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The Bells are Ringing Villa Blog

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20150723

A Scouting Insight (by James Curtis)
Welcome to a new blog piece by our very own James_Curtis. Feel free to ask James questions below, and we may well see more from him - Kimbo

A summer of coming and goings is well underway at Villa Park along with many clubs across the Premier League. A few people have enquired about why the change in philosophy at the club, in recent years we have seen Martin O’Neill buy British players for a premium where other clubs have seemingly struck deals with foreign talent. More recently, Paul Lambert bought many...

by kimbo - Comments: 7 - Views: 4224
20150724

7 Days of Villa (22 and 23)
For various reasons, last weeks diary didn't happen, so this is a bumper issue...

Friday, 10th July

According to just about every media outlet, Delph is off to Man City. I can understand it on paper, but not six months after:

It's really disappointing, but the fact is, in 112 PL games, he scored 3 and created 5. Those figures are disgusting; he's a loss, but irreplaceable...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1327
20150710

7 Days of Villa (21)
Friday, 3rd July

Liverpool continue to try and sign Benteke through the media; this time they roll out Robbie Fowler to publicly talk about how good Benteke apparently would be for Liverpool.

Gueye is on by the looks of things, just waiting for a work permit as he hasn't played the 75% of international games in the period required. It appears to be just a formality, everything else seems to be sorted.

Helenius is returning to Denmark; shame it didn't work out for him. I wish him well.

Fulham are linked with a move for Joe Bennett....

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1159
20150703

7 Days of Villa (20)
Friday, 26th June

It's reported that Fabian Delph has a release fee of £10m. That can't be true, can it? I could understand a relegation clause, but we could lose him for just £10m just months into a new deal? If this is true, it's a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.

We're linked with a 'swoop' for Spurs trio Emmanuel Adebayor, Andros Townsend, and Tom Carroll. That feels like lazy journalism.

Saturday, 27th June

Good news! The Delph release fee isn't £10m. Bad news! Apparently it's only £8m. What. The....

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 1022
20150626

7 Days of Villa (19)
Friday, 19th June

So at the end of last weeks column I was bored of Grealish and Benteke talk. Guess what?

Anyway, Kieran Trippier is not joining as he's off to Spurs, however it looks like his mooted swap with Matty Lowton will be 50% accurate, as he appears to be heading to Burnley.

Saturday, 20th June

I might just start referring to the Grealish and Benteke stuff as GaB. In fact, let's try that...

"There's...

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 1758
20150619

7 Days of Villa (18)
Friday, 12th June

Fabian Delph says he'd like Benteke to stay but won't try to force him into doing so.

Micah Richards is apparently set for a medical at Bodymoor early next week. This is pretty much everywhere, not just Twitter ITK accounts

Matthew Lowton is linked with a move to Burnley, I'm sure a move for him is best all round at this stage.

Benteke plays against Wales, and is awful. Still doesn't change the £32.5m clause though,...

by kimbo - Comments: 2 - Views: 1229
20150617

A Football Manager Summer...
A contribution from début writer Will Forrest - you can catch Will on Twitter at @WFAPEX - I'm sure we can get him to join the site too...

All Villa fans have fancied ourselves as potential future managers at some point in our life, whether creating your perfect Villa team on FIFA, bantering with fellow fans in the Holte Suite or playing Football Manager on your phone.

I'm certainly no...

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 923
20150612

7 Days of Villa (17)
Friday, 5th June

There's international stuff going on, and it's England v Ireland on Sunday, so there's stuff about Grealish and Delph in the news. None of it particularly interesting, truth be told.

Also, Cleverley to Everton is seemingly official. Meh.

Saturday, 6th June

We're linked with Pogba. I hope that doesn't affect his performance in the Champions League final tonight.

Oh, hang on. It's not that Pogba...

Right, it's his brother, Florentin, who currently plays for Saint-Etienne....

by kimbo - Comments: 3 - Views: 1254
20150605

7 Days of Villa (16)
Friday, 29th May

Cup final is tomorrow. I keep going from supremely confident to extremely concerned. Often within a couple of minutes of each other!

Team news is generally positive. Let's do this.

Saturday, 30th May

I should have known it was all going to go wrong when Falkirk got sucker punched at the end of their game...

