benteke vs bent eke

playing with bent is like playing with ten players in most phases of play anyway

in this case you have a 5'6 defensive midfielder playing in hungary

benteke is now already one of the best of his type in the league, known for being very strong and workmanlike but now showing significant actual talent too

ceteris paribus of course......

i fucking hate darren bent

this whole villa team screams with the underinvestment consequent from paying about £16m too much for darren bent

How many times was Benteke caught offside today?

"this whole villa team screams with the underinvestment consequent from paying about £16m too much for darren bent"

Agree with this. The story goes that he was a panic buy to save us from relegation during the monumentally awful aftermath of O'Neill taking his ball and going home (we're still plum smack in the middle of that phase right now, hopeful signs be dashed). But what a fucking useless signing in that case - the whole squad was a bag of shite, so let's blow the whole budget on a player who doesn't bring anything to the table unless he's getting several chances a game served to him on a plate. Absolutely mind-boggling logic (or lack there-of).

The prevailing narrative that he is our star player and we should be reliant on him to get us out of our current predicament is totally the product of that inflated transfer fee, and it belies the fact that a return of 9 goals in his first season was meh and 10 in his second was in fact pretty rubbish. Get fucking fed up of people singing his praises and calling out Lambert for leaving out "a proven goalscorer, guaranteed 20 goals a season striker" when in actual fact Bent has only broken the 20 barrier twice in 9 seasons as a first-choice Premier League striker across 4 different clubs. In 5 of those 9 seasons he's actually scored 11 goals or less. Prolific goalscorer my fucking foot.

Basically him and N'Zogbia are prime examples of the colossal mismanagement of this club over the last few years. £34m on the pair of them. I don't just wanna regurgitate the same old shit about the transfer policy of clubs like Newcastle and Swansea but the point stands. That sorta dough could have put together a pretty decent Premier League squad, but instead it was squandered on divas and chancers. I'm aware that Villa are taking a lot of shit round here atm (hardly surprising considering the last two results / performances) but tbh I'd sooner see us pursue the course we're currently on (youth, energy, tenacity) than put our trust in the likes of Bent, N'Zogbia, Ireland, Dunne, Given etc.

Sure, we were giving the ball away a hideous amount today, but can you really blame the lads for being shook after the Chelsea game? Except for Benteke (who definitely needs a lot of work himself, even if everyone has been wetting themselves about him recently) I don't think a one of these boys is yet good enough for the job they're being asked to do. Whatever. If we are for the high jump, I'd sooner see us go out this way, as a kind of tragi-comic experiment-cum-parable about what happens to a side in this division when you ill-advisedly try to compete with the youth team. Can almost make my peace with that. Better that than the relentless nightmare of soulless drudgery that was the McLeish tenure, anyway. Something infinitely more likeable about Lowton and Bennett than there was about Warnock and Hutton. Spose knowing that the young'uns get paid about a quarter of the wages helps. And ah fuck it, who knows?! We might even pull it out the bag and stay up! lol

Oh yeah, point I originally wanted to make before I got side-tracked into that drunken rant - voting Benteke. FUCK Darren Bent.

No comment on Eke Uzoma, never met the man. Merry Christmas

realest of talk

otm cept we're prob, as a board, rooting for villa's youth experiment.

Also, idk if d bent has been 'first choice' for nine seasonx tbfttl

you may be right. but prior to his coming to villa we're talking 36, 32, 27, 33, 38 games in a league season for each of his clubs. Only 20 in his last one at Sunderland, admittedly. But if those numbers don't qualify as first choice each season then they can't be far off. (tbf I should also qualify this by stating that I don't know how many of these appearances were from the bench, but I'm a pretty bad sufferer with vertigo and right now this horse I'm on is far too high for me to even consider climbing down.

On your other point, there seems to be a degree of in and out running re: the Villa experiment round these parts right now. It's all fun and games when we're somewhat unsportingly pumping Norwich in the cup, and Bentekkers is Strictly-Ballroom-Dancing his way through Skrtel and Agger / giving Chris Smalling the monster truck treatment. But there's been a level of venom coming our way for these past few games which seems rather unwarranted considering that what you've got here is a team of apparently likeable and essentially untalented young hopefuls being ritually disembowelled in front of millions of viewers, firstly by a disgusting vanity project riding the back of the combined forces of grasping capitalism / shady organised crime in one week, then by tag team exertions of TinTin Boy Reporter and Tom fuckin Daley the next. More than a whiff of Baldrick and Lieutenant George being sent over the top at the end of Blackadder about recent Villa games, yet apparently we are "painful to watch" / "almost a whole team of craig gardners" etc.

