I'm only mentioning the friendly win against Walsall now, because it was a friendly and it was Walsall. We were always going to win. It means nothing. Saying that, it was nice to see Bent and Heskey both get on the scoresheet and by all accounts, there were some positives.
The biggest one for me is I've been told that Stephen Ireland looked up for it, even if he didn't see out the game, he looked lively.
Some of the younger players got a chance too and again, by all accounts, nobody disappointed and it looked like we could have scored more than the three we ended up with.
But it was just a friendly, which is mostly why I've not mentioned it until now. Still, nice to get a win and lets hope we get a few more in Hong Kong.
Pressure on the board
So, the Charles N'Zogbia saga drags on for another day, but there is a clear as day message from the manager to the owner.
I would love it to happen quickly. But it’s not down to me. The admin side is not my department. I can only recommend the players and then it’s up to the club, but they have been trying very hard. For now we are concentrating on this one. I have no worries about young Marc Albrighton because he has a great future, but we need someone on the other side.
We have made an offer of £9,000,000 - because Dave Whelan told us. At the same time as telling us this, what seems like quite a few days ago now, he also said the price was £10,000,000 - so it appears the club were happy to do business at one price, but for whatever reason, only known to one or two people, they wont stump up the extra £1,000,000 to get the deal done.
I hope it happens soon and I have to tell you, I'm surprised it hasn't been done already, if all it comes down to is this. More on this if anything happens today, but there is talk in the paper today that we might be turning our attention to Aiden McGeady - it would be sad to lose out on first choice for the sake of £1,000,000, when we've sold two players for a reported £36,000,000 in recent weeks.
Fantasy football
Just another reminder to click here to play the fantasy football game. All you have to do is register your team and add it to the AVFC Blog mini-league. The pin code is 163802 and the password is blog1234.