can you understand delusions of grandeur? You sound a lot like our neighbours, the tiny totts.

For a broader perspective on things, though, I’ll tell you all where Villa are in terms of ownership, direction and re-establishment. We are where Arsenal were around about 1986-87. Lerner is our David Dein and O’Neill our George Graham, if you will. The point the author of this blog misses entirely is, apart from finances, Lerner has a rock-solid vision for the club and where he wants it to be. He and the Manager are in it together and both understand the club, its history and where it needs to be. I think this is why so many Villa fans are happy with the people at the top of the Club. It’s their vision and attitude. (That O’Neill tells Wenger,Benitez -whoever- where they can go is exactly what we want in a leader.) They believe, quite rightly, that Aston Villa should be second to none and are working very hard to get the club back up there competing for, and winning, the League and European Cup once more. That is what we all want.

Unlike yourselves, let us not forget, Aston Villa have a tradition of winning the very top trophies. Restoring English football’s greatest club is probably the most special job out there -Lerner and O’Neill are doing a fine job. It’s football’s equivalent to restoring a vintage Rolls-Royce.

it is not nationalism, dear fellow, it is just insularity.

O’ N E I L L.

Best wishes.

Before taking potshots at another club, its playing style, its manager or its fans, you should first get your own house in order, surely? The diving of a certain Arsenal forward springs to mind. The hissing and anti-Jewish chants when playing North London rivals spring to mind. The feeble surrendering to direct counter-attacking football springs to mind, too.

Villa being hamstrung by the twenty-five year reign of English football’s most awful chairman (Doug Ellis) seems to have given you folk the misguided view that your club is superior to Aston Villa. You question Randy Lerner’s financial practices – I’ll tell you what, I’m very confident that they are sound, very carefully thought through and substantial enough to restore Aston Villa to its rightful place at the very top of the pile.

Isense the problem here. I sense frustration. I fear you folk can feel your rather plastic Premier League era spell of success is coming to an end. Cheer up! At least you have a new, fairly large soulless concrete bowl of a stadium to boo your team out of over the next decade or so (a concrete bowl that is already looking a little dated, might I add). Aye. You get rid of Highbury for that! In twenty years time you will look back in anger. A soulless club, built on bribery, putting money before its own (limited) tradition. Sad, sad, sad! And you lecture your elders and betters at Villa Park about class?!

Give me the peerless Aston Villa Football Club any day.

P.S. Talking of stadia, wait ’til you see Mr. Lerner’s plans for the expansion of Villa Park – observe, in the process, his respect for the unrivalled history and traditions of English football’s original giant. News will be filtering through soon enough…

Completely agree about Mr. O. It’s sad, but I don’t think the media likes smart people.

Not really. Its against the Laws of the Game.

So. Strong sauce, or whatever you say in Brummie Land

As for Villa, they like the Spud’s may mange to break into the top 4 over the course of the next few seasons. What they don’t understand is that they will go out at either the qualifying or group stage, this will lower the PJ’s coefficient and that could end up resulting in the PL losing a place to another country, thus making it harder for them to qualify again. Their hope relies on them not achieving their aims. Bit strange really.

The referee stopped the game and naively checked to see if he was ok. Strange he went down holding his head since he gave the ball away with his leg.

But Martin O’Neil teaches them right.

I dislike MON. I detest his false earnestness. You know that kind of “you know I wouldn’t lie to you” earnestness.

I also detest the way he loves bootlicking the media.

On the issue of economics, I was not wishing to suggest Villa is like Chelsea or Man C, but following the model of Bolton, who do the same thing. (We had quite a review of the Bolton finances in the last couple of weeks when Arsenal played Bolton – who for reasons I won’t try to explain we habitually call Notlob on this site).

Some of my thinking was influenced by an interesting piece in the Guardian in the last day or so, which reviewed the lending and rate of interest by the owner in some detail, and they reached the conclusion too that the new rules would mean they could not go into Europe.

But I do agree with you, there are virtually no UEFA rules which are followed properly, so you could well be right.

But may I reiterate I do appreciate you writing back in a manner that accepts who we are and what we do here.

And I must admit when Martin O’Neill came to my house to pick up his daughter, he was the most courteous of men, and I was impressed that even a man of his status would personally put himself out to go and see what sort of maniac had been hosting a children’s party for the past 3 hours.

Tony (and my titles are all just honourary – awarded by readers for reasons that are quite beyond me)

1. Yup, tight game. Neither side covered themselves in glory in front of goal. It’s an area for concern for us at the moment. Next.

2. Yes, sore point with a lot of Villa fans and MON received more than his fair share of criticism for it. Hindsight probably suggests it was a mistake, but hindsight is always 20/20.

3. Mmmmm. Weak sauce. Cry more.

4. No, you’re way off the mark I’m afraid. RL has been generous, without being extravagant since taking over. Last annual accounts show a £7m loss with interest payments back to the holding co. of ~£4m that year. We’ve doubled the wage bill in the last few years to £50m. Clearly it’s a strategy of firm, but steady investment that is perfectly manageable. It’s not inconceivable that the finances can be tweaked in the next few years to meet any UEFA requirements.

We’re a club very much going about re-building ourselves the right and decent way and it’s incredibly harsh to throw us in with the vulgarity that UEFA are trying to tackle. We’ve a lot of years of neglect under Deadly Doug to undo, but we’re hardly doing a Citeh or Chelski here and RL is no sugardaddy.

5. Oh dear.