straight_red

As this Europea League football article points out we're facing another side with an excellent home record. They've won five out of six there in Europe land 11/12 domestically. A draw, or even a low scoring defeat would be a good result, and we can then look to get into them at Anfield.

Bit misleading some of these stats. O'Neill's net spend might be £66 million, but he's been at Villa since 2006. Compare that to Mancini at City. His net spend is £7 million, but which club do you think has been more prudent? Also, it's easy to forget what an awful state Villa were in when O'Neill arrived... He's done a good job.

don't agree with the "once a manc, always a manc" but. But he's clearly not good enough. Best of luck to him in the Championship next season.

As this Champions League football expert points out, Bayern's only hope is Ribery playing a blinder and he's still lacking match fitness. United to go through comfortably, sadly. Barca too, and Bordeaux and Inter...

If you read what it says in this Daily Mirror story the denial from Villa isn't very strong. It just seems he hasn't quit. That means he could still be considering his position...... If he has been asked to trim the wage bill and squad I'd be highly surprised if he stays - shows the club has no ambition.

I agree with this EPL match prediction blog which goes for a low-scoring win for us. Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a draw as we won't bother trying to attack to kill things off so Portsmouth will be in with a shout for the whole game.

According to the Daily Mail the Rhone Group would want a controlling stake in the firm. Not sure how the investment would encourage players to stay though. If, as Rafa says, Torres isn't motivated by money surely anything less than fourth means he's off?

With Rooney in the form he's in he'll just destroy out back line and make another mockery of the zonal marking system. It's going to be dreadful...

Maybe we should all just ignore them until the nasty men go away...

As this Europa League match review says the misery continues. And it's not just the result, it's the football. Who thought it would be a good idea to go to a team with an excellent scoring record and play for 0-0. Rafa needs to let the players of the leesh now and then. The Wigan result proved we can't grind out wins all the time. A bit of flair would do wonders.

The best we can hope for now is to achieve the best failure we can. Scraping into fourth would still be a failure - we should have been pushing for the title. Winning the Europa League would still be a failure - we should have been in the knockout stages of the Champions League. Our season is so far past turning points and kick starts it's a joke. All we can hope for now is that it doesn't turn out to be an utter disaster, but sadly that's what it's looking like. Still, Rafa has promised a come back and that's all that matter to me! Ahem.

Yeah, as this Europa League football blog points out Lille are a tough side to beat at home. Five wind and a draw out of six games this season, and they haven't failed to score for 20 league and European games. I'm hoping we'll manage to scrape a draw.

Have a look at the European league tables and then contemplate the question again. Real and Milan are so much better off than us it's not even funny. Juventus and Mallorca are probably more realistic comparisons but they're better off than us in their respective leagues. As for the financial side of things, I think you have to get to the Europa Cup final to match the amount of money you get from being in the last 16 of the Champions League, so again they're doing better than us there. It's a sad fact that Champions League qualification is now pretty much the be all and end all of things in football. Oh and if we do get into fourth and end up in the Champions League group stage, would you really be happy at the prospect of facing a number two seed that's either Real or Milan?

Sorry, but since when did scraping into fourth become a success for us? Rafa seems to have sucessfully lowered expectations to a massive degree and he's even struggling to deliver on that. If it wasn't for the Champions League fourth would be nowhere. I expected a title fight at the start of the season and in one of the closest (and probably worse) title fight for many years we're nowhere near. Fourth or not Rafa should go.

I'm not sure Whelan is the kind of person you want on your side in any battle... He's also wrong that American owners are a bad thing per se. Just look at Randy Learner down at Villa. He doesn't seem to have any problems understanding things... Overall, probably not helpful comments from DW.

Careful with Real Madrid, Lyon have a cracking record against them as this football stats site points out. I'm going for Lyon to qualify Man U v Milian draw Stoke Reading in a nice four fold

Spot on. It baffles me when people argue that it's the players fault. That might be an acceptable arguement if they wasn't for the fact Rafa has assembled them himself. Attitude is something which should be taken into account as part of the recruitment process. Rafa seems to have assembled a squad full of people who don't really care and aren't going to try and motivate each other.

Is that a John Shuttleworth reference? I think it is...

This Daily Mail interview with Paul Jewel suggests the fans are set to turn against Rafa, but I can't see that happening for for now (in the kind of way it would happen at other clubs, that is). In my view, there's no point in sacking him now - whoever comes in will still have to work with the same players and I doubt they could do much better. If we have to sack him, it should be at the end of the season but I would hope he'd do the decent thing and save us the bother by heading off somewhere else.

I'm afraid I have to agree with this. There's no point in Rafa moaning about players lacking passion and the right attitude when he's the one who a) signed them and b) should be motivating them for each game. Of course you can't blame Rafa 100% for his players' bad attitude, but you can blame him for bringing the players to the club in the first place.

But when they didn't replace Adebayor, they counted on Van Persie being the main goalscorer. Eduardo hasn't really had that much game time, so see how he copes. They've scored shit loads of goals from elsewhere in the team, but if they meet some stubborn defences and have a streak of tight matches, losing their main goal threat is definitely going to hurt them.

Rodwell is quality, but he's probably getting played too much at the moment for a player his age, apparently his stamina and conditioning aren't really at a level they need to be for every match in the premiership. As for the friendly, it shows that injuries will screw the national team in June, no cover adequate cover for any position. In midfield everyone was pretty poor - Barry isn't good enough against the world's best, was shown against Spain and again against Brazil. Wright Phillips loses the ball too much when he dribbles, and Milner gets praised just for not giving it away, which isn't enough for a winger. Weirdest thing about the defence was that despite never playing together before, they looked alright as a unit. As this football article on England's World Cup chances notes, it was individual errors that cost us. And they were mostly from Wes Brown, who shouldn't be playing international football. But can't see us threatening in June. I just hope we don't get too far cos the media will become sickening again.

The biggest joke with Veron was that Chelsea still gave them £16m for him. He was worth about £4m in the Premiership. Can't believe he did so well abroad.

Spuds want all their money back for him, they paid £14m and apparently some Russian teams are willing to pay £12m now. Can't see how they'd accept a loan in that case. Still, at £12m he'd be a snip compared with the £20m West Ham are expecting for Carlton Cole. Idiots.

Six reasons why Ireland can go through from this World Cup blogger on betting predictions, and these don't even count Domenech's use of astrology to pick teams or ridiculous over rotation of defenders! I would love to see Ireland scrape a famous victory .France not qualifying for the World Cup is payback for them winning the bastard in '98.