Okay, we all know what happened. It was painful. Arsenal were better not just in performance but also tactically.

Are we all okay with me leaving it there? Why re-live...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1300
20150529

7 Days of Villa (15)
Once again, there are daily Benteke-to-Liverpool stories, so, whatever.

Friday, 22nd May

Sherwood says that he expects Vlaar to stay.

Saturday, 23rd May

He now says he's confident of Benteke saying.

Elsewhere, we're linked with Micah Richards. I believe he is a Villa fan, is he not?

Sunday, 24th May

Ugh. We play Burnley at home in the last game of the season, we're rubbish, Sherwood picks a bizarre/disturbing team, and the league season ends...

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 1208
20150522

7 Days of Villa (14)
I shall start off by saying that I'm not going to bother talking discussing the Benteke-To-Liverpool rumours, as they are a daily annoyance...

Friday, 15th May

Sherwood says Benteke would be better off staying at Villa. Obviously I agree!

Big day tomorrow, we could be safe, or we could be having a little bit of squeaky bum time on the last day.

Saturday, 16th May

by kimbo - Comments: 2 - Views: 1381
20150515

7 Days of Villa (13)
Friday, 8th May

The U21 side lost 3-2 to Middlesborough. Niall Mason and Jerell Sellars got our goals.

Other than that, it's all about tomorrow. Everyone has had their eye on this one as a 'We'll win this' fixture; let's do that, shall we?

Saturday, 9th May

WE DID! A pleasing 1-0 win - pleasing because Cleverley got his third in three games; pleasing because some players were ace; pleasing because plenty were not and although no-one let us down, we won ugly, which is nice of course; finally, pleasing because...

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 813
20150508

7 Days of Villa (12)
Friday, 1st May

It's May! Big big big big month. Like, BIG month!

We could stay up.
We could go down.
We could win the cup.
We could fail.
We could have new owners.
We could still have Randy.

It's all HUGE, and will undoubtedly have an effect going into June as the new owner saga may or may not carry on, and of course we will find out about retaining or losing certain players.

As for today, the only news of note is the U21 side lost 1-0 away to Reading. Other than that, it's all about tomorrow.

by kimbo - Comments: 2 - Views: 1295
20150501

7 Days of Villa (11)
Friday, 24th April

The U21 side beat Arsenal 3-1 with goals from Jerrell Sellars, Tom Leggett and Khalid Abdo. Lets say it was a dress rehearsal for the cup final

Saturday, 25th April

Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh. We started off awfully against Citeh, including the howler of all howlers from Brad Guzan. He's been vilified plenty for it, so what's the point of me piling on? I mean, I've even seen people slagging him off because he hasn't...

by kimbo - Comments: 4 - Views: 1351
20150424

7 Days of Villa (10)
Friday, 17th April

Tim says he'd sell Benteke. I really wish he wouldn't! I get what he's saying though; if Benteke is desperate to leave, he'd rather sell him than have a player that doesn't want to be here.

I really don't know how the Benteke situation will pan out. He has two years left so as long as we sort our safety out, I feel like an FA Cup win might be enough to keep him for next season at least, but if a genuine, real top-tier club comes in for him, can we expect him to stay? When I say genuine, top-tier, that sure as hell doesn't mean Spurs,...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 2028
20150417

7 Days of Villa (9)
Friday, 10th April

As you can imagine, the media is full of Sherwood and Spurs. He has some very nice things to say about them, but to the surprise of no-one, the tabloids were far more insistent on concentrating on anything that could be twisted; scumbags.

Saturday, 11th April

WE WON! It's been ages since we beat Spurs, so this was most welcome. Maybe Sherwood will have the hoodoo over Spurs the same way Lambert did over Norwich? That sure would be nice. (Okay...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1867
20150410

7 Days of Villa (8)
Friday, 3rd April

4-Day weekend hey? Boom. Anyway, all the talk is about Man Utd and us going there to win. Isn't it about time we got one over on this lot?

Saturday, 4th April

Well we didn't get one over on them today as we lost 3-1.

Sherwood said we were always in the game. I suppose that's true in as much as for the majority of it we were only one goal behind, but I don't think we were ever really in the game. I'm reluctant to get too down on the manager but playing 4-4-2 when Weimann and N'Zogbia...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1328
20150403

7 Days of Villa (7)
Friday, 27th March

Fabian Delph played all 90 minutes for England as we coasted to a 4-0 win over Lithuania.

