[drewks]

'Clueless pulis'

Ah, the mass fuckwittery begins.

  Nicely put, BC!!
TP has made decisions that we all think are, at best, odd, but that's his perogative. He knows more about football than we all do amd he certainly knows more about our squad than we do.
He's probably saving us from relegation that seemed inevitable a short time ago, a relegation that would be VERY hard to recover from. These last 2 games are, as has been said, disappointing and a wake-up call. No more.

And as for 'f***wittery' those morons that say they're Albion fans and then behave like that are a disgrace; hopefully they will be identified and banned for life.

[SomersetBaggie]

Getting to Wembley would have been great but ask Wigan fans if they would swap with us. I bet the majority would prefer to be in the premiership. There is still hope that villa will be in the chumpionship next season!

Lets get behind the team and manager for the rest of the season, we can then see what TP does regarding signings in the summer.

[Borders Baggie]

It always amazes me on forums that lots of punters are brilliant football managers.
Who should play, what formation, how to attack, who shouldn't be near a starting XI etc.
Tony Pulis knows how to keep a team up. He's already said this was a massive job with the tools he'd been given.
Punters saying Pocognoli should play, Gamboa should start, we need pace down the flanks. Pulis works with these players every day and will know (better than any of us) if these players are showing enough and capable of performing in a team battling against the drop. From his team selections since he became manager, it's obvious that certain individuals are not showing enough day in, day out to warrant being put into the heat of the battle.
Yet after a poor first half against Burnley and two losses to the Villa, we get the usual dissenters to the current manager, player, set up ........
I for one will be back behind my desk Monday morning, doing a job that I'm decent at. I know I'd make a crap football manager. But I'll be looking forward to the Stoke game, who will be in the squad, who will start and give the players and management team the backing they deserve.

[BC Baggie]

8 points clear of the relegation zone. No wingers, no full backs, 2 half fit strikers. I don't know about 'clueless pulis', more like 'best manager outside the top 6'

[wba_1996]

8 points clear of the relegation zone. No wingers, no full backs, 2 half fit strikers. I don't know about 'clueless pulis', more like  'best manager outside the top 6'

I'm not anti-Pulis by any means, but we have 4 recognised fullbacks in our squad and a winger Pulis signed himself on the bench so I don't think that can be used as an excuse. Simply, Pulis picked the 4 centre backs and slow wide players through preference over the other options and they couldn't contain the pace of Agbonlahor, Sinclair, Delph or N'Zogbia throughout the two games. He has to take a chunk of the blame, as do the inept performances of the majority of the players and Foster for giving them the win in the league match.

Personally, I think the first thing we need to do in the summer is cut out the dross freebie signings of the likes of Gardner and Baird who were signed for the sake of it purely because they were free. It was obvious neither were a step up on what we had and, as with the Anelka and Lugano signings it is just leaving us with a number of below-par ageing players who need to be cleared out each summer. Funds need to be made available to TP in the summer if we are ever going to get back to the comfortable midtable seasons like we had under RH and SC.

[GlassEyedBomber]

8 points clear of the relegation zone. No wingers, no full backs, 2 half fit strikers. I don't know about 'clueless pulis', more like  'best manager outside the top 6'

I'm not anti-Pulis by any means, but we have 4 recognised fullbacks in our squad and a winger Pulis signed himself on the bench so I don't think that can be used as an excuse. Simply, Pulis picked the 4 centre backs and slow wide players through preference over the other options and they couldn't contain the pace of Agbonlahor, Sinclair, Delph or N'Zogbia throughout the two games. He has to take a chunk of the blame, as do the inept performances of the majority of the players and Foster for giving them the win in the league match.

Personally, I think the first thing we need to do in the summer is cut out the dross freebie signings of the likes of Gardner and Baird who were signed for the sake of it purely because they were free. It was obvious neither were a step up on what we had and, as with the Anelka and Lugano signings it is just leaving us with a number of below-par ageing players who need to be cleared out each summer. Funds need to be made available to TP in the summer if we are ever going to get back to the comfortable midtable seasons like we had under RH and SC.

personally don't know how you can say Gardner is a bad signing. Probably one of our better players this season.

[tidy]

One thing that has not been mentioned this weekend is that QPR made our relegation slightly less likely by losing their game in hand at home to Spurs.

In a REALLY bad week, it made me feel ever so slightly better.

