Will be interesting to see what MON does with money in January. He had a bit to spend when he first came to Celtic and his most expensive signings all done good jobs for us - Lennon for £6m, still playing for us at 35, outstanding in the OF game on Saturday and another very good game tonight, also Sutton for £6m, virtually unplayable when at his best in Scotland and Hartson for £6m, loads of goals and again virtually unplayable at the top of his game.
I think any club will struggle to break into the top of the EPL now. Chelsea have bucketloads of money and the players in now, Man Utd are huge worldwide, have money and the "attraction" of playing for them while Arsenal don't quite have the money but have a great manager and great playing style. Liverpool I still think are just that one small level below these 3, even after winning the CL, but are the closest anyone will get to breaking into the big 3. Its almost a big 4 really.
I think the best that Villa can hope for is to become a Spurs, Newcastle type side who have pretensions of joining these sides, sometimes threaten to do so but will struggle to finish ahead of these 4, and in a CL spot, on a consistant basis.
MON has had a great start, he is a great motivator of teams and gets them believing in themselves but he also has an excellent couple of assistants in Walford and Roberston. Its more a team effort than a lot of people think.
He/they did well at Celtic but his one fault was he didn't replace the players who needed replacing on a more regular basis, stuck with his favourites, which in a way is fair as they had done it for him in the past.
If you look at his league record at Celtic however, there was league titles won by 15 points in the first season, and this was after Rangers had won by approx 15 points the previous season, followed by a 18 points and 2 seasons later, 17 points.
The two seasons we lost the league were by 1 goal on goal difference, we missed a pen in the last game of the season, and 1 point, lost in the last 4 minutes of the last game of the season. He was extremely close to rattling off 5 league titles in a row.
There was also a great European home record, dreadful away, and a
UEFA Cup final followed up by a
UEFA Cup quarter final the following season, excellent achievements for a Scottish side.
His record at Leicester was also good, two League Cup wins before every EPL side became a snob about the competition and a consistant mid/top half EPL side. The question about well he did there was where were Leicester before he joined and where are they now?
I think overall he will do well and as I said at the start, will be interesting to see what he does with a bit of money available. I have heard stories of Bobo Balde for £4m in January
Can Villa Get To Chelsea's Level?
TOTW/F/M Award(s): 1
But I honestly think hes only using us as a stepping stone & keeping his eye in for Man Utd when fergie goes. He'd been out of football for a year & if he just hung around for Fergie to go & it took 3 years then thats a hell of a long break......I think hes keeping himself in there & took the biggest job available to him at the time to tide him over. Hes already proved hes a superb man manager as the Villa squad, minus Petrov, is the same as last season. .GIF "Thumb(1)")
I'll go & edit that post 