Joe Cole says he wants to play against Man Utd. Yeah, that's not my first, "Man, I forgot we've got him!" moment this season.

Saturday, 28th March

Despite going 1-0 down, the ladies smashed Watford at their place in front of a respectable attendance of 1102. Goals came from Alicia Robinson (2), Katie Wilkinson and Kerri Welsh.

Neil Moxley (Sunday People) claims that Lerner is set to sell...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1730
20150327

7 Days of Villa (6)
It's international week. I wouldn't bother going to do yourself a cup of tea or anything before you start reading...

Friday, 20th March

Standard Friday, it's all about the game tomorrow. Plenty of Scott Sinclair talk, given his connection to the Swans.

Saturday, 21st March

That was disappointing. A 1-0 defeat when a win was really needed, or at least a draw. Swansea were the better team in the first half, we were better in the second half. A draw was probably the best result.

My biggest...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1560
20150320

7 Days of Villa (4...and 5!)
Due to Cheltenham related shenanigans, I wasn't around for writing last week - so enjoy a bumper issue! I'll try to keep it brief

Friday, 6th March

All the news today is about tomorrows cup game with the Albion. I can't help but be a bit nervous, they can't be that bad again, surely?

Saturday, 7th March

What a night! Albion were better than they were earlier in the week, which was to be expected. We were...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 2127
20150306

7 Days of Villa (3)
Friday, 27th February

Typical Friday, no news of any note, just match previews, positive talk from the club and a general feeling of doom from the fans.

Saturday, 28th February

We lose 1-0 to Newcastle.

I said after the Stoke game that I expect we’re going down.

What’s interesting is, I didn't feel that we deserved to lose against Stoke, and I felt that we deserved even less to lose against Newcastle.

So there are signs of improvement, but we are finding a way to lose matches...

by kimbo - Comments: 2 - Views: 1175
20150227

7 Days of Villa (2)
Friday, 20th February

Kevin MacDonald returns to Villa as Sherwood’s assistant manager, and the appointment is mostly greeted with positivity. There were also some very negative comments but I agree with the vast majority in this case. Lambert seemed to need a ‘bad cop’ as his number 2 but I get the impression that Sherwood is more likely to need a ‘good cop’ as his; KMac fits that.

Sherwood talks big about leaving a legacy at Spurs. I'm not going to lie, I felt a bit underwhelmed about his arrival and I can’t say I have much of a feeling either way...

by kimbo - Comments: 4 - Views: 1484
20150225

A Trip Down Memory Lane with Jonny Gould
Birmingham-born Jonny is TV and radio sports and news journalist, who lives and works in London. He’s a Sky News regular reviewing the papers and talking sport and runs www.sportsmedia.co.uk. He was sports editor of Beacon Radio in the late eighties and early nineties, which covered a Villa season of (near) glory under Graham Taylor.

He went to Handsworth Grammar School, ate orange chips at...

by kimbo - Comments: 5 - Views: 5645
20150220

7 Days of Villa (1)
Friday, 13th February

Welcome to the first entry of ‘7 days of Villa’ – basically every Friday I will be reviewing the previous Friday though to Thursday (I do parts of it as the week goes on, hence why some of it is in the 'present tense') for you; sometimes I’ll keep it brief, sometimes I’ll go off on enormous tangents, either way you’ll hopefully enjoy it :)

It’s an eventful time to begin; just a few days ago, Paul Lambert was removed from the club. BOOM!

Tim Sherwood...

by kimbo - Comments: 0 - Views: 1117
20150216

New Blog - The Launch Post
Welcome to a new blog, brought to you by independent fans forum, The Bells Are Ringing.

We could not have timed this better; with a new era at Aston Villa beginning, it feels like the appropriate time to launch this new aspect of TBAR.

I won’t be too long with the first post; there’ll be more to come soon. Simply put, this is a mere introduction to the blog.

First of all, what’s it all about? There will be all sorts of Villa-related musings; some regular columnists and features, some guest spots, and a fluid process that will develop over time....

by kimbo - Comments: 1 - Views: 1268