[May68]

Hi. May68 here. I'm a new user though I've been lurking for a while. Used to post occasionally on the old BBC606 site. STH in the BRE, and I've been going to games since the 93/94 season.
Felt like I had to sign up and post, just to vent my frustration at the last week. I have to say, I'm surprised at the number of people jumping to TP's defence. I agree he will almost certainly keep us up and deserves a bit of slack for that very reason, but that does not make him immune from criticism. The fact is, in these two Villa games he has got it horribly wrong. When we win he gets the praise, but when we lose people blame the players for their individual errors. In this way, he quite literally can do no wrong in some fans' eyes.
If we had put those two team selections and performances in under AFI, then half the Black Country would be outside his house with pitchforks and torches, baying for blood. When we do the same under TP, the mentality of many is 'hey ho, TP sees the players in training, he's worked in football for years, he must know better than us.' Well exactly the same could be said of AFI, but that did not stop everyone criticising him (rightly).
Another thing I keep reading is that everything will be better once we have a summer clearout and TP is allowed to bring his players in. I admit our transfer dealings over the last 2 seasons have been generally poor, but if we expect TP to sort this out I think we will be disappointed.  Giving him too much control over our transfer dealings is dangerous given that when he was Stoke manager his transfer policy was to spend a fortune on bang average British journeymen.  TBH I think McManaman will be a flop but I hope I am wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I am not calling for TP's head or anything, I just think he is far from the messiah some people are making him out to be. He is making strange decisions with regard to team selection and we are far far too negative away from home even when playing teams demonstrably worse than us.

[drewks]

8 points clear of the relegation zone. No wingers, no full backs, 2 half fit strikers. I don't know about 'clueless pulis', more like  'best manager outside the top 6'

I'm not anti-Pulis by any means, but we have 4 recognised fullbacks in our squad and a winger Pulis signed himself on the bench so I don't think that can be used as an excuse. Simply, Pulis picked the 4 centre backs and slow wide players through preference over the other options and they couldn't contain the pace of Agbonlahor, Sinclair, Delph or N'Zogbia throughout the two games. He has to take a chunk of the blame, as do the inept performances of the majority of the players and Foster for giving them the win in the league match.

Personally, I think the first thing we need to do in the summer is cut out the dross freebie signings of the likes of Gardner and Baird who were signed for the sake of it purely because they were free. It was obvious neither were a step up on what we had and, as with the Anelka and Lugano signings it is just leaving us with a number of below-par ageing players who need to be cleared out each summer. Funds need to be made available to TP in the summer if we are ever going to get back to the comfortable midtable seasons like we had under RH and SC.

personally don't know how you can say Gardner is a bad signing. Probably one of our better players this season.

I agree! I've been pleasantly surprised by Gardner almost every game! 

[Salopbaggie]

Hi. May68 here. I'm a new user though I've been lurking for a while. Used to post occasionally on the old BBC606 site. STH in the BRE, and I've been going to games since the 93/94 season.
Felt like I had to sign up and post, just to vent my frustration at the last week. I have to say, I'm surprised at the number of people jumping to TP's defence. I agree he will almost certainly keep us up and deserves a bit of slack for that very reason, but that does not make him immune from criticism. The fact is, in these two Villa games he has got it horribly wrong. When we win he gets the praise, but when we lose people blame the players for their individual errors. In this way, he quite literally can do no wrong in some fans' eyes.
If we had put those two team selections and performances in under AFI, then half the Black Country would be outside his house with pitchforks and torches, baying for blood. When we do the same under TP, the mentality of many is 'hey ho, TP sees the players in training, he's worked in football for years, he must know better than us.' Well exactly the same could be said of AFI, but that did not stop everyone criticising him (rightly).
Another thing I keep reading is that everything will be better once we have a summer clearout and TP is allowed to bring his players in. I admit our transfer dealings over the last 2 seasons have been generally poor, but if we expect TP to sort this out I think we will be disappointed.  Giving him too much control over our transfer dealings is dangerous given that when he was Stoke manager his transfer policy was to spend a fortune on bang average British journeymen.  TBH I think McManaman will be a flop but I hope I am wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I am not calling for TP's head or anything, I just think he is far from the messiah some people are making him out to be. He is making strange decisions with regard to team selection and we are far far too negative away from home even when playing teams demonstrably worse than us.

Welcome to this board May68