in the world and he cant even bring himself to look outside britain for talent? Oh sorry Salifou hmmmm wonder how much money he is on, more Oneill Genius eh. All that information regarding transfer and net spend does not include what really matters in modern day football, as anyone with a brain would know. That is wages! You pay a lot of rubbish players big wages and never play them that millions flowing out your club every week.

Personally i think to go up further we need a manager that can really manipulate the transfer market and who is tactically much better than Oneill. Someone who can use subs and rotate his squad keeping more than just 11 players happy. There is no way villa will ever hold onto a decent squad with him as manager and despite all the praise about him playing the oungsters i have seen him put no faith in the youth of this club since he has joined other than gabby. How defonse wasnt being brought on ahead of Heskey towards the end of last season i dont know.

I waited after the blackburn game to applaud the players and he couldnt even be bothered to come round to thank fans for their support, too busy being coy about his future.

My prediction for next season, Milner has gone and the money has been re-invested in players that we have all heard of before and for inflated prices as they are all from premier league teams. The team manages to finish 7th next year to which everyone is delighted about as hey what can we expect. Then the player who performed the best for us that season, gets bought off us by one of the teams above or around us and so the cycle continues.