Yorkie

They're knocking on the door now, pulling us out of position a lot. Need to get and hold the ball for a bit.

Exceptional defending on the recovery from Burn

Brilliant from Elanga, well done son

Absolutely laughable whinging from the cockerels re the goal

DJ Ed Spence spent far too much time on the deck (s)

Totally deserved

SCHAAAAAR

Classy performance so far

Regardless of where you stand on the daylight argument, I'd hope that most could see that a (pretty fundamental) rule amendment provoked by the existence of VAR is fucking shit. There's no way this is on the table if VAR isn't routinely chalking-off perfectly good goals. There's fuck all wrong with the rule if it's applied moreso in spirit rather than to the letter. You take the rough with the smooth and just accept that the vast, vast, vast majority of goals scored from an offside position are negligibly so, and/or something you credit the striker for, for 'beating' the rule. In the same way a defender might get away with a sly dig or stamp off the ball, which should technically be a foul. If VAR has taught us anything it should be that the game's imperfections are baked-in, part of its fluidity and its nature; instead we double-down with more interference, refs mic'd up to stadium speakers and - heaven forbid - rule changes. Just leave it the hell alone.

God it would be SO MINT if we retained this thing.

Ramsdale Krafth - Schär - Botman - Burn Tonali - Miley - Ramsey Elanga - Osula - Barnes

So is O'Neill generally looked upon not that favourably by Villa fans? Looking at the basic facts - three consecutive 6th placed finishes, followed by a very slow and inevitable march towards a hideous relegation a few years later - you'd assume he's seen as one of the better PL Villa managers?

Guessing there's no obvious omissions to indicate some young blood featuring on Wednesday night?

Poor old Rog' got an absolute hammering on here 19 years ago. Maintain that that thread is full of bad takes. Bloke's a ledge.

Punt this Bale on his Spurs return?

Dzeko?

Presumably England getting five the first time increases its chances of always getting five, because there's more opportunities to run up coefficient points across more entrants?

Rodon on the bench is the stinker for me. Ah well, low scoring week all round. Pretty much a case of those who had Van de Ven and those who didn't, generally.

That's why the actual points is the one that counts. xAnything is just a metric for looking at trends, nothing more.

Sensational stop from Dubravka. Looks like a great signing for them. Fair play to him, looked more or less finished in 23/24.

At one point we'd lost 38 times across two season's worth of games, all the whole sucking Ashley off and whinging about fan expectations. It's a miracle he escapes the Bruce levels of criticism for most fans.

It was a jape about how we tried our best to get knocked out of the cups at the first attempt, if that wasn't obvious...

Assuming he's still in charge, this game will take Howe to the same number of games in charge as Pardew, if you can believe that. When you consider Pardew oversaw roughly four cup games, it puts it into perspective how long we had to put up with that idiot. It feels like Howe has been here forever now.

I bet that's amazing tbf. Razor would do well for tele tbh, it's the spells of not knowing what's going on that troubles me, but maybe I shouldn't expect audio description levels of detail.