brummie

This is a comment on the club as much as the team, but to me, you look very, very much like we did two months ago (and previously) and still do to a certain extent. Moribund, clearly going nowhere, and run (badly) by people who don't really give too much of a shit. Like us, the only thing that will really change things in the long term is a change in the ownership.

Can't wait to see Man City's first again.

That was 100 times better than anything under Lambert earlier this season.

We seem to have much more spirit under Sherwood. I looked ten mins ago and we'd have 60% possession too. I think that is what Brendan Rodgers calls "winning the possession".

I don't like the bottom of the table at the moment.

And while I'm at it, putting German players in WW2 situations, Mats Hummels looks like he should be wearing a very thick woollen jumper, on the bridge of a u-boat, looking through binoculars at some British shipping.

He's a proper character (world class player too) He just looks so unbelievably German. He looks like he should be on the top of a tank, Afrika Korps hat jauntily perched on his head, being chased by Montgomery across northern africa.

He's an absolutely dreadful defender, like. Never hack it in a proper league. He's one of my least favourite footballers of all time. An absolute fucking clown.

God, if we win it, Sherwood will never, ever shut the fuck up. Like, ever.

I agree with you re the semis being at Wembley, but you soon forget about that when you're there. re fans with a sense of entitlement, we played Man United in the carling cup final in 2010. We lost, and I shit you not, at most half of their fans bothered to stay for the cup presentation. Staggering.

He said he doesn't get sports you utter loon. Sorry, that bit of insanity passed me by. Why have Sky without the Sports? I've got Sky without the sports. The basic package, means I can get Sky Atlantic and all that decent stuff. As for the sports, I tend to steal them from the internet. Or, in the Lambert era this season, not steal them from the internet. *gangster pose*

I don't really know of any dislike between us and Wolves. Mind you, I doubt that would impact where a player goes in any case.

I got a letter from Sky this week which started with the line: "Good news! The price of your subscription is not going up!" Made me really angry. They treat it like fucking train fares, the yearly hike of which is now effectively a meekly accepted tax people have to accept to get on with their lives.

Forgot. You made Cleverley look really good, too.

You reminded me of us this season under Lambert. Constant tactics fiddling, enough passing the ball around, zero purpose. Team didn't look like they knew what they were doing. What on earth was Rodgers thinking bringing Rickie Lambert on on 91 minutes? You're losing, Brendan. You're wasting time, which is what we're supposed to be doing. We played well, but I can honestly say I've seen us play better than that this season, and come away with less, and sometimes nothing. Rodgers strikes me as an informed tactician, but one who doesn't really get how to make it work on the pitch, especially when the opposition aren't making it easy for you. It's also worth noting that only QPR currently have more injured players than we do. We played on Sunday with a not very good right winger at right back and a really poor midfielder at left back. We also had our best defender this season - Clark who has improved out of all recognition this year - out, and also were without Agbonlahor, who, despite not being exactly prolific, usually does well for us in matches like this. On top of that, we lost Baker in the first half, and had a 19 year old who had only started one game in his life playing. I'm the most pessimistic Villa fan you'll find, but I genuinely didn't think we'd lose that game for a moment on Sunday. Liverpool really need to be a bit worried.

Normally, I don't do the whole "supporters of club x are all y" thing. We're all fans, ultimately, and have more in common than divides us. However, really, Liverpool's support at the match on Sunday was horrific. I did a full circuit of the stadium before the match, and really, it was a vision of football hell. So many red foam hands, jester hats, fucking half and half scarves, whole nervous looking families clad in replica shirts, grown adults looking like they'd been in a hurricane inside the club shop. During the match I was bang on the halfway line in the middle, neutral level, and the lack of noise from them was almost total. Bar YNWA at the start (which got booed out, anyway) and an outburst of that horrible "Fields of Anfield Road" song after they scored, that was pretty much the lot. I appreciate it's partly because they get to big matches far more often than we do, so maybe they're blase' about it, but really, it was absolutely shocking stuff. I thought maybe I was being overly critical, so looked on RAWK and there's a thread there of them saying exactly the same thing. Their away support (which is similar when they come to VP) seems to be disproportionately made up of passive day trippers who have bought into the "brand", the result of which is that they manage to combine impressive numbers with truly poor noise. I have little against Liverpool. I hated them winning everything in the 70s and 80s, yes, but I have way, way more distaste for Man United. What I don't get is how, when, say, Man United come and play us, their support seems to be made up mostly of Mancs, who make very good noise, yet when we play Liverpool, there's hardly a scouse accent amongst them? Do Liverpool have some strange ticket allocation system going on which makes this possible? Before, during and after the match, we got chatting to some scouse Liverpool fans, who were, to a man, a good bunch, and after the match, really magnanimous in defeat, but coming home, I was thinking how I actually feel sorry for them. That RAWK thread is really worth a read. I know Liverpool traditionally have a bit of antagonism between their regional support and the rest, and thought that Reclaim the Kop thing was cringemaking, but after Sunday, I am starting to understand the problem a bit more.

We always say that footballers are out of touch with reality. Isn't the flip side of someone like Asprilla being such a talented mentalist on the pitch that he's going to be a bit, well, "different" off it? ** ** understatement of decade

Shit, sorry, genuinely didn't realsed you'd played today.

Fuck. Me, What a fucking day I've had. I am so glad I fluked a freebie for that. What a fucking brilliant day out that was. Just brilliant.

I can't believe any of you really think you're going to get relegated. You're already on a total which could well be enough for the season.

Liquidator? Aye. White supremiscists love a bit of reggae. Wolves (I think) and Albion do, too. The song, not the white supremacy, probably for the opposite reasons in their case. Great song, too. Am jealous. "Fuck off West Brom, we're Wolves" they sing, don't they? And I believe the Albion fans sing "Fuck off the Wolves" to it. There was something about their club trying to get people to stop doing it a few years back, so I don't know if they've stopped playing it.

Liquidator? Aye. White supremiscists love a bit of reggae. Wolves (I think) and Albion do, too. The song, not the white supremacy, probably for the opposite reasons in their case. Great song, too. Am jealous.

Wembley in the late evening sunshine looks lovely. I bet it fucking tanks it down all day tomorrow. Come on, Reading, you sort-of-history-less-characterless-town-full-of-rootless-London-overspill-people-who-probably-prefer-rugby hoopy bastards!

Ha ha, and in a massive, massive volte face, a mate has just offered me a freebie in a box in the Club Wembley Gold area and I've accepted it. Fucking LOVE Club Wembley, me, like.

He's done ok. We are bearable to watch. Quite entertaining, in fact, which is borne out by the massive uplift in goals scored since he came. As a person, though, he strikes me as a bit of a thick idiot. A well meaning thick idiot, mind, but all that gillet throwing stuff is a bit embarrassing. He reminds me of O'Neill is his touchline antics. Let's just hope that's where the similarities end. I think we'll find out what those are this summer, as although he's clearly a decent coach (although apparently Tony Parkes is massively involved in the coaching), we have no idea what he's like doing the other bits of management (ie the transfers part). I still think we may have left it too late to sack Lambert. He should have gone ages ago. Hard to believe how depressing his reign got towards the end. It was worse than watching McLeish's side. So what about in general, then? Irreparable damage from previous tenures or can you feel the passion coming back? Well, scoring goals again has made a huge difference to spirits. If you look at Sherwood's win ratio here, it isn't actually that good, but trying to score and showing a bit of flair is a massive improvement on the eye-bleedingly bad shit from the earlier part of this season.