brummie

To be fair, he's made the step up from Man United seamlessly.

I thought the first 20 minutes when we were well on top, it was utterly silent.

I've been impressed with Senderos and Richardson, too, they struck me as extremely meh signings, but one thing we were saying the last two years was that we needed some experience. It has clearly started to improve us. Mind you, the last few years, we've done very well at grounds we're not supposed to get anything. Especially Anfield.

No point in thinking about anything he says. Also NB without Ron Vlaar. Our record with and without Vlaar last season was remarkable. It seems like we have learned how to defend properly and not act like frightened children when someone has a go at us.

That's a good point. How far is that, 300 each way? If you're going to lose your rag with fans, it makes it much worse if you're doing it to those who have put in an extraordinary journey like that to watch their team.

I think, when stuff like that starts to happen, you really know the end is not far off. It was the same with McLeish and us, once it tipped over into Peter Grant (his assistant) swearing at fans at home matches, it was only going to end one way. I think that's pretty much a given at all clubs, really. Once staff start acting like that to fans, the end has to be near. That clip looked particularly bad because there was a kid stood right at the front, in the middle.

We're playing pretty well at the moment.

Did his ACL twice!

Watch this boy, he is the real deal: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/12/jack-grealish-real-deal-aston-villa

When I turned up in Newcastle as a student in 1986, I'd never been there before - other than for an open day at the Poly - and had no idea where the ground was. One thing that struck me was that back then, it was a horrible, dated mess. I'd never been to a ground open at both ends in the first division before, and the main stand looked like it had been built 100 years previously and never cleaned. It had the feel of an athletics stadium. If you look at what it became over a couple of decades, you would never, ever have predicted that at the time. I know you have become known for poor leadership in recent years, but at some point, someone got things consistently right to transition the ground from what it was then to what it is now in such a short period of time. I went to quite a few matches in my time there, and the thing that always struck me as unique was the location in the city centre. I remember walking around doing a bit of shopping on a Saturday afternoon and hearing a roar when you'd scored, and it struck me as surreal - I was used to a city where all three grounds were a few miles out of the city centre. I also liked the fact you'd see people converging on the city centre for a game. Carrying fanzines, or programs, the pubs we'd drink in as students full of people going to the game. I think that city centre location and the fact it is in a one-club city add so much. This was the late 1980s. In Birmingham, you'd probably not wear any colours if you were going to the city centre for drinks before a match, as there would be too much chance of aggro, so it was strange for me to experience living in a place where this didn't happen.

I love that stadium, so classy with the brick. If they knocked Villa Park down and built it again, I'd love them to do it in that style. Brilliant, easily my favourite on this thread.

Only a loan. That bit pleases me. In fact, it's nice to see we've finally realised you can TAKE loans rather than just give them. Sounds like his agent is an absolute bell end, though, judging bt the story in the Torygraph today.

There's been a few done in Newcastle-Gateshead (Westgate road building and Get-Carter car park both knocked down) but money is tight nowadays. The rules are stupid, the old odeon is a listed building and in a prime spot for a massive redevelopment and it's been sitting derelict for 10 years now. Is that the main Odeon in the centre of Newcastle? Used to go there a lot in the late 1980s. There and the Tyneside Cinema (which I hope is still operating).

I always loved Craven Cottage. For ages, that has been my favourite English away trip. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Fulham_Football_Club,_Craven_Cottage_-_geograph.org.uk_-_577769.jpg Nice old ground in a great settings, near to enough really good pubs you can avoid the plastic glass, beer throwing, singing pre-match venues if you want.

You're probably talking about the gas st basin -> brindley place section. Currently they're doing up the NIA (arena), making it bigger and giving it a glass frontage over the canals: http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/vv10/guilbert53/ES109Eastside148_zpsfc71d79c.jpg

If you like proper beer, you need to go for a few in the Post Office Vaults and the Pure Bar, both of which are pretty much round the corner from the Wellington.

Swansea and Southampton are two clubs which have developed an ethos in terms of how they want to play over years, which has survived manager changes and lasts longer than any one manager or coach. Clubs like Newcastle or Villa don't have anything like the correct attitude in that department, mostly because they're run by people who understand money but don't get football. To paraphrase someone, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. As a result of this, everything is short term. The upshot of this is that those clubs end up being good jobs for that seemingly endless roundabout of mediocre British managers who seem to become millionaires by going from one club to another with no discernible reason to keep getting jobs (Pardew, McLeish, Allardyce, Bruce etc etc).

