Much Adam About Nothing

First of all the Villa news and gossip. Villa have been linked today to Blackpool's lynchpin central midfielder Charlie Adam, we've apparently had a £2.5 mil bid turned down. Also turned down was the £4mil bid we made for Jean Makoun from Lyon, again another central midfielder. Why the hell are we bidding for central midfield players? I thought we were supposed to be cutting out all this wasteful expenditure on players wages who basically don't play. We already have nine central midfielders in Petrov, NRC, Pires, Ireland, Delph, Hogg, Gardner, Bannan, Herd why do we need another, it isn't a priority surely? What we desperately need is someone to stick the ball in the back of the net and a left back but Houllier appears to want to compete with Spurs to see who can have the most Central midfielders in the squad. Sure some of ours could be leaving but we wouldn't get much money for most of them, either too old, too near contracts end or not established enough (and one is a fruitcake) for them to raise much in the way of fees. Houllier does appear to like central midfielders though, so much so he put four on the bench in one game recently, though I digress. I've seen it said today that we've bid for Adam to try and force Lyon's hand over Makoun (they are said to want £8mil - when they only wanted £6ml in the summer) but I can't see it. I think we just moved on when it was clear Lyon wanted more than we were prepared to offer. The other rumour of the day was an odd story about us getting involved in some sort of a swap with Newcastle, us getting the full-time nutter, part time footballer Joey Barton and them taking NRC off our hands. Hopefully you can file that one under "made up rumour"

In other news Gerard Houllier had admitted he made a mistake in playing Pires too early in his Villa career which was a very odd thing to say on a number of levels. Its odd because its actually an admittance that he did something wrong, must say I've rarely if ever heard that from him. Secondly it's tantamount to an admission that he doesn't actually know what he's doing. Pires is still way too slow but Houllier thinks he's improved, not sure which game you were watching on Saturday but Pires was almost anonymous but if you now think you played him to early then why why oh why did you get him in the first place? The day he signed, we had a reserve game, surely you could have asked him to play in that, if you'd done that you'd have seen that he runs like he's about 50, he is simply too slow for the modern game. We supposedly signed him because we had an injury crisis and its only now you think that Pires is fit, just as the injury crisis is over! Please don't bother playing him again we've got kids there that need games under their belts and wasn't the whole point of the new direction for Villa under Houllier to be using the kids and growing the club "organically." If we keep bringing in central midfielders at this rate the kids will never get a game.

Anyway enough of the football. Yesterday we had a few guests round for a meal and we drunk far far too much and ate ourselves stupid. A good time was had by all, though I suspect everyone is suffering for it today. I certainly was but I've perked up enough to write this at least, well at the second time of asking, I deleted it once by accident! (I'm blaming that on the hangover too!)

Onto things musical now and an album recommended to me by my good mate Pete who is a sort of musical taste doppelganger of mine. Our tastes are so similar its often scary. Anyway Blonde Redhead's album Penny Sparkle has been out a few months now by all accounts but its new to me and although a little one paced it definitely has its place. Its a downtempo chilled synthy little affair with aurally pleasing laidback spacey vocal delivery. Standout tracks are Will There Be Stars (see below), Penny Sparkle, My Plants are Dead and Spain. Its not going to be everyones taste but I find it fills a gap in that when I want to listen to something slow and mellow that isn't going to overpower me and interfere in my thought process then this album is my current album of choice. Thats about all for today, hopefully back tomorrow

  Blonde Redhead - Will There Be Stars by Paulo Vieira