Aston Villa News 24/7Writer: young_jonah 
Date:Thursday May 15 2008
Time: 11:00AM
UK time is: 05:20:05
Choose your club
Other Sites
Network Navigation
Vital Partners
'If It's Football, It's Vital'
Top Four For Villa? Why Not?
Top Four? Why Not?
2007-08 will always be remembered by Villa Fans as the season that Martin O'Neill took us back into Europe. Okay its only the Intertoto Cup at the moment, but Aston Villa are one step away from the UEFA Cup. It has been a great season, but we should not stand still, lets plan for next season.
So what is our aim for next season? Many fans would argue that we need to aim for 6th again, most seasons it is a qualifying position for the UEFA Cup. I personally believe that we need to go into the Summer aiming higher, not 5th, but 4th. If we finished 6th it would be great, but we need to keep improving.
If we aim for 4th going into the Transfer Window then we can aim for the top players. I can't see any reason why we can not compete with the likes of Liverpool. They have Torres and Gerrard that are both World Class, but we have Barry and if we brought in a top European Striker we could do it.
Aiming for 4th would also encourage Barry to stay, he wants to play in the Champions League, of course he does, but I think he would rather be leading out Aston Villa than be coming on for the last 15 minutes at Liverpool.
This season, Liverpool finished 16 points ahead of us. 16 points. That is only 5 wins and a draw. If we were to sign a goalscorer and a top keeper then we could improve by 5 wins, surely.
Whatever happens next season, it promises to be an exciting one, now over to Randy Lerner and Martin O'Neill to take Aston Villa into the 3rd year of the infamous 5 year plan.
Whether the Champions League is their aim or not, I will be behind them 100%. UTV
Vital F1 Prediction League - Join now for Spain
Your Comments
Well said,and that flag looks great.
british84
abso-bloody-lutely.
jonah
I think Randy and MON will have met prior to the Barry meeting yesterday, so I reckon the plan is in place already, but I still think it will be interesting to see how the fans see next season panning out at this point, of course we can ask the same question in August too, hopefully it wont be much different.
young_jonah
Can we compete in Europe and the Prem??? Only reason we have done so well with our small squad is because we got kicked out of the 2 domestic cups straight away. We need at least 8 quality players to do this.
Villan444
Nice article Young Jonah well done. Jonah give him an extra portion of pudding tonight.
still skeggy
Next season will be very interesting, we at Everton managed to keep going in the league whilst in Europe, we in fact played much better whilst we were in Europe and just stopped when we got knocked out. I think we used 21 players this season, and on 3 occasions we made about 8 changes. Our back up players are crap though, so we didn't do too well in those games. (except our reserves going and being the only team to win away at AZ in europe lol). It is hard to be playing every 3 days though, you will need to rest players like young and barry, or by the end of the season they will burn out. Pienaar, Arteta and Osman played most of the games until about the 30 game mark, when they all visibly struggled to keep going. It's all about the squad not just the first team in Europe, something both of us lack in a bit. I'm hoping Everton sign at the very least 5 or 6 players of a good standard, and Villa will need to sign at least that to stay where you are in the league and compete in Europe. Will be interesting who copes the best, and the likes of Blackburn, WHAM and the barcodes will benefit in the league battle because of lack of Europe. I'm hoping we have a run at 4th ourselves, but if offered I'd accept 5th and some good cup runs again.
EvertonMike
Good article YJ, I agree that next season the next logical step is to try and gatecrash the top 4. If we can keep scoring the goals and tighten up at the back, then who knows! As for keeping Barry I'd say 2 signings of intent would persuede him to stay. Bentley and a top name striker.
DeanoVilla
Or Deano, maybe we could sign a right back?
Carlosio
personally i dont think we'll get 4th next season but it should be our aim, if that makes sense?? what i think will be a mistake is entering the intertoto as even with big investment in the summer we wont have the squad to sustain 4 competitions. i think we should have built this summer and concentrated on automatic european qualification next season and build again to add depth and quality. Only problem is that the better players want european football, along with piles of cash, so its catch 22 really.
themightyatom
Intertoto format has changed, Villa only have to play a two leg match against a team from Denmark/Finland or N.Ireland. Its that simple.
young_jonah
its not the intertoto thats the problem its the games after that in the uefa cup, assuming we get there. we'll have a qualfying round then a first round at which point 4 more league matches and then the knockouts if you get there. its easily going to add 10 games and you'd be hoping we get further in the league and fa cups this year which adds up again.
themightyatom
Villa have a real chance of gatecrashing the top four next season, you have been improving under O'Neill, and the top four are bound to slip up sooner or later the law of averages would suggest that. Arsenal and Liverpool are the two likely candidates to slip up, I really can not see Manchster United or Chelsea slipping up next season. I hope you do break into the top four as the Premiership has lost a lot of interest among the neutrals.
Dean1
We are currently learning to walk again, learning to walk after season upon season of being in reverse mode, progressing only at a backward crawl. Great strides have been made since the demise of the old regime. We are thoroughly professional nowadays in our actions and intentions off the field, behind the scenes, and the same can be said of the MON revival on the pitch also. We still have a ways to go before we'll be ready to break the monopoly of the so called Big Four, but lets face facts here. We're a damn sight closer as of right now, than we ever were back in August of 2006, August 2007 in fact, before a ball had been kicked in anger in the campaign just ended. As we all well know, we now find ourselves involved in what is going to be a very crucial summer transfer window. We have to get out there from day one, beating the bushes, and seriously competing to bring in the quality needed to help take us onto that next level. Not just to progress in fact, but to ensure that our sixth place finish this season isn't going to be a one-off, with a return to being no more than a mid-table outfit, mere also rans, for the next two or three seasons. I dont think that either Mr Lerner or MON will allow that latter scenario to unfold, they both know full well what is needed, and no doubt neither will sit back and allow complacency to slip back into the football club. Top four for Villa? As my good friend young_jonah so rightly says, 'Why not'?
glensider
Cheers Glensider, it is a real possibility, I am sure Barry will be leading the way.
young_jonah
Have Your Say
Recent Articles
Lambert Thanks Fans For Vociferous Support (Sunday May 19 2013)
Stats: Wigan v Aston Villa (Sunday May 19 2013)
Wigan v Villa - Team News 19/5/13 (Sunday May 19 2013)
We Deserve To Finish Higher (Saturday May 18 2013)
Pre Season Takes Shape (Friday May 17 2013)
Something For The Weekend (424) (Friday May 17 2013)
Lambert Sticking To His Policy - No Big Signings (Friday May 17 2013)
Shaun Maloney Speaks To Vital Wigan About Stan (Friday May 17 2013)
Mystic Mug Sits On Fence To Beat Lawro! (Friday May 17 2013)
Clark Ruled Out Of Wigan Match (Thursday May 16 2013)
Archived Articles
Vital Members League (view all)
| 1. | Pride of Lions | 868 |
| 2. | The Fear | 652 |
| 3. | BodyButter | 432 |
| 4. | kefkat | 365 |
| 5. | CDX_EIRE | 309 |
| 6. | ClivetheVillan | 244 |
| 7. | thefacehead | 239 |
| 8. | Villan57 | 239 |
| 9. | DeanoVilla | 196 |
| 10. | mike_field | 180 |
League Results (view all)
| Latest Results | ||||
| Wigan | 2 | - | 2 | Aston Villa |
| Aston Villa | 1 | - | 2 | Chelsea |
| Norwich | 1 | - | 2 | Aston Villa |
| Aston Villa | 6 | - | 1 | Sunderland |
| Man Utd | 3 | - | 0 | Aston Villa |
| Aston Villa | 1 | - | 1 | Fulham |
League Table (view table)
| Team | P | W | D | L | GD | Pts |
| 12. Fulham | 38 | 11 | 10 | 17 | -10 | 43 |
| 13. Stoke | 38 | 9 | 15 | 14 | -11 | 42 |
| 14. Southampton | 38 | 9 | 14 | 15 | -11 | 41 |
| 15. Aston Villa | 38 | 10 | 11 | 17 | -22 | 41 |
| 16. Newcastle | 38 | 11 | 8 | 19 | -23 | 41 |
| 17. Sunderland | 38 | 9 | 12 | 17 | -13 | 39 |
| 18. Wigan | 38 | 9 | 9 | 20 | -26 | 36 |
Breaking League News
| The Reality Of Newcastle United
» Newcastle : 20/05/2013 00:43:00
|
| PDC: 'Environment worse here than Swindon'
» Sunderland : 20/05/2013 00:39:00
|
| Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Sunderland
» Sunderland : 20/05/2013 00:31:00
|
| Report - Swansea City 0-3 Fulham
» Swansea : 19/05/2013 23:07:00
|
| West Ham 4 - 2 Reading
» Reading : 19/05/2013 22:55:00
|
|
» Newcastle : 19/05/2013 21:53:00
|
| The Moment That Made It All Worthwhile
» Arsenal : 19/05/2013 20:48:00
|
Current Site Poll (view all polls)
|
|
1 © - All content copyright Vital Network Ltd, not to be reproduced without explicit permission Copyright Issues
Cookie Policy
At Vital Football, we along with most other modern websites use small files called 'cookies' to create the most secure, effective and functional website possible for our users. Without these files our business model, based on advertising, breaks down and we would be unable to continue to provide the services that you are here to utilise. By continuing to use this website after seeing this message, you consent to our use of cookies on this device unless you have disabled them. For full details please read our Cookie Policy which can be found here. However, if you would like to disable cookies on this device, please view our Cookie Policy which contains an opt-out tool for disabling advertising cookies. Please also visit our information pages on 'How to manage cookies' if you would also like to block all other types of cookies. Please be aware that parts of this site will not function correctly if you disable cookies.