Too right. This is Chamberlain Square in Birmingham. On the left is the Council House, a grade II* listed building. On the right is the Town Hall, a grade 1 listed building, built in the mid nineteenth century where everyone from Charles Dickens to Churchill spoke, where bands like Black Sabbath played some of their early gigs. http://www.britain-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/CN2FE1.jpg What used to be on the other side of this square (ie behind the person taking the picture): http://www.photobydjnorton.com/Library/Test160.jpg What is there now, built in the mid 1970s: http://www.birminghamroundabout.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/birmingham_central_library.jpg Truly revolting. Being demolished at the end of the year, thank fuck. John Madin built loads of this brutalist shit over Birmingham and he outlived almost every one of them. I for one would gladly push the plunger on this one. I appreciate that lots of the post war buildings went up due to the damage the Luftwaffe did, but when I hear London luvvies getting themselves all wound up about that horrible mess getting demolished, i want to puke. It is also right in the middle of the city centre, dividing it in two. The moaners are probably the same people who, for decades, sneered at that building. Oh well, sorry, I've gone off topic.

That's tremendously beautiful. I'm annoyed massivley on your behalf! I'M A GRIEF THIEF To give him his due - and this is five or six years ago when he still cared - Lerner was apparently livid when he read about what had been done. He fished out a lot of the original features in storage from the old stand (stuff like claret and blue stained glass windows, plus old fixtures and fittings) and had them installed in the new Trinity Road stand. He also, and this is impressive and just shows what a change he has undergone, when he read about the mosaics on the old stand, tracked down the Italian company who made the original, found out that the main bloke there's great grandson was still running the family business, and employed them to recreate (reinterpret) the mosaics on the back of the Holte End: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/20/article-0-0398A296000005DC-959_468x289.jpg He also spent £4m renovating the Holte pub at the back of the Holte End. It's a lovely Jacobean imitation (ie of the stately home the other side of the park next to the ground) building which at the start of the 1900s was also used to house some of the players in the boarding rooms upstairs. Under Ellis it was derelict, boarded up and falling down for years. Lerner turned it into this: http://www.groupdyer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2047_1.jpg When I remind myself of things like that, Lerner's loss of interest looks even more stark.

Aye, not far. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00346/114790394_football_346024c.jpg There was an article in the Observer last year about how Liverpool are fucking people off by buying up surrounding houses one by one over the years and turning the area into an unliveable shit hole to put pressure on those who don't want to sell up. Found it: http://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2013/may/07/anfield-liverpool-in-pictures and this is the article. Well worth a read: http://www.theguardian.com/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2013/may/06/anfield-liverpool-david-conn

I'll never forgive that fucking philistine Ellis for knocking down the old Trinity Road stand. The entrance was beautiful, and respected the fact it was practically in the gardens of a Jacobean stately home. I am sure we could have somehow redeveloped the stand but maintained the facade. One of the few remaining Archibald Leitch (the original God of football stand design) stands. I can only think of Craven Cottage and Ibrox that still have them. http://www.astonvilla.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/profile/uploads/6090p.jpg http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/PA-504788.jpg http://freespace.virgin.net/d.barker/graphics/stein51.jpg

I know it's all very childish, but all that FHRITP stuff last night screwing up SSN's wank-a-thon was the highlight of the night. If you allow your reporters to be surrounded by mongs then you have no right at all to complain if they then decide to act like mongs. Yellow ties, fucking 'totalisers', constant updates on which players could be moving, pushing the odds via SkyBet, Big fucking Ben, Natalie Sawyer's latest yellow dress, Jim "the cunt" White. Put it all together, douse it in petrol, burn it and shoot the ashes to the Moon. It's an absolute twatfest. Pointing at that big fucking screen with the total spend on it and pretending it is exciting to see it so high rather than a pretty fucking sad indictment on the priorities of the modern world. I hate them all.

I know it's all very childish, but all that FHRITP stuff last night screwing up SSN's wank-a-thon was the highlight of the night.

Totally agree, Cleverley is SHITE. Oh, hang on *looks at twitter* Actually, he's alright as a loan move.

16m and 100k a week for Welbeck = mental.