Aston Villa Blog fantasy football and five more quality players

You'll have to do the searching for this, but is what Martin O'Neill is saying today pretty much the exact same thing he said at this time last season? It feels like it.

Before I get to that, I just want to remind you that we have launched our fantasy football game for the new season and we will be closing the door on new entrants to the league on August 14th. You have to have your team registered and in our league by then or it won't be able to be added.

We have nearly 300 teams in so far and it would be nice to get it to 500, so if you are not already playing, click here for more information.

Anyway, back to Martin O'Neill and he has been talking today.

Martin O'Neill
Will we have players in by Thursday? I don't know is the answer. We want to try and strengthen the side and we will do our very best to do so but whether there's anybody in before Thursday or not I can't tell you.

I think that if you have five quality players in that would be excellent. You're talking about players that could immediately take their place in a decent Premier League side. I don't get anxious. These things take time, like everything else, and you want to try and be as right as possible. If you are looking for immediate replacements for Martin Laursen and Gareth Barry, we are pressing on with that.

We have enquired about quite a number of people and the ones we would like in I couldn't tell you that we would have anyone in by Thursday.

Now, if he is saying five new players, does that mean he only wants two more than last season or is he not counting those? I have to be honest with you, while I'd love to see some of the youngsters given a chance and I hope that they are good enough to make the step up, if they are not, I fear for us next season, because we really should have added by now.

It's not because of pre-season, it's because we should have known who we wanted and we should have acted on that a lot earlier. I know we do not have the attraction of Manchester United and we clearly don't have the funds to really compete, but surely we could have done a little work before the window opened and prepared for this?

Some of you will say we did but there is little evidence to back that up and while I'll be as optimistic as the next man about our chances, we need two or three truly very good players and not just decent Premier League standard for us to kick on next season. But, that is just my opinion.