Im sure in the cold sober light of day I'll read this back and shake my head ruefully, but right now when I read shit like that ^^^^^ about this team of poor misguided chumps I feel rather as I imagine the person would feel who's been out walking the dog in the park and has just seen some cruel heartless bastard kicking their adorably simple little puppy into the fucking pond.

if i;m getting carried away and need to rein it in, tell me. getting to that stage now where i could just keep on going otherwise

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wouldnt dream of it

We're all about venom here tho, you want to get used to that. I'm not sure that yr quoted evidence of ilf contempt for the villa qualifies as anything more than a light brush at best. I'd advise you to ride out the bumps involved in breaching the interface of wider consciousness, it's toxicon the other side but reasonably smooth ime

Yeah alright, I accept that these were pretty sweeping statements to make on limited evidence, no doubt about it. These were overall impressions formed, probably erroneously, off the back of a number of comments many of which I almost certainly inflated beyond their intended or appropriate significance.

Don;t wanna give the impression that I'm butthurt about people taking potshots at my team, nor that I'm incapable of rolling with the punches. THis wasn't intended as a "oh everyone stop being nasty about Aston Villa", more as a vehicle for me to vent my current affection for/exasperation with this Villa side. For that reason I did leave an open invitation on the main Prem thread, a kind of "would you like to take this outside?", if you like. Just thought it needed pointing out that for all that we might not be fun to watch at times, we are at least trying to do things "the right way". Whatever the fuck that might mean.

i don't hate villa cuz they're shit, i hate them because they have too many british players

you'll be cheering with the rest when Baker and Herd lead England to World Cup glory in 2018

wait, herd' s aussie isn't he? fuck that then

they have too many australian players too

that much we agree upon. at least 2 too many

there is some residual sympathy for westwood from crewe because he looked made up on transfer deadline day when being interviewed through a car window en route from villa's training ground

naturally this is misguided sympathy: he too must be destroyed

Something infinitely more likeable about Lowton and Bennett than there was about Warnock and Hutton

woah sorry but you've overstepped the mark there

x-post - n'awwww, that's the sort of shit i'm talking about. there's something so doe-eyed about them right now. it's like baker and herd, with that ridiculous hipster haircut, naively assuming that they can get away with just stepping up and heedlessly sticking a foot in every time an opponent gets the ball in and around our area. i'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts, because pretty soon the glitz and glamour of the premier league will drag them right down and they'll all be wearing leather and smoking like olivia newton-john at the end of grease, and they'll be demanding vast sums of money to do it.

Stephen Warnock was taken to the 2010 world cup. Mindboggling.

England's 2010 World Cup squad was a round on Pointless a while back. I think Warnock was a pointless answer.

My comment on the Prem thread about Villa being painful to watch cos they give the ball away so much was not meant to be a general comment about this Villa team ( I've barely watched them this season) but about the particular game I was watching y'day vs Spurs. Sorry if I caused offence.

Oh and Warnock is terrible, his one shining moment was presenting Chris with a prize iirc.

jesus christ you can't pander to em like that pandemic (pandervmic?) they'll learn nothing.

Haha, who was asking for apologies?! I was spoiling for a fight, not a handshake. Unsurprised to find that people don't actually care about Villa as much as I had drunkenly assumed after reading 2 or 3 derogatory comments about them.

Anyhow, as predicted I wake up sober and read this back with a rueful shake of the head. End-of-the-night, corner-of-the-pub stuff. Yikes.

bollocks to that, more of it please.

i'll fight you away, but i was after a long drive tbh and i've actually got a soft spot for this villa outfit (based on little more, i admit, than your argued case above of they're young and cheap and not very good but let's see how that works out)

but by all means say something i disagree with and let's go punk

Professional wrestling is a legitimate art form and ought to be recognised as such.

SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMM

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£18m and off to Brighton on loan.

this is a decline so steep that even i am wondering if he is really that bad now

did he lose all of his pace? he is still only 30

also in steep declines, sylvan ebanks-blake, 28, scored 14 in the champo two seasons ago and now a free agent

the most pronounced one-man team in recent epl memory?

Benteke is with Rooney at DC United now, lol

ben teke