Twitter detectives were hard at work this afternoon when a mystery player and his agent were spotted with Paul Lambert at Villa Park on a Sunday. After extensive analysis it was determined that the player was Feyenoord's captain and center back for the Dutch national team, Ron Vlaar. His name fits into many songs. Does this mean Vlaar is set to join Villa? Rumor is the fee being discussed is anywhere from 5-8 million pounds.
Images of Ron Vlaar and his agent being shown round VP. He's a Dutch international CB for Feyenord.
There have been rumblings about the future of Liverpool big man Andy Carroll since Brendan Rodgers has taken over at the Merseyside club. Rodgers has plans for Liverpool that don't involve a player like Carroll but apparently Aston Villa's new boss Paul Lambert thinks he'd be a great fit in Birmingham. Could Villa look to bring on Carroll in some kind of season long loan? Would a team of Darren Bent and Andy Carroll work for you? Let us know what you think.
One of my main frustrations with the online soccer community is the relative dearth of statistical data available freely so people like you and I can wonk out to our heart's content. A man who doesn't have that problem, lifelong Villa fan and WhoScored editor-in-chief Martin Laurence, put together this post on Karim El Ahmadi's stats in the Eredivisie. Of particular interest is the line Laurence draws between El Ahmadi and captain Stiliyan Petrov, and if El Ahmadi can fill those boots and more, we've got a real player on our hands here.
Ian King takes on the topic of one of our favourite Villians, Doug Ellis.
Hope you like lime green away kits!
Tactical genius Alex McLeish worn bench coats just added. In the pockets we found these unsurprisingly defensive notes twitter.com/classicshirts/…
— CFS(@classicshirts) June 13, 2012
Aston Villa doesn't get a lot of glory in Euro 2012 -- all we've got is Ireland. So let's read about Richard Dunne's thoughts on his side.
Via mao's Football come these looks at the possible new Villa kits by Macron. As always, take any kit speculation with a grain of salt until we see an actual product, but these seem believable. Home Away Keeper What do you all think? Do you hope these are what we see at the kit unveiling in two weekends? Personally, I don't love the away kit, though for some reason I really like the keeper one. EDIT: Via commenter TylerInOklahoma comes this video of the kits being made.