Defensive Poser For Villa

Cech is proof that a great keeper is worth many points a season. i'm not knocking Tommy, he's having his best ever season, but for us to take the next step we need a great keeper. we should try and get Robert Green when the hammers get relegated. the other problem we have is our ever changing back four. we need consistency more than anything. laursen is quality, but too injury prone, we need to decide on a pair of centre backs and let them form an understanding

Green is no better than Sorenson IMHO. If he is better, then it is only marginal. If we are going to invest in a keeper it has to be a world class one. We have two reasonable keepers and I believe that only Cech, Van Der Sar and possibly Given are better than what we have. The rest are all of a similar standard, apart from Robinson who is probably the worst English keeper ever. It is true that a good keeper can be worth many points. If you look at all the games this season, Tommy has won us many more points than he has lost us. Think back to the games at Arsenal, Watford, Chelsea, Everton and the home game to West Ham. I can not think of a single game (but maybe I will be reminded otherwise) where we have lost points because of an error by him. I personally would have got rid following his mistakes against the dildo salesmen a few years ago. But he has recovered brilliantly from that and only the three keepers mentioned earlier would improve the team. I just think the old Villa fan failings of critisising our own is still a problem and it could prevent the club from achieving the status we want.

I always though it was a team game win together lose together, no one cares who stops the ball going into the net,,,,,, as long as someone remembers to do it.

its always been our windfall -our last 3 managers have not solved the problem!

My personal opinion is that a lot of the soft goals we have conceded are because we have not settled on a regular back four yet - this is in part due to O'Neills lack of a pre-season and in part because of injuries throughout the current season.. until we have a first choice settled back four these "concentration lapses" and "organisational mistakes" - (aka balls ups to you and me) will unfortunately continue. Hopefully it will not take too long to rectify, else we will continue to leak soft goals.

I didn't see the Fulham game but the MOTD highlights suggested Laursen was at fault for the goal as it was he who lost his marker and scorer. We've had 3 weeks off, we know we have set piece problems so what have they been doing in Spain?

I agree fatloser, Mel and Ridge looked solid and comfortable. Having said that - how difficult is it to man mark at set pieces? They was 3 guys jumping for the same ball on the weekend whilst they let the goalscorer wander around the area unmarked? It maybe a case of having a 'mouth' in the team that gets up players to do their job??

Our defense is not up to the task, end of. Its more a collective thing, and blaming individuals for the odd poor game here and there, wont get to the bottom of